Week 5, day 3: Stability

I didn't change a thing last night. When I woke up, I realized that I hadn't swapped the Sandpaper Letters, and started to do that... but then I remembered that she hadn't chosen the Letters yesterday, so I didn't need to change them.

Nugget ran for the room early this morning -- she and her Daddy made chocolate chip pancakes and as soon as she'd had her fill of those, she dashed into our bedroom asking to do Montessori.

Of course, she chose the animals first. I got smart this time and used my sticker maker to make the letter labels repositionable (I'd glued them down last time), so I moved those around on her before she started. She, of course, did just fine. Again, igloo is a bit of a sticking point, but if she thinks about it for a second, she gets it.

Next, the Sandpaper Letters. We did g, j, n, and v. And because the noun pictures are in a small, wooden treasure chest, she told a story about a pirate while she was doing it. Again, no problem with any of those letters or sounds.

I suggested she do all 4 Cylinder Blocks so that she could crawl into the middle of them when she'd finished. She chose our blue striped rug so that it would be a pond (when she choses the brown striped rug, it's a muddy pit). I pulled the cylinders out, she put them all back. This time, the story started out being about heffalumps and woozles looking for their houses, but turned into mommy and daddy and baby cylinders finding where they lived. She did all four without any help from me.

She took a small break to hop on the bed, while I pulled out double sets of the Knobless Cylinders to make into various patterns. She helped a bit, but doesn't really have any interest in this. She's never been the sort of kid to be interested in blocks, and that seems to extend to the Sensorial block-like items.

Nugget tried the color shade matching, choosing to do the purple. (Note: although the display looks great on the shelf, the picture frames holding the clothespins all fall over when she carries it.) She mixed up a few, and wasn't really interested.

She chose to pour with the funnel next. She does it perfectly nearly every time -- except once, when she makes a terrific mess. Well, it means she gets to push the sugar around with her little broom and dustpan. She still can't sweep it into a pile, but she enjoys trying.

Her Daddy did some yoga with her next, and then it was back to the animals. Then we did puzzles -- she would pick one for her and one for me. These are significantly easier for her than they were yesterday. She did nearly all of them, then gave a cursory effort at the dressing items.

And, by then, it had been an hour and 15 minutes and she was done. So we snuggled and huggled for a while to give her a chance to recharge. There's been a few days when she's seemed pretty drained at the end of our Montessori time, and she's spent the rest of the morning easily frustrated and irritable. I'm not sure how much of that is just having a bad day and how much is the mental drain, but I'm going to put an effort into a wind-down time at the end of our work. It's a small sample size, but she's doing much better today -- even after our work time, she's choosing to play independently and working things out on her own (except I just jinxed it, and now she's having a small breakdown).

All in all, a good day. If we finish the week on this note, I'd be happy. We probably won't get any time in tomorrow because of Daddy-Daughter Day, and Friday is a midwife visit during our usual Montessori time. We might get some afternoon work time, or we might not.