Little J 15 months activities

Phew finally midway through September and I am just now able to catch my breath!  Where did the end of the summer go?  It seems like August just started and the next thing you know L is in school and the leaves are changing!

Here is a catch up post on what Little J was up to in August at 15 months.

 

Scrubbing apples.  We have a wonderful apple tree in our yard.  Both L and Little J enjoyed eating the apples from the ground as well as helping to make blackberry and apple sauce.  This picture looks so civilised but it quickly turned into chaos as Little J decided it would be way more fun to tip out all of the water and roll the apples off the side of the deck!

 Painting al fresco.

 

On the shelves.  We didn't really have any strict "works" over the summer.  I found it way too hard with L around as she always wants to interfere with what ever Little J is doing. 

From the top left we have:

The shoe basket.  LJ is still obsessed with shoes and dressing himself.  We also have worked on sorting the shoes into pairs.

Stacking boxes, shape sorter and then the ever popular open and shut basket.  I keep rotating different containers in this basket.

Bottom left is a emergency vehicle puzzle with little knobs to develop the pincer grip.  An etch-a sketch type drawing board which we had when L was little.  It is great fun to draw and then push the lever across to erase all of your work! 

Melissa and Doug tool box.  Hammering is the number one favourite at the moment.  Little tow truck with wooden sorting shapes.  The tow truck has a magnet on it to attach the shapes to.  This is from Ikea.

 

These are just a few of the things that Little J got up to this summer.  What is not shown is LJ's love of climbing.  He will climb anything and everything.  The number of times I've been out of the room for two seconds and when I come back he is actually on the kitchen table searching for scraps!!  He certainly keeps me on my toes!

Meal time with the Montessori weaning table

I have been using this Montessori weaning table and chairs with the babies since the first day Sweetpea came here.  It is working amazingly well.  Both babies are well supported in the little chairs and they are able to concentrate on the task at hand which is of course eating and learning to feed themselves.

The table is left bare when we are not using it and once I have prepared breakfast or lunch I put the place mats on the table.  We have been doing this for five weeks now and I can say to Sweet pea "It's lunch(breakfast)time and she sees me putting on the place mats.  She will shuffle her way over to the table, pull up on it and make her way into the chair that I have pulled out for her.  Baby J who is still not on the move is still lifted into the chair.

As I mentioned in a previous post I decided to put the table in the Infant area instead of the kitchen because we just don't have enough room for it in there.  I put down four foam play mats underneath it to protect the carpet and they work really well.  I can easily wipe and sweep up any spills.

Before I call the babies to the table I make sure that I have everything I need so I don't have to leave them while they are at the table.  I put everything in a little basket shown here.  At this meal they each have their own little ceramic bowl of red lentils, a spoon, small plate for pita bread and cucumber and a small glass for drinking.  I also include a pitcher for refilling their glasses and a small bowl with two wet cloths.

Sweetpea and Baby J are almost 3 and a half months apart so are at very different stages in their journey of independent eating and drinking. 

If I was a gold star giving kind of gal Sweetpea would definitely get one for eating.  She is a fantastic eater both in the fact that she will eat almost anything and also that she can feed herself.  She loves to eat and is very focused at every meal.  Her mama began offering her a spoon around 11 months I think and she would take it and feed herself and then give it back so her mama could get another spoonful of food for her.  She has now developed so that she can completely feed herself with the spoon.  She does an amazing job of picking up the food in her bowl with the spoon and getting it into her mouth.  For Sweetpea I just leave her the bowl on the table and also give her a side plate with a finger food on it.  She alternates between feeding herself the finger food and the spooned food.  The one thing I do have to watch out for is that she will just keep putting the finger food into her mouth until it is gone no matter how full her mouth gets.  What I do is for example just put one small triangle of pita bread on her plate and don't give her another until her mouth is empty.  If we have smaller pieces of food I will bring another plate that I keep and just keep giving her about three pieces at a time until she has finished the ones in her mouth.

She drinks out of a glass but is still getting used to the feeling of it.   As I mentioned before Sweetpea is very focused on eating and will almost never mess about with the plate or utensils.

 

Baby J is another personality altogether.  He is quiet a little joker and loves to try and do things to "impress" Sweetpea.  She takes absolutely no notice whatsoever but he still tries.  He will blow raspberries in his drink or make funny sounds which he thinks is hilarious.  He is quite rambunctious while eating and still loves to explore his place mat and side plate.  I will give him a side plate with his finger food on it but if he starts messing about with it I take it away.  Once he has calmed down I will put it on the table again with a piece of food.  I keep his bowl on the table closer to Sweetpea and spoon out a helping for him.  I give him the spoon and he feeds himself and then gives me the spoon to get another helping.  He does this for about half the meal and then usually looses interest and I will feed him another few spoonfuls before he is done.  I keep his glass with me and will offer it to him several times throughout the meal.  He will pick it up and drink out of it and then give it back to me.  He is so confident (or cheeky) now that he just holds it and drinks with one hand just like the big people.  He usually doesn't last at the table as long as Sweetpea before he starts playing with his place mat.  That is when I know he is done and I give him his cloth.  He also tries to take off his bib.

