Montessori work: Thursday June 25th

Lovely & I did really well during our Montessori preschool time this week :)

We'd had a few weeks off & he was really eager & I was excited about using the classroom guides that I bought from New Child Montessori. I'm starting from the beginning with the guides (despite having dipped into them at different spots previously) & so I had a 'plan' for the day but I also was completely open to whatever Lovely was interested in.

His first choice was the Mystery Bag. He never used to like the blindfold but will happily wear it now if I do it first!

Homemade Sound Cylinders. 2 of my sounds are too similar (even I struggle to match them) so I must change them before next week.

Bead sorting. An impromptu activity. I had bought a string of coloured wooden beads at the thrift store & L found them & wanted to do something with them so I grabbed a muffin tin from the kitchen & some small tongs. He's sorting them by colour.

Viewmaster! I love the viewmaster :) The cards he's looking at are ones we bought at Cape Canaveral years ago before we had munchkins. I also have a set from Graceland and Hearst Castle :) Not falling into the "traditional" Montessori category but it's a challenge for Lovely to use the image-changing lever correctly and lots of fun.

Dusting.

Lovely also chose the balancing beanbags for walking on the line. As you can see in this photo (of L dropping the beanbag ;) our house has the perfect 'line'! We live in a really old house that was transported to this site a few years before we bought it. It had to be cut in 2 & moved as 2 pieces and this is the cut line. It travels right through our loungeroom. How handy :)

We also practiced walking around a work mat (hmmm... will he ever get it?! He still loves to run across it), rolling and unrolling a mat, walking feet. We talked about 'personal space' and used an imaginary paintbrush (choosing our favourite imaginary colour of paint first, of course) to "paint" the space around ourselves.

We practiced shaking hands & saying hello with eye contact, and finally we learnt some new name songs: "Where oh where is ______ (first & last name) 3x, Tiptoe to your work" & (to the tune of 'Twinkle Twinkle') "The beginning says 'llll' and the rest says 'ovely' put them both together and it says... Lovely". He loved this one and we played it for ages later going through all the friends and family & later things we saw & thought of driving in the car.

These songs and some of the activities are from the New Child Montessori Fall guide :)