In Aline Wolf's book Nurturing the Spirit, chapter 16 Peace in the Classroom Community, she talked of ways to include peacemaking in your classroom. One of her many suggestions is the circle activity:
Who Is Missing?
Here I've create my own version of this idea.
Materials needed:
photo cards for each child in your class
with their first name printed on the card.
a circle rug (the one in the photo is actually a chair pad I thought was colorful and resembled our circle rug)
To Use:
One child arranges all the photos except one in a circle, leaving space for the missing picture. She then says, "Some one is missing from our community. Who is it?"
The other child(ren) guess the name of the child missing and the first child returns the card to the circle, completing the classroom community. The game continues with children hiding their eyes while another child removes a different photo from the circle. The exercise shows that the presence of each person is necessary to make their community complete.
In our classroom this work was chosen every day. The children LOVE looking at photos of themselves (and trying to trick one another :)
The circle itself is a wonderful symbol of community. It has no beginning or end, no front row or back row. Each sitting space is equal in rank, indicating that each person in the circle is equally important. Most Montessori classrooms have "circle" at least once a day.
~~MM
3 comments:
Thank you for this idea. I am going to make it for my daughter class. they will love it!
Great idea for a birthday party game too!
When I was teaching in a 3-6 class a few years ago I made 3 part cards of each child in the class: a card with a picture and the child's name; a card with just the picture; a card with just the name. The children do indeed love to work with pictures of themselves and their friends. I printed the names on controlled writing lines using software called Fonts for Teachers. While taking the pictures for this activity it took 9 shots of one child to get a good one of him. As I was about to delete the photos I didn't need, I realized I had a wonderful activity in front of me. All nine photos had the same child in the same clothes in front of the same background. The only difference was in the expressions on the face and the orientation of the head. I asked the child if I could use his pictures for a classroom activity. I printed doubles, mounted and laminated the cards and we then had mathcing "Child's name" cards. The children loved them. This was very challenging work. I also printed out all of the pictures for the child who then made a collage of them that his parents framed.
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