Sept wk 2, day 5: Touch

We had a really nice day in the room today. I think it was about an hour we were in there, but I'm not really sure where the time went. I can't point to any one thing that occupied her time, but we had fun.

We do one fiction book to kick off the theme, and today's was a favorite from the library -- "Tickle the Duck". So it started out on a fun note. I made up some touch tablets from textured scrapbook paper, and we talked about how they felt and did a blind matching. I put out the texture balloons from a few months ago, and those are always a hit.

In the rest of the room, she successfully filled the spindle box with counting bears, did a very little bit of practical life, went back to the hearing game, and worked with me on the Pink Tower and Brown Stair.

I printed out and set out 4 of the trap door readers. I LOVE these. I'm not sure how she did with them -- she had trouble holding them without pinching the slider and just wanted to see the pictures. I intervened a bit to make them work correctly, and she did seem to be blending.... but it's hard to tell.

Now, a weekend of preparations for next week -- human needs!

Sept wk 2, day 2: Hearing

Just under an hour in the room today. We did a game where I played various sounds and she chose the picture of its source. I think you can find the sound files online if you search for sound bingo.

We tried to work on identifying middle sounds (sorting CVC words for e vs u), but she just wasn't hearing them. I put out and she worked on opening and closing containers, as well as more sequencing. I think most of our time was spent on the Pink Tower and Brown Stair -- she initially built the BS incorrectly, but eventually corrected it. It's still just on the edge of her grasp, I think.

Sorry these are getting short -- I'm feeling pretty swamped by getting things set out for the next day, prepping materials for the next week or two, and planning topics further out.

Tomorrow -- taste!

Sept wk 1 day 4: Staying healthy

An hour and a half in the room today. We might have been able to stay more, but she was starting to tire out and we had visitors coming for messy preschool art fun.

Today's topic was keeping your body healthy. We talked about healthy foods and exercise. The topical activity was sorting food cards into sometimes foods and all the time foods, which was no problem for her -- we talk about that sort of thing all the time.

There was a new Practical Life activity -- transferring water with a sponge. I also had a semi-Sensorial activity to sort by size -- the cheaper version of this. She got two of the middle sizes mixed up, oddly enough. She also worked on tanagrams and was starting to show signs of tiring out. So she moved on to a new language activity, matching rhymes. It took a few cards for her to remember how rhyming worked (I realize now that we haven't done it in a while), but she was hitting all of them by the end.

Then, Nugget chose another language -- the Melissa and Doug See & Spell. We were hanging out together, working on this and chatting... I spelled a word off of the cards and we started talking about how you can lay out sounds in a word to write it. I knew she was starting to be able to hear sounds inside of words.... so I took a chance and pulled out the Moveable Alphabet.

We worked together on the first word, "mom". Then "dad", which she wanted to turn into "daddy". Then she just wanted to keep going. We ended up spelling out all of our family names.


Here you can see her working on "Liz". She insisted that she heard lots of "z"s.


Column 1: Miles ("miz"), Gramme ("grm"), Aunt Heidi ("iet hd"), Ken ("cn")
Column 2: Mom, Daddy ("dade"), "atle"
Column 3: Nana ("nen"), Pop-pop ("pppp"), Liz ("lzzzz"), Grandpa (I helped with this) Johnny ("jn")
Not seen: Pap Webb ("p wb")


She was definitely getting tired by the end (you can tell from her efforts), but she really wanted to write everyone's name. You can also tell that hearing vowels is still tricky for her. But what an amazing step! I'm just blown away! You could have knocked me over with a feather.

We've got a few day break before we start the Five Senses on Monday, but I'll probably pull out the Moveable Alphabet over the weekend to give her some more exposure to it.

Sept wk 1 day 2: Brain, heart, lungs

Another great day! We studied the brain, heart, and lungs, and spent an hour twenty in the room.

Again, we started out by reading books. Then we did a version of "Simon Says" (we used "my brain says") and the felt body organs. We blowed bubbles (well, I did, Nugget tried to) and listened to her heart with a stethoscope before and after she ran around. I demoed some three (well, four) part cards about the organs but it was way over her head and she blew it off. I'm not surprised; I'm going to simplify the cards a bit and try again tomorrow.

Then Nugget moved on to the typical Montessori work. I put out a lentil pouring activity which she dug in to, then tried the bead sorting (I simplified from yesterday) but didn't do it right.

She did puzzles, and when she started looking around, I suggested a Pink Tower game (she looks away, I remove one block and ask her where it was). Through our work with the Pink Tower, I'm certain she CAN do it, she just has more fun not doing it (the sly smile and "is that right?" when she put them in the wrong order).

She went back to the pouring and, for the first time, poured into two containers (tomorrow, I'm going to set out containers that are too small to fit all of the lentils). Then she sorted -- correctly, when I suggested that she was putting the animals (the beads are shaped like sea life) into their homes. She noticed that they were beads, and asked about threading them. The beads and holes are so small, the only way to do that was with a needle and thread. She worked so hard and so carefully! She threaded all 36 beads. I was very impressed with her work.

