The lead up to Easter....

Here are a few things we did last week. Thank you to Karen for the inspiration for this counting activity. I'm still looking for better containers to put the sticks in but for the first time we used these glasses. This only lasted until we got thirsty ; )



Talk about great minds think alike. By the time we had done these next two activities I'd seen them on so many blogs!! I love those little chicks they are so cute. L actually thought up this one herself. When we were in the Dollar store I picked up the chicks and then the bag of eggs and she said "ah to put the chicks into!" As soon as we got home she had to "re-home" them.

She didn't like this one quite as much as the cheap chicks(hehe) kept loosing their beaks when she tonged them.

More Easter fun to come....

Money, money, money, money!

One of the first things we did when we moved here is open up a bank account for L. She got a free piggy bank with the account. Every so often she will do the rounds with it and ask if we have any change. It got so full that we decided to sort all of the change and then roll it so we could take it to the bank.

I couldn't believe how long she stuck with this and filled about six rolls with coins.

The next day we took the bag of change rolls to the bank and L got to deposit them into her account. She knows that this is where we save her money so she can do things like go swimming, take classes and go to school in September. I believe it's never to early to start learning about the value of money and how to spend it wisely.

Nature's Garden

Right across the road from our house is this beautiful wood with different nature trails to explore. The local neighbours have taken it over as their own and have made it into a magical forest. They have made bridges, seats, trail signs and have added many little hidden creatures along the way. We decided that it would be the perfect place for two of our fairies to live.

Entering the woods.

The fairies having a little conversation on the way to their new home.

If you look carefully you can see many other little woodland creatures going about their business.

We are so lucky to live in such a magical place and hope our fairies enjoy their new home and friends. We've already been back to check on them a few times this week!

Not much to tell...

Well this week has been a little skimpy on anything too interesting. L and I have both had bad colds and haven't really been doing too much. We have done quite a few practical life things like cutting up and serving cantaloupe and washing the car. We also had a wonderful playdate with one of the children from the Montessori school L will be attending and his mother. I can't wait for her to be able to socialize with all the children in the fall she is soo ready.

Now spring is here L is helping Granny in the garden and we are starting to plan what we are going to plant in the vegetable garden. This is a good thing because today we were walking on the board walk along the beach and I asked L what she thought it was made of. She said wood so I asked her where she thought wood came from. "The wood store" was her reply. Hmmmm Vegetable garden is definitely the next thing on my list.

Montessori Monday

Last week we did more language activities. This is a picture of a rhyming activity we did. For example I would ask L if she could find the item that rhymed with "moon". This is the first time we have done an actual rhyming activity. I've said before oh cat rhymes with hat and then kept saying more words but she has never really participated. She did get this but is not 100% on it. It may have just been the time of day when we did it. Will have to try it again this week.



We also did an activity with objects on this tray like hen, dog, bed, hat and pig. I said to L I'm thinking of something on this tray and then wrote it down. I gave her the piece of paper and asked her if she could figure out what object I was thinking of. She sounded out the letters and I then I said them a bit closer together. She got most of them and we'll be doing a lot more of this.



L found this little tape measure my mom got from a material shop. I let her play with it and she had great fun as there is a little button on the top of it you can press that makes it detract. The next day I made up this activity( I think I originally saw it on Activity Mom) so she could see how to use the tape measure and also practice her numbers. She really enjoyed this and it was quite easy for her. How great to see her go from randomly playing with something to knowing it's purpose and using it appropriately!

Today L really helped out in the kitchen. This morning she helped daddy by whisking up her blueberry pancakes and at lunch time she whisked up her eggs.

She also grated her carrot for the first time. This took a LOT of restraint and trust on my part and my hands were hovering just out of view in case of need of quick assistance. She was a star though and also cut up her cucumber with a sharp knife.
Putting the bits in the compost. I realised today that L is much more co-operative and willing to help with everything if she is involved with making a meal from the very beginning. She never usually wants to set her table any more but at lunch she did all of it.

Making butterflies with a friend

Last weekend L's friend Aa girl and her mom stayed with us. They had such a great time and basically did non-stop activities together the whole weekend. One of the favorites were these coffee filter butterflies.
First color the filter with felt tip markers.

Then spray with water and watch the colors blend together. This is by far the best bit!

Leave them to dry and then twist a pipe cleaner around the middle.

Pretty little butterflies for spring!

