Twas' the night before......

L starts Montessori pre-school tomorrow.  We've been anticipating this moment for ages.  Me for the past year!  It's such an exciting time for all of us!  My biggest curiosity will be what activities she chooses for her first day.  Oh how I wish I could be a fly on the wall.

It's felt like ages of waiting for L and I for this day to come so to help with the anticipation I created this sequencing activity for L's first morning.

While she was coloring I made up these little cards with pictures of each small event that will make up our morning routine.  I'm not sure how clear they are in the picture but we have everything from waking up to brushing teeth and putting her breakfast dishes in the dishwasher(we'll see how this one goes!)

We first talked about each pictures and then mixed them up and L put them in the order in which she will do them in the morning.  She's done this quite a few times over the last few days so hopefully it will come off smoothly tomorrow.  We'll see : )
Check out this wonderfully creative post by Cynthia over at A Montessori Musing place which sums up the excitement we feel.

Fantastic Printable Materials

We've been trying out these printable materials from Montessori for Learning and L is really enjoying them.  The website is a fantastic resource.  Along with having a membership area it also has tons of great free printable materials. 

Here L is doing the singular/plural activity. 

After putting the pictures in their correct columns she decided to match all of the pictures saying "one ant, three ants"

We also enjoyed learning about the names of the fingers.  We talked about the different names and then placed them on the hand together.  She then did the activity with the control card.

To help with learning we sang a cute little song with actions.

(put hand up in a fist)

Little thumb, little thumb

Where are you?

(pop your thumb up and wiggle)

Here I am, here I am

How do you do?

(close hand into a fist again)

Index finger, index finger

Where are you?

(pop up index finger and wiggle)

Here I am, here I am

How do you do?

continue on for all fingers.

then finish with

(both hands in fists)

Fingers all, fingers all

Where are you?

(open both hands and wiggle fingers)

Here we are, here we are

How do you do?

L absolutely adored singing this song and after a few times she matched the labels to her own fingers.

Mystery words.  Sooo much fun.  You have to use a mirror to read these secret words. 

These are just a few of the many great activities we've been trying from Montessori for Learning.

Games

L has reached an age where she really enjoys playing games.  Here are a few that have been keeping her entertained.

Digging for objects I've hidden in some sand in her pail and then matching them with the correct word.  (yes I accidentally put hen down twice!) I got the idea for this one from Montessori for Learning.

 Counting the garden.  Always fun.  I drew small pictures of different things in our garden and then we went around together.  L counted and I wrote down the number beside the picture.

 The rhyming game.  I saw this on The Activity Mom and knew I could quickly whip up one of my own.  I used pictures, words that L can read and larger words that I had to read.  The object of the game is when you get a card that rhymes you put a penny on the happy face.  When it doesn't rhyme you put one on the sad face.  We play until all of the faces are covered.  At first L didn't really get this but by the second time she was understanding and enjoying!

 Go Fish.  We just started playing this last week and L can't get enough of it.  She always asks "can we play goldfish?"  I used the number cards from a game we have called Phase 10.  At the moment we are using four cards of each number from one to seven and each player gets five cards to start.   You get rid of any pairs and then ask another player if they have a card that matches one of yours.  If they don't they say "go fish" and you have to pick a card from the ones in the middle.  The first player to get rid of all of their cards wins.  This game is so fantastic for number recognition and I could imagine making up your own number cards in the shape of fish!

What I like best about all of these games is you can whip them up in very little time and they cost virtually nothing to make!

Water activities

L has been enjoying doing water activities outdoors. 

First I set her up with a sponge and two bowls.  She soaked up the water from the left hand bowl and squeezed it into the right hand bowl until she was done.  She looked at me like "too easy Mom!" so I then gave her this sieve and we put some twigs and flowers into the bowl for her to remove. 

Once she'd done that a few times we moved on to making bubbles with an old hand held beater.

Oh the concentration!!

The best water activity of all was helping to wash the dog! Granny also got very wet in the process!

The next day L asked for more water activities so she started with dropping single drops of water into her plastic fish.

I then colored these dots on a folded paper towel.  Some of them have two colors together so they blend to make a new color when wet.  She really enjoyed this and when she was finished I gave her a blank paper towel and a red, yellow, and blue marker to experiment with.

Story stones and August nature table

After reading about these story stones on Counting Coconuts I thought it would be something both L and I would really enjoy.  L still brings out her Peter and the Wolf puppets and wants to put on the puppet show all  the time.

One of our favorite stories that I tell L when she's warming up from swimming in the ocean is The Enormous Turnip.  This was the first story I decided to do with our stones we collected from the beach.  I just used acrylic paint and then covered the stones with a layer of Modge Podge.

While I was painting those L was painting stones to represent the animals from Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  Once they were finished she matched them up to her book.

We then put them in order all around our nature table.  The little girl represents the children : )

We also made some colored sand the same way we made colored rice and added some glitter.  It looks much more spectacular in real life!

We Modge Podged some sea glass to make it sparkle!

Hope you are all enjoying summer's radiant, heart warming sunshine!  Happy story telling.