Our First Montessori-ish Day

I say Montessori-ish because we are by no means true montessori sttyle. what I have done is taken the bits of this philosophy and many of the activities and changed other bits and pieces to meet our needs. Today was our first day using this new structure and I must say it was a success!!!

Because of all the new activities today was a lot of me demonstrating an activity to Liana then one to Liam, then back to Liana, the.....well you get the idea but both of the children worked really well on their activities and even Liam soon learned the idea of having to complete his activity, pack it up and put it away before moving on to another.

The good thing about the kids wanting to just do each activity one after another was that I could see what worked, what didn't and what I needed to change. I had to alter a few activities on the spot becasue they were either too easy or way too hard and I learned that flour is not a good option for the letter tracing tray. I quickly changed that to rice!

I forgot about the camera until about half way through, but as they worked on their activities for 1.5 hours I still got a few good shots. Liana worked solid this whole time and I had to make her stop for lunch. Liam worked on and off stopping to go and play with his trains every now and then and then coming back for more.

So I officially call today a success and am looking forward to tomorrow. Here are a few photos of some of our activities today.

Tot School

Our theme for Tot School last week was red. We went on a scavenger hunt around the house to collect as many red things as we could find. Picked out all the red blocks, made red jelly and ate red sausages, tomatoes and strawberries for lunch. We made a "What is Red?" mini book that Liam loved and carried around and read to everyone all week. We also did a red collage and of course painted with red!! I kept forgetting to take photos so only have a few to share this week.

Making a red collage....



Our red painting started like this....



Then moved to this......



Then this....



And finally, this!




Check here to see what others have done for Tot School this week.

Montessori

So after much thought and lots of googling and reading, I have found that I am heading back towards the place I began my homeschool journey - Montesorri. I have decided to change my plan and head away from the classical road and back towards a lot of the Montessori ideas and activities. I am slowly converting our games room and making and printing off all the materials I saved back when I first decided to homeschool 2+ years ago.

Tonight the kids spotted one of the activities I was preparing and were busting to have a go, so I let them at it! They played with it for over 30 mins before I insisted the have a shower and go to bed. You can see the response I got from Liam at this suggestion. I think this activity is going to be a winner.





The idea is to use the tongs to place a marble in each section of the ice cube tray. We then moved onto 2 in each. It is amazing how many times they wanted to repeat this. Great for fine motor, hand eye co-ordination and 1 to 1 correspondence.

The Mosquitos are Here

Well,there are definitely some parts of spring I don't like - and mosquitos are one of them!! They are here in full force already. I have a feeling we are going to have a plague of them around hereby summer.....sigh.

I wouldn't mind so much except that poor Liana is so sensitive to them and for some reason she has very tasty blood! If you see a mosquito land on her you can literally watch as she swells up in a couple of minutes.

Last night a mozzie must have made its way into her room. She was wearing long p.js so I guess the only place left was her face. This is what she looked like 24 hours later and after several doses of antihistamine......





So today I went and bought a mosquito net canopy for her room. Not that it will help when she is outside. I wonder if I can keep her in her room until summer is over???????

Nature on Our Doorstep

I love living in the hills. It is so different to where we were before. The kids are loving it and we don't need to go any further than our own yard for our nature studies!!

This is what Paul found when he opened the front door yesterday....



and then the dog discovered another in the back yard. We have nicknamed them Bob - short for Bobtails. Creative I know, but hey, it works.

Then today we opened the front door again to find our newest friend.



This little one who we have nicknamed Maggie has been hanging around for a while (well, we think it is the same one) but we fed her today and she kept coming back all day for more. She is not timid at all, even taking food right out of my hand and almost following me inside! We will leave some mince out for her tomorrow and see if she returns.

Tot School

This week it is school holidays so all our normal activities like ballet, latin etc are on break instead we have had swimming lessons every morning at 8:20am - what was I thinking!!!!!!!

Needless, to say we spend the rest of the day with tired kids and tired mum so we haven't done a whole lot of planned learning. There has still been plenty of things going on though.

I made Liam his first tot book from here he carried it around with him everywhere for the first couple of days and shows it to everyone he sees. I think it is safe to say he likes it!






We have also done lots of playing with playdoh using the new mats I printed and laminated. Here the kids are making faces for their people.




To check out what others are doing for tot school, click here.

Liana-isms!

Everyday I look at my little girl and realise she is not so little anymore. She will be 5 in January - how did that happen?? The baby toys have gone, the nappies are now a distant memory she is reading and writing and coming out with information that I don't even know. Then every now and then she will say one of those cute little words that she hasn't quite gotten the hang of and I resist the urge to correct her and just enjoy those last few baby things.

Here are some of the few remaining Liana-isms that I hope stay for a while longer!!
poofrints - footprints
squashed lemons - lemon squash
badulk - adult
rainbrella - umbrella

I know there are more but can't remember them now. I will add them as I remember or hear them.