On the shelves-19 months

 I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season.  It was very busy at our house with lots of family visiting and fun was had by all.  

I did manage to get a few works on the shelves for LJ in December.

Melissa and Doug pattern blocks. 

 I got these off of the used children's items site I belong to for a very reasonable price.  They come in a wooden box with several different wooden frames.  I just take out one at a time which has pictures on both sides.  I put it along with the shapes it needs into a basket for LJ to do.  

 Mystery Bag

Although we have been using the mystery bag for exploration for a while now we have only just started using it for stereognostic recognition.  I put an assortment of known objects into  the bag.  LJ pulls them out and names them.  He then puts them back into the bag and I ask him if he can find a certain one without looking.  He enjoys playing this game and is usually successful.

Putting Cheerios into a pill container.  

I bought a seven day pill sorter for my pills and vitamins but before I put it to use I gave it to LJ to sort Cheerios into.  He had great fun opening the sections to get the Cheerios in and out.

We even managed some Christmas themed activities.

Here is a Christmas mystery stocking with a tiny snowman, red ribbon, needle felted Christmas tree and several candy canes.  

Pushing colored pompoms through the correct hole and then retrieving them from inside the shoe box.  LJ was pretty random on when he chose to match the colors.

We did several Christmas crafts together but this one worked the best with both children.  Simply gluing tiny pompoms onto a pine cone to make Christmas trees.

 They both enjoyed this activity and they turned out nicely!

Me and My Amazing Body

We've been learning all about our bodies the last few weeks. L is fascinated. We started with this great book called Me and My Amazing Body by Joan Sweeney. It talks about the different parts of the body and how they work in a way that L can follow.

We also got this body parts game from the library. You roll the die and whatever part your counter lands on you have to point to. We kind of made up the rules as we went along, sometimes putting the counter on the girls body part instead. This would be a really simple game to make.

I printed off this skeleton puzzle from here. I'll laminate it once my laminator arrives as it's a favorite. We are keeping it simple at the moment by just learning the skull, rib cage, spine and pelvis. I'll have to look up the names of the other bones before I can teach them to L ; )

I saw this body puzzle on Chasing Cheerios quite a while ago and couldn't wait to get it. Unfortunately the only store that has them around here was sold out of girls so I got a boy. I thought I would have some explaining to do but L just dove into the puzzle and was much more interested in the muscles, and skeleton and "skin bits".

I would never have thought to introduce the workings of the body to L in such detail at such a young age but after seeing other blogs I realised it would be MY reservations holding her back and I was right. She is SO into it! She gets the book out at least three times a day and loves to talk about all the parts of her body inside and out.

Back to Montessori

Okay, sadly Halloween is over but we had a blast. Here are some activities L has been doing over the past couple of weeks.

Years ago I made a board game and made tiny pieces for it out of Fimo. Sadly it's too heavy to take with us so I thought I'd get some use out of it before I we leave. First L sorted the pieces into colors and then by object. Okay yes we did use the left over Halloween plates. (Helps with the withdrawal symptoms). I find it interesting how she mostly sorts all of one thing before moving on to the next.
Ages ago my mom made L this awesome button board out of felt and a cheap frame from Ikea. I just re-introduced it to L a couple of weeks ago and she can now open and close the buttons.

Okay I think my girl is a bit unusual with her obsession with puzzles! She got this small 30 piece puzzle in a Birthday card and after about three goes with help she can now do it all on her own. She does this puzzle almost every day and sometimes a couple times a day. I can't keep up with her! This is also the first puzzle that she's used the picture for a guide.

So I knew this gift from Granny would be a great hit and it was. I first saw Mighty Minds over at Aayla do! Montessori and asked my mom to get it for L. What a success. The other day she worked straight for 45 minutes and did 14 of the cards! I sit with her and only help if she gets frustrated and then will put maybe one piece in to guide her. She also finds them a bit slippery and sometimes has a hard time lining them up so I will help her by holding one of the pieces.

I love this activity because the first 15 cards have places to put the shapes she needs before starting the puzzle. She now also puts them back after she has done each card. I think I'll have to take them out one night and try to figure out the harder puzzles before she gets to them so I'll know how they go! How embarrassing!

