Weekly highlights--5/17

We haven't been very motivated to do lessons this week due to the great weather we've been having. It rained most of last week so we were itching to get out of the house. I also had a good bit of housework to catch up on, hence the lack of activity here this week. Here are some shots of what we did. 

Observing our first frog of the year daddy caught for us out of our yard.

Painting with strawberries

Enjoying Mother's Day goodies

Fun at the park

And Friday we finally got to some lessons

Pouring/spooning lentils

Lydia was interested in how they moved

Delores got up to all 10 pairs of the memory game.

She was so proud of herself after she found all the matches. Here she is holding all the cards in the box beaming that she matched them all.

And Delores worked on the number rods. Last time we worked with the mini number rods she needed some help building it. This time she did it all on her own. We had to work on the rods 4, 5 & 6 again this time. Last time she worked up to 9, but this time she seemed tired and had a hard time focusing. I feel like she got it this time. 

The interesting thing about Delores is that she will do a new work one time and then she won't go back to it again for a month. She loves to do Lydia's works over and over again but she is not so interested in doing new works more than once. Sometimes the lessons sink in overtime and you can tell she didn't need the repetitive work you come to expect after researching Montessori methods. Then other times it really is because I've missed her window. She's either mastered something and I don't realize it so she doesn't repeat something because it's boring or it's too hard and she gives up, gets frustrated and won't go back to it. Every child is different. 

What I've learned from this is that the method is a good guideline but always let the child and his/her learning styles and abilities be your guide to what you introduce and how frequently you introduce something new. 

I hope to go into more detail about this topic on a later post of how teaching Lydia is so much different than teaching Delores. 

So we had a pretty laid back week. On weeks like these I have a some guilt for not doing "school." I catch myself thinking "when they are school age I can't have weeks like this," and I put a lot of unneeded pressure on myself. But I recognize I have got to start living in the moment more because I'm missing out on a lot of great moments worrying about what I could be doing or what is going wrong. I haven't quite figured out how to balance that yet but I am going to try.

We'll see what next week holds for us. :)

Surprise! A productive day!

I couldn't have designed a more perfect day for formal (but a little non traditional) lessons/ activities.

The girls' attention spans and energy levels were spot on for a good stretch of rug time (or in it case a blanket). In fact Delores spent a total of 2 hours doing lessons without a break. She was on a roll and I wasn't about to mess that up. Even Lydia spent a good 15-20 mins on a pouring/ spooning activity.

So this is what Delores worked on yesterday:

She started with spooning black eyed peas from one bowl to another and then started using her pincher grasp to transfer one pea at a time from one bowl to the other.


Next she moved on to a set of language cards of items found in the kitchen. She quizzed herself and them went on what I call the scavenger hunt, and placed all the cards with their corresponding object. After she was done I came over and asked her to retrieve each card by name.


After that she got out a memory game an work herself up to 7/10 pairs in the box an worked for a good 20 mins on this.


Then she moved onto Lydia's opening and closing bottles


And then clipping 38 clothespins around a food storage container.



And then she she did Lydia's beginning counting with three triangles.

Whew! That makes me tired just writing about it all.

Lydia also did her opening and closing of the bottles





Pouring, spooning and examining of the black eyed peas.

And the beginning counting to three. Just when you think your children are not receptive to your teaching they have a day like this. I may not understand the reasoning behind why they have good days or difficult days but there is always a renewed hope and love for montessori teaching when you have productive days like these.