Week 2, day 3: the running materials

Nugget's still more active than usual, but less so than yesterday. I decided to give a shot at making the activities more physical, anyway.

While I showered, I tried to interest her in the Cylinder Blocks, to no avail.

When I got out, I asked if she wanted to do the Running Tower. Her eyes got wide. "What's the Running Tower?"

I set up a rug on the other side of the room and told Nugget that we were going to build the Pink Tower, but that she had to race to get each piece. Starting with the base -- ready, set, go!

I sat on the rug and cheered her on as she ran back and forth. This kid loves races (my husband runs marathons, and Nugget loved participating in a kids' race at his last one). So she got a total kick out of this.

And she did the Tower great, too! She got 2 blocks out of order, but swapped them with no problem.

Then we pushed it over and built the Tower on its side. She demonstrated the same problem with that as she has with the Brown Stair -- putting pieces on the opposite side of the largest block. So maybe working on the Tower horizontally would be a good step on the way to the Brown Stair.

Nugget wanted to build the Running Tower again, so we did that to move it back to the shelf. This time, she brought me the last 4 blocks in one delivery and had no interest in finishing the build.

Next, I suggested doing Running Bells. I put out 2 rugs, one on each side of the room and each with a container -- one marked for jingle bells, one for non-jingle bells. In the middle, I had the bucket of mixed bells.

Her job was to pick one, shake it, and run it to the correct rug/container. She did about 5, but was getting visibly tired. I can't blame her -- she'd done a lot of running for her! And then she needed a potty break, and that finished our work day.

All in all, about 20-30 minutes. I'd call it pretty successful -- we found a new, fun way to do the Pink Tower. I can be pretty sure that she's got the upright Tower concept down pat -- it just isn't very interesting to her right now. I might try the horizontal Tower a few times soon to help her with the concept of building in a line.

Tomorrow we may or may not have Montessori time, but we should have some Friday before our weekend break.