A spirited boy at work

Ian is revealing to us his spirited personality. He is very sprightly when he plays. He is very much into jumping, climbing, rolling. He is challenging his body and …. his luck also. He’s had some accidents recently: his face is full of bruises, his lips are cut and a big toe lacks of nail, but it does not seem to matter to him. He just keeps going nuts and driving us crazy.

Fortunately, that naughty boy of two weeks ago received the attention he was begging for and, even when he is very resolute when he is playing riskily, he is not behaving aggressively anymore and this week he was very enthusiastic at work. He was very animated with most of the activities I set up for him. And he finally found a place where he feels comfortable to work: the dining table. There he has his materials all around the table.

Well, here is what we did:


Practical Life

Using a hammer. I'd put out this activity a number of times and it never enthused Ian until this week. The hammer was one of the objects included in a matching activity (see below) and the most attractive for him. He gets very excited when he finds something whose name he can pronounce (even incorrectly). I was happily obliged to gather together the hammering activity again and this time Ian was ready to do it and enjoy it. His motor skills were quite good to hammer the golf tees until they were completely nailed into the styrofoam. Another thing he liked was to push down the golf tees with his fingers. I was so happy Daddy was at home to share with Ian, what a lovely picture they presented me. Ian, of course, tried to interchange his hammer with Daddy's :-) but he didn't have luck this time :-)

Making bubbles with a whisk. The Work Plan reminded me I was waiting for Ian to get some skills with the grater to set up this activity. He enjoyed every step of the activity: grating the soap bar (a wet one to make his job easier), feeling the texture and smell of the grated soap, observing how it submerged in the water, beating the water with the whisk and watching the bubbles. He needs more practice with the whisk, he did not move it in small circles in the water, but moved it in and out :-) I helped him to make the bubbles.

Tweezer. The tweezer was a thing that was in the science activity of the week (see below) and he grabbed it with thumb and fingers and started to clamp his toes with it :-) I took that as a sign he was probably ready to transfer objects with the tweezer. He did it, he transferred pom-poms! ... but, the next time he attempted to grasp it in a different way (maybe looking for a easier way) and it did not work, he gave up the activity. As he is very obstinate I decided to rotate this activity for later.

Buttoning. This is another old activity that captured Ian's interest for the first time. When I made this mat Ian had not developed visual discrimination skills yet and he just pulled the pieces of felt off the buttons and threw the mat away.  This time, as usually, he did not let me present the activity and went directly to what he thought the activity is about: matching colors :-) He did it perfectly. I helped him to button, but he was so focused on matching and unbuttoning that he did not pay attention to my demonstration. Once more, I have to step back and wait for his own due time to start buttoning.

Language

Object-Silhouette Matching. Ian is very much into matching. He is not interested in matching objects to objects or pictures to pictures, but rather objects to pictures!!! This week we moved to matching objects with silhouettes and it was a hit. He loves to work with familiar objects and learn their names.

Science

Exploring with magnets. This was the winner activity of this week!!! Ian did it every day over and over again, so I had to set up some variations to satisfy his curiosity.

Well, Ian is not interested/ready for categorizing activities, but this version seemed perfect for him. As Ian is enjoying matching I used pictures to help him know how many more objects are left to find in the oatmeal tray. I've never seen Ian so amazed and interested in something than the power of a magnet.

When Ian discovered that magnetism travels through objects, he spent a long time gathering everything together. I gave him a screwdriver for further experimentation.

As he mantained his interest in this activiy I added objects to the tray and printed the corresponding pictures.

Sensorial

Oats tub. I've seen lots of sensorial tubs over many blogs and doubted tha Ian would be engaged with them, besides I do not have any "interesting" things to put inside them. Well, I was wrong. The science tray not only captured Ian attention to accomplish the magnet experiment, but he enjoyed exploring it with his hands too. So, I put the rest of the otameal in a tub and he spent a fun time making mountains of oats with his hands (he did not want to use the scoop). When I showed him how to drop them, he was very excited doing it.

Big and Small.  This is our official first activity (not counting the Pink Tower) to learn about big and small and it was not very appealling to Ian, at least not to discrimate size. Well, what is this activity about? I gave Ian farm-related stickers to stick the big ones in one column and then match and stick the small ones in the next column. I hoped that he would be interested in the contrasting size of the stickers, but he was loyal to his current interest in sticking, peeling, matching and naming the stickers.

Math

One-to-one correspondence. Daddy and Ian usually read at bedtime. Lately, they've been counting together anything in the books while reading. Daddy asks Ian, "how many ... do you see? Let's count!" and Ian points one by one to all the things only once. It is a great advance. For now he lets Daddy count the numbers, even though he knows them.

