A few things we've been doing

I came up with this while draining the pasta. L's first attempt at lacing. She kind of grasped the concept with quite a bit of help from me. She didn't really get that we had to keep turning the strainer over to pull the pipe cleaners through. I think this activity would be really enjoyed by an older child. You could go to town and do some cool weaving.
Of course L now associates the pipe cleaners with making Cheerio necklaces so kept asking where the Cheerios were. I finally gave in and brought out that activity but she really just wanted the Cheerios.

We also tried a taste activity for the first time. This was really interesting and funny. I put two cups with a bit of salt water, two with sugar water and two with lemon water and then a glass of just plain water to rinse in between. Well L has never really eaten anything with any added salt or refined sugar so this was a big shock to her taste buds! I got her to taste each one and told her what is was (sweet, salty or bitter). I was planning to get her to taste the other cups and match them but after a couple sips she decided she didn't like any of them and drank all of the plain water. I don't really blame her. It was really funny watching her reactions.

And mommy's favorite no mess water painting! Gotta love it!

In answer to the question from My Child's Diary about L drinking and pouring water. I started off with a small glass and jug and just filled the jug a quarter full. Now I fill it half full and she has to ask if she wants more water. This way she doesn't have to worry about stopping pouring before the water is gone and overflowing the glass. If she started messing about I would just say we only use the glass and jug for drinking and take it away. She wouldn't get anymore drink for the rest of the meal. ( she has lots of drink available between meals) She soon realised that if she messed about she would go thirsty. Now we only have the occasional fork in the glass or she puts the jug on top of the glass.

Thank You!

Karen over at Mi escuelita Montessori has given me this award. Thank you so much! I love your blog also and you are so great at leaving comments.

The conditions of this award are: tell your readers 10 things about you that they may or may not know, but are true. Tag ten people with the award, and be sure to let them know they have been tagged (a quick comment on their blog will do). Don't forget to link back to the blogger who tagged you.

Here are ten true things about me:

1. I love the Montessori Method mostly because of the order and structure
2. I love to read
3. Both L and I are vegetarians but my husband is not
4. I'm a trained classical flute player and played professionally in a symphony orchestra for 10 years
5. Before I moved to England I also taught children and adults to play the flute
6. I really don't like cooking
7. I owned two VW vans when I was footloose and fancy free!
8. I can't wait to move back to Canada
9. I love the outdoors
10. I really enjoy writing this blog and connecting with other moms!

Now it also stipulates to pass this on to ten other people. I'm only going to do three for the sole purpose of not giving the same people this award many times over. ( I follow all of the same blogs as have already been nominated and think they are fantastic also).

The first one is Aayla do! Montessori. This is actually written by a close friend of mine who was key in inspiring me to start Montessori with L in the first place. She has some really great ideas and is really worth checking out. (she also owned a VW van in her footloose and fancy free days!)

The second one is Al Ain Notebook. I found this blog by accident when blog surfing and I really enjoy it. It is written by a mom who has a daughter close to the same age as L and is living in the United Arab Emirates for a year. I find her posts interesting and her photographs are amazing.

The third one is a repeat and I'm sure she's been nominated a million times but she deserves it and that is Making of a Montessori Mum. She was my initial inspiration for this blog and my "unknown" mentor in Montessori and blogging. Thanks again! : )

Summing up 20 month practical life

Wow I can't believe another month has gone by. This is my last 20 month post so I'll do a brief summing up of where L is at with practical life activities.
We didn't get as much accomplished as I'd hoped but we are making progress in a lot of areas.

• Potty training-accomplished. I'd say she's fully potty trained(except when sleeping). She'll only have the occasional accident now if she's really excited or distracted
• Pulling her own pants down. Depending on what she's wearing. Sometimes she'll go to the bathroom and I won't even know until she comes to me when she's done. She still needs help pulling them up and washing hands etc. Today she'd even emptied her own potty before I got there. YIKES!
• Getting dressed and undressed. Well she's tried a few times to put her top and pants on but is not really interested. She's able to take all of the bottoms off and sometimes her top with help. She can take her shoes off but is not interested in putting them on at the moment.
• Sets table no problem but doesn't like to clear it any more hmmmm... we usually clear most and get her to take one thing. Also doesn't like to wipe it any more. Only occasionally, also needs to be reminded to push her chair in most of the time.
• Still puts clean dishes etc. away
• Victory on the water department. No more messing about. Pours and drinks water with no problems
• Helps with putting shopping away, laundry, watering, weeding, putting dirty clothes in basket, rubbish in the bin

Now for goals I set last month:

• L has no interest in helping to fold the clothes or put them away will try again this month
• Only has a small interest in dressing herself
• She's also done some dusting as I've put in a previous post

We also got around to washing the windows. She loved this of course, although because she needs two hands to use the spray bottle her aim is a little off most of the time. I'm just using water until she has more control in case she sprays herself in the eye!

Lots of helping with the baking. I decided to use L's little table for all of her food preparation because I think it's a lot safer than her standing on a chair. I just get everything I need prepared ahead of time now and then just put them out as she needs them. The other night she made pita pizzas for the whole family!

