More Halloween activities and a silver lining

Here are some more Halloween themed activities L has been doing. The ever messy spooning bugs out of colored rice(thanks itty bitty love). I used the old egg carton tray from a previous color sorting activity and I should have know that L would try to spoon the bugs in by color! She did the best she could but of course me not thinking about that at all didn't change the colors to match the bugs!! This is such a sweet activity and I'm afraid I can't remember where I saw it. It's so simple to just cut out different shapes and let her get creative making Jack-o-lantern faces. After she got the idea she added cheeks, ears, hair and even a hat with the shapes provided.

Now this is what happens when you leave your child alone for two minutes with a colored rice activity! Two minutes and I came in to find her having a wonderful time sprinkling all of the rice over the carpet. I have to admit it looked cool and it must have been seriously fun to do! So I got out the vacuum cleaner right away. Now this is the good bit. L has always been terrified of the vacuum. It makes a really loud noise and she always either cuddles with me while my husband does it or huddles on the couch. Well the colored rice did the trick. She just couldn't resist having a try when she saw how much fun it was to suck it all up.

She did most of the carpet and even wanted to help me do the kitchen. What a breakthrough! I'll take colored rice on the carpet any day if it means my little one is now wanting to help with the vacuuming!

Autumn fun with Granny

We found this amazing farm on the weekend that does a children's introduction to Halloween. There was a beautiful Halloween display inside a huge barn with pumpkins and hay bales. There was also a Halloween palace that the children could go through that was brightly lit with witches doing funny things, friendly ghosts and black cats. It was really well done and L wasn't scared at all.

Here she is picking her pumpkin.

The amazing corn maze! So many things to discover around each corner.

Across the road was a duck pond with a tree tunnel path that lead to an enchanted forest.

What a magical place!

It's beginning to look at lot like..... Halloween!

We've started preparations for L's Birthday/Halloween party now that my mom is here. We've been making decorations and costumes left, right and center. Halloween is by far my favorite holiday so I'm in my element.

Here's L doing her counting activity with some spooky things to count.

Some double doodling. This is really cool. It's just some paint in a Ziploc bag and cotton buds for drawing. I got the idea from here.

Some decorations for the party. Bat idea was from here and cat idea from here.

And the winner is.....

First of all I would like to say thank you to all of you who posted comments. I found it fascinating to read all of the varying descriptions of the Montessori Method. I'm sorry my brain has turned to mush right now and so I won't be doing an all inspiring "summing up" at the moment but I can see how this method can appeal to a wide variety of people and it seems to me that just by the interest in the blog world it's catching on! Yeah! Power to our children!

And now on with the winner. I counted the number of comments and then put the numbers into L's jack-o-lantern. She had the honor of picking the winner and it was number 7 which corresponds to the 7th comment which happens to be........Aayla do! Montessori.

Now when L picked this number and I figured out who it was I immediately thought Oh no! They're all going to think it was a fix!! but seriously we did it as randomly as we could and she came out the winner. (I also personally have to say that I loved her description. It is the one that I would choose to use if describing Montessori to people who know nothing about it.)
So congratulations to Aayla do! Montessori the Amazing Sticker Book will soon be on it's way and we'll be looking forward to some posts on how you decide to use it.


Thanks again to everyone who left a comment. I had so much fun and learned so much that I'm sure I'll do another one very soon.

Last day before giveaway!

Just a reminder to please leave a comment if you would like to take part in the Amazing Sticker Book giveaway. If you don't feel comfortable describing the Montessori Method just leave a comment about what got you interested in Montessori or this blog!

Happy Birthday Giveaway!!

In honor of both L's and my birthday this month I'm going to do my first giveaway!
The 1000 Stickers book was such a hit with us that I went back to TK Max and amazingly was able to find another one. So one of you lucky readers will soon be able to stick to your hearts delight!

All I ask in return is that you tell me in a few lines how you would describe the Montessori Method to friends, family and anyone else who knows nothing about it. If you read this blog and are just learning about Montessori just tell me what got you interested in it. I will read all of the comments on Friday and either make a decision or try the random number generator if there are too many good ones!

A many step number and counting activity

Sometimes I get inspired by an activity idea and want to do it right away with L (without really thinking it all through). This is a case in point. The idea was to take all of the objects out of the bag, sort them and then place them into the numbered bags that I'd made but I soon realised she needed another step. So this is how it went.

Take objects out of the bag

Sort them (too funny how she put them all around the edge of the mat like she does with the puzzle pieces!)

This is the step I added. I found it was too hard for L to just recognise how many things were in each pile so we counted them and then put them by their number.

Then put them into their corresponding numbered bag. L loves this last step!

This activity has a lot of steps and I introduced each one as she completed the last one. She really seemed to like it and brought it out again the next day. She isn't 100% with the numbers yet so I sit with her and help her if she asks me.

What we've managed to fit in

With all of our energies put toward getting the house ready to sell poor L has been a bit neglected. Here are a few things we did manage to do.

Polishing her boots. Getting ready to go to the park and jump in the puddles. Practical life is one area she has been doing a lot in. She helped me to scrub the kitchen floor, dust and clean the walls.
A plastic fantastic sorting activity.

Cheerio towers (got the idea from here)

and making straw and pipe cleaner necklaces.

Moving with a toddler

We have just put our house on the market in hopes to sell and move to Canada. This has been an insane process and I would not recommend doing it without a lot of extra help(which we didn't have). We had less than a week to finish all the odd jobs and clear and clean the house before the first viewing on Saturday. Normally this would have been hard work but doable. With a toddler around it was next to impossible!! I don't even want to think how it will be once we sell the house!
Thankfully my aunt was able to come for two days and that was life saving.

Needless to say the Montessori activities have been few and far between. My mom is coming next week for a month so hopefully we will be able to spend some quality time with L and get back into our Monti routine.

Fruit or Vegetable Conundrum

When I first bought the Amazing Sticker Book one of the activities I'd imagined doing with L was classifying fruits and vegetables. One night I got to work putting all of the stickers on cardboard backings and cutting them out. I thought I'll just check on a couple to see if they are actually classified as fruits or vegetables. WELL little did I know what I was getting myself into.

Scientifically speaking according to botanists a fruit is anything that has seeds. So this makes many of our well loved vegetables technically fruits!

“To really figure out if a tomato is a fruit or vegetable, you need to know what makes a fruit a fruit, and a vegetable a vegetable. The big question to ask is, DOES IT HAVE SEEDS?
If the answer is yes, then technically, you have a FRUIT. This, of course, makes your tomato a fruit. It also makes cucumbers, squash, green beans and walnuts all fruits as well. VEGETABLES such as, radishes, celery, carrots, and lettuce do NOT have seeds (that are part of what we eat) and so they are grouped as vegetables.”Read more: http://vegetablegardens.suite101.com/article.cfm/fruit_or_vegetable_#ixzz0SgDdoUWr

Of course in the culinary world the classifications are completely different. So I'm thinking where do I start. My daughter isn't even two! Do I really want her to go to school telling the teacher that a cucumber and pepper are actually fruits? No. I took the easy way out and decided we'd just look at and name them all and leave the classification to someone more qualified in these matters ; )

Silly mommy! When we got to the aubergine(eggplant) L asked "what is this?" so trying to be smart since we are moving to Canada I said it's an eggplant. L replies "oh, is it like an aubergine?". Hmm I think this goes into the ever growing outsmarted by a toddler category!!