Montessori Kid at Work

Montessori hundred board work

Last year, we got a Montessori hundred board for home--I think on the recommendation of HomeschoolDad--and we are still using it with great pleasure. This particular instance was totally instigated by J, and he did the entire thing himself, which takes quite a bit of concentration. Well, not the whole thing--we've lost tile 59 (aaagh!)--but 99 percent, and it's so fun to see him growing with it.

If you're looking for a math-y "toy" for your home, and you don't mind the inevitable 100 tiny tiles scattered all over your kitchen table, this is a terrific object to have on hand.

Montessori-Inspired Toddler Activity Trays

According to the sun, the moon, the stars and the school-supplies setup at Target, it's back-to-school time! I'm feeling the peer pressure to get back to work, so for the first time in months I put together some Montessori-style work for Jackson. Herewith:

Jackson has never evidenced even the least interest in threading anything, but I'm trying again. This is a plastic lanyard string from the dollar store and plastic spools I ordered from S&S Worldwide. Orange is his favorite color right now, so maybe that will entice him to play with these a little.

Inspired by an excellent Montessori Minute post about using the hardware store as a resource for DIY educational gizmos, I hit Culver City Industrial Hardware today for a collection of hex nuts in different sizes. I was skeptical about the value of this exercise at first, but as I was selecting the nuts, I realized I was straining to distinguish the sizes and that I was naturally drawn to stack and sort them--hopefully J will have the same reaction. Then I took the collection to FedEx Office and arranged them on a photocopier and then laminated the copy. That way (a) J has a matching activity to work on, (b) when pieces are inevitably lost and roll under the couch etc. I will have a reference with which I can determine the missing pieces that need to be replaced!

I had every intention of this activity being cutting straws, which I read somewhere is the first step in developing scissor skills, but then I discovered I'd thrown out our straws during a decluttering binge. Bah. In lieu of that, I turned to the printable cutting worksheets page on the School Sparks site. This should make a fine mess and he might even get a fine-motor workout in the process, which is just the way I like it.

Montessori-Inspired Toddler Activity Trays

Open-close tray: Tiny Patrón tequila bottle (!) with cork (I found it on the ground outside a hardware store, I swear), empty spice tin, empty makeup compact with pop-out mirror*, mini Slinky for no reason besides fun, film cannister, blue plastic box, red plastic hardware cannister.

*Jackson calls this the "puter" because he thinks that the pop-out mirror is like a pop-out DVD player.

Carabiner-inspired keyrings for linking practice and sorting by color.

Pom-poms, mini tongs and an old frozen shrimp shumai tray for a transferring activity that the kiddo loves. This one really hit the "zone of proximal development" (as the education pros might say).

Stringing activity with cedar hanger attachments and a length of cord.

New Montessori-Style Toddler Trays

After months of total slacking, due to distractions like birthday parties and home improvement projects, I found some time to slap together some new trays for Jackson to play with, and by play with I of course mean "scatter around the house."

1. Paper matryoshkas copied from an HSBC ad about globalization that I found in The Economist (thanks for the subscription Grandpa Jay!), which should be a fun way to practice matching and ordering by size.

2. There are two sets of seven ribbons, which is both an occasion for more matching and a sneaky lesson in the names of some common fabric patterns: stripes, polka dots, checks, plaid, paisley, meander or fret, and knot.

3. Pouring! This is just going to end up all over the house and under the couch, but the kid loves pouring, so better to direct his energy into dry pouring than let him wreck havoc with milk, which is what he usually does. :)

And lest anyone thing that Waldorf has the patent on promoting beauty in the lives of children, these are flowers for Jackson's table clipped from a feral rose bush in our neighborhood. Thanks to Tim Seldin's book How To Raise An Amazing Child the Montessori Way for the suggestion, including the tip that single-serving Perrier and Orangina bottles make easy and affordable bud vases. I needed an excuse to drink more Orangina anyway. :)

Child Labor! AKA Practical Life Tips

I'm clearing out some books and scanning key pages that I wanted to save even though I didn't love the whole book. First up, the list of age-appropriate chores from Barbara Curtis' Small Beginnings book. I haven't seen anything like this elsewhere, but I'm finding that developmentally targeted lists (of books, chores, activities, projects) are invaluable. You can work out the pace yourself, but you know which age to target.

