L's new environment Part 2

Okay part two.  The first two pictures are of L's activity shelves in our spare bedroom.  I'll do a quick run down on what is on the shelves at this particular time.  Some activities are always there and some I constantly change up.

The top shelf holds a baskets of my crafting supplies.  The next shelf down is L's craft shelf which holds different kinds of paper and coloring books, crayons, markers, pencil crayons, stamps and ink, scissors, glue sticks and chalk.  She is also allowed access into my baskets if she needs something specific.

The next shelf is her language shelf which holds her handwriting binder, language activities, upper and lower case letters, chalk board and chalk and her eye spy bottle. This shelf gets changed up every week or so.

Second from the bottom is her games and puzzles shelf.  L loves puzzles so we have tons of them.  I have them all out because she uses all of them.

The bottom shelf holds her Lego, wooden blocks in the bag and her other puzzles. Her work mats are to the right of the shelves.

 The second set of shelves.  From the top are all of her board type games.  Next is her "science and geography shelf"  This shelf also changes but at the moment is has her bug viewer, animals and insects and also her Leap Frog globe.  We LOVE this.  I'm usually not a fan of these kind of things but I found it at a boot fair for $2 so I couldn't resist.  You place the pen on the picture and it tells you all about the animals and places on the globe. 

The bottom shelf holds her puppets and shadow puppet theatre.  This also changes depending on what we're working on.  Next to the shelves are my super messy activity drawers where I store all of our past activity materials.

 The living room is still a work in progress but at the moment we have L's table for crafts and activities, her easel(with just crayons and pencil crayons! I'm not going any further with that white carpet underneath!).  For the moment we also have her instrument basket here until we get the music room set up properly.  I'm also planning to put our new nature table in the bay window.

I'm setting up a special space for L in each of the rooms in the house.  In part three I will hopefully have L's snack space, the music room and L's new bedroom which we are painting next weekend.

I'm also almost finished our Australia continent box and will be posting about our activities some time this week.

L's new environment Part 1

I'm so happy to finally have proper spaces for L's things.  Our house is mostly unpacked so I wanted to record how we have set up L's spaces to enable her to have as much independence as possible.

Kitchen

This is my favorite room for L other than her bedroom.  She has her own cupboard where she can set her own place, get her aprons for baking and cooking and also her cooking utensils.  There are cloths for clean up and for use at meals.

We also have a dishwasher(yoohoo!)which L puts her dirty dishes into after her meals and is able to unload her clean dishes into her cupboard (when she so feels that is!) She also loves to put in the washing powder and turn it on.

 Beside the table is her stool and her bucket with her mop, dustpan and broom and head for her long broom.  She is able to sweep up crumbs and mop up spills, like the drink she spilled all over the floor yesterday!

 The best bit is the water dispenser in the fridge door!  Liquid independence!

We also have a wonderful pantry which will eventually have a shelf for L's snacks as well as a fridge with low shelves to hold L's cold snacks.

 Hall Closet

L has her own hooks to hang her jackets on when she comes in and is able to put her shoes on the low rack.  There is a basket for her hats and mits.

 L's bedroom closet

This is one of the first spaces I organised when we moved in.  It's so important for L to have a place for all of her clothes so she can get dressed in the morning.  The blue hanging organiser has compartments for (starting at the bottom)tights and undershirts, underwear and socks, pj's, and bathing suits.

The low rack holds her tops and pants.  L is able to hang up her dresses and jackets on hangers now(thanks to school).

L is soooo proud to have her own laundry basket that she can carry to the laundry room.  She helped me do laundry the other day and put away all of her clean clothes.  Lets see how long that continues!

So that is the end of part one.  Part two will have L's spaces for activities in our house.

We're In!

Phew!  We made it!  We've been in our new house for almost a week now and we're loving it!  We are on the top floor and have lots of windows and natural light as well as lots of space for L to run around and dance in.
I'm especially excited to be setting up our home to enable L to be as independent as possible and will have some pics and a post about it coming soon.
Most of our boxes are unpacked(as long as you don't count the garage!)and we just have to get some more book shelves here and there.  L is excited to paint her bedroom and we are still under negotiations for colors.

