new trays for practical life

new year celebrations art

Fire works out of a hat:

paper
felt-tips
glue
scissors
pieces of paper to stick on
glitter


1 draw a hat and some fire works

2 cut it out



3 let your child stick some niece pieces of paper (I use used wrapping paper)
4 put some glitter
5 let your child colour in the fire works and put some glitter



6 glue a little stick on the back of the fire works




7 fire works slide through the hat

some more difficult writting

One day M. was colouring in one of those "princess magazines" I usually buy when we have to fly somewhere, to keep her busy during the flight. She always asks me what the pages ask her to do (colouring in the princesses, find their crowns, count their friends etc). One page was asking her to trace over the word below. She got her pen and starting tracing over the letters: I noticed that she was trancing the letters exactly and she should, as she had done many times with her finger over the sand-paper letters. She was quite confident at it, she wasn't just starting trancing over any point of the letter and going messy over it, her tracing was clean and tidy, letter were traced in the right direction. It seems quite natural for her doing that exercise, she didn't ask for help even if that was the first time she was using a pen to write a word.
I guess that without the sand-paper exercise, I would have to teach her letter by letter how to trace every single one on a piece of paper, repeating the same letter over and over again on the paper, losing my patience because she is not starting from the right point and not following the right direction. I realise how easy it is now for her tracing the letters, and how execiting it is. No boring exercise to learn how to write, no feeling like she will never be able to do it, never saying "it is too difficult".
I found these wipe-clean letter flash cards I had for a long time but thought wasn't the right time to take them out. Now it was the right time: how it is true that a child will let you know when he/she is ready, just observe!

I gave her the flash cards and told her what to do. She starting tracing those letters with such a natural touch, as if she had done it before.
And now she is so pround of her letters writing. She often takes them out and traces some letters until she is tired of it. I never push her to do more, I do not want her to hate any thing she now likes to do.





She still likes to take her sand-paper letters and do the exercise with them.

next step to writing

Here M. is practicing her pen grip and control of the pen around geometric figures. M. then is colouring in the geometric shapes on the paper, trying to fill in the different shapes with different colours.



Here M. is refining her eye-hand coordination to the smallest detail to create the figure on the tablet by putting the right piece in its exact place without moving all the other pieces.

All the above exercises are preparation to writing.
We started with touching the sandpaper letters in the sense of writing, in this way the child memorizes the letter through seeing, touching, hearing the sound and saying the sound (three part lesson: this is "C", give me "C", what is this letter?"). Then we started doing some signs on the flour, trying to imitate the some signs the finger does on the sandpaper letters. Now we use a stick like a pen and we pass with it on top of the sandpaper letters.
M. is already prepared to use the stick as a pen because her sense of touch has been refined through the exercises of the smooth and raugh gradiation tablets, touching the different fabrics and of course the sandpaper letters and numbers; her coordination of fine movements has been pefected through the practical life exercises, her pen grip is excellent because she has exercited herself with stencils and colouring shapes without going out of the borders.
Every exercise she has been doing all this time was a preparation for writing.

smells and sounds

To develop the sense of smell I always have fun with M. smelling different spieces, herbs, flowers, purfumes we encounter out and about. I tought it would be a nice activity to set out a "smells table" where there could be different and various scentes put out for her to experience. This week the table offers menthol, oregano, salvia, rosmary. Every week I will then change the objects to smell.



These are our sounds containers.Every silver container has a sound equal to an orange container. M needs to shake the containers and find the matches.
The containers are full or part full of different things: rice, sand, pebbles, lentils, pasta.

First writing

M. is doing very well with her letters. She is keen in taking the Montessori sandpaper letters and passing her fingers on the one she knows indipendently. Now there are just a couple of letters left to discover and then she will know the whole alphabet! The most wonderful thing is that I do not force her to learn the letters, she is actually interested in learning them, she actively seek to learn more letters and to memorize better the ones she already knows. When we are out and about she keeps on calling me because she has spotted some letters she recognizes!

This morning I prepare for her a fun way to draw her first letters. Floor and fingers

Montessori time

M. is getting to know her letters, we use the sand paper letters to memorize each letter using eyes and touch, and then she has to say the sound of it.
Now she is proud to show me each and every letter she recognizes on bill boards, shops signs, neswpaper, books and every where.
Since she is very confident in some letters, I started to use the movable alphabet with her. I use a tool box to put in each space a few magnetic letters, and some small toys she has to guess the letter they start with.
With some help she is enjoying doing it. (she is doing it in her mother's toungue)





We are also keep on re-visiting the sand paper numbers, even if now she is quite confident in all the numbers to 10. She is now doing the exercise indipendently.



M. is also doing counting with the spindle box and the other materials




Here is she using the blue rods and put them in order from the longest to the shortest