Montessori Monday

This week we've had some blasts from the past. I made this felt dressing doll for L when she was 19 months. We brought it out again and it's interesting for me to see the difference now in how she works with this activity. Instead of just trying to put the clothes on the doll she makes up different scenarios and picks the outfit to fit the outing. Too cute! I'm thinking of making some more outfits for her so the poor dressing doll can go more places!

Tracing shapes. I cut out some shapes from some old margarine container lids for L to trace. This was her first time tracing like this and she enjoyed it. Once she tires of tracing with the pencil crayons we'll trace with our fingers and count the sides. Then I'm hoping to eventually get her to recognize the shape by feel only.

Another oldie but goodie I brought back is the mystery bag. This time I put in different items we found on our nature walks. At first L just brought out the items and named them.

I then introduced the blindfold for the first time. L picked something from the bag and had to guess what it was. This was funny as she wanted to lift the blindfold as soon as she took the item out of the bag. She had no problem guessing the items because they are all so different. I wouldn't say L loved the blindfold idea but she did it. I'll keep introducing it slowly.

From the airplane

Although I've tried to wipe the memory from my mind : ) I thought I'd post about some of the things we did to keep busy on the 10 hour airplane journey. I actually managed to take a lot of pictures (nothing else to do!). Thank you so much to everyone who left comments about activities. I used a lot of your advice. Here are some of the things we did.

Sewing a button snake. I think this was originally on What Did we do all day? but I saw it on Counting Coconuts. I made one ribbon for each of us and this kept us busy for quite a while. I just kept all of the bits in a pencil case which kept the whole thing contained.

Shape matching. I just bent some pipe cleaners into different shapes and cut out some shape pictures from the Amazing Sticker Book. I also brought this lid from a shoe box to keep everything contained and we didn't drop or loose anything!

I got a great suggestion from Montessori Moments to bring some small presents to unwrap. My awesome aunt gave L a whole bunch and I brought them out at different times during the trip. They were all a huge hit. Here is a cool sticker activity with different farm scenes.

We also did some counting but by this point she was really tired so it didn't last too long.

The super cool Farm in a Tube. Thanks Auntie S.

We also did coloring, reading books, a really hard 3D magnetic puzzle and had tons of snacks. She also took a 2 1/2 hour nap which was the best part of the trip! he he

All in all she did really well and the cabin crew actually commented that she was the best behaved child they'd had on a long journey. We survived but it's not something that my husband or I want to repeat any time soon!

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.

Perseverence and what we've been up to...

Towards the end of L's 19th month we tried a couple of new things. The first one was of course potty training. I'm happy to report that it has gone extremely well and I would say that she is fully "trained". She will either go to the bathroom when she needs to or if we're out she will tell me "I have to go pee". Can't ask for more than that. I'm still helping her pull her pants down but we're working on her doing it on her own. At the moment I'm just more anxious for the pee to go into the potty!
The other thing was having L pour her own water and drink out of a glass. It was not that she wasn't capable of doing these things before it was that she would mess about with the water and drive me nuts. Well we've made a lot of progress on this and she now very rarely bothers with the water other than to drink or pour it into her glass. We do still get the occasional fork or spoon in there though but I just take it away.

Some other things we've been up to are:

Locks and keys. L loves to try and open my car door so I bought her this little lock. It's a bit hard so I also bought her a bike lock that was on sale. With this one I've just tied them both to a string and threaded it through a lid so nothing gets lost.

We love the mystery bag!

There was a post on The Wonder Years a while back about scooping ducks out of a bowl of water. I bought these ping pong balls for L to try but she was too smart and took the easy way out and just picked them up with her hand and put them in the scoop! So I tried this activity instead and she seemed to grasp what I wanted her to do. We now do the scooping in the bath tub which is much more challenging and fun.

Yesterday I decided to put these geometric shapes into a bag and get L to take them out and match them. She already knows the cube and cylinder(which she calls a sillylid) from playing with the blocks. I introduced the ping pong balls as spheres which she didn't like because obviously they're really balls mom! and I started calling the triangles triangle prisms and then felt silly so we're just calling them triangles for now. Anyway she matched them no problem so I then took a turn and pulled out a cylinder and asked if she could find one. She was able to find it and the sphere no problem and didn't have too much problem finding the others either so we'll keep trying it this way from now on.

Cardboard is my new best friend...

Sometimes I think I should rename this blog "Cheap and Cheerful". As anyone who has read my posts will have realised I don't have any budget at all for Montessori activities. Therefore I have to try and be creative with the materials we have and we seem to have a lot of cardboard! I just came up with this little ditty when I saw a package of straws on sale at the supermarket. Just an old shoe box with small holes punched in the top. She has to match the color and also try to get the straw into the small hole. I thought this would be challenging for her but the first time she put them all in, with the correct colors no problem. Then she started exploring with the straws a bit (they're the bendy ones) and put them in bendy side down. She is also learning that she has to put one hand on the lid in order to take the straws out with the other and then take off the lid to store the staws inside.

I also found this excellent shape and colors game at the boot fair today for 50p. Bargain. L doesn't have much trouble with it but she loves it. It also comes with two dice that have the colors and the shapes on them which we'll try out a bit later.

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.