Anyway, here's the list of age-appropriate chores, part one (age 1.5 to 4) and here's list of age-appropriate chores, part two (age 5 to 10). Enjoy. :)

New Montessori Toddler Trays

New work, aka new things for him to scatter around the house (hee):

• Blue toothpicks to drop through the holes in a sugar container for a pincer-grasp/fine motor/pre-writing activity
• Cut-up pool noodle and a stray weed-whacker string for a stringing activity
• Open/close tray with old makeup compacts, a tea strainer, a spice container and a ring that once connected some measuring spoons

New Toddler Montessori Trays

Now that we're properly back in the swing of things and I have a plan, it's time for new choking hazards trays. (I joined a mailing list that hints that despite persistent Montessori protestations about their benefits, all of these activities cause child-care inspectors to fly off the handle. In some places, objects like the smallest box of the pink tower have been known inspire reprimands. I see both sides of the debate, but in this case I'm lucky that I can decide for myself about my son's likelihood of choking. For the record, he likes to tease me because he knows I'm neurotic about choking hazards, but none of this stuff is something I'd worry about with him at this age.) 

Anyway, for the current trays, I put together the following arrangements of junk from the garage:

• Baby-food jars and three colors of wall anchors for a sorting activity.
• A water bottle and a bundle of coffee stirrers for a modified "clothespin drop"
• Inspired by the success of the coffee pouring, dried kidney beans from the bulk bins at Sprouts, plus two Japanese teacups and a sugar spoon, for a scooping activity. The kiddo loves this one.

I love watching him work studiously at all these tasks--he takes it all seriously and it's adorable!

Learning Through Play, As They Say

We've been at Home Depot a lot lately because of the Great Patio Door Project and I picked up these carpet samples for free in the decor department. J has a great time matching the pieces to their partners. There's actually a bit of nuance to it because they're all kinda brownish and carpety!

Thanks to Lia for this idea. Jackson now gets to help scoop my coffee into the French press  every morning. His scoops aren't terribly full (it takes about four or five to get the right amount where it's usually just two), but by gosh, he's mastered the twist of the wrist to get the grounds in the pitcher! This is a classic pre-writing fine motor activity and he loves it!

Which One Is Different?

If the house caught on fire but I still had some time to rescue a toy after getting all the important stuff out, there is no question in my mind that I would take our Haba blocks. Blocks and balls are pretty much the best toys ever, and I think the kid and I could play well for years with these gorgeous building blocks.

Anyway, J got two new sets of Haba blocks for Christmas, and to my surprise, one set, the Clown Blocks, was on a smaller scale than the usual Haba blocks (3 cm for Clown blocks vs. the usual 4 cm). At first I was very mildly disappointed, but then I realized (a) who cares, they're still great, and (b) this new variety of shapes and sizes offered great opportunity for what Jackson calls a "lesson." In fact, after we did this for the first time yesterday, he come up to me today and said, "Blocks...lesson?" and we did it all over again.

Basically, I unrolled a place mat (Montessori says it focuses the child's attention), set out four blocks in a random arrangement, and asked him to point out which one is different. He did a great job, although for some reason the combination of three rectangular solids and one cube confounded him and/or made him mad. But he blasted through everything else, and I got a chance to very gently introduce vocabulary like taller, wider, diameter, cube, cylinder, cone and so forth.

Here he is pointing out that the larger triangle is the one that is different.

We compared the following sets of blocks:

• 3 large cubes, 1 small cube
• 3 small triangles, 1 large triangle (pictured above)
• 3 red cubes, 1 yellow cube
• 3 short wide cylinders, 1 narrower taller cylinder
• 3 rectangular solids, 1 cube
• 3 cubes, 1 rectangular solid
• 3 cylinders, 1 rectangular solid
• 3 rectangular solids, 1 cylinder
• 3 cylinders, 1 cylinder with a "hat" (conical tower topper thing)

When we got to the cylinders, Jackson took over and decided it was time to play/work on his own. He had a field day exploring the many dimensions of the four cylinders, including shape and sound.

Toddler Trays, Including No-Choking-Hazard Bead Stringing

Now that Chrismukkah is done and the New Year is almost here, I thought it was time for some new trays:

Open-close tray items, clockwise from top: Rocket-pop popsicle mold, travel-size Infusium 23 bottle (this one's a double-header, technically, since the bottle top both flips open and screws off), a card-like mints box with a paper-fold opening, a USB thing with a flip-out cover, and a jewelry box with a love note for the kiddo inside.

Squishy sparkle pom-poms and "novelty beakers" from the dollar-stuff section at Target, aka our first attempt at a "dry pouring" exercise.

