Experiment: Soil

A scoop of soil, a clear glass jar & water.

Add the soil to the jar

Pour in the water

and Observe...

The soil will settle in layers. I offered the extension of doing a drawing of what we can see in the layers but no-one has taken me up on that yet - but the jar is still sitting on the bench so I wouldn't be surprised if they want to later.

This lesson idea was from this sample page (Plant Needs) on the New Child Montessori Curriculum website. 

I've decided that I am definitely going to buy the Guides! Having trialed them for the past little while (using the sample pages) I think that they're just so good & Gini (who created them) has been so helpful in answering my questions via email :) 

Now (to complement the Guides) I just need to place my first Montessori materials order... eeeek! It's thrilling but scary too. More to come on this topic, for sure!!  :)

My Lovely One

Lovely snuggled into bed this morning and said: "Mama I'm gonna marry you"

Awwww... What a way to warm a mama's heart :)

He's growing into such a big, strong, confident, determined, smart, sweet, funny and friendly boy... it's hard to believe that he was this little chubby bubba only 3 short years ago.

I love you my Lovely one :)

Sharpening a Pencil | Practical Life activity

Lovely has been interested in using the sharpener recently so I put this simple tray together for him.  The wooden bowl is for collecting the shavings. He did this pencil rather easily (though was inclined to turn the sharpener instead of the pencil) & so I collected him some more to do.

If you want more details about presenting this Practical Life exercise P.S. Montessori has a thorough lesson posted here.

More Lego maths

While we were away recently Hug asked his daddy how 1 Billion was written. This was how T showed him. 

A few minutes later he started playing with his Lego & came over & showed me that he was making a pyramid like the one daddy wrote out for a billion. We talked about it more for a little & then Hug happily continued with his Lego while T & I marvelled over the Lego straight-sided pyramid & what a simple way that was to see how 1 billion was 10 to the power of 9! 

I don't think I ever saw it that clearly even through years of Maths at high school. I don't yet know what Montessori lessons this would relate to (I'd love if someone could tell me) but I'm excited to be on that journey along with my munchkins.

Our Sandpaper Numbers

We finally have some Sandpaper Numbers!

I actually found these numbers at a stationery store last year (in their half price basket - yippee!) & hadn't got it together to buy the sandpaper  & turn them into what I wanted... until now that is :)

They're kinda huge & a mix of colours which of course isn't ideal but I'm happy. The cool thing is that the actual number came with it too (sitting in the space now filled with the sandpaper - the sandpaper is just stuck onto the back of the cards, face up) so I'm sure that there will be many extensions & uses for them also. The cards do have a little name & logo of the company that made them on each one so I may cover that with a label of the number, Eg. 'one'.

This was Lovely's first time with them. I think I kind of jumped the gun a little because I had given him a numbers puzzle which he was really enjoying so I got excited but I really need to go back now & present a lesson on Sensitizing the finger tips & make the Touch Boards and Touch Tablets.

Counters and Cards

Lovely seems to be getting quite confident with his counting up to 5. 

I put this little collection together on a pretty plate for him to practice. It's a mix of cards (I think from Montessori for Everyone) and little counters that just happened to be the same size and colours as the dots on the cards. Perfect :)

The control of error is that there is only the right number of counters (in that particular colour) for each card.