She finished up doing some sequencing work. Interesting note -- she'd been sequencing one of the stories -- a dad lifting a girl -- incorrectly. I'd thought last night to put stickers on the back so that she could check her work, but didn't. Today, in order to help her see her error, I asked her to tell me the story of each group she sequenced. And she wasn't wrong! Instead of seeing the story as "girl runs toward dad, dad starts to pick up girl, girl is in the air", she saw it as "girl runs toward dad, girl is up in the air, dad puts girl down". I'll totally give her credit for that answer -- it could be read that way! Another reason to love homeschooling. :)

Tomorrow -- digestion!

Sept wk 1 day 1: Bones and muscles

Our first day went well! We got started at 8:30am and stayed in the room for an hour. That's a great length, I think -- my eventual goal is 2 hours, but right now an hour is just fine. Today, I would have been happy with anything over 30 minutes. My husband was home to be able to hold on to Sprout, so I just had to leave once to nurse him.

I'm not taking many pictures while Nugget is working -- it's a big distraction for her. But I've got some pictures of our environment and materials.


This is our set-up. It's part of our master bedroom. I have one shelf for Practical Life, a couple for Sensorial, and one each for Language, Math, and the current topic. The shelves are pretty bare because I don't want to swamp her with a ton of stuff right off the bat.

This is our Practical Life. I have a sorting activity and flower arranging (a perpetual favorite). I spent a lot of time setting out an assortment of beads so that she could sort by either color or form -- I was interested to see which she would pick. But she poked at it, didn't find any matching pairs (nothing matches in both color and shape), and turned it into a straight transferring activity.


Current Sensorial materials. This will slowly grow as the days and weeks go on. She completely ignored them today, as is usual.


New Sensorial material to go along with "muscles" -- weighted containers. There are pairs of 3 different weights. Nugget did a great job with these -- she was able to pair, grade, and name (heavier, lighter).


Language. On the bottom is a Melissa and Doug activity, on the top are sequencing cards available for free from Montessori for Everyone. I chose to start with these because Nugget seems to have a hard time with picking the "first" letter when looking at a word. She often picks the last letter instead.


Our topical shelves. I have out some things to pick up and look at -- a paper mache skull and a remarkably nicely done skeleton from a Dollar Tree garland. (I'd like to highly recommend doing a unit on skulls around Halloween.) Behind those are the skeleton matching cards, and on the bottom is a skeleton puzzle she's had for a while but I tucked away so that it would feel new for this unit.


Here's a fun craft project -- my version is on the left, hers on the right.


We started out our time in the room with a silly song ("Dem Bones", and Nugget looked embarrassed for me) and then read some books about bones. Nugget then went right for the animal skeleton matching and did it perfectly -- even recognizing some skeletons without seeing the animal picture. I introduced the idea of "checking your work" for the first time, with stickers on the back, and she used it (before, she'd just matched the backs without attempting the activity).

She proceeded to do the craft, investigate the hands-on bones, try the sorting, and assemble the skeleton puzzle. Then there was a break to look through the "Visual Dictionary of the Skeleton" together (she loves books like this). Then back into the room for sequencing, flower arranging (and unarranging), and weighted containers. BACK to the "Visual Dictionary of the Skeleton", then she started to "play Pixar" on the bed, so I got her to straighten up the room and we called it a day at 9:30am.

Outside of the room, we've been soaking a chicken bone in vinegar (to dissolve the calcium and make it bendable) and looking at an x-ray of her metal-skeletoned Bullseye stuffed friend (gotta love having a family member in the health care industry!).

Back tomorrow for heart, lungs, and brain. I won't do such a detailed review every day; I've got enough on my plate just preparing for the next days! But I do want to track what she's up to, so there'll be SOMETHING here.

Finding more time

Nugget has been asking to go into the Montessori room every day for the past few days. We've been able to get about 30 minutes at a time in there, which is a nice balance for right now.

I've refreshed a few things in the room. I'd love to show you pictures, but Sprout is asleep and I'm not going to turn on the light for that. :)

For Practical Life, I put out a marble-placing activity again. This time I put tongs out as an option; she tried that once, then went back to using her fingers.

In Sensorial, I made sound shakers out of plastic Easter eggs. The ones from Montessori Outlet are really difficult to tell apart, even for me. The eggs are filled with coins, rice, and other household things. They're much more appropriate at her level.

I also found another way to display the color shade matching activity. Nugget helped me change it around, and also matched the colors so that I could write control of error symbols on the back.

In Math, I put out a number line and some stickers marked with numbers for Nugget to place in order. She really enjoyed this and did it two days in a row. She recognizes maybe half the numbers right now, and I'm trying to work on this lately. She learned her letters so fast, I'm not sure why the numbers aren't sticking as easily.

For Language, I put out a few new things. I bought a pack of small wooden hearts and wrote the letters on those, and stored them in a wooden treasure chest. We made a game of pulling out one letter at a time and saying its sound.

I also put out a beginning sounds game from a workbook, where you match ants with letters on them to the picnic food that starts with that letter. Because this involves animals that she can narrate, this is a big hit, of course.

Lastly, I set out 3 of the Controlled Word Building Cards from Montessori by Ayashy. I'm a bit disappointed in the images on these -- instead of photographs of real things, they're very cartoony clip art. But Nugget got the idea, so they work fine. She struggled a bit with this activity. She identified the sounds in the word and knew the sounds the letters made, but couldn't put the letters in that order. I'm wondering if it's a problem grasping the sounds -> words idea, or if it's simply a problem of not understanding left to right/first to last. Definitely something for me to try to tease out, and an activity for us to revisit later.

