Montessori...Tuesday?

Okay...so it's Tuesday today.  But I thought I'd share with you a little Montessori/Tot School-inspired activity I made for Niamh some time ago.  She took it off the shelf today, so I took the opportunity to snap a few pictures:

I made these little numbers out of this glittery card I bought at Spotlight.  It has a sand-paper texture, and she can trace each number with her finger.  My intention for making them was to try to link the feel of each number to its shape and name in her mind - eg, 3 looks like this, and feels like this.  To that end, I glued some wooden beads and buttons onto each card.  She can count these to self-check whether or not she has named the number correctly.

She has known her numbers up to 10 for a while now, but repetition is very Montessori, and I am sure it is doing her very good to start forming a picture in her mind of numbers being more than just a squiggle on a page.

The little surprise she gave me with the cards (don't you love when they do that?!) was that she can also use them to do a bit of very basic addition (eg 1 + 2 = 3...she can then count the beads on number 3 to check her work).

Here she is, coming up with addition all by herself:

1 + 2 = 3:

The shapes of the numbers are also self-correcting.  If she puts one on the floor upside down, she can't feel the beads.

Please check out the wonderful TOT SCHOOL blog.  They have so many fabulous ideas for little ones.

More on Colours...and some science thrown in at the end...

I hereby dub July, "Colour Month."  Okay, maybe as a choice of name, it is a little counter-seasonal.  It is winter here, after all.  (Counter-seasonal...is that a word?  Words?)  Anyway, since winter here in sunny Western Australia is hardly dull, drab or grey, I think Colour Month is a fitting title.  And grey is still a colour...

Following on from yesterday's revelations on how to make colour a more interactive, tangible experience, today, we had great fun with the colour pink.  Borrowing THIS wonderful Montessori-inspired idea from the brilliant Totschool blog, I made Niamh a little water activity.

Here, she is using an eye-dropper to drip water I coloured with pink food colouring onto wax paper:

 A bit hard to see, but I had drawn some little circles onto the wax paper, with the aim of getting her to try to drop a single drop into each.  A bit ambitious for a first try with the eye-dropper, maybe, but it did give her the idea...although it was instantly WAY more fun to make BIG pink puddles, rather than little ones:

 It was fun to make little dots onto pictures:

You'll notice she is not wearing an art smock (but is wearing her PJs - really, sometimes that battle just ain't worth fighting first thing in the morning), and we are using a glass for our pink water and not a paper or plastic cup.  I really wanted her to a) engage in having fun without all the cumbersome bulk of the smock, and b) to work with real materials in order to learn both care for her clothing, and her tools.  If the glass had fallen, so be it.  If things break, we clean up the mess.  (The glass is still in one piece, by the way.  Even 1 year olds can learn to be careful with things that break.)

She loved, loved, loved this activity!  It was enormous fun to watch the water beading on the wax paper, and to break it up into smaller and smaller beads just by giving it a little push with the eye-dropper.  It was hilarious to suck the water back up into the eye-dropper (complete with slurping noise - think spaghetti, but pink).

Dyeing our fingers pink in the droplets was fun too:

 Next, we experimented with different kinds of paper and a paintbrush, as well as the eye-dropper:

On plain white paper, you could paint the dots into stripes and blobs, which was lots of fun.  Or just make really big, wet, pink puddles:

On paper towel, the drops made blotches which spread out:

It was just as much fun for me as it was for Niamh, I assure you.  We spent nearly an hour just playing with pink water, an eye-dropper and a paint-brush.  How's that for cheap entertainment?

After I finally won the day's "Ye shall now be dressed," battle, I was thrilled when she immediately asked for more painting, but this time, "a different one."  A week or so ago she had started to paint a little wooden jigsaw puzzle (a great idea - you buy the puzzle in plain wood, along with paints, then decorate it yourself - you can find them Here), and I suggested we finish it.  She agreed.

You'll note the art smock this time.  She was wearing a fairly new top and, well, the "mama-hates-a-washing-challenge" panic button over-rode my higher philosophical ideals...  Glass and pink dye smashed all over the floor is one thing.  An impossible washing challenge is something else entirely.  Ah, sweet, merciful, human fallibility...thy familiar embrace is a warm, numbing comfort.

