All about me!!

As part of starting off the year, I decided to focus on the children themselves; their characteristics, where they live and such like to ease them into the idea of doing activities and things again after the break over summer.

We started off with a couple of projects.

I got the children to lay down on a sheet of newsprint, traced around them then had them paint themselves.

Then we stuck them to the wall with a little plaque featuring their names, ages, favourite colours etc.

Then we did a collage of favourite things.

Lamb and I spent some time searching google images for pictures of things he likes (the beach, walking in the bush, haloumi, dinosaurs and lightening McQueen among other things) then he cut the pictures out and stuck them on his collage.

I searched Cherry's favourite things for her and she was excited to see the little collection of things she loves. She sat at her collage for a lot longer than Lamb arranging things on the page.

Her list included Jessie from Toy Story2, rabbits, mango and inari.

These collages went up on the wall next to the outlines of themselves that they painted. All the children that have come into our house since have measured themselves against the two children on the wall and commented on whether or not they like a particular thing on the collages.

I also made this up.

I have seen a similar idea on several different blogs but I'm sorry to confess that I have not noted down where. One version was with little boxes that you could stack on top of one another but I just cut out different sized circles from card sticking pictures that I got from the internet and holding them together with a ring.

We've been going through country, state, city, suburb and home address during circle time. 

Giveaway

So there is a fabulous giveaway I simply have to tell you about!

The giveaway is for Karen Tyler's online course and TWELVE Montessori albums!!!

Just perfect for those of us who are planning to use Montessori as the base for our homeschools or after schools.

If you are interested, the link is here

Cherry's Activities

I haven't posted about what my little Miss has been up to for some time so here we are...

Cherry is now 27 months old.

Chopping bananas with a bread and butter knife for practical life.

Eye dropping water from one cup to another to exercise those little fingers.

First time with scissors (I know, it looks so wrong). She pretty much just clipped around the edges of each square but was so intent upon it!

We went for a walk one day. Cherry and Lamb picked up these seed pods to bring home so I used them for little spoons for a transfer activity. The little purple tray has fruit shapes in it for making ice cubes and it kept Cherry amused for quite a while (she is still messy with the rice and not quite adept with the brush and shovel to clean up her messes). I love the way she is sitting (so ladylike).

Here I blutacked some golf tees to a tray and she threaded the beads on top. It kept her completely quiet during a morning 'school' session (normally she asks Lamb a lot of questions about his activity and he gets a bit cross when he is trying  to sound out words and things while she is making "all this noise")

Here she is with the knobless cylinders and the pattern cards from Montessori print shop.

Cherry has learnt several letter sounds, so lately I have done a few activities to ensure she can tell the difference between them. We have coloured in flowers that I draw for her with different letters on the petals. Here I drew a basic little garden scene and wrote letters on the flowers, the sun etc and she dot painted the letter we were looking for. Lamb would never have taken to an activity like this, he has always been more hands on with traditional Montessori items but Cherry enjoys book work a little more.

Metamorphosis

Over the last couple of weeks the Winkles and I have been looking at metamorphosis.

I had collected a few 'shells' left behind by cicadas at the beginning of the summer so firstly we had a good look at those with the magnifying glass.

Then we watched a clip of David Attenborough's about the life cycle of cicadas.

Here is the link if you want to check it out on Youtube

I made up some cards for the lifecycle of the cicada by doing a google images search

And once they were used to the terms that were in the life cycle we picked up some books from the library and I expanded our little chart to include pictures of ladybugs, butterflies, house flies and grasshoppers to cover the difference between complete and incomplete metamorphosis.

(For those who aren't sure: grasshoppers and cicadas have an incomplete metamorphosis from egg to nymph to adult while the others are complete going from egg to larvae to pupa to adult)

Here they are deciding on which picture comes next from the assorted ones I printed and laminated.

They both really enjoyed the activity!

Monet

While on a trip to get new books from the library we came across a story about a little girl that steps inside the paintings of Monet and then does a rendition of one of his paintings herself.

Both children really took to it so, being a Montessorian, I printed out the Monet cards I had on file and popped them on the shelf.

Then we relived Katie's experience and did a Monet of our own!

Both children were up with the play with this idea and had an idea of which art work they wanted to imitate. Their decisions were different from each other too which really surprised me, I though perhaps Cherry would just follow her brother.

Here they are on a wet and rainy afternoon creating their masterpieces.

They painted for a half hour solid, discussing what colours they would use for each thing.

While Cherry's was a little difficult to disect, Lamb had a flowing blue stream and upside down heart shapes for lilypads upon which were little pink flowers. I painted with them and he was asking me how I did my shrubs. I showed him the circular brush strokes which is what he was trying to achieve in the top left of his painting.

I loved doing this with them!

Calendar

Last year I made a little board with the days of the week and months of the year on it in English and French for us to familiarise ourselves with.

It worked well but very quickly so that Lamb tired of it.

When I saw the idea for this interactive calendar at counting coconuts I knew it would be great for us.

So here is our version...

Again we have the months of the year and days of the week in English and French (I recycled the cards), we do the weather each day and I popped some season pictures up.

What the children really love is the popsicle sticks with 'today', 'tomorrow' and 'yesterday' on them. I am hoping it will help them not to get so mixed up about when things happened! 

The date on the monthly calendar can obviously change each month as I just pull out the push pins and rearrange the laminated numbers and for a marker for the day, I took an old key ring, wrapped it in embroidery cotton and attached a button (I happened to have little red stars in my sewing kit)

Voila! And so far they love it!

Setting up for 2012

Seeing as this is the year that Silas would be attending four year old kindergarten, I decided that I might spruce up the children's area of operations.

Until now they have more or less sat at the dining room table to do activities with Mummy or on the lounge floor with their mats and things from their shelves.

Unfortunately we don't have space to have all of their school things together so the shelves will stay in the lounge but when a friend handed down a little kids table and chairs, Mummy got to work.

I gave the table and chairs a paint job so that they were fresh and white on the surfaces the children would use (they came with a bright blue Winnie the Pooh pattern which I thought might be distracting).

Then I sewed the little book bags for the backs of their chairs.

I involved the children in the process in that we went to the fabric shop together and the children chose which fabric they would like.

They are SO easy to make.

You simply cut and pin the pocket together and then the extra  piece of fabric for over the back of the chair gets pinned on too. I got all the seams together with a little adjusting here and there and the iron so that everything sat flat then I sewed ONCE around the edge of the entire thing holding it all together!

Once I bought some new pens and the tins the children were BUSY for days getting their scrapbooks out of their pockets and sharing their new pens, discussing what they were drawing.

It is so great for Cherry to have an area to get busy whenever she wants to and Lamb never wants to! But now that it's there, he too has been busy drawing away! YAY!

The display on the wall is from the Ready to Read units by the moffat girls which we have been using (they really are great), and I even have room just behind them to set up our chalkboard so that I can play teacher....their new calendar is there also....