In Science, I put out Sink/Float. I didn't plan to, but Nugget begged for it. That is such a huge hit. I'm curious if a magnetic/non-magnetic one would be as engrossing for her.

Although I'm happy that we've gotten back in the room, I've been unhappy with how scattershot my approach has been lately. I'm not upset with myself about it; a 2 month old is a valid excuse, in my book. But I would like to be more organized and have more of an overarching plan.

So I've been considering buying the New Child Montessori curriculum. I like that it's designed to work with the Montessori materials, but provides a framework for studying other subjects that are outside of the traditional materials. I like that it can be reused each year, just at a deeper level.

If anyone else out there has used it, I'd love to hear your opinions!

Turtles!

Nugget has really wanted to get back into the Montessori room recently. Luckily, she hit an interested period at the same time that my husband could take Sprout for a walk to get him a nap. So Nugget and I were able to have a relatively long work period -- less than an hour, but still good for having a 7 week old in the house!

I've been slowly working on some turtle-related materials for our new theme. In a burst of luck, May 23 is World Turtle Day -- and Disney's Animal Kingdom celebrated Turtle Day on Wednesday. We HAD to visit for that (we're local to the parks, and visit pretty often). Nugget had a blast there, seeing vets doing check-ups of Egyptian Tortioses, wearing a pretend turtle shell, playing turtle-related games, etc.

I only had 2 turtle activities for her today -- a life cycle and a sorting work. For the sorting, I printed out pictures of various turtles -- 4 pond turtles, 4 tortoises, and 4 sea turtles. Then she sorted them by type by putting them in their appropriate home (kindergarden-level drawings I did of the ocean, a pond, and a grassy hill). This was a hit, and she did it at least 3 times today.

She also worked with the animal name sound activity, but with a twist. We changed out the beginning sound letters for ending sound letters. The last time I set this up (2 months ago, maybe?), she had a really hard time hearing anything but the beginning sound. This time, she was identifying sounds in the middle of the word and at the end. I think she might be getting ready for some Trap Door Readers....

After that, she did a bunch of Sensorial. The mystery bag, sandpaper tablets, texture balloons, and even some work with the Pink Tower and Brown Stair. We finished up with the Knobbed Cylinders. That was extra amusing, because she talked while she did it. She's always talking to herself while playing, but in a low voice that we can't hear. This time, she was speaking to herself, but loudly. So I got to hear the strange train of thought that went along with working with the cylinders. First they were a family, baby to great-grandparents. They got in and out of a car and tried to find their places. Then the big one was a mommy pushing out a baby. It was a water birth. Then the baby had tongue tie that had to be clipped. I find it amazing the ways that she processes the world around her.

Week 9, day 1: Slowly getting back on track

Nugget had been showing a growing interest in getting back to the Montessori room. She was going in their on her own (just for a few minutes) and talking about it again. So I decided to try to get us back in the room a bit.

To give me a framework for developing new activities, I'd decided to try incorporating some aspects of unit studies. I'm going to focus on swamp animals for a few weeks, since we live near some swamps and she's been interested in them recently. This week I chose frogs, and developed variations on some basic activities using frogs.

Her biggest request was a new animal beginning sounds activity. So I made her a swamp with all kinds of animals and insects. The sounds were easy, but she was quite taken with all the animals (as expected).


I used some of our Safari frogs for her to match to pictures of their real-life counterparts.


She put the appropriate number of frogs on each lily pad (this was difficult -- she's not quite ready for this yet).


I put out the pieces to a frog craft and an example that I made. I let her figure out on her own how to put it together. She did great!




She used her new magnifying glass to match tiny pictures to big pictures.


As a gross-motor activity, I cut lily pads out of felt for her to jump between.


The only old activity she chose (at my suggestion) was the knobbed cylinders, which she pretended were frog daddies and babies who needed to get back to their houses.

(Is anyone surprised to hear that Nugget is obsessed with being a vet when she grows up? This kid LOVES animals. Nearly all of her play is animal-based, and anything can be made more interesting by throwing animals into the mix.)

All of this was accomplished with Sprout asleep in the sling on my chest. I felt like super-mom!

Week 8: Her choice

As I mentioned before, I haven't pushed or even suggested going into the Montessori room lately. Nugget has just been too scattered and I've been too wiped to spend my evenings making new materials (39 weeks, 3 days today!). She's been spending lots of time playing on our bed lately, usually being a worm or a snake or a bird or serving up picnics. Our Montessori materials are in our master bedroom, so she's been seeing the materials; she just hasn't chosen to use them.

This morning, I left Nugget playing on my husband and I's bed while I took a shower . When I came out, she had settled at the little table in the Montessori area and was doing puzzles. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to see if she wanted to do some work. So I removed the turtle pin punching and put out a Stegosaurus suction shape with marbles. I've wanted to have one of these out for Practical Life for ages, but I've had no luck finding the shapes at a store! I was finally able to pick up a set of 3 from the Montessori Swap Yahoo group. I just put out the marbles for Nugget to place with her fingers; I'll have to see if I can dig up an appropriately sized set of tongs or some such later today. As I expected, Nugget got a kick out of the silliness of "decorating" her Stegosaurus.

