What we did in September

I have not posted for about a month, so this will probably be a really long post.  I am an online school Geometry teacher, and with the planning and teaching of my high school students, I haven't had as much time to work with my own kids.  Still, we had a fairly productive month. 

I cut a mop down so that it was R's size, he has mopped the floor for me several times since then.  I let him use plain water when T is around, and water with Vinegar when T is napping.  He does a pretty good job of getting the floor clean.  He isn't quite strong enough to squeeze out the mop, so I have to go behind him with another mop getting up the extra water.

About a month ago, R came into the house and announced “bird in water table”  we had no idea what he was talking about so we went outside and looked in the water table and found this.

A very cold, wet, sick bird.  We took it inside and gave it some food.  That night we got a cage for it.  The bird lived with us for about a week.  After a week it was flying around its cage banging into the sides desperately trying to escape.  It seemed healthy again so we let it go.  When we caught it we really did not think it would live.  T was really interested in the bird.  He kept crawling over to the cage and pointing up at it.  If you asked him “where is the bird” he would crawl right over to it.  He was very disappointed when we let it go.  

 I made an outline matching activity for R.  I took several objects and traced them on card stock, I then colored them in.  I made about 12 or so cards.  I gave R the cards and the objects and showed him how to match them.  I thought it may be too hard for him, so I initially took out about 4 of the cards that looked the most similar (knife, Popsicle stick, large medicine dropper).  He did not have any trouble at all with this activity.  He was very careful to line the objects up exactly in their outlines.  The only mistakes he made was placing a few of them on backwards.  For example on the knife card the rounded part of the knife pointed to the right and he placed it so that it pointed to the left.  

I gave R bowls of red, yellow and blue water.  I showed him how to combine the colors to make green, orange, and purple.  He then continued mixing colors and got quite a few lovely shades of brown.  He really enjoyed this activity and has asked to do it several times.

R is pretty good at stringing beads, though it doesn’t keep his interest all that long.  I was trying to think of a similar activity and came up with this.  (I'm sorry that the picture is sideways, I forgot to rotate it)

I gave him a large needle (yes a real one) it is about 4 inches long and rather thick, though still sharp.  It is normally used to attach arms on stuffed animals.  Anyway, I gave him the huge needle threaded with dental floss and a bunch of pom poms.  He did a wonderful job threading the pom poms onto the string.  He stayed interested in this for quite a long time.  He ended up making two “caterpillars” and has asked me several times since then to do it again.  In the picture below I only did the first two to show him what to do, he did all the rest.  

 

Last Monday R decided he wanted to go to the zoo.  He woke up from his nap that day and completely fell apart because we were not going to the zoo.  He asked on Tuesday, and Wednesday to go to the zoo.  Wednesday I decided I would take him on Saturday since he seemed to want to go so desperately.  I was trying to figure out how to explain to him when Saturday was and came up with this idea of a calendar for him.  I found a picture that represented each day of the week.  Sunday is a picture of our church.  Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday are his grandmother because she babysits him those days. Wednesday is the playground because we often do something fun that day.  Friday, is another one of their babysitters.  Saturday is a picture of the whole family because we are all home that day.  I talked about the days of the week, and attached a clothes pin to the current day.  He moves the clothes pin to the next circle every morning and we talk about the name of the day and what will be happening that day.

 Yes, we did go to the zoo on Saturday. T was feeling a bit left out in this post, so here he is with a goat.

I have spent a good deal of my time this past month making Montessori Materials, most of which R is still too young to use.  I have made red rods, which I will post a picture of later because I have not yet take one.  Sandpaper Letters, which R and I talk about every morning at breakfast. I do have the whole alphabet done, here are a few of them.  They took me way less time than I expected them to take.  They are made from a very heavy illustration board that I got at a craft store.  The boards are painted and the letters are mod podged on.  I then covered the whole thing including the sandpaper with modpodge.  I got this idea from another blog, but I'm not sure where. 

I also have begun making golden beads.  I have the thousand cube done but have not yet taken a picture of it.  I will do a post soon on the Montessori materials I am making.

Last two activities I promise.

To practice counting we glued candles onto "happy birthday cakes"  R is currently obsessed with happy birthday cake.

I wrote numbers onto several colored circles.  R does not yet recognize the number symbols but he is very good with colors.  I gave him various instruction such as hop to the red number 1, or put your shoulder on the green 7.  He really had to think about how to move his body for some of them. At the end I tried the direction "put one hand on a red circle and the other on a yellow circle"  He was not able to do the two part direction, he would get half of it and then get frustrated.  I will try again at some point. 

Well, that was out month, I will try posting weekly from now on so I don't end up with such massive posts.  There were other things we did that I wanted to post about but this will have to do for now.

If you would like to see what other tots are doing go to 1+1+1=1