Spooning and Pegging

Over the last week I have dipped a toe into Montessori with Cherub, offering her a couple of simple activities from Teach Me To Do It Myself.

We started with spooning rice. I already had the small Pyrex bowls, and picked up the small tray from IKEA last week - the only trays I had were too large for Cherub to carry comfortably. I would have liked a less distracting plain tray, but this swirly pattern was all I could find. She spooned the rice happily from one bowl to the other several times before she lost interest, with very little spillage. There was a bit of enthusiastic stirring in there too!


The next day we moved onto using clothes pegs. I put a couple of dozen into a small square basket and showed her how to clip them onto the edge of the basket, and then when they were all done, how to take them off and put them back into the basket. Again, she repeated the activity several times. After a couple of times she decided off her own bat to sort the colours as she pegged, so two activities for the price of one ... sorting and fine manipulation.


Yesterday, I put both activities out so she could choose for herself, and she happily did both until we ran out of time. I don't have anywhere I can leave Montessori activities out permanently, so I'm just going to set them out temporarily on the shelf where I normally keep her toy baskets when we want to use them. I'm planning to add a sensorial activity next (rough and smooth sandpaper), and then a couple of mathematical activities as she is very into counting. I'm thinking it should work to have four or five activities available and rotate them out as she loses interest.