While she did the marbles, I unrolled a rug and worked on changing her food chain activity a bit. Setting out the entire chain in order to sort the herbivore/carnivore/omnivore cards was too much for her to manage on her own, so I put out three pieces of construction paper -- one with a leaf, one with a drumstick, and one with both. I showed her how to lay out the sorting areas and then place each card in its appropriate spot. She did perfectly on this, and still really enjoys seeing what each animal eats.

I thought, since there were no more new materials, that Nugget might disengage at this point. But she pulled out the texture balloons and we played with those for a while. Then she wanted to do the Mystery Bag, which she's gotten so much better at! She uses it appropriately and always finds the right object.

I decided to put out one more new activity -- the Small Number Rods. I just put out 1-5, and showed Nugget how to arrange them from smallest at the top to biggest at the bottom. In a few days I'll pull out the Sandpaper Letters and start associating the rods with the numbers. She's into a counting phase these days, so I think this might be a good time to introduce this.

After the Number Rods, she did the marbles again and some more puzzles. Then she went to the animal beginning sounds activity and ran through that with no problem at all (expect needing to be reminded of the names of a couple of the more unfamiliar animals).

She now wanted to pretend to be a duck in a pond (our blue striped rug often is her pond; the brown striped one is a mud puddle). I suggested we pull out the Knobbed Cylinders and do all 4 so that when they were done, she could jump into the middle and pretend it was her pond. I was shocked that she thought that was a great idea! She brought out the Cylinder Blocks (counting each one as she did so) and we disassembled and reassembled them (I made a show of helping, but she really did nearly all of it herself). Then she jumped into the middle, jumped out, and removed all the cylinders AGAIN! My husband was really getting a kick out of listening to this because she pretends each cylinder is a baby looking for its home or its mommy. I think he said Maria Montessori would be spinning in her grave. :) But I'm happy, because Nugget was doing the activity on her own and enjoying it!

The last item she chose was tonging Easter eggs, and she did that quite a few times. We finally finished up about 90 minutes after we started! We had a great time in the room, and I'm feeling so much more positive about the whole thing. I'm so glad that she chose to start working on her own. I might even have a bit more motivation to get a few more materials made before Sprout comes.

Week 7, day 1: Food chain

Back into the swing of things... for a while, at least. :)

Nugget worked exclusively with the new materials today, so I'll just show pictures of those.

In Practical Life, as always she got new flowers and new yoga cards. I also went back to basics with a tonging activity. Nugget chose to both use her hands


and the tongs.


I also put out pin-punching with some pieces of foam as the backing, some construction paper with a picture of a turtle, and a push pin. The goal is to poke enough holes along the lines to punch out the shape. My understanding is that this is done a lot with maps in Montessori schools.


Nugget isn't quite old enough to grasp the idea that a lot of little holes will add up to punching the entire thing out. She just wanted the turtle out NOW. I got her to do some punching (some on the line, some not), and I did some while she was working on another activity. My hope is that each of us will work on this a bit throughout the week, and at the end, we'll have gotten far enough that the turtle will be punched out for her.

After a while, though, she just wanted to push the pin into the backing. That was just fine with me.


I put out two (semi-)new Sensorial works. I added two new texture balloons -- popcorn kernels (which are very similar in feel to the barley, so it's a bit tricky) and pompoms. I also put out a Stereognostic Bag filled with household items, because I figured the wooden shapes I have would be too similar to work well as an introduction to the idea. I managed to find a number of distinct, paired items, and put one of each in the bag and one in the bowl.


I picked one at a time from the bowl and asked her to find its match in the bag. It took her about half the items to get the hang of this -- first she wanted to pull all of them out, then she wanted to look in the bag to find them. But by the time we were half through (and it probably helps that the number of items was greatly reduced by this time), she understood the concept. The second time she did it, though, she pulled the items from the bag, THEN found the matching one in the bowl. *lol* Oh, well.

The last new item was in Science, the food chain I'd mentioned. The tray contains a sun, some arrows, and piles of cards (plants, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores).


When Nugget chose this, I pulled out a rug and we talked as I laid out the chain.


I had planned to leave the omnivores for another time, but I knew she'd be curious about what people are. And although her Dad is an herbivore, she and I are definite omnivores. So, at the last minute, I pulled out the omnivore cards and included them.

She was very interested in this as we talked about it, and loved pretending to be various animals and eating different things. We've talked about it a few more times throughout the day, and she's got an amazingly good grasp on the idea (for example, she knew that a jellyfish was a carnivore). The terminology sometimes slips away (or she "forgets" it), but the concept seems solid in her head.

I'm thinking about doing an activity where I have a picture of an animal as well as pictures of what it eats, and having her sort based on that. Maybe after that we can add in some more complexity -- scavengers, decomposers, etc. I also think she'd get a kick out of learning about the various biomes and what lives in them.

Ah, my animal-obsessed daughter. She could spend all day pretending to be animals, learning about animals, watching animals... I bet if I put pictures of animals on the Pink Tower, I could even get her to do that activity! *lol*

Week 6 review, week 7 preview

Remember how I said I was going to be more prepared for the next week and not leave all my preparations for the last evening?

Yeah.... that didn't happen.

I think I've been expecting that Sprout will arrive before we get back into the room, so my exhaustion and evening contractions took priority in my brain over new activities.