When the painting was done, she immediately requested MORE drawing.  Here she is drawing some stripey balls with crayons:

The balls are actually in black on her left, and the stripes are separate on her right.  I love it.

After the artistic frenzy (seriously, 2.5 hours doing nothing except drawing and painting!), we headed to the park for a picnic and some fun with her favourite thing in a whole world - balls.

Running down the hill (she is "very fast"):

 Rolling the balls down the hill:

Uh-oh, better catch them!  (I love the look of concern - those balls are getting away from her.)

 I asked her, "Who goes faster, you or the balls?"  A rather stern look in return.  "The balls."  Duh.  Obviously, mama.  "Do you know why?"  Another look (you know, the one you get when you're an idiot), "They're round."

Wait...is that...physics...coming from the mouth of a child not yet 2??  Dagnabbit.  How dare she learn naturally!  I was probably in high school before I had that one spoon-fed to me.

Later, we made a slide for our fairy stick people to play on:

(I might not know physics, but I can ram a couple of sticks through a leaf.  Take that, science!)

Roll on, Colour Month!

So many ideas from such a simple thing

For some time now, I have been toying with (warring with, might be a better turn of phrase to decribe the turmoil of my thoughts) the different educational options available to Niamh.  I was decided before she was even born that she would never, ever attend a state or public school.  I hold with neither the curriculum, nor the methods of teaching.  I won't go into why now, as it will no doubt be the subject of many future blogs...as will the two main methods we are exploring, Montessori or Unschooling, and which of those we eventually choose.  Whatever we choose, the path will be one of natural, non-invasive, child-centred learning.

To that end, Niamh has been attending a Montessori pre-school (0-3 year olds) once a week for over a year.  She loves the jobs, and has a blast going from shelf to shelf to see what is there each week.  For all my dreams of setting up a learning environment for her at home along similar lines, however, I have to admit, I have been a bit lapse.  We do have a child-sized area with shelving at her height, where all her toys and books are stored for her to use at will; we don't allow battery-operated toys and prefer natural, beautiful toys made of wood; we encourage her to do tasks herself (eg clean her own teeth, wash her own hands and face)...and I have made a few brief and rather pathetic attempts to provide her with Montessori-inspired tasks, manipulatives and puzzles.

Here she is with a basket of  number cards (1-20) I made for her to explore.  She is ball-obsessed, hence the theme:

(You'll notice the very non-Montessori mess in the background...)


The last few days, mama-guilt has taken over a bit.  So today, I got my act together and made her a pouring job - two small glasses, one filled with rice, one not, on a tray.  Frankly, it didn't go well.  She has never really gone for the pouring jobs at playgroup (kind of my reason for wanting to try it), and this was no exception.  She poured the rice a few times, then ran off to do something else.

Right, thinks I.  How do I make this fun for her?  Some pink food colouring and some pink and purple beads later, my little glasses of rice looked quite inviting (bad photography aside - it was very dark and the camera just wouldn't focus):

Well!  I am proud to report that it was a big hit!  She sat there for probably half an hour (not bad for a nearly 2 year old), pouring and pouring and pouring.  Then, she asked for a spoon.  And without prompting spent another few minutes spooning the rice from one glass to another:

From the look on her face, you can see how much fun she was having. At one point, she was shouting with excitement, "Oh, THERE'S a pink bead!  THERE'S a button!  THERE'S a purple bead!  I found FOUR!"

Then, she spent another good twenty minutes exploring all the beads inside the rice - and to do so, she had to use the pincer grip in order to extract individual beads from the glass!  Then, she happily sorted the purple beads into a small pile, and the pink beads into another pile.  (No prompting or intervening from me at all, other than to take a few photos).  Here she is holding her favourite pink bead:

Her hunger for learning just AMAZES and humbles me.

Who knew so much learning could come from a little glass of pink rice and wooden beads?

Montessori Monday - One Hook Wonder