Catching up-22 and 23 months

I openly admit that over the last couple of months I've totally been neglecting taking pictures of my children.  Yup I have been so busy taking a million and one pictures of my needle felting creations that I have forgotten all about my children.  Well almost.

Here are a couple pics of things LJ has been up to.

Playing with his Very Hungry Caterpillar story stones.  LJ loves to tell bits of the story with the stones and the one with all the food on he calls Saturday.  Too cute.

Table setting.  This is a favourite.  It's hard to see but I traced all of the items in the place setting with a black sharpie so LJ know where to put them.  

He then gets to take out his leek and pretend to eat it.  Too much fun!

Land and water.  I simply cut land and water shapes out of felt and put assorted animals in a box for LJ to sort.  He enjoys this but knows them too well.  He is such a joker that he loves to put the wrong animals in the water on purpose.

Of course decorating Easter eggs.  He was so focussed on his work!

Not a lot documented.  We've been playing with a lot of new "toys".  I was lucky enough to do a toy swap with Sweetpea's mom.  She has some really cool things.  I will try and take some pictures of them for an upcoming post.

Preparations for L's Spooktacular Halloween/Birthday Party

This past week has been a crazy rush to finish all of the preparations for L's Halloween/Birthday party. It's seriously time consuming when you decided to make all of the decorations and activities!

L's first time cleaning out a pumpkin. Yes she had to use a spoon as she wouldn't let any bit of the guts touch her fingers. Talk about taking after her daddy!

Decorating her pumpkin. A very serious business.

Way back I had the great idea to make a pinata. Last week I realised I must have been out of my mind! Here are the beginnings of a spider pinata filled with little trinkets, stuffed animals, stickers and raisin packets.

Gluing on little pieces of tissue paper. Yes I must be mad!

Stay tuned to see pictures of the finished product plus pics of the Spooktacular event.....

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.

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.