Turning out alright

I go through ups and downs as a Montessori homeschooler. There are some weeks when I feel the pressure to do school in a very formal way. I become stressed and I usually take my stress out on the girls. Then I get frustrated with myself and I am reminded it is about going with the flow and following the child. Not about sticking with a schedule or an outline. Then I relax and do just that. I spend some weeks just trying to enjoy my girls and then something happens and the pressure creeps up inside me again. I try more and more to stay in those easy-going weeks, but I have weaknesses and downfalls just like any other human being. If you want to know the truth I think it has a lot to do with my cycle and hormonal imbalance. I find myself going from one extreme to the next and, as hard as I might, I can't seem to get a grip on it.

This week however, I am going with the flow and while I still have that nagging feeling to do school I am pushing through it to be the mom and teacher I want to be for my girls.

Monday we had a busy day. We didn't do much "school" where they sat in front of a mat doing activities for hours at a time. They did the kind of school that I love to see blossom in them. The natural curiosity for life and the learning that comes from that. 

Here is the only shot I got of the girls doing mat work.

Delores transferring poms into a container with tongs.

The rest of these pictures are just of things that the girls asked to do.

Delores using our DIY version of the circle metal insets made from pink and blue foam board and dowels hot glued into the middle. 

Delores and Lydia washing the chalkboards. 

Drying the chalkboard

Delores cutting on the line to make a letter "H," beginning sounds booklet I got from here: http://www.first-school.ws/theme/alphaletter_p/h.htm

Then on top of all that the girls asked for turkey and cauliflower for lunch and asked for classical music as background noise after lessons. :) So no matter how bad I put myself down for being hard on the girls and being stressed out and not feeling like playing all the time, apparently they are turning out all right. Yay me! And yay them for putting up with me. 

Our Easter Activity Day

At the end of every month I make a calendar for lessons or activities I would like to get accomplished for the upcoming month. It may change a lot depending on what the girls are interested in, what did or didn't work or the interruption of short notice appointments. I'm not a very spur-of-the-moment kind or person, which I am trying to change, so the calendar helps me to see a map of what they will be learning as well as what I need to buy in advance to make the lessons. Yes, I do make most of their lessons, but that is another post for another day.

So anyway, I've found the best place to find holiday themed activities is on Pinterest. Here are some things we did last Friday in celebration of Easter.

This first is a counting game. The object is the roll the die, which only has ones and twos on the side, and the child gets the corresponding number of Easter themed erasers. The first to count out 10 wins the game.

Checking out my homemade die.


Playing the easter themed counting game.


Lining up the easter erasers.

After Lydia won the game, Delores just wanted to line them all up and count them.

Counting the easter easers

After they had changed clothes, made their beds, brush their teeth and combed their hair they came back for trays I'd put out on the shelf the night before.


Tonging poms into an egg tray. I was tempted to use jelly beans, but this was the first time Delores had used any kind of tongs so I used the poms instead. It's a good thing too because she tried to tong a jelly bean and it was too hard and she became frustrated. Always trust your gut.


Using a "B is for Bunny," template I snagged from here: Making Learning Fun . I don't particularly care for templates but I thought it was cute and it was a holiday and we have been working on our "B" sounds in our beginning sound basket so I caved.

Switch!



And just for the heck of it, practicing the padlocks and keys.


After the mats were put away I set out the egg dying stuff. There was a lot of practical life and sensorial activities involve in this. For instance spooning the eggs into the colored water. Mixing primaries to make secondary colors. Washing the eggs. Straining the eggs. Drying the eggs. The intense look of concentration on their faces told it all.

Dying eggs



Peeling eggs


Washing peeled eggs. Like all toddlers Lydia loves to play in water. When I asked if she would like to wash the eggs her eyes lit up. Just one of the many things that keep me on the montessori path.

With the peeled eggs I took one and cut it in half for each of them to try for snack with a little salt. Lydia made it very known that she did not like it and Delores just liked the egg whites. With the remaining two I made egg salad which Lydia loved and Delores hated (oddly enough).

After naps they got to "trace" Easter themed clip art onto our back door. They didn't really trace but they had fun so, oh well. You may have seen on other websites that people use things like foam or shoe polish or window paint. All of that stuff has to scraped off with a razor blade. We used dry erase markers. They scribble, the rub it off if they want to do it again and it is easy clean up.


Easter themed window "tracing" pictures.

We had a great productive, fun filled day that I'm sure we will probably be repeating for years to come.