The Good, the bad and the ugly

Okay I'll start with the good. My back is finally starting to get better! Yeah! After three months of relative inactivity today I actually was able to grocery shop with my family. I'm not 100% yet but definitely going in the right direction. I spent the last three months watching people of all ages walk, run and bend down with ease. Something I used to take for granted. I just want to say to all of those people out there who take walking for granted like I used to do to just take a moment to realise what you have and to be thankful.

The other good news is that my husband found a job!(finally) Which also brings me to the bad news. Well kind of anyway. He has to train for six weeks in a city that is two and a half hours away. This is bad enough but he also is taking the laptop with him!!! This is seriously cramping my blogging style! The weekends will be the only time I will be able to post anything with pictures.

Now for the ugly....Wednesday was the first day in three months that I've been left alone with L all day. My mom had been in Palm Springs for the past two weeks and was coming home that night. Hubby was away training. Of course I took on too much trying to get the house clean for my mom's arrival. As I'm sure many of you can relate to this was like taking two steps forward one step back with L.
It was mostly just tidying and sorting things out which L couldn't really help me with. She decided she wanted to do baking and took all of the bowls out of the cupboard. I thought cool that will keep her busy pretending to stir and pour from bowl to bowl and I got on with my chores. About 10 minutes later I went to check on her to find that no she wasn't pretending. She'd got the flour shaker out of the cupboard as well and there was flour EVERYWHERE!!
I hadn't vacuumed in three months and now had no option. Okay so we got that all cleaned up and I still had a lot to do.
L decided to play with her little wooden train. Cool I thought. Can't get into much trouble doing that. Ha ha. After a few minutes I got down on the floor to do my back exercises and L asked if she could drive her train on the glass TV stand. Sure I said. As I was down on the floor I noticed that there were tons of marks on the glass. With further inspection I realised it was wax! Unbelievable L had opened a little jar candle my mom had which was really soft and decided to drive the train and all the cars in it. They and the TV stand were covered in it!! It took me the next half hour to wipe the trains and TV stand off.
Basically the whole day continued like this and by the end I was ready to drop. And I was so desperate to be able to look after L on my own again. Ha ha ha ha

March nature table (kind of...)

This month our nature table is more of an indulgence for me than a specific nature table :p After seeing several needle felted toadstool houses on the Internet I was desperate to make one. I finally got the wool and did some research on Google Images using my favorite bits from a number of other people's creations. Some of my favorites were from Fairy Folk and there is a tutorial on how to make one here.

L and I collected all of the other bits for the toadstool family's home during our daily excursions.

Check this out!

Check out this cozy giveaway over at The Magic Onions!

Language, letters and beginning reading

L is most definitely in a sensitive period for language and letters. Since she pretty much had all her lower case letter sounds down I introduced the upper case. We found this foam puzzle at the dollar store and the upper case letters were actually mine when I was a kid(way to go mom!)

We started off playing a game where I find the upper case and she finds the lower case. She can do them by herself now and can't get enough. She brings it out all the time and it's starting to drive me bonkers!


We've been playing stage four of the eye spy game so I finally made up some last letter sound sorts. All of the pictures start with the same letter to make it less complicated.

We also tried writing some letters in salt which was a big hit. First we tried easy ones like "o", "i" and "u" which were a great success. L was so excited and wanted to try them all which was of course disastrous! We just haven't worked enough on tracing the sandpaper letters yet for her to have any clue where to start writing them. It was fun but we'll do a lot more tracing work before trying to write more letters.

I was reading through some old posts from The Adventures of Bear(fantastic blog) and saw her poor mans version of the spinny speller. L came over and looked at the screen. She said c-a-f. So I pointed to the last letter and asked her what it was and she said t. Then she said cat. WHAT!? Okay so as soon she'd gone to bed I made my own version.

Today we tried it starting with "at" I said "a" and "t" each separately and then blended them. Then she said "at". We tried the first word cat and she got it. Then tried the rest. She got them so I added the pictures which she matched.

We moved on to her sounding out the words on these cards and matching them to the pictures. No problem! She wanted to do more but I didn't have anything else prepared. She is just exploding in her understanding in this area and I can't seem to keep up. I suppose tonight I'll have to make another "spinny speller" and find some more pictures.

I know with the Montessori Method the children learn to write the words first which I want to try but I don't have a movable alphabet. Soon I'll introduce step five of the eye spy game and while I'm doing that try and figure out how to make up my own version of the movable alphabet.

I'm starting to get out of my depth here and can't wait until she starts Montessori school in September!