Well, he's got one more night, but it looks likely that we'll be headed into the room tomorrow. So I spent this evening pulling some new stuff together.

I'm still planning on trying my best to ignore the Sensorial material unless she heads there herself. I added two new textures to the texture balloons, which I bet she'll notice. And I know she'll notice the mystery bag, filled with fairly distinct items.

I haven't done much in the Language area, just moved all the Sandpaper Letters out.

Practical Life is getting new flowers for arranging, new yoga cards, a pin-punching activity (she LOVES making holes in cardboard with a pen, so I think this will be up her alley), and Easter egg tonging.

I'm still waiting on the Small Number Rods from Montessori Outlet (supposed to ship Wednesday, then supposed to ship Friday, now... who knows?) to start Math.

Science-wise, I'd thought to continue with animal classification. But I don't think that will mean too much to her yet. However, she does constantly ask what animals like to eat. So I'm going to try a food chain activity.

I'll try to get pictures tomorrow, when there's some more light in the room. But I'm feeling pretty positive about most areas (wish I had more Language out, but I also want to get to bed at some point :) ).

Week 6, day 3: Desert animal activity

Nugget has been begging and begging and begging for another animal activity, so I whipped one together last night even though I was exhausted. I had hit Joann's yesterday with a big pile of coupons and totally stocked up on Safari Toobs, so I pulled out the Desert set since that was the easiest environment I could figure to create (just brown paint and a few brown construction paper rocks). I also bought a small wooden box to store the animals in as an extra point of interest (she loves finding things hidden in little containers).

I didn't have time to make the beginning sound letters, so when Nugget found the activity, that was our first order of business. We pulled out each animal, identified it, and determined what letter it started with (I had removed an animal or two whose sound was difficult to figure out). I then made small stickers of each of those letters and let Nugget choose where to put the sticker (i.e., where the animal would live).

We set all that up (no problems for her identifying sounds and letters) and then spent some time talking about the different animals. Her favorite question is what they eat. Thank goodness for Wikipedia!

When we were done, we scrubbed the sea shell a bit again (vague interest on her part), then she pulled out the animals again while I chose to do the shape puzzles. Nugget helped me with that and did one on her own. I really don't like this set -- the cards and the shapes are both slippery, so any little bump on her part disturbs everything she's already set out. I wonder if I should glue some nonskid mat pieces to one side of each piece.

Nugget moved over to the bed to pretend to be a scorpion while I pulled out some I Spy Phonics books. I haven't had a chance to look at these closely, but we made up our own I Spy for each page. Nugget doesn't quite get the idea -- she'll take a turn saying, "I spy something that starts with the letter.... duh." But then when I can't find anything and ask her what it is, she'll come up with something that starts with D but isn't in the picture at all. And then she tries to fudge it. For instance, she said she spied a ... um .... doll. I asked her where the doll was, and she looked around for a while... then claimed the toy horse was a horse doll. *lol* We did this for a little while, but she wasn't so interested.

She took a quick break while I played with the Red Rods. I'd put those out the other day, but hadn't had a chance to look at them closely. Nugget was intrigued by this, and helped me align the bottoms of all the rods. Then we stood the tallest up to see if it or she was taller (it was!), and, after a demonstration, she moved the smallest up and down the line to see that the difference between the rods was constant.

She turned to a puzzle while I built towers with the Knobless Cylinders. Her contribution to this was to knock them down and then help me return them to their boxes. :)

Finally, Nugget wanted to work with the texture balloons again. And she actually chose to use the blindfold! We matched and did same/different.

All together, about an hour in the room today. I hadn't really been looking forward to it -- it seemed like all she wanted was new materials, and I was still a bit frustrated by the Sensorial issue (although I was trying not to be). But today went pretty well, and I think I'm making progress on letting go of my expectations re: her reduced interest in Sensorial and Practical Life and increased interest in Language and Science. I'm really anxious for my backordered Small Number Rods to arrive (they were supposed to ship on Wednesday, but I haven't heard anything from Montessori Outlet -- so annoying!) to see if she's ready for moving into Mathematics. She's been doing more unprompted counting these days, so I'm just waiting waiting waiting for the material to arrive to see what she thinks of it.

Week 6, day 2: A wash

Well, this week isn't our best. We had school time on Monday, but Tuesday we had a bunch of appointments and Wednesday we took advantage of a nice day squeezed in between cold days and rainy days to make a trip to the Magic Kingdom. We got into the room for a bit this morning, but Nugget's sniffles were on their way to turning into a full-blown fever and she only spent about 15 minutes working.

She's made a half-hearted attempt or two at scrubbing the sea shell (I rubbed it with dirt the other night to make her efforts at cleaning it more purposeful), but she's really not interested.

The texture balloons are still a hit. Last night, I added plastic baggies filled with the same materials as is in the balloons. That way, she could match what she could see to what she could feel.

She also chose to do the new letters. I had out all of the vowels and their noun cards, and she did as well as I expected -- got most of them, but had more trouble than with the consonants.

Her final choice was living/non-living cards. We defined living as "grows, eats food, has babies". She added "goes away" to that, which I think is the result of a conversation we had a few months ago about plants dying once they're picked. There were a couple that we had to talk about, but she seems to have the concept down pretty well.

