The Natural (Pink) Tower

I gave Lovely his first presentation of our Not-Pink-Tower today! I was quite nervous actually! I've had it for about 2 weeks & hadn't presented it yet... this feels like 'real' Montessori & I didn't want to get it wrong ;)

Due to space issues we won't be able to store the tower standing in its upright position but I'm kind of okay with that as I have seen Montessori classrooms with it stored in a basket.

So, here it is! Our "Natural" Tower. Hmmm, I do think that I probably need to paint it pink (as discussed in some of my recent comments) just so that there is clear distinction between the Pink Tower and the Broad or Brown Stairs (which I had made by the same people & which is natural wood also) when we work with both materials together. Also, the patterning of each block might be distracting from the sensorial perspective - I can see how the flat pink lets the child focus on the dimensions instead of how it looks. It's beautiful though so it will be a shame in a way too! Possibly, I should have waited to paint it before presenting it to Lovely - but, despite my nerves - I was pretty excited.

This was the first time I got the blocks out. See Lovely's hand dart to that gorgeous tiny block! For any readers who don't know about Montessori & the Pink Tower it is a series of graduated blocks, starting with a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm cube... then a 9cm cube, an 8cm cube and down to a tiny cube that is just 1cm cubed.

After my initial presentation (which included deconstructing the tower and returning the blocks to the basket) I invited Lovely to build it himself. Here, he's meant to just be taking all of the pieces out of the basket and placing them randomly on the mat but chose each piece in order and started to build it across the mat. He did make one mistake ( a block out of size succession) but he didn't seem to notice and I didn't mention it but was interested to see how he'd go with the tower.

I love this photo :) Building! I presented using 2 mats: 1 to lay out the blocks and another across the room so that you had to - carefully - carry each correct block to it's position.

Voila! Pretty good for his first time :) Now I'll have to read about some of the extensions...