Montessori Monday

Ok, I am making a rule that no one in this house is allowed to get sick again; it's putting a serious crimp in our Montessori lessons!  Short Pants was feverish for a few days, then passed his cold on to me, so we were only able to do lessons twice last week.

One of his faves was a new sink or float lesson.  We've done this before, but he loves "testing" new objects:

 

 
We also worked with his new materials from Handwriting Without Tears.  Since Short Pants loves to put things together I thought he'd be all over these wood pieces for building letters.  Unfortunately, we only built two before he was done.  I'm going to go ahead and leave the lesson out for next week, as I think part of the problem was that he wasn't feeling all that great:

 
  
Our Zingo game was a big hit, at least.  Short Pants and I played several rounds:

 In case you're not familiar with it, Zingo is kind of like bingo.  The goal is to get all of the pictures on your board covered up before the other person does.

 
We also did some sort of a cross between Mystery Bag and Sterognostic Bags.  I took several pairs of matching objects and divided them up - one into the bag, the other into the bowl.  Short Pants matched them up object by object by reaching in the bag and using his sense of touch.  We've done this a few times before and he always enjoys it:

 
 
He also worked with our lake and island landform set again.  THANK GOODNESS I've finally bought more clay so that I can make another set!

I think I've mentioned before how much I prefer the toys from the Chick-Fil-A kids meals as opposed to other places - if we've got to eat on the run I'd much rather my boys recieve something useful versus a plastic toy that breaks the next afternoon.  This neat little stamp matching sticker set came from there, and Short Pants had a lot of fun putting the stickers in the proper places and listening to me read the animal facts:

 
We also worked for a bit with the phonics drawers:

Here's my silly boy pretending to play our tiny trumpet:

Thanks for reading!

Comments

[Mari-Ann]

Fantastic, as always! You do such a great job with your Montessori lessons. The Zingo game looks like fun! And may I ask where you found your miniatures for the drawers? I believe you wrote to me saying you use animals from Toobs (LOVE those btw), but what about things like the little scarf & trumpet?

[One hook wonder]

Thanks Mari-Ann. :) The little scarf and trumpet are actually mini Christmas ornaments, so you've asked at exactly the right time! I also used buttons for several of our miniatures. Our local craft store carries some in all sorts of different themes - construction vehicles, holidays, etc. Hope that helps!

[Deb]

Every time I read about your Montessori lessons I feel a twinge (sometimes more) of guilt that I'm not doing more individual instruction time with my younger kids. It feels like we're constantly on the go (because we are), the older ones need attention, too, and for some reason all these people want to EAT all day! I love the idea of the phonics drawers. My 4-yr-old is recognizing letter sounds and beginning to sound out simple (very simple) words, so this would be perfect for him.

[One hook wonder]

Deb, there is absolutely no guilt allowed while reading my blog! I know from reading yours that you do a fab job with your kiddos. It would definately be a whole different ballgame if my big kids were here and home all day too.