The whole meal usually lasts about 10 to 15 minutes.  Once I have wiped them off I pull out their chairs and help them down from the table.  I then take all of the items back to the kitchen and wipe down the table and mats. 

 

They are both so used to sitting at the table that they never try to get off their chairs or move around until they are finished.  Sometimes I just die of cute watching them eat their meals and have their little conversations.

That mats that are in the picture have now disintegrated so I have to get some new ones.  Once I have them I will start to give one to Sweetpea to help me to bring to and place on the table.  Once she is walking confidently she will have her own little basket which will have a few things she can use to set the table and I will have her help to clear a few things as well.  I am also going to attempt to make bibs that they can start to put on and take off on their own.

So what happens after the meal?  Well the potty of course......

Check out Living Montessori Now's Montessori Monday for more Montessori inspiration.



The prepared environment-It works!

Most people who've worked in a Montessori environment will read the title of this post and say "Well duh!" and I also obviously know how important it is.  Over the past month the importance of having that prepared environment has really been emphasised.

Before Sweetpea came to us she was looked after by her Dad(while her Mama was courageously teaching L and her classmates).  I believe they had basically quiet days with a strong routine.

When Sweetpea first came it was obviously a huge adjustment for her.  Everything in her little world was new.  The people, environment and routine.  Sweetpea is a very happy, sweet natured little thing and adjusted really quickly.

 

I did observe that in the first couple days she would just go from one thing to the next not spending more than a second or two with each item.  She would mostly go through all of the materials pulling them off the shelves and hucking them out of the baskets.  Now this is completely normal behaviour for a 12 month old however I knew she was capable of really using the materials for their purpose.  I would introduce a material to her but she would quickly loose interest and move on to something else before I'd finished the short presentation.  It was tempting to figure she was bored and just wanted new things to explore, however all of my reading and some advice from the wonderful Pilar (The Full Montessori) made me stick to my guns and just let her continue to explore and get used to the materials that were on the shelves.  By the end of the second week I was already noticing a change in her interaction with the materials.  Instead of just moving quickly from one item to another she was beginning to experiment with things.  Oh this goes in here, if I do this this happens.

It was super exciting the first time she realised the could fit the cylinder into the imbucare box.  Last week while I was in hospital she completely mastered it and can now also do the rectangular prism.

 

Sweetpea is taking more care with the items and figuring out how they work and what they will do.  For example instead of just pulling the stacking cups off the shelf she will carefully pull out one by one and then work out how they fit back into each other.  There are obviously some items which hold her interest more than others.

Sweetpea now feels completely at home and comfortable in this environment and her growth and exploration is amazing.  I usually switch out one material a week or add an extension material if she's mastered something.  I will do an upcoming post on what each baby is working on.

 

Baby J loves having Sweetpea here and is totally spurred on to try and do what she is able to do.  He is desperate to move like she does.  It is wonderful to see them interacting together and a favourite game is to hand things back and forth to each other.

 

Here are a few pics of Baby J at work.

 

 

Another note on the environment.  Obviously it can get pretty messy at times but I try to put things back as they have moved on to something else so that the babies are used to seeing the environment always in order.

 

Infant materials 9 and 12 months

Here are the materials we started off with on the shelves at the beginning of January.  The shelves are from Ikea and are bolted to the wall.  I really like them because there is a separate compartment for each  material which makes them easy to keep organised.  They are also great for pulling up on and cruising along.  Both Baby J and Sweetpea have been shown all of these materials.  Sweetpea is cruising so is able to get anything on her own but Baby J still has to be given something unless I put him beside the shelves.  

 Starting on the top right.  A simple empty wipes box with a long silk scarf inside.  I thought this would be a bigger hit than it was actually.  They both seemed to be more interesting in the lid than pulling the scarf out.

This is a Pringles container which I covered with material.  I poked a hole in the lid and the bottom and threaded a long ribbon through and then tied  beads to the ends.  Both babies enjoy pulling the beads from one side to the other.

Stacking or nesting cups from Ikea.  I figured a close up pic wasn't necessary.

This material is one that I ordered on line.  It is basically a bead on a serpentine wire.  I've put this on the shelf and once they have mastered this I will put out a more complicated one that we have.

