The Brown Stair, with Lesson

Pumpkin is ordering the Brown Stairs.

Pumpkin, now 3.5 has been working with the Brown Stair since she was just two years old.  Here you can see her building it vertically.  She was also pretending to put mortar in between each prism (there's construction on our street) which is fine by me.  The fast she's using her imagination shows me that she has mastered this concept.  

She caught me taking this photo...."What Mom?...It IS called the Brown Stairs.  I was just checking with my feet!"  Fair enough.

The Brown Stair Lesson-

Area

General-Sensorial

Specific- Visual Discrimination , Size awareness

Materials

  See the photos :) 

Aims

Direct-  Refinement of the ability to observe, compare, discriminate, differentiate, reason, decide, solve problems and appreciate our world.

Indirect- Learning to grade prisms by discrimination of volume

Preparation:  Pink tower, knobbed cylinders

Age- First year Montessori student

Presentation of Lesson:

  Carry one prism at a time

  Place them to the right side

  Hold prisms adjacent to floor with two hands

  Isolate the extremes to the left of the mat “This is the largest”  “This is the smallest”

  Start with the largest prism, continue grading prisms- setting them largest to smallest in a stair form

  Appreciate

  Return to shelf one prism at a time, starting with the largest

Work of the Teacher

Points of Emphasis:

  Carry with two hands adjacent to floor

  Scanning for next prism

Language:

  Non verbal 1^st

  Prism

  Large, small

Points of Interest:

  Heaviness of prism

  Chance to build

Work of the Child

Points of Consciousness:

  Largest goes 1^st

  They make a stair

Control of Error:

  Child’s eye

  Smallest prism

  If it’s not built right, it won’t look like a stair

Variations:

  Build Vertically

  Build end to end

Extensions:

  Combine with other discrimination of size materials, ESPECIALLY the Pink Tower-- hours of fun.