I've been taking notes on supplies I need and ideas for the next step in different areas, so I'm feeling better about being more prepared for next week. I'm just going to let this week be a wash -- try to get some more time in, but not worry too much about it -- and move forward more in language, science, and maybe even math in the next week or two.

Week 6, day 1: Textures

New material: texture balloons, flower arranging, scrubbing, Knobless Cylinder extensions, new Sandpaper Letters (the last of the consonants!).

I spent way too long getting ready for this week last night. I hadn't done any preparation the other evenings during our break, and I had to rush to put things together. I don't want to end up in that position again -- I was totally wiped and burned out, and I don't think I did a great job of choosing materials. I really need to keep a list through the week of what I might want to put out the next, and spread the preparation out over a few evenings.

In any case, things got done. For Practical Life, I swapped the yoga cards, removed the funnel pouring, and added flower arranging and scrubbing.


Flower arranging is one of the activities from way back in the day, before I had official Montessori materials or work time. She's always loved it. I took advantage of a sale at Joanns to pick up some new flower bunches and set those out today. It's simple but enjoyable for her -- she puts a stem in each small vase and then scatters the vases around the Montessori area.

Now that she's done funnel work with the sugar, I'm looking forward to extending her skill to using liquid and adding in pouring to a line. Then she'll be able to fill the small vases with water, and we can use real flowers! Of course, then I have to worry about the cats eating them....

I also put out our first scrubbing activity. It's simple -- toothbrush, soapy water, big seashell, and cloth.


I'd expected this to be a bigger hit, but Nugget tried it once, briefly, and was done. Maybe if I got the shell visibly dirty, so that there was some point to cleaning it?

I also added some Knobless Cylinder extensions available from A Bit of This and A Bit of That. Unfortunately, her cylinders must be a slightly different size than mine, because although the smaller cylinders fit just right, the bigger circles are different enough to be noticeable. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that. I really like her patterns, and I don't really have the time/energy to go making my own.

Of course, this is kind of a moot point -- I tried to interest Nugget in these (both by offering them and by working on them myself), and although she half-heartedly added a few, she really didn't want to do it.

I really just need to give up on these spatial Sensorial activities. I tried three times to interest her in other ways. First, a Pink Tower extension where I built the tower, had her close her eyes, and removed one of the cubes. The idea was that she would show me where it was missing from. Did it once, wanted nothing else to do with it. I tried showing her that the small block was the difference between the sizes of other blocks. She moved the block up and down the tower but showed no real interest. And then I tried building a Pink Tower + Brown Stair extension, which she first tried to get me to stop doing, then half heartedly added the top one or two.

It's just not her thing. I think that finally got through to me today. The problem is, I hate having these core Montessori activities staring at me day after day. I feel like I have to try to get her involved in them. But that's my vow for today -- I will drop my pushing of the Sensorial materials. I will pretend that they aren't even there.

Well... except that I'll set out the Red Rods soon. We're short on space, so I've been waiting for the back-ordered stand from Montessori Outlet. I called them (again!) today, to hear that Color Tablet box 4 and the Small Numerical Rods should ship this week, but the stand isn't expected until late April. Guess it's time to start asking other Montessori suppliers if they think their stand will work for these rods. In the meantime, maybe I can find the space for them somewhere.

The Sensorial activity she really enjoyed was the texture balloons.


I filled 4 pairs of red and blue balloons with flour, oatmeal, dry barley, and beads. Nugget chose to do this activity multiple times today, and we did it a bunch of different ways. We matched, held two and said if they were the same or different, ranked them by "bumpiness", and identified their contents by feel. Sometimes I was the "teacher", sometimes she was the "teacher", so we both did all these activities multiple times. She got quite a kick of of this!

Nugget also chose to do yoga, Sandpaper Letters, and some puzzles.


We spent about an hour in the room, and it was getting close to time to go to storytime at the library. She was starting to get antsy, but we could have extended our time a bit. But when I was taking down the Pink Tower + Brown Stair build, one of the larger Pink Tower cubes fell out of my hand and smacked her in the back. Those things are HEAVY! The poor girl was rightfully upset, and that ended our Montessori day then and there.

We probably won't have any time in the room tomorrow. Later in the week I want to put out some vowel Sandpaper Letters and noun cards. She's also asking for another animal activity, so I want to come up with something for that. I have the Desert Toob that I could do in the same vein as the Arctic and North American, but I'm not really feeling it. I'd like to think up something new.

Since she loves Loves LOVES animals so much, I think I really should move into living/non-living and then further into animal studies. I think she'd get a real kick out of trying to identify the various types of frogs and turtles in the Toob or sorting animals by where they live. I think that's much more up her alley than playing with blocks -- no matter how traditionally Montessori they might be.

Week 5 review, week 6 preview

I think last week went well for getting back on track for more stability! I'm going to keep that up this week. I've got some new items to put out for tomorrow, but then things will stay stable (except for the language materials).

Most of what I'm adding is Sensorial -- some Knobless Cylinder extensions, texture balloon matching, and a mystery bag. I also did a swap of the main Practical Life activity -- funnel pouring to scrubbing a seashell -- and new yoga cards.

In Language, we've got one more day's worth of consonant Sandpaper Letters and noun cards. After that, I think I'll put out the vowels and associated cards. At that point, I can be sure that she can recognize all the letters and their sounds and that she can hear those sounds at the beginning of words.

