letters

I got this idea from a Montessori blog. M. is sorting the objects putting them on the letter their name is starting with. We have done it with animals and make-believe food and kitchen objects. M. is confident in recognizing most of the sounds and letters. Still need some work on the odd V, T, and of course on b,d,p,q... they just look too much alike! She really enjoyed this exercise!

sense of sight part 2

Backgrounds. we explore how the picture changes when we chnage the back ground and leave the same subject. I draw three simple identical houses and coloured in the same colour. I cut out pictures of different types of holidays destinations (woodland, seaside, Australia etc). I then glued each house on a background. I told M. that that was my house and that it was going on holiday. I showed her that my house was first in the woods, than it went to the seaside and then it went to the mountains. I asked her what remained the same throughtout the house journey and what kept on changing.

I then told her it was her turn to make her house go on holiday. She was really enthusiast about the activity. I let her choose the backgrounds she liked best from a few magazines, then I let her cut them out her self and glue her houses where she liked in the picture. She then made up different stories of why and how the house went to the different destinations.

sense of sight part 1

In the next months we will focus on our five senses. I asked her to colour in where the sense of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell are in a drawing of a little girl. We called her our little explorer. Then in a separate paper, I let her colour in her cloths and then cut them out and glue them on the girl

For the sense of sight we made a cardboard TV which we will use to explore various concepts using our eyes. First of all we looked at visual illusions. She will understand that not always what we see it is what actually we think we see! I showed M some simple examples of hidden figures, then an example of a figure made up of small tiny same figures and she made her own. I did this by using children stamps and stamp pad and colouring in each of the tiny figures. She then made her own, wanted to make a few more: one butterfly, one bee and one snail!

I then showed her some clever visual illusions on the computer on the kids.niehs.nih.gov/games/illusions/index.htm web site. there are many, you should choose the ones more suitable to the age and stage of your child. It was an interesting experience for her and it was fun.

composter bin

For the next months I want M. to get to know and understand how nature works and what must be our contribution to nature. I was waiting for a bit of sunshine after all this rain to get starting with our gardening projects: first of all make a little home made composter bin, to teach M. that nothing in nature goes to waste and how composter is so important for plants and that she can make a contribution to the cycle of nature. We made the composter bin in a small scale just to start off. A small containers with holes, some soil on the bottom of the container and as many vegetarian left over as possible, I covered ours with cardboard.

Now she is aware that potatoes, carrots peels, egg shells, banana skin etc are all good to make compost and she is always remember to fill up the composter bin! Of course she knows that compost is good food for plants, so we must grow a few plants to give the compost to. As last year we got growing veg, but this year I want to add a couple of new friends: we already have quite tall tomatoes plants (4), we have already eaten our spinach and lettuce and already seeded for more of them and iceberger lettuce, we then prepared to have green beans and cucumbers.