I've been looking for a way to do a bead-stringing thing, but I am a child-safety paranoiac and the commercial stringing beads sets are totally a choking hazard (every stupid thing is a choking hazard, but the beads stress me out extra for some reason). As such, I've been looking for a DIY alternative. I thought  thread spools might serve as a bead substitute, but I could never find any that were affordable and easily available. Then I was in Bed Bath & Beyond and stumbled across "Cedar Hanger Rings" and thought "Aha!" They totally pass the toilet-paper roll test, plus they're fabulously chunky and substantial for little fingers learning how to do this work. I tried strangling myself (as you do) with various lengths of shoelace, and cutting a 45-cm shoelace into quarters resulted in a cord a little less than 5 inches long (~11 cm), which like it's a less risky length that still provides some room for the kid to work.

Meanwhile, Jackson wants a "lesson" by which he means a proper sit-down thing where I unroll a work mat and demonstrate something, three-period-lesson-style. Mostly he loves the rolling and unrolling of the mat, but I think I'm going to use some of new Christmas blocks to explore same and different sizes and colors. I'll try to photograph it if it happens.

Montessori-Style Upcycled Locks & Latches Board

Montessori-style locks and latches board (with bonus switches and wheels and magnets and geegaws)

Much much love to my mom for helping me make this activity board for Jackson. Inspired by these pins on Pinterest, we went through Sylvia's Wondrous Garage Hardware Store and found a collection of old hardware stuff that seemed to fit the bill. Some of it we screwed on, and some of it we glued on with silicone, but everything is firmly and safely attached. FWIW, the board was almost free and totally recycled/reused but we did have to spend .59 to buy one extra box for the second light switch.

Here's what's what on the board, just because I made my mom tell me the names of everything:

Toddler Montessori Trays

Links Tray: My little one still can't separate these links from the chain. He wails piteously whenever he encounters them, "Help! Help! Help!" I'll demonstrate until I can demonstrate no more, and hopefully he'll eventually get it. This link chain is composed of the orange links from Bright Start Lots of Links, Sassy Links and Fisher-Price Link-a-Doos.

Open & Close Tray: The open-close tray is totally inspired by the brilliant Counting Coconuts. This basket includes a squeeze-open coin purse, a cassette tape box with a little carabiner inside, an Altoids tin, a baby-medicine syringe, a tooth floss box with the cutting edge popped out, a travel toothbrush and a Tic-Tacs container. I like that the tape and the floss open from the "front" while the Tic-Tacs opens to the "side."

Toilet-Paper Roll Tinker Toys Tray: After seeing this great post on Almost Unschooling about a toilet-paper roll Tinker Toy craft, I thought that pushing pencils through holes in a toilet-paper roll seemed like great fun. It reminds me of both lacing cards and the "straw-in-the-hole" activities. We'll see if the kid can handle it or if overwhelms him or if the tubes are just crushed immediately.

Toddler Trays - Holiday - Montessori

Last week's Montessori activity trays were such a hit I decided to go again!

Montessori toddler tray: Jingle bells and tongs

I'm so proud of my little guy! When I first demonstrated this tray, he was confounded by the tongs and couldn't quite grapple with them, but this morning he used them successfully and correctly! OK, well, to be fair, so far he's just using the tongs to drop them in the bottle below rather than putting the bells into the tray (LOL, Montessori might not approve of this tray cross-contamination), but he actually did the problem-solving and the work over the past two days to figure out a new skill. He likes to put the bells in the tray with his hands as well as trying with the tongs, and the bells jingle beautifully, so there's a nice sensory element to this tray as well. He both jiggles the smaller tray full of bells and swirls them around in the larger tray. The smaller tray once contained mochi ice cream, and I just want you all to know that eating that stuff so I could have this project for him is the kind of Great Sacrifice I am willing to make for my child. :)

Montessori toddler tray: Clothespin drop

The clothespin drop is a classic children's activity, and I made it "holiday" themed by picking out a red jar and using only red and green clips. So far he chucks in big handfuls of clips at a time (much the way he eats only big handfuls of food at a time), but I hope to refine his technique over the course of the week. This is also a very wide-mouth bottle, so I might dig around the house and see if I can find anything narrower and a little more challenging.

First Montessori Trays

After spending a lot of time looking at albums of Montessori trays (especially the ones on Counting Coconuts), I decided it's time to try some projects like this with Jackson. I put together three trays for him, and I'll either introduce them tomorrow before I leave him with grandma and grandpa or maybe I'll start a Montessori Monday thing.