So I guess, after that, I'll need to work on some activities for ending and middle sounds. There's I Spy, of course (a constant through our day), but I'd like to have some activities for her to work through.

I think Nugget will be kind of disappointed that I don't have another animal sound activity out, but I'm really burned out tonight. I've been working on the room for 90 minutes, and I'm not sure where the time went! I don't feel like I've made that many changes!

Part of it is that I just tonight decided that we'd try to grab some time in the room tomorrow. We won't be around Tuesday morning (various appointments), so I need to get in there when I can this week.

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.

Week 5, day 2: Arctic animals

New material: new Sandpaper Letters and noun cards, arctic beginning sound matching


Today went pretty much as I expected. Nugget was drawn immediately to the new arctic animals, and she did them just fine. There was a slight confusion with igloo (e or i), but we got that straightened out and all the rest went without problem.

Since this was the first time these animals were out, we spent a while talking about each, looking at photographs, and watching videos (like building an igloo and dog sledding).

After she disengaged with that activity, she wandered for a bit, asking what was new and looking at the Sandpaper Letters, yoga cards, and color shades. She settled on the Knobless Cylinders, doing the remaining 3 boxes. We built towers of the green and red, then worked to arrange the blue in height order (identical diameters, differing heights). That wasn't easy for her, plus she was starting to disengage.

She went back to the animals, but was starting to break down. I sat down at a distance and tried to stay uninvolved, but she started to remove the animals from the activity and I had to step in and get her to put it away.

She took about a 10 minute break to wear her cardboard wings and pretend to be a bee in a honey tree (that's the theme for today, apparently) while I stepped back. After that, she funnel poured for about 5 minutes, then spent some time digging in the orange sugar. Then my husband came home from his run and I had to get her hands cleaned up. Nugget tried to show her daddy the animal activity, but she just wanted to play with them. Her concentration was shot; that was the end of our work time.

As I'd expected, she only really wanted to work with new materials. Like I said, I think it's going to take a while for her to readjust to the idea that things are more stable.

Week 5, day 1: Putting it all on the table (or shelves, as the case may be)

I feel like a lot has changed since the last pictures of our Montessori environment, so I took some overview shots today.

This is our little corner of the master bedroom. (Yes, I know the last picture like this had the cat in it, too. He's the into-everything type.)


The Practical Life shelf is to the left on the picture. It has a funnel-pouring activity and yoga cards on the top shelf, dressing items and containers on the bottom shelf.


The funnel pouring has some orange sugar. I wanted to use dry barley, which would be a lot easier to clean up. But my funnel kept clogging on it (a great reminder to always test activities before setting them out). The orange sugar looks neat and pours well, but is definitely harder to clean up.


The yoga cards are from Montessori by Hand, as mentioned previously. I only have the 6 easiest of the 25 total cards out right now.


This is the Sensorial area, against the back in the overview picture. I have a small Ikea shelf to hold all the Cylinder Blocks and the Pink Tower extension sheets next to it. The first plastic shelf holds the Pink Tower, Knobless Cylinders, and Brown Stair. The top of the second plastic shelf has color matching; the bottom has rough and smooth, a blindfold, Smelling Bottles, and Sound Cylinders.


This is a close-up of the color shade matching. I'm happier with how it's presented now, although it's still not perfect.


Here's 3 of my homemade rough and smooth boards. This is the smooth, roughest, and middle grade. I have two other in-between grades tucked away.


This is the Language shelf. It's pretty empty today because I wanted to review some letters before putting out the next animal activity; that will go on the bottom. The top has 4 Sandpaper Letters and a treasure chest filled with coordinating noun cards. You can kinda-sorta see our rugs, rolled up in the corner space between the Sensorial and Language shelves.


These are the Math and Science shelves. Right now, the top has a shape puzzle and the bottom has our animal and botany puzzles.


I bought the shape puzzle set on sale at some discount store recently.


And finally, just a shot of our little table that Nugget does most of her work at. You can see my notebook on it; I take notes during each session about what she chooses and anything that strikes me (if something seems too easy or too hard, if the environment isn't working for her).


So, how did Nugget do with all this new stuff to go through? Much better than I expected, actually! I thought we'd have one of those days when she bounces from one thing to the next without spending any time on them. She checked out everything new, of course, but actually worked through everything.

I think the colorful box lids of the Knobless Cylinders grabbed her attention. That was what she pulled out first; the yellow box. I showed her how to line them up biggest to smallest and how to build a tower. Like the other size-based Sensorial items (Pink Tower, Brown Stair), she did them well but without much interest.

She did the funnel pouring once. That vase is way too tall, but I don't really have another option.

Then she spent 20 minutes working through each puzzle in order. She sat at her table, I sat on the bed and worked on the week's grocery list. She'd ask for help ("Mommy, can you help me with this? I need some help...."), but if I gave her an extra 5 seconds, she'd get it herself. That's just the phase she's in -- in Montessori and in daily life. The tree puzzle was by far the most difficult, but she finally got it. I was a little worried a few times -- she's got awkward and over-enthusiastic toddler hands, and those puzzles are made of pretty thin wood. But no damage so far....