Sensory bottles.  I bought these plastic travel bottles from the Dollar store.  They contain colored water, beans, oatmeal, feathers and dimes.  

On the bottom right are soft stacking blocks from Ikea.

A basket of tactile beanbags.  Each one is made from a different textured material and filled with rice.

The treasure basket.  Each week I change this up.  Sweetpea is in the sensitive period for language so I am now doing a theme for each basket and presenting it to her with the first period lesson.  This basket is for bathroom things but we've also done one with kitchen items.

I found this on a local used toy website.  It comes with a hammer but at the moment I've just introduced it without and the babies push the balls with their hands.  The balls roll out the bottom.  This is a favorite of both babies.  Baby J also loves to hit the balls together as they make a wonderful noise.

The ball or "rolling things" basket.  Baby J is desperate to move so I put together this basket of ball like objects for him.

Homemade Imbucare box with cylinder block.  To make these I bought three wooden tissue boxes from the craft store.  My husband cut a large circle in the side and covered the top with acrylic with a hole cut into it the size of the block.  We made three of these but I have just introduced the first one.

So those are the items I started off with.  It seems like a lot but I only change one item a week plus the treasure basket so both babies have a chance to become very familiar with the materials and come back again and again to work with them.  I will be posting about our experiences with this environment soon.  The homemade materials come from ideas from around the Internet.

Our Montessori Infant Environment

Okay here is the new environment I've set up in our home for the two infants 9 and 12 months.  This space is also shared with L.   It is simple and spacious and easy to keep "order".  

 Starting on the left I have set up a little cozy reading area with pillows and a quilt.  We sit here to read books or the babies can choose their own books from the little brown basket.  Baby J also does his works on the quilt at the moment as he is not quite mobile.  Next is the pull up bar.  My husband made this for us.  It is 45cm high.  We have tucked the left support under the couch for more stability.  I am hoping to also get a mirror to go behind it.  

In the middle is the eating area.  This was Baby J's table from the kitchen and my husband made another chair for Sweetpea.  I used four foam play mats to protect the carpet.  Beside that is a little stool I use when the babies eat their meals.  As I mentioned above this space is also shared with L.  She has her desk there that she uses for crafts, writing and other activities.  The lowest box on the shelves is also hers for her craft supplies.  

Moving on are the shelves which hold all of the works.  There are 9 spaces and I usually have one work in each space.  This is actually a lot of choice but as there are two infants of very different ages there are works for both their stages. I will be doing another post on all of the works on the shelves in detail.  On the top of the shelves are L's globe, marimba and pan pipes.

An up close view of the eating area.  The picture is at eye level and will be changed every month.  We also use place mats at every meal.  I will also be doing a post on how the meals go.

Of course the environment will be constantly tweaked and updated as the infants needs change.

Baby J's Activity Area

 

Things have been absolutely manic here lately with L's birthday, Halloween and Baby J's not sleeping.  I've been collecting pictures and have tons of posts I need do find time to do!

 

Here is Baby J's work area as well as L's work space in our living room.  These pictures are a bit old.  This environment was ideal for when he was 3 to 5 months.  Now he has just turned six months and is sitting up so I'm modifying things a bit. 

 It's a bit hard to see but the first mat is his movement mat.  Above it hangs the dancers mobile.  This is where he lies and watches the mobile, has tummy time and plays with his toys. 

The second mat is used under his tripod.  This holds his hanging ring on an elastic which he used for practising batting and catching as well as hand to hand transfer.  There is also an elastic holding the Takane ball which you can see sitting on top of the tripod.  He uses this for kicking and now he can bat at it while lying on his belly as well.

 As I mentioned L and Baby J share this space so it also includes her easel, table and gnome home as well as the dresser which we use for her craft drawer, games and the top as our nature table.  Obviously once Baby J is totally mobile we will be seriously modifying to suite his needs and safety.

This is the little unit I found to store Baby J's toys for the time being until I find an appropriate shelf.  On the top is his basket of known objects, Art ABC book which he looks at when on his belly.  Starting from the top left are his interlocking discs, Squish and teething beads.  On the bottom row is one of my favourite bits.  A cubicle with a door which we can later use for the idea of object permanence.  Then there is his teether and another Takane ball.  I have placed these toys in the cubicles because they are developmentally appropriate for Baby J right now.   Eventually he will be able to move over to the shelves and pick his own toys.

I love this space because of the order and simplicity.  There are not too many objects to clutter the space and there is a sense of order(usually until L has gotten in there!!).  I also love the natural light.  I as mentioned above Baby J has pretty much outgrown this set up now so I will be posting about our modified activity area in a future post.  If you would like to read more about how to set up a Montessori infant activity area check out this great post over at The Full Montessori.