I am sharing this post in One Hook Wonder where you can see other toddlers learning according to the Montessori Method.

Diversifying activities

Ian is growing every day and his interests have been diversifying. We still spend the major amount of time doing practical life and visual discrimination activities, but I've been looking for other activities in areas like: science, sensorial, language and math that could capture Ian's interest. Last week we did a "float and sink" science activity and this week we explored smells, stressed in language while working in matching activities and introduced patterns.

Here is the review of the activities:

Practical Life:

Arranging Eggs. Ian is always ready to help with eggs. He usually helps me peeling and cracking them and  this week he enjoyed transferring the eggs from the cardboard tray to refrigerator trays. He has learned to take the eggs carefully without breaking a single one. This activity has reinforced the concept of one-to-one correspondence.

Preparing mashed potato. Every time I cook I try to involve Ian as much as possible according to his skill level and this week I thought that he was ready to prepare mashed potato: he used the potato masher, pressed it down (he did not do a twist motion); shook salt and pepper shakers and said "too much!" :-) just as Daddy says to him every time Ian plays with the spice shakers; spooned the margarine and stirred it all up.

Sweeping into a dustpan. This is a house chore Ian wants to do by his own every time he sees me with the dustpan and brush. He has been sweeping rose petals and getting better at it.

Hair barrettes and headbands. I had seen this activity in My Montessori Journey. I am sure Daddy will say this is a girly activity :-), but I say it is a fun fine motor skills and sensorial activity ... and Ian likes it a lot!!!
I got two pairs of barrettes and two pair of headbands of the same color and Ian had to unsnap every barrette and then snap it onto a matching color headband. Unsnapping and specially putting the headband inside the barrette and snapping it, challenged Ian's concentration and fine motor skills.

Pre-Reading Skills

Matching picture to object. We've been working with matching pictures to silhouettes and I recently realized I should start with matching objects and gradually move to more abstract matching activities such as the silhouette ones. Well, while I was looking for pairs of objects to match, I set up two picture-to-object matching activities. The first set contained objects we found around the house (actually it was aimed at attracting Ian's interest) and the second one contained vegetables and fruits. I know for this activity I should use picture cards and teach Ian how to order the cards one by one from left to right, horizontally, before doing the matching, but for now the less formal the "lesson" the most likely that Ian will be engaged with it. Well, Ian enjoyed both activities and did them pretty well.

Sensorial (and more fine motor skills)

Color matching with dot stickers.  I was using color dots stickers to prepare material to introduce patterns, when Ian started sticking the stickers everywhere. So, I improvised a simple worksheet with color dots to give him something more interesting to do.

Pipe cleaner and beads.  The original version of this activity come from Itty Bitty Love. I changed it a bit and got Ian busy pushing pipe cleaners (of primary colors) into the holes of a shaker and then stringing same-color beads onto the pipe cleaners.

Art

Spice Collage. As I told you in previous posts, Ian likes to mix chopped vegetables before I put the saucepan on the stove. Lately, I also let him spice the mix and I've noticed that Ian likes to smell the spice bottles and somethimes he ventures to taste the spices. Since then, I have been thinking of Montessori smelling bottles, but I think that Ian is not ready yet to pair or classify the smells, so I preferred to set up an art activity where Ian can explore multiples smells. All we needed for this activity was paper, spice bottles and glue and maybe a paintbrush. Ian dribbled glue on the paper (he was not interested in using the paintbrush to spread the glue on the paper), then he took his time to open each spice bottle, smell it, shake it if it had a hole top or otherwise pincer grip the spices and sprinkle them over the paper.
What I loved about this activity was how it encouraged Ian to touch, smell, see, and even taste.
It also is a great opportunity to get further practice with lids. Fortunatelly, I have different spice bottles, some require to be screwed and others lifted. Ian almost forgot what he was doing when he discovered the paprika can, he spent a lot of time opening and closing the three different tops.
Another thing that I liked about it was that it is easy to clean up. This reminds me of the experience of Nicole at One Hook Wonder with glitter :-)

Finally, I love the exquisite aroma of the picture!!!

Pre-math skill

Introducing Pattern. In order to build math readiness skills, I've involved Ian in activities aimed at developing number recognition and one to one correspondence. Now, I want to introduce sequencing activities so that Ian begins to recognize, describe, reproduce, extend, create and compare repeating patterns. I am looking for fun activities to get Ian into it, but first I wanted to know what is our starting point using this homemade material.

I noticed that even when Ian put the ring on the correct pin (according to the color) he did not do it sequentially. And when I put the pattern card in the tray, he did not follow it at all, he put the rings on any pin.

