Montessori Shelves and Using a Work Mat

Little J is sixteen months now.  L is back at school and we have managed to get back into some kind of routine.

Now that LJ and I have time in the morning to ourselves I have set up specific shelves for his "Montessori" works.  There is really not much difference between these activities and the ones in his cubicle shelves, however what is totally different is the process in which he does them.

I wanted to introduce a separate area so LJ could understand that anything taken from these shelves needs to be done in a certain way.

As you can see on the right of the first picture he now has a basket with work mats in it.  When first introducing a new work on these shelves I introduced the use of a work mat.  LJ gets the work mat and I help him roll it out.  He then goes to the shelves and selects a work.  It is important that he takes the whole basket or work and brings it over to the mat.  He then must take the work out of the basket to do it.  After he is finished he must put the work back into the basket and return it to the shelf before selecting another work. 

At this point I am not so interested in the actual works he is doing as the whole process.  What is important is that LJ knows he needs to use a work mat to do one of the works on his Montessori shelves.  It is also important to take the whole work over to the mat and of course to return it to the shelf.  I was quite surprised how quickly LJ took to the whole process.  Of course I am there to give him a gentle reminder to bring the whole basket or to help him remember to put the whole work away before getting another but in general he does really well.  I am also there to supervise if things start to go a bit "crazy"  I just sit back quietly and observe and only step in if I must say if he starts walking away from the mat with part of the work.

 

I generally keep four different works on the "Montessori shelves" and rotate one out every couple of days.  I've also found that once his Montessori work time is over (which is decided by himself) I remove the baskets from the shelves.  I've found that this helps in not having him continually go back to them and take pieces out later in the day.  If he would like to do more work and we both have some free time then he will get his work mat out and point to where I keep the baskets.

 The "Mystery" Bag.  Later on this is used to stimulate the stereognostic sense by having the child locate a known item in the bag without looking.  At the moment LJ is just using it as a bag of discovery although I think he will be soon ready to try the "mystery" aspect.

 Color matching.  I got these little wooden cups and bulbs from the craft store and painted them as shown.  The object is to match the colored bulb with the pot.  I decided to just paint the inside of the pots with the color to make it more of a challenge.  LJ mostly loves to manipulate these and sometimes matches the colors depending on what type of mood he is in!

 

We are blessed with living very close to a wonderful market that has goats on the roof, fresh fruits and veggies, yummy ice creams and best of all tons of super cool wooden toys.  I have to restrain myself every  time I go there to not buy up the store!

This adorable little fishing game came from the market.  LJ loves it and so does L.  This is quite a process to set up as he has to remove the "water" then add the fish before he can go fishing.  Once he has caught a fish he must put it in the red bucket.  LJ does this work several times throughout the morning.

 Lacing beads.  I wasn't sure if he was ready for this but low and behold he is!  It took him a little while to work out after several demonstrations but he is now able to make necklaces.  I taped a piece of straw onto the end of the shoelace with yellow tape to help LJ push it through the bead and also for him to easily locate the correct end.

 

I introduced a basket of wooden African animals along with smaller plastic animals for matching.  LJ knows the names of all of them so I figured matching wouldn't be much of a problem.  I made the mistake of saying can you find the mommy zebra.  Well that started off a frenzy of mommy and baby kissing as well as LJ kissing all of the mommy animals.  Seriously too cute!

 LJ loves to roll up his mat and put it away.  We sing a little roll, roll, roll song as he does it.

On the shelves 12 and 16 months

Whew!  This post has been a long time coming.  It's seems that May and June have just been crazy busy and only now do I seem to have some time to catch my breath.  L is done school so Sweetpea is also on her summer holidays with her mother.

I finally managed to take pics of most of the activities that have been on the shelves over the last couple of months.  Of course these have not all been out at the same time but have been at one point over the last three months.

 

Open and shut.

This is super popular with both Sweetpea and Little J.  I put little finger puppets that I have from Ikea inside some of the containers for them to find.

 

Tennis ball cannon using a Pringles container.

 

This was more of a testing the waters activity to see if Sweetpea was ready to sort colors.  Both littles enjoyed manipulating the beads and container however I will bring it out again in another few months to see how the color sorting goes.

 

This animal basket used to be by the pottys.  One morning I started putting the animals along the edge.  The littles caught on so I turned it into an activity and put it on the shelf.  Little J enjoys doing this activity as well as making some of the animal noises.

 

Hat basket.  We play with this basket together or as pictured here the littles will also try the hats on when it suits their fancy.

 

Little J is obsessed with trying to put shoes on.  He will spend up to 20 minutes doing this.  Once he gets it on he will take it off and start again.  Watching him so reminds me that at this age it is all about the process and not the product! 

 He is also obsessed with trying to put his pyjamas, pants, shorts and diaper on.  While sitting on his potty he will spend ages in deep concentration attempting to get his legs into one of these things.  The other night he managed to get both legs into his sleepers! I was astounded however once again as soon as he got them both in he took them off and started again.

In a few months I will bring out this out again as a matching activity.

Little J got this cute ice cream set from Sweetpea for his birthday. 


 

They both enjoy putting the pieces on and off but are not ready for sorting by color or shape yet.

 

I love this cute little activity.  It's actually two activities in one.  The first is pulling the finger puppets out of the snack cup and the second is to put them in the muffin tray.  Little J enjoys pulling them out and putting them back in and will also put a couple in the tray.

 

Okay I think I'm all up to date now.  As I said before these activities have been rotated throughout the last three months and have not been presented all at the same time.

 They all focus on fine motor skills however the littles also have ample opportunity to work on their gross motor skills which I hope to document in a future post.