Left to right:

• Assembling a flashlight, which consists of putting in the two batteries (motor skills) in the right direction (problem solving) and getting the cap on. Possibly/probably too complicated, but I'm hoping the appeal of his very own flashlight is motivating.
• Putting Kennedy half-dollars in a piggy bank should be good for hand-eye coordination and pincer grasp. Jackson is obsessed with coins, so I think he'll like this one. (When we're driving, if he hears coins jangling in the cupholder he says, "Quarters?") I'd love to make this a progression, working down to dimes, with educational elements like exploring about the Presidents currently featured on dollar coins or the State Quarters.
• Matching lids to jars seems like it should be helpful for visual discrimination and spatial relationships. These are all jam jars and I'm hoping that the widely varying sizes will make it easier for him to "solve." There's one tall skinny jar, one squat wide jar and one tiny little jar that I actually swiped from our honeymoon hotel and just used up last month. I'm not sure if this will be easy or hard for him, but if it's easy I have more jars at the ready to up the level of difficulty.

I got the baskets years ago at a thrift store and they've just been sitting in the garage ever since waiting for the call. (I think they were originally intended for serving up greasy food like fries and lobster rolls. Man, I miss the @Lobsta truck. But anyway!)

There's a fair amount of "danger" in these baskets: the first flashlight I got out of the garage had a corroded battery and if my fingers burn off later tonight, please tell the paramedic it's from battery acid; the half-dollars probably aren't bigger than the toilet-paper roll guideline that is supposed to prevent choking; and of course the glass jars could easily shatter on our tiled kitchen floor. I will supervise, but I'm also taking a bit of a leap with these since I'm usually a fanatic about safety guidelines. Wish us luck!

Garden Variety Vocabulary Cards - Upcycling Seed Catalogs

I think I'm about to become a lamination monster!

It's seed-catalog season and before I consigned all the poor unloved things to the recycling, I decided that the pages of the High Mowing Seeds catalog were particularly well-suited to becoming veggie vocabulary cards. If nothing else, it's good for the kiddo to see that plate veggies were once plants, and I also kind of like introducing him to slightly odder vegetables like fennel bulb and okra. I also liked that the High Mowing Seeds catalog had the scientific name for the plants, which is just interesting and shows the alert reader that we eat a quite a few cucurbits and brassicas!

So, last night during RHOBH and Gossip Girl I cut out the veggie pictures (including scientific name!) and pasted them to index cards. This morning I realized that (a) the cards were curling from the glue, (b) they would last about five minutes near a toddler in paper-only form, and (c) I'd put the hole and ring in exactly the wrong place for him to read the words, so I unhooked them and took them to Lakeshore to check out this "laminator" about which I've heard so much.

Suffice it to say, laminating stuff is awesome. I wish it were free, which it isn't, but I can afford .30 a linear foot and it is so much fun. Anyway, he likes the cards quite a bit--he seems fascinated by "corn" in particular, and he remembered "garlic" from when we planted the cloves a few weeks back!

DIY Texture Tablets - Much Cheaper Montessori!

Inspired by this post and by Montessori's fancy texture gradient tablets, I decided DIY texture boards were in order for the little one. (A set of "rough gradation tablets" goes for $47!)

Why do these? Well, I'm hoping to provide the kiddo with some touch-sense stimulation, practice matching, preliminary puzzle-solving skills and some new vocabulary words, but also because I like having as many outlets as possible for recycled goods around here. Not every Diapers.com box is going to be upcycled, but a girl has to try.

These are 10 cm x 10 cm cardboard squares, with 8 cm by 8 cm textures. The textures, so far, are a nubbly orange washcloth, smooth parchment paper, a soft cloth (formerly striped socks someone gave me), rough sandpaper, bumpy contact paper, bubble wrap, slick aluminum foil, and rough mesh (formerly a potato bag). So far he likes petting the textures, and we'll see what else comes of having these around.

I'm planning to add some other sandpaper grits and fabrics as I can find them, but any suggestions for other readily available textures that he might like to play with? Inspire me!

Montessori-Style Practical Life

I don't really understand Montessori, but I've decided that on the face of it there's a lot of (a) saying yes to your child's natural instincts and/or (b) putting them to work doing mild menial tasks in hopes of building hand strength (or something?). I'm using that template for the time being, in hopes of deciphering it as I go along.

As such, here are some sensory projects and/or practical life exercises I've done with the kiddo lately, not including his obsession with the brooms in the broