Birds of a feather....

I so love all of my bloggy friends.  They make my life so much easier!  L and I started learning about birds a few weeks ago and luckily for me we weren't the only ones!

We have floor to ceiling windows in our kitchen which look into the back garden.  We can watch the birds at the feeder and in the bird bath while eating and have started looking them up in our two bird books.

I made up this little chart of the three different environments we see most of the birds in.  Every time we see a new one we look it up in our bird book, find a picture on the Internet to copy and L pastes it on wherever she's seen it.  So far we haven't seen anything too exotic but it's still really quite exciting when we see a new one. 

Bear and her mom over at The Adventures of Bear have also been learning about birds and I got this yummy idea for edible birds nests from her.

We also made these gorgeous birds nests as shown on The Magic Onions.  L's is the one on the left.  We first talked about what type of things birds would use to build nests.  To make our own we used some yarn, wool batting to fill in the nest and I made some wool eggs for them.  I love how they look on the nature table.

Another brilliant idea from The Adventures of Bear!  We made up some snacks which birds would eat.  Sunflower seeds, berries, spaghetti for worms and banana for the tropical birds.  We then used some tweezers, tongs and chopsticks as bird beaks.  L had the most fun when we took turns pretending we were baby birds being fed by their mother.  The unanimous conclusion was that hands are much easier!

Seems like bird study is very popular this time of year as most of the books were also signed out at our library.  We did find a really cute one called In the Nest by Anna Milbourne which was perfect for our nest building.

Montessori Resources

I don't have a list of Montessori resources or favorite books on my blog(mostly because I haven't taken the time to learn how to do it). I've had several requests asking me what books I would recommend. Well thanks to the lovely Mari-Ann over at Counting Coconuts she's done all the work for me and posted a fantastic list of resources for anyone who has any questions about the Montessori Method.
Check it out here.
Thanks Mari-Ann you are a total Superstar!!

The only other book that I loved and got so much out of that I didn't see on her list is Montessori Read and Write: A Parent's Guide to Literacy for Children by Lynne Lawrence.

Snack time

I've been wanting to set up an area for L to get her own snacks for a long time now. I finally got around to getting the containers. L has four choices which will change every week or so. This week it's dried cranberries, hemp granola, cashew nuts with raisins or an apple.

L takes the snack container of her choice to her table then the measuring cup and a little bowl. She puts enough in to fill the bowl then puts the lid back on and replaces the container.

I'm amazed at how well this is working. I think she absolutely loves the fact that this is all her responsibility. She can get whichever snack, whenever she wants and has the control. Interestingly enough she only gets them out at her usual snack time and doesn't ever take too much. Basically she doesn't abuse it at all and always puts everything back where it's supposed to go(unlike in other areas). We are however still working on her sitting at the table the whole time until she is finished. I tell her once you get up that tells me that you are done and if she gets up I take the snack away. This has led to some serious hissy fits but I'm hoping she'll get the idea soon.

I'm also trying to figure out how and where to keep out some water for her to help herself to but haven't found a space or appropriate container yet.

A bit of our week

I've decided to cop out on the whole "reading" the Montessori way (ie. learning to write first) and am just following L's lead. I'm taking the easy way out and hoping she'll get the right schooling when she goes to school in September. For now we're just doing fun sounding out games like this fishing for words game and lots of the eye spy game.

L catches a word and then matches it with one of the figures.

We've also been learning about living and non-living. This has lead to several funny conversations. Like when Daddy got home and I asked her if he was living or non-living and she said "Daddy's a carnivore!" hehe. She also woke me up the other morning by saying "Mommy an elephant eats food, drinks and has babies so it's living" Good morning to you too!

We then moved on to plants and animals. She totally gets the animal bit but had a harder time getting her head around the fact that plants can't move(on their own) after some good discussion and looking out in the back garden I'm pretty sure she's got it now. Too funny the things that come up when talking to a two and a half year old!

We've also been doing some more work with the blindfold and she's much more comfortable wearing it. Today we did some blind tasting and guessing what the food was. This was easy for her but when it came to my turn she always told me what she was going to put in my mouth. I still tried to act surprised. One day she's going to learn how to play a joke and tell me one thing but give me another!

The Life of Bees

A few weeks ago I borrowed City of Bees from the library. This DVD peaked both my and L's interest and I decided to do some research and put together some activities.
I found a lot of great resources here and one of them was a template to make your own bee. I cut all of the pieces out of construction paper and used wax paper for the wings. I really helped L with her bee because I wanted the end product to be realistic for further use.

We talked about the different parts of a bee and counted how many wings, legs, eyes etc. they have. Did you know a bumble bee has five eyes! I used some hexagon pieces from our Settlers game to create a small piece of the hive for the bees to fly into and do their various work.

We of course also talked about how bees make honey and then had to sample some for our snack.

I saw this counting game on Chasing Cheerios a while ago and adapted it for bees. Each bee has it's own number and each time you roll the number the bee moves closer to her flower to get the nectar.

The other day L was playing in the back yard and came to the door with something in her hand to show me. She was so excited "Look Mommy a bee!!" I tried not to freak out and quickly realised it was no longer alive. Phew. Then I got excited myself and pulled out the magnifying glass and all of our bee materials. We had a blast examining a real bee and comparing it to our diagrams and pictures.

Some other things we've done are to talk about the different types of flowers bees like and watch them pollinate and get nectar from them. We also drew pictures using the diagram as a guide to know how many parts to put on them.

This has been a real learning experience for me as well as L. I realised how little I knew about bees! We are planning to do some more bee activities in the next little while before we move onto something else.

Here are some of the books we've been reading:

Bumble Bees by Cheryl Coughlan

World of Insects Bumblebees by Emily K. Green

Honey Bees by Deborah Heiligman

Nature Challenge continued

SATURDAY

Ahh the open water, smell of pine, wind in your hair and the spray of water on your face.

Priceless! SUNDAY

Evening walk along the beach to watch the sunset and build stone inukshuks.
MONDAY
Okay technically I failed this challenge because although we spent the whole afternoon at the park I forgot my camera!

TUESDAY
Helping to get the bed ready to plant our vegetables.


WEDNESDAY
Along comes Timothy snail....he was a really curious and brave snail before he slithered away.

THURSDAY

Earth Day hike with a friend : )

Happy Earth Day!

May we all learn to walk a little more softly on Mother Earth.

Thank you Childhood Magic for the idea and tutorial on how to make this wonderful Earth lantern.