Working Unattended :)

I wasn't the most observant Montessori Instructor today :)  I was using the computer, which is in the school room and Link was doing his own thing.  At first he was just hanging out in the other room, but then I noticed him behind me, going through his new (and incomplete) /f/ box.

It's kinda funny how he progressed through his work today.  He found a piece of foam and thought it was like a sponge.  So, naturally, he thought it should go with some kind of water activity and put it with the whisking activity.  Then, he wanted to whisk, so I told him I'd find him a sponge.  Again, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to him at this point; he's pretty good at doing it by himself.  The next thing I knew, he was in the bathroom cleaning the toilet.  He was so enthusiastic about it, I had to be too!  Afterwards I cleaned his sponge and he went back to whisking.  Next thing I knew, he was cleaning the toilet again :)

It's very difficult for him to walk with the bowl full of water when he puts too much in it.  So, after I helped him clean all the water up, he surprised me by choosing the geometric solids!  I added the bases about a week ago, but haven't been able to give him a presentation on it.  I was about to jump in and ask if he wanted one, when he picked them up and started matching them up!  I decided that stopping his work to do a demonstration of something he obviously "got" would not be conductive to his continued use of the material.  So, I sat back and waited until he looked like he needed me.  Once he got out one of the stands, looked at it with confusion, and put it back, I asked if I could show him something neat.  So, I demonstrated how the ovoid wouldn't stand up on the tile by itself, but how it would on the stand.  Link was very into this.  He demonstrated for me how the others would either roll or fall over.  Then he spent a good bit of time building.  Since he wasn't hurting anything and was putting things together and experimenting, I just let him go at it.

Geometric Cabinet & Other Presentations

I've read things that say if you give a presentation and the child doesn't do it correctly, you just conclude the presentation and try again another day.  But there has to be some point you just let them use the material, right?  Link doesn't really do the presentation tray or geometric cabinet drawers correctly.  But after two presentations, he just said "I don't want to do that" (meaning trace the shapes) and he puts the pieces back.  I feel like I should just let him do the cabinet since he's interested, even if he's not doing right....

Then there's the red rods.  He has not tried to build the stairs.  I asked him if I could give him another presentation, and he said no.  Maybe I'll just do them myself one day and see if that helps.

School Room Setup

I mentioned that I've updated the schoolroom twice without posting much about it.  This was due to the fact that I updated it, and Link didn't find much he was interested in, so I had to update it again.  After that, I got my new material and had to add some of it.  Then, we went out of town and had company so he hasn't been back in the room since the second update.

I figured even if we didn't do much school time, I could at least show my setup.  I added a sorting activity with quarters, nickels and pennies.  Link really enjoyed this one.  At first he didn't realize that there was a difference between the quarters and nickels, but after repeating the presentation another day he noticed it.  He did this one several times, one of the few activities he's ever repeated.

The scissors are not supposed to be there :)

 This is the 'b' box.  First I did just objects, then the next day I added the pictures.  He's not that into repeating things if they aren't different, so I try to change what's in the box to get more use out of it.  I only put about 10 objects in at a time, even if I have more.

 

Matching objects from the box to the pictures

Below is an activity I made up on the fly.  I had this bag of shapes and I don't think he's ready to use it the way it is intended, so I just had him sort each shape into the little glasses.  He only did this one once, but he explored the objects for a while afterwards.  He put the round shapes back in the bag, then messed around with the rest.

These only lasted two or three days.  Then I had to completely change the room.  I moved the art supplies to the corner.  Then I put several pieces of felt on the shelf to lay the red rods on.  I tried to group the sensorial activities together here.  So just to the right of the red rods is the picture below.

When I was cleaning the closet out I found some dice.  I thought it might be interesting to have Link sort them by color, but also see if he could recognize the similar shapes.  Below that is the first cylinder block and the geometric solids.  The first time I put the solids out, I used the box they came in and put the bases and stands out as well.  It was very heavy.  Since he really just needed to explore the shapes, I decided to put just the shapes in a basket.

Right next to this is the pink tower, which doesn't fit right now.  I made some sound bottles, but did the presentation all wrong!  I guess I should have read up on that first.  I'm going to put them in two different boxes and try again.  I still have out the beginner pattern blocks.  I think I'll get the next step up soon and replace these.