So, I prepared a playful  activity to start talking about patterns. I printed two sets of this Hungry Caterpillar Cut and Paste worksheet, colored both, used one to build the pattern and give the pieces of the other to Ian and I was surprised that he could alternate the blue and green pieces mostly well.

I am sharing this post in One Hook Wonder where you can see other toddlers learning according the Montessori Method.

Learning to honor Ian’s emotions

I think our move has affected Ian more than usual. Usually changes impact Ian’s sleep (or better said, worsen it, because he is a bad sleeper). This time our moving has made him quite bad tempered. Ian is an active child but now he seems hyperactively. His attention span has decreased, he’s been disobedient, reacting very badly when I call him to order: throwing things, kicking and hitting. I don’t know if it’s just the “terrible two’s” or if our relocation has exacerbated it.

At times I forget that he does not have an appropriate vehicle of self-expression and I was punishing him with time-outs, getting caught up in power struggles. Even when those punishments made Ian calmer, they made me feel sad. So, I’ve been trying to identify and acknowledge the feeling behind Ian’s behavior and I came to the conclusion that he is very upset because with the move he has not received much attention from all us and of course we are imposing too many changes in a short time.

Now I am trying to be more empathetic to Ian’s feelings. It is taking lots of self-control from myself and I know I will need much more along with experimentation and practice. I also decided to slow down arranging our stuff in the house to spend more and better time with him. That made Ian peaceful and more willing to do some learning activities. Here is a review of them:

Cookie cutter silhouette matching. I traced the silhouette of some cookie cutters in a paper to let Ian match them with the cutters. This activity was an easy one for him and he enjoyed more sticking adhesive tape along the border of the paper. He is very much into cutting the tape by himself and sometimes he gets it.

Sorting the cutlery. As a first exercise I gave Ian spoons and forks to sort and he had no problem. Later, I let him try the spoons, forks and knives (no sharp ones of course). He sorted them pretty well. For both exercises we used two sizes of forks and spoons, but I didn’t show Ian how to separate the sizes and he didn’t discriminate between them. Next time, I will ask him to attempt to sort them by size.
 

 
Sorting flowers by color in spice bottles. The first time I set up this activity was six weeks ago and Ian was unable to do it, he was not interested in trying more. Now, the sorting is the easier part and he needs more concentration to insert the stems into the holes of the spice bottles. Once more, everything in its time.
 

 
Puzzles. Ian has been working with these four-pieces puzzles for long time and each time he needs less help from me to complete them. When he finishes, he likes to put them in a row, admires his work and calls out the names of the figures.
 
 

 
Floats and sink. Ian has been playing a lot with water lately and one of the things that catches his attention is putting different objects into water, pushing them down and observing what happens. He did this by himself. So I decided to prepare some extensions.

For the first experiment we used leaves and very small pebbles. Ian floated a leaf and tried to put as many pebbles on as possible until the leaf sinks under the weight.

He worked patiently putting the pebbles on the leaves for a while. Then he decided to rush the experiment and dropped all the pebbles from the container.
 

 
And here is a photo showing how our science session finished (lol)
 

 
For our second experiment I prepared two “boats”, one with cork and the other with a piece of Styrofoam; for both I made the sail with a leaf on a pin. I put the “boats” on the water with the idea of just letting it float for a while and then show Ian how to blow it with his mouth. But Ian wanted to continue the previous experiment and in one second flat he disarmed my boats. So I gave him different objects for a free experience.
 

 
By the way, the first time I attempted this activity was when we just started Montessori at home and I still thought Ian would follow the lesson. I took my time to prepare everything including the cards with labels “sink” and “float” following strictly the instructions of an album. I invited my little piggy for an “exciting activity” :-) and as soon as he saw the materials, he put all the objects in the bowl with water including the cards :-) ; he didn’t even observe his “work” and left the room immediately. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry … but, I laughed heartily.
 
Peeling beans. Ian loves to peel shells and I love to observe him while he does this. He is very focused and ordered. Well, last week, he peeled beans. I broke a bit of the outer pod and he split it open and extracted the individual beans. When he finished, he was not done yet! He also peeled the skin off the beans. If you like beans, I recommend let your children try this activity. It is an excellent exercise to improve fine motor skills, concentration and order.
 

Ian also loves to separate and wash the florets of broccoli. I did some superficial cuts to make it easier for Ian who has to use a bit of strengh to get the florets.

The last things that we moved to our new home were the flowerpots and Ian was so happy to have them again because he really enjoys taking care of the plants.

And challenging his balance