Wednesday, May 20, 2009

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.

5 comments:

Sweetness and Light said...

What a cutie!! She looks very content and interested :) Hugs!

Fe said...

These look great:-)

I know she's two—just wondering when her birthday is... my Bilby is also two, and I've been meaning to start some of this stuff with her... Just thinking I'll play follow-the-leader if you're posting stuff at the moment—or wondering if she 'should' be ahead of here:-) (Bilby is an October girl.)

(Oh, and a hairband! What a clever idea:-) Bilby has fabulous 'Tensing ears' like the puppy next door, but she might well go for a headband:-) )

The Bookworm said...

Hi Fe. She is very almost 3 ... her birthday is June 8th, so she is a few months ahead of Bilby. Over the last month or so she has gone through a developmental jump and just suddenly seemed ready for early learning activities. Various things suddenly came together - colouring (proper colouring in rather than vague scribbling), counting accurately, loving puzzle / activity books, that sort of thing - and she seems to be needing more stimulating activities.

Have to go and help put stickers in a dinosaur sticker book ...

Cay G. said...

She has gotten so big and is so incredibly cute and pretty! :-)

Anonymous said...

What cute pictures!