Yes more puzzles!

Check out this beautiful boot fair find! A 52 piece floor puzzle of endangered species. Only £1. It's great when I love doing something over and over as much as L does.

We also found a 100 piece continents with animals puzzle which is really challenging(for us!) It's definitely a family puzzle. Daddy and I were trying to sort the pieces when we looked over and L had already put most of Africa together(and us to shame!)

A visit from GAS and GUS

The other day L's Great Auntie S and Great Uncle S came for a visit. We refer to them as GAS and GUS for short. Rather unfortunate acronym for my aunt but the rest of us think it's hilarious! L gets so excited when they come over and has a fabulous time showing them all of her activities and puzzles. We got out the continents mat and had a fun time putting all of her animals on their home countries. We also went out for a lovely walk and L got to ride on GUS's shoulders but she was really riding an elephant!

My aunt picked up this second hand fractions puzzle for L and she can't get enough of it. It's such a novelty because it's new but also because it's from her special GAS! (hee hee)

Puzzled

L seems to have gotten herself into a routine in the mornings. After breakfast and before she gets dressed she gets out her animal and truck puzzles on her floor mat and does all 8 of them. She puts them around her mat and dances around them all! She then puts them away (singing the song) and gets out her African animal puzzles to do on her table.

There are five twelve piece puzzles and she can now do three of them all by herself and two with only some verbal help. That's 13 puzzles in a row every morning. Talk about really being into puzzles!!

I got out the shapes puzzles again and she now does them all at the same time. She has a bit of trouble with the triangles because they are homemade and not uniform.

I'm out looking for more puzzles now but it's really hard to find ones that don't have Disney characters or Dora the Explorer! Hopefully I'll find some at the next boot fair.

Puzzles, puzzles all day long

I found these animal puzzles and also some construction vehicle puzzles at the boot fair for 50p! They are 3,4,5 and 6 pieces and L can't get enough of them. This is the first time that I have really seen a sensitive period so blatantly in action! She does them over and over again. I like these puzzles because she has to first sort them into piles and once she has done one she has to push it off of the mat to clear a space for the next one. They are not only teaching her about puzzles but also how to organise her work space.

I also made up this song for cleaning the puzzles up. Something along the lines of This is the way we.... but we would sing L.... is putting the elephant away, elephant away, elephant away, L.... is putting the elephant away into the box. I've also tried it in other areas like clearing her table and it seems to be transferable. Woohoo! Simple but it works a treat at the moment and I'm milking it for all it's worth while I can!

I also found some great African animal cards at the boot fair for 10p. They have very detailed descriptions on the back which we can use later on. After looking through them L matched her animals to the ones on the cards. There was a similar activity posted on The Wonder Years a little while ago.

More cardboard creations

I've been picking through our recycling pile again to make these recent activities. L is big time into puzzles at the moment so I thought I'd try and make some personalised ones. This one is of her and her Dedo who lives in Macedonia. I found a four piece puzzle template here, glued the picture onto a piece of cardboard and then traced the template onto it and cut it out. It's a bit fragile (just like most of my homemade things!) but I figure it teaches her to be gentle and take care. I would like to make lots of these puzzles with her far away relatives on them but I think we'll have to get a new ink cartridge first.

I saw these pattern block mats on a blog somewhere (sorry can't remember which one) and thought I'd try them out with L. I got the templates from here. First of all I just printed them off on paper and let L try them. They were a bit too slippery so I made cardboard frames so the pieces stay in place more easily.

She especially likes the caterpillar.

As you can see because I made them myself they are not all uniform and I will have to cut down some of the shapes so they fit in the frame better.

Buzy Bees

Well I'm sure I'll slow down a bit once I've been doing this a while but at the moment I'm still gung ho! We've been doing activities galore at the moment. It helps that the weather hasn't been that great so we've been spending more time indoors.

The other day I made up the shape puzzles which are also from Maja Pitamic's book. She has a template at the back of the book that you can copy and then I just traced them onto some cardboard and cut out the shapes. L seems to like them. At first I just started with the circles which she found quite easy and then the squares. After she'd finished those I put them out together. She did a few but then lost interest. Today I added the triangles which are quite challenging. I think this will be a good long term activity.