Sept wk 2 day 3: Taste

Another hour in the room. I delayed taking us in because Nugget was so involved in a 100 piece puzzle and I didn't want to disturb that. In fact, she's back to doing it again after we got out of the room. :)

We started out with some books on taste and then went on to tasting. Last night, I made 4 different flavors -- salt water, sugar water, instant coffee, and lemon juice. Nugget tasted each and I told her the names. She only wanted to do it once in the beginning, but she returned to it at the end (and ended up spooning lots of sugar water into her mouth :) ).

The rest of our time alternated between nice, productive work and near-breakdowns. She did a little of everything -- PL, puzzles, sequencing, sensorial, etc.

I set out some pictures of pink series words ending in 'g' and 'n' and she sorted those very well. This provided an interesting example about being very careful about making materials. When I'm making materials, I hardly every re-use ones that other people have designed because I want to make sure that the picture shows exactly what I'm aiming for and that I think Nugget will understand it. In this case, I made a picture for "egg", but chose an image with multiple eggs (I thought it would be easier for her to see what it was). Of course, then she didn't hear the 'g' at the end of the word -- she heard an 's'. So I dashed into the closet and quickly pulled out a Sandpaper 's'.

The ending-sound activity was pretty easy for her. She looked to me for verification each time, but got all of them right. So ending sounds are too easy, middle sounds are too hard. Guess I'll just give it more time.

I tried the Moveable Alphabet again and she helped me find the sounds as I sounded out a short grocery list. But then she wanted to write "grocery store" and somehow working to do this led to a breakdown. I think the MA is just out of her reach, and so it's easily frustrating. I'm going to tuck it away for a while and might step outside of the usual Montessori sequence and see how she does at reading some simple CVC.

At the end of our work time, I had one more taste experiment. The night before, I made 3 yogurt smoothies -- one banana, one strawberry, one vanilla. I put them in opaque containers and had her see if she could tell which was which. She couldn't, but it was tasty anyway!