Montessori Monday...On A Tuesday

Work with me here, people.

We weren't quite as productive during our Montessori time last week, but we still had a lot of fun, which is the most important thing of all, right? Actually, in all honesty, Short Pants had a bit too much fun at one point. I made his first set of landforms from non-drying clay (those are plastic Glad containers) and introduced him to the concept of a shoreline, etc:

Our boat wouldn't float, but our car did. (?) We ended up using a walnut shell in place of the boat. Short Pants thought this was one of the best lessons EVER:

And then, like a dumb ass, I broke a very important rule of mine. You know, that rule about never leaving a child alone in the Montessori area? Uh, yeah. Pita Pocket woke early and Short Pants *really* wanted to continue exploring the landforms, so I gave him strict instructions not to get out anything else...

You know where this is going, right?

I came downstairs not even 10 minutes later to find both landform bins practically overflowing with water and filled with just about every miniature from our phonics drawers. It was not a good scene. And no, I didn't take a picture. Suffice it to say that Short Pants is not allowed alone again in the Montessori area till he's thirty-four.

While not quite as fun as trashing the phonics drawers, Short Pants still enjoyed a lesson last week about nuts and got to practice using a nutcracker. I printed pictures from the net so that he could see how the nuts grew:

And we used three-part cards for the first time (before I've just printed out a single set and we look at them). I actually didn't think Short Pants would go for the three-part card matching but he seemed to enjoy it , so I guess we'll be doing lots more:

Of course, the very best part was the eating:

I've started to introduce uppercase letters, so I made my own version of the Pancake Game I saw over at My Montessori Journey. When Short Pants flipped over the pancake, he got to keep it if he knew the uppercase letter - otherwise I got to keep it. He really liked this one:

Short Pants also worked on two lessons that he requested I put out. The first was tonging marbles onto a frog (it's a non-skid bathtub thingy turned over):

The second was placing colored hair bands on the matching dowel rods. While watching him I realized how much his hand strenth and coordination has improved. Just a few months ago he had trouble with this lesson. When he did it last week he whipped right through it!

And, of course, Short Pants worked with his continent boxes. Looks like Asia is up next. Pita Pocket joined us in the Montessori area for just a few moments and Short Pants really enjoyed showing off the animals from his Antarctica box:

Lastly, something we've both been enjoying (and sometimes even Pita Pocket too!) has been using the yoga poses from Sew Liberated. I just printed the pictures out, labeled them, and laminated them. Short Pants didn't want me to take a photo of him doing any poses, but he loves lining them all up and then picking which one to do next:

Thanks for reading!

6 Comments

Ha! You're too funny! My son would've done the exact same thing - more water = more fun. :)
Great Montessori day though, as always! I'd like to try the nut lesson, where did you get the cards?

Posted by: Mari-Ann | November 17, 2009 at 08:21 AM

Oh...I can feel your pain! When I first started my blog a couple people contacted me to let me know that it would be "more Montessori" if the school room were accessible all of the time. I read a good post recently on why that doesn't work for a homeschool like it does for a classroom. Your post reminded me one thing I would add to those arguments...a school classroom would have about 25 other kids to "sound the alarm" when something started to go south like that. At home we are missing the checks and balances of those other children and when a child is alone in the school room anything can happen!

Posted by: myboysteacher | November 17, 2009 at 12:27 PM