I'm going to have to make that shelf taller for the pink tower.

I don't have a lot of practical life out right now.  A lot of what we do is done in the kitchen.  Plus, I don't have any good ideas right now.  I do have the dressing frames almost finished but there is no end in sight right now.  I made them a little small and need to find something to attach them to.  Maybe in the next week or so you'll see them.

The beans are missing for the sweeping...

 And this is what's left, grouped together.  The orange box is now a 'c' box.  I have out the frog, horse and tree puzzles.  The sandpaper globe.  Melissa & Doug word puzzles.  I know, I need to work on this area.

That pretty much fills up the school room.  I plan on putting out the brown stairs soon. The geometric cabinet is already out, you may have seen it below the red rods.  But I have not given a presentation on it yet.  I plan on doing the presentation tray soon, then moving to the cabinet.  I'll have to review everything again to see if there is something lacking.  The room is filling up faster than I expected.  I'm sure that soon I'll have to remodel, move the computer, and adjust shelves.

I'm a little worried!  We'll be gone a week and a half in November and one to two weeks in December.  Then we'll all be staying with family for the entire month of January - until I have the baby.  Then we'll come home and I have a feeling that doing school time with a newborn is going to be very difficult!

Big Boy

I have been spending a TON of time trying to prepare for starting school with Link.  The main thing that has been holding me back is that I don't have a space to dedicate to school.  I finally decided that I was letting that and the lack of a full fledged plan keep me from starting.  So on Friday I decided to just start small.  Here's what I did...

First I made a small list of activities to pull from.  I used the book Child's Play by Maja Pitamic to get some ideas, others came from Gettman and a list I bought, or I just read about them somewhere.  This was my list:

• I Spy
• Guess the Sound Game
• Hard & Soft Game
• Sort Beans
• Walk the Line
• Bean Bag Throwing
• Traffic Lights
• If You're Happy & You Know It

There are several reasons I wanted to start with this list.  "I Spy" is of course the first language activity recommended by everyone and I'm very anxious to get started with language.  The next three would give me a chance to practice presenting an activity, and get Link used to sitting with me while I show him something.  The three after that I can do inside or outside, and since I often just want to play outside, it'll get me going while fulfilling that need.  And the last one will encourage Link to sing, listen and perform certain actions.

So, shortly after breakfast we have about a three hour period that works great for doing whatever I have planned for the day.  I chose bean sorting since there was not a lot of prep work involved.  I didn't really present it the way I should, I just said "want to help mamma sort some beans?" Since he said yes (he's back into helper mode) I got one big bowl and two little bowls, and some black beans and lima beans, mixed them up and showed him how to put one in each bowl.  He did great considering I put way too many little black beans in the bowl, and they were very very small.  Then he decided he wanted a snack, so he left, ate a little, then came back.  He got almost all the way through it before he decided he was done.  So I finished up and put it all away.  Not bad for our first activity.

After his nap (and snack this time) I decided to try pouring rice.  Nope, it wasn't on the list, but whatever!  I read in the Gettman book how I should present it, then I jumped in.  This one was a little more difficult.  Link didn't want to watch me demonstrate and he certainly didn't want me to help place his hands correctly.  This is where "BIG BOY" came in!  When Link wants to do something by himself he lets me know he's a big boy and wants me to leave him alone.  I handled it well I think.... He only fussed a little, and he ended up letting me show him.  This is where I think starting small and getting him used to the whole presentation idea is important.  He did well, and only dumped the rice out once, but was very enthusiastic about picking up the rice.  Then he was all done, and I put it away.

Those were the only activities we did.  I plan on starting the I Spy one on Monday.  I made a list of all the sounds to help me and Daddy keep track of the sounds and a chart for each week showing the sounds we're working on for the day.  Here they are:

It is very hard to think of things that I have to use for the I Spy game.  I don't have a ton of little miniatures, so I think I'm going to use the I Spy Phonics Book Set and Alphatales Book Set that MyBoysTeacher uses :)  I'm going to try to do activities at least two days next week and I Spy every day.