To infinity and beyond!!!

I’d love to say that this week Ian's kept the explosive enthusiasm for Montessori activities he displayed last week, but he didn't. One day he liked activities, the next day he didn’t. I think it almost sums up his development. I must remember that he is on the border of being ready to absorb all that is around him and I must wait and observe … I must, but I cannot :-) I'm still struggling with my expectations, every time a bit less but still struggling.

At the moment he is very busy playing imaginary games. He has moved from acting the stories from his books to acting his favorite movie “Toy Story 1”. The character "Buzz Light Year" has became his best friend :-) and all the "great activities" I set up for him cannot compete with him! Unbelievable!!! :-) Well, at least we invite him to participate. See the next collage of photos; Ian was so concentrated with band aids of his friends…I know, fantasy characters are not Montessori-ish at all, but peeling and sticking are. 

And take a look at this contrast. I better laugh at myself :-)

Between those extremes, there were other activities that were appealing to him, especially those related with discovering how objects work: the magnet tray still captures his interest (that is a historic record! ) and this week he discovered what is inside the flashlight. On the other hand, his interest, revealed last week, in exploring his tactile sense, has persisted, and this time was the turn to feel flour.

The details follow.
 
Practical Life

I did not prepare Practical Life "lessons" this week, except for using the sifter. The rest arose naturally in the kitchen, as usual.

Using a slotted spoon. I put cooked broccoli in a bowl with ice cubes and water to stop the cooking and Ian helped me by passing the broccoli florets using a slotted spoon. The best part of it came when he used his hands to take the broccoli florets out of the bowl with water and took the ice cubes off to another bowl; he really enjoyed experiencing the different temperatures of the ice, the water and the broccoli: frozen, cold and warm. The sensorial experience is becoming more and more interesting to him.

Using a Sifter. This activity was more difficult than I thought. It requires lot of skill to shake the sifter hard enough to sift the flour but not so hard such that the flour falls off. Ian tried hard and sometimes he got it . He animated himself saying "shake,shake!!!" :-). Soon, it got very messy and Ian got confused when he had to scoop the flour into the sifter, he seemed to be wondering: which hand should I use to grasp the sifter? and which one for the spoon? from which bowl should I spoon the flour? ... etc. too much complicated for my toddler. I should have started with a simpler exercise using just one bowl and a slotted spoon.

Even though sifting was not that easy for Ian, he insisted to try it again and again...well, he just wanted to see and feel how the flour fell delicately. Look at his adorable face!

Later, he was amazed to see the outline of our hands on the table after we put them on it and sifted flour over. "high five!" he called out while raising his hand :-)

Rolling. Ian had gotten some practice rolling his floor mat, bamboo placemats and a fabric mat. He does it pretty well when it comes down to big things as he can use whole hands. This week he did a great job rolling the herbs in paper towels  (see the firm supervision of "Buzz" :-)) ; but, when he tried to prepare his jam rolls he could only make thick ones, because he can't coordinate his fingers to make thinner rolls yet.

Pouring. My boys (I mean, Daddy and Ian) have been resisting my encouragement to became vegetarians. I am attempting to get Ian to drink veggie juices and every time I prepare one for me I give Ian a portion to try. He pours the juice, pretends he tastes it looking at me very playful :-) and keeps pouring from the pitcher to the glass and viceversa, over and over again. I guess he likes the different colors and  densities of the juices.

Sensorial

Transferring and sorting by color using a tong. This is our third activity with tongs (see the first one here and the second one here). The extension for this week involved transferring and sorting four different colors of cotton balls. Ian likes this activity enough to practice it almost every day. Sometimes he asks me for help and I just show him  my hand doing the squeeze-realease movement and remind him of the sound effect "clack, clack" :-) after that he is excited enough to try again.

Button outline matching. As Ian has been enjoying visual matching activities I set up this one for him (besides the one above with the split butterflies that Ian did not pay attention to at all) and Ian completed it successfully; he enjoyed identifying the figures of the buttons and looking for the outline; but, lost his interest completely within the next few days. I think it was too easy for him and the buttons look boring to him.

Science

Flashlight. After all the blackouts we've had lately, Ian has mastered switching on and off the flashlight and I wanted to show him more about its workings.
The flashlight we have comes apart at one end only and that is enough to begin. I looked for a transparent flashlight but I could not find one.
I drew around each piece on a paper to guide Ian where to place them as the flashlight is disassembled, but he took the flashlight apart and set the pieces in any order. In spite of that, he remembered perflectly how to reassemble the flashlight. He only asked me for help to screw the bulb piece because it requires a bit of pressure before screwing it down.

Then he went on to test his job switching on the flashlight. At first, it often did not work because he put the batteries in backwards, and he rejected my help to show him the error. We resolved it just placing the batteries vertically instead of on their side, ready to insert in the flashligh correctly.

As my "guide" was completely ignored by the novice scientist, I replaced it with a three-part tray where Ian could place each piece separately.

Great experiment for a curious boy. Great lesson to learn about how many parts make a whole.

I almost forgot to tell you the most important challenge we started this week: potty training. I've been postponing it for a long time because Ian's been experiencing many changes lately, but changes are and will be part of our lives for a while, so I decide to undertake potty training.

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

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.

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