Nugget spent some time wandering after the puzzles. She poked at the Sound Cylinders and the Sandpaper Letters before trying the shape puzzle. She tried the bird shape first, but got frustrated pretty quickly. I encouraged her to flip the sheet over and try the train, and I sat with her while she worked through it. Then we went back to the bird and completed that with some encouragement.

She went back to the Sandpaper Letters; I'd set out c, f, p, and s. She recognized each one and had no problem matching the noun cards. She did them all perfectly the first time.

Then she poured a few times -- cleanly for a while, then things got a bit messy. Next, we did the yoga cards together. That was pretty fun, and I was really happy with her body awareness. She's pretty slow on gross motor in general, but she enjoys things like gymnastics and yoga.

The wandering started again... poking at the Knobless Cylinders... wandering... looking at the color shade matching... wandering....

She settled in with the Sound Cylinders briefly. I reduced the number from 6 to 3, but two of them still sound too much alike. I might make our own, more distinct version and move to these laster. We at least talked a bit about loud and quiet.

Nugget started to wander again, and I pulled out Cylinder Block #4. She worked on some containers while I did that -- and it is tough! In Cylinder Block #4, all of the cylinders are the same diameter, but different heights. If you put a too-short cylinder in a too-deep hole, you have to turn the whole thing over and dump all of them out.

When I finished with Cylinder Block #4, I put all four out in a square and worked with them all at the same time. Nugget wasn't happy with me when I started out, but she finally settled in to watch... and then started to help... and then took over. And she did it just fine. She had to tell a story during it, of course. :) Something about an animal digging a hole? Her "reward" for finishing all four was to be able to climb in the middle of them and pretend it was a muddy hole.

And that pretty much ended our day. All together, about an hour and fifteen minutes. As I said, I was happy with her level of concentration given all of the new material.

Tomorrow, most of what's out will stay constant. I'll put out some new letters and, hopefully, another animal beginning sound activity (this depends on my energy level tonight which, so far, is pretty low). I think I'll set out another shape pattern card, as well.

We'll see how she reacts to a day in a nearly-identical set-up. I think it'll take at least a week or two for her to get used to this idea, so I'm going to go into it not expecting too much.

Week 4 review, week 5 preview

We had one really good day this week, the others were mediocre. I definitely felt like we needed this weekend break, though. We have the choice of getting back into the room on Monday, but I'm going to have to ponder whether I'd rather delay until Tuesday.

Nugget is very much looking for what's new these days, and I think it's preventing her from going back to things she's seen once. So now that I've tried it both ways, I think I prefer making most changes over our break. I imagine I'll need to swap out the language material more often (like rotating letters every day), but I'm going to aim to make practical life and science changes weekly and sensorial changes even less often.

So over this weekend, I'll get the sensorial to a place that I'd like it to stay for a while. I'll add Cylinder Block #4. I think I'll reduce the 6 Sound Cylinders to 3 (I'd had it at 6 because I didn't expect her to try matching). I still have in reserve the Red Rods (STILL waiting for the back ordered stand for them), the Baric Cylinders (those are HARD), a mystery bag (not sure if she'd get the concept), and the Knobless Cylinders. I also need to finish the color shade matching, although she's not terribly interested in that right now. I wish I could think of a better way to display it. And I'm thinking about making sensorial balloons (deflated balloons filled with different textured items to feel and match, like beans and popcorn kernels and flour).

I'm a bit torn about introducing the Red Rods; I'm not sure she'd grasp lining them up with their bottoms even, and I don't really have space for them without the stand. So I guess those will stay back. I'm also unsure about the Knobless Cylinders, mostly because they seem like a nice, easy thing to be able to add in once Sprout comes... but I guess, if I'm following the idea that she should be allowed to pick her own direction, that they should go out.

Practical life.... I think I want to keep a weekly rotation going here. I have one shelf to dedicate to practical life, so I can have out 2-4 activities. She's been completely ignoring the dressing items, so I'll probably remove those. She also completely ignored wet pouring all week, so that'll be gone. Maybe folding? Oooh, maybe a funnel for solids. I've also received prints of the yoga cards from Montessori by Hand and have a nice little basket for them, so I'll start by putting about 3 out and slowly add cards. Nugget LOVES her gymnastics class, and I think she'll really love the yoga. I'm also hoping it'll provide the opportunity to take a more physical break during our work time.

Language. I guess I'll keep working through Sandpaper Letters and beginning sound cards until I've verified that she remembers all the letter shapes and their sounds (since it's been a few months since we've worked on them officially). Of course, we're still doing language work outside of the classroom, like I Spy, rhymes, and recognizing beginning and ending sounds in random words. She so loved that animal set-up that I think I'll do another one. I've got a bunch of arctic animals, and that's easy to make -- white for ice, blue for water.

Science! Well, I've got the animal and botany puzzles tucked back. She's been into puzzles lately. I guess, if I'm putting it all on the table... those should come out. More experimental-type activities, I'd like to rotate weekly. I'll put sink and float away, but maybe something where I have a "boat" that floats and she adds weights (coins, etc) one-by-one until it sinks?

Geography, I'm going to continue holding back on even though I have a nearly-completed sandpaper globe and the continents puzzle. That's definitely something that can wait; it's still pretty abstract for her at this stage.

This next week will be the start of our second month doing this! Amazing!

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. :)