To be honest I haven't even thought of goals for next month yet! I guess we'll just keep on with the clothes thing and I'll try and include her more in food preparation. I would really appreciate any suggestions for other practical life activities anyone has done with their children at this age. It's definitely more work getting L to do all of these things for herself and takes a lot of patience but when I see her getting out her own things for her meal all by herself it certainly makes it all worth while! : )

Going on Safari

For Daddy's birthday we decided to go to a Wild Animal park close to our home. I really don't like zoos and animals in captivity but this one is the closest we could find to animals being able to live in their natural environment. It is set in 600 acres and even has an African Experience Safari where different animals roam freely.

Setting off. Now I did read on the website that the park was set in 600 acres but it obviously didn't register as we set off sans stroller. At the end of this path were about 5 flights of stairs down to the old manor house. Well we soon realised that it was going to be a huge trek. L the little trooper did a fantastic job and only had to be carried up the hills.

One of our favorite animals. We got a book about wild animals out from the library a week before we went so L knew all of the names of the animals and was so excited to spot them.

Trying to step on her shadow. She thought this was hilarious.

Out on the open plains. This was from the safari bus. It was so cool and as close as we'll be getting to Africa for a long time I think. We were exhausted by the end of the day but I think fun was had by all!

Silly mommy!

I decided to retire the chopsticks for a while and use the lacing beads for color matching. L is at the stage where she doesn't like change and will do the color matching but still asks where the chopsticks are all of the time so I brought them back. I was originally hoping she would match the patterns on the cards with the lacing chopsticks but we'll have to work on this activity a lot more before that will happen.

I also got this idea of spooning grapes into an ice cube tray from Leptir. L had no problem spooning the grapes in although she doesn't really understand why she can't just use her hand which is so much easier! But during the whole activity she was troubled, asking me where the ice was. Ice cube trays are supposed to have ice! Duh. So luckily I'd saved the ice and we switched grapes for ice.

She was much happier, although the activity quickly dissolved (literally) into a lot of sucking and licking. I just left her to it and went and did the dishes. She had a great time.

After reading Making of a Montessori Mum's post on circle time a while ago I got all inspired and decided to try having one with L. Well after diner one night it was just the two of us with lots of time before bed so I though yes I'll have an impromptu circle time. I got L all excited about the idea and put some instruments in a basket. We got the floor mat out and sat down and I began singing a song. Well after I'd finished and was all proud of myself L asked, "Mommy where's the circle?" Once again Duh! So I quickly grabbed bear and doll and added them to the circle. We passed them out some instruments and I did the pleases and thank yous for them. We sang another song together using the instruments and then L took one of the maracas from bear looking at me like, well he's not using it is he! We did a few more songs and then finished. L asked me once again where the circle was so I tried to draw one around us with my finger to show her. I realised it looked a lot more like a square.

So in conclusion (having been outsmarted by a 20 month old again) I'm either going to leave circle time for a bit or call it something else!

Collecting Leaves

We finally got around to getting out and collecting leaves at the park. I've wanted to try leaf rubbing for some time now. We took a basket for L to collect the leaves in and she absolutely loved it! We had to really watch her though because there are tons of stinging nettles along the path. She only picked up the leaves that had fallen on the path. Once daddy had gotten over his wanting her to only pick up the "clean leaves" we all really got into it. Somehow L also added picking up sticks to our agenda. It was really interesting to see her learning the size limitations of her basket when it came to the sticks.

Sorting out the findings. She even found some sort of large seed which she insisted on calling popcorn?

I have to just note here that I'm putting in the old college try when it comes to plants but I'm really very lacking in knowledge (probably the only person who's killed a cactus). I'm just trying to hold down the fort until we get to Canada and granny the expert can take over. (Does green thumb skip a generation?)




All three of us got started rubbing the leaves, although daddy and I ended up being much more into it than L. She did get in some Double Doodling though!
Our end result turned out to be really colorful and best of all we all had a great time!

We splurged!

As anyone can tell by my cardboard creations we don't have a lot of money to spend. With only one of us working it is very seldom that L gets anything new. The boot fair was cancelled last weekend due to rain so we ended up going to ..... Toysrus!! That's right. Now this is not a place that we normally frequent but it does have something that I've been wanting to get for L for a while now. Just a few words about Toysrus before I continue. (I have to get my rant in). I've never seen such a great example of where society is going wrong. It's like Las Vegas for kids in my opinion. So much plastic and almost every toy is associated with a TV character. That being said they do have a tiny portion of one isle dedicated to Melissa and Doug toys. Yeah! So that's where we headed and picked up....

The Melissa and Doug tool kit. I've been wanting to get this for a while because I think L is ready to start working on her twisting movement and she also didn't have a hammer. Well you think this would have been enough for one kid but daddy had come along with us. (uh oh)
L still has her obsession with airplanes and daddy has been wanting to get a small airplane they can fly together. Well they just happened to be on sale. He looked at them and hummed and haa'd but we ended up just getting the tool kit. When we got to the car he was still talking about the plane so I said oh just get it. It can be an early birthday present. (ha ha) So he did. We had to get about a zillion batteries and charge them up and the we went out to test it.


This was such great fun and hilarious. We took it to an open space but there were still trees around and it was quite windy. It took daddy a while to figure out the controls and then the plane was off. It went higher and higher and then started drifting towards the trees. We were all yelling to try and bring it back but it ended up in some brambles. Luckily we could still see it. So hero daddy waded his way into the brambles with his stick Indiana Jones style and finally retrieved the plane. Serious entertainment!
Anyway I love both of these because they are things L and daddy can do together and he enjoys. She already knows the names for the spanner, hammer and screwdriver!