R has not been focusing on school work very well lately. I have temporarily given up on most of the Montessori type activities. He is no longer all that interested in the pre-Montessori activates such as poring, spooning, stringing bead… He is pretty good at all of that stuff. He has not yet progressed to the true pre-school Montessori activities, most are still beyond him. The only Montessori like activity he is currently wants to work on is cutting. I consider cutting a Montessori activity because it is one that he chooses, and it is a life skill that he will need later. He is getting quite good with scissors. He will happily cut paper up for a long time. He will even begin cutting on lines that I draw for him.
My Grandmother got R a subscription to “My Big Backyard” We learned about a lot of different animals. The magazine had a little book inside to cut out and staple together. You can see the little book in the picture below. R cut it out, I was totally shocked at how well he did.
Even though I am having trouble doing Montessori activities with R, T has recently gotten into them. Here he is a picture of him after he poured the tiny acorns from our sensory bin, doesn’t he look proud of himself?
Their dad bought these tongs. R picked the counting bears up off the floor and put them into the egg carton.
R can now name a word that begins with most letters of the alphabet, but it is pure memorization. He has not really made the connection between the sound and the letter. For example he will tell you that e is for elephant, but if he sees a picture of a rabbit next to an “R” he will point to the “R” and say that it stands for “bunny”. I tried having him sort words by their first sound. This activity was a complete failure. I will have to try it again in a few months.
R can count to 14 and is beginning to have one to one correspondence, but has not yet made the connection between the quantity and the number symbol. I pulled out his hammering board that I made him last summer, and printed out numbers and put the correct number of start stickers on each number. His job is to hammer a nail into each star, and then count the number of nails he used. He did a couple of numbers and then lost interest. He was more into figuring out how to use the claw end of the hammer to pull the nails back out.
While R was hammering, T practiced spooning glass gems and acorns from one bowl to another.
I love this picture, it is so rare that both boys are working on something and focused at the same time.
T began learning how to thread beads onto pipe cleaners. This is still a little beyond him, but he had fun putting a single bead on and taking it right back off for a few min.
I briefly thought about doing a letter of the week study, but I admit that it has never made much sense to me. For me it seems to work better to work on several letters at once. Below is one of the “A” activities we tried before I gave up on letter of the week. We did several others, but it seemed more like I was doing them while R was watching.
R is using an apple stamp to stamp the a’s while eating an apple. He did a great job on this.
R has also gotten into "writing" his name, to me it just looks like scribble but he has assured me that he really is "writing" his name. Using word art in Microsoft word, I wrote his name in huge bubble letters. I then had him trace the inside of the letters so that he really did "write" his name. He did a pretty good job on this, but it still needs a lot more work.
R learned to draw circles this week. He drew one that was nearly perfect, I wish I had gotten a picture of it before he attacked it with his scissors (as I said he likes to cut, no paper is safe from him).
One day when I came down to eat lunch with the boys, I work from home while their grandmother watches them, R runs over and hands me this.
He told me it was a book that he made for me. He has made pictures for others, but this is the very first one that he made for me.
Toddlers reading are always cute.
Here is the second picture in two weeks that I got of the boys working together without fighting (at least for this one moment).
Since I never got a post up last week, here are some Halloween pictures. I made both costumes. R unfortunately was terrified by people in costume, especially those wearing scary masks, and adults wearing full body costumes in which you couldn't see their face at all. There were several times in which he completely fell apart.
.
R wasn't a big fan of the hat as you can see.
Go to 1+1+1=1 to see what other toddlers did this week.
