Week 4, day 4: Sick day

New materials: green shade matching, rough & smooth matching, Sound Cylinders, Cylinder Block #3, picture cards for beginning sounds. (I'll put pictures up later today.)

Nugget caught my husband's sniffles, so we only spent about 30 minutes in the room today. Once again, she spent most of her time asking what was new. I'm hoping to get most all of the Sensorial material that I'm going to have out for the medium-term out by next week, so that the work available will be more stable.

Nugget went right to the Sandpaper Letters. A few evenings ago, I bought the picture set for beginning consonant sounds from Montessori for Everyone. It's the sort of thing that I could have made on my own, but I don't have the time and energy to sink into that right now. It's really nice to have another option. The PDF arrived soon after my order, and it was easy to print and use. We won't use the sounds for X -- they aren't the true "cks" sound. But nothing starts with that anyway, so... what're you going to do? It is a little frustrating that the vowel set is nearly as expensive as the much-larger consonant set, though -- I probably won't spring for that.

I'm thinking about using the Pink material from Montessori for Everyone, too -- Nugget will probably be getting into that around when I've got an infant, so I really doubt I'll have the energy for it then, either. :) They also have some really nice free materials on their website. And if you fan them on Facebook, they have pretty interesting Montessori-related updates.

I set out 4 letters for Nugget -- b, m, r, and w. These are letters she's worked with on the animal beginning sounds activity, and I thought they sounded fairly different. I didn't realize until we started working that she pronounces 'r' and 'w' very similarly. But, with one exception ('watermelon', which went under 'r'), she matched everything correctly and without difficulty. I want to work through all the letters, to make sure she knows all of them... I'm trying to figure out a way to do that faster than working with a couple letters at a time. The Sandpaper Letters are so huge, I can't see having them all out.... maybe I break out the Moveable Alphabet and have her choose the appropriate starting sound?

After the letters, she chose the 3 rough and smooth tablets I set out (smooth, roughest, middle). She didn't want to use the blindfold, though, so this didn't work out very well. She felt and matched, but by look, not feel. I tried putting the tablets under our second rug and having her reach under, but I couldn't get the concept across to her. Another case of just a tad too young.

Next, Nugget pulled out the Sound Cylinders. I set out one full set of 6, intending for her to just shake and listen. But some of them sound very similar, and she started matching them up on her own. I didn't want her matching things that aren't actually the same, so I pulled out the second box of Sound Cylinders. We matched (close enough, at least -- even I can't tell the difference between some, but I have tin ears) and we talked about softer and louder.

She moved to the Smelling Bottles (just sniffing them) and Cylinder Block #3 (which she did once with no difficulty). She poked at one container and did the animal beginning sounds once. But she was really done, so we moved on to some arts & crafts.

I've got some thinking to do about the frequency of introducing new materials and how to keep her engaged in materials that she's seen before. She's a neophile -- takes after her mom. :)