We've still been big into learning about Australia and when I get my act together I'll have some posts on our activities as well.
I've missed posting and reading all of your posts and am looking forward to getting back to the bloggy world!

Have to share a conversation between L and my sister the other day while she was visiting.
L had her "dancing dress" on and was flitting about.  My sister asked her " would you like to play hockey one day?" To which L replied as she was doing a twirl  " No.  Too sweaty!"

Moving!

Yep, the day has finally come (well almost come)when we are moving into our own house! It's been over a year living with my mom and although it's had tons of advantages, as you can imagine we are so ready to have our own space!!
We have sold my mom's place and have bought a two story house with an ocean view! Woohoo.  We have a large deck upstairs so we can sit and eat our meals outside in the summer while watching the sun set over the water.  Ahhh can't wait.
My mom has her own separate suit downstairs so although we each have our own space we are still together.
We move in on the 15th so it's all hands on deck here and needless to say not much else going on post wise. 
One of the things I'm most excited about is finally being able to set up our own space to accommodate L's growing independence.  She finally gets her own bedroom and with it will come more responsibilities. 

So I probably won't be on here much in the next couple of weeks but after that expect lots of new house and set up posts along with our first Continent Box.
For those of you who expressed an interest in a swap I'll get back to you once the dust has settled!

Fairies in the Woods

A while back I posted about the beautiful woods we have across the road from our house.  L and her Granny take the dog around the trails a few times a week and always check to see if everything is where it should be.  The other day we were cleaning out the crawl space and I found a bunch of fairies I made out of Fimo years ago. Unfortunately they were covered in mold so I thought the woods would be the best place for them.

We really enjoyed finding new homes for them.

I realised after that I didn't really get any pictures of their wings which they do have, all except the wizard that is.

Fingers crossed that they enjoy their new home and that the people who are lucky enough to spot them just enjoy them and leave them be!

Continent Boxes-Swap and Upcoming Giveaway

When I was first learning about Montessori I thought one of the coolest things was the Continent Boxes.  I still do! Of course I figured that L would be doing them at her school but when I asked her teacher about it she didn't know what I was talking about.  They only have Continent Folders left over from another teacher from a different school.

I was pretty happy actually because after seeing so many fantastic ideas in the blogworld I secretly wanted to make my own.  So now I plan to make them first for L and when she has covered them I will donate them to her school.

This is where you come in.  I'm almost finished Australia(thanks to some great Aussie friends) and once I completely finish the printables I will be putting all of them up for a giveaway.

Also I'm looking for people who would like to do a Continent Swap.  I've seen some very successful ones done in the last little while.

I am looking for people who would like to swap things from South America, Africa, Asia and Antarctica for things from North America(mainly Canada) plus any of my printables I have made from all of the Continents.

If you are interested please leave me a comment with your email address or just email me at montessoribeginnings@yahoo.ca

Stay tuned for the upcoming Australia printout giveaway.

Streams and Vines board game

L loves to play games or do activities after dinner and before bed.  I've been wanting to do a variation on Snakes and Ladders for ages and after seeing one in the store for $19.00!! I was spurred on to finally create it.

Our version is called Streams and Vines( including one waterfall).  The little girls(cut out from a cute Christmas card)have to make their way home, sometimes getting a shortcut by climbing the vines and other times getting a setback by flowing down the stream or if they're really unlucky falling down the waterfall!

 I wanted to make up a game for L to practice her counting but also added the element of some cards for her to practice her reading as well.  The cards say things like "Get on a frog and hop back three spots" , " Get a ride on the bird to the nest" or "Move up 4 spots".

This game was so simple to make and the best part was it was totally free!!  I just painted a piece of cardboard, cut some paper up for the cards, used a frog, needle felted bird and die we already had and recycled the little girls from an old Christmas card.  L loves it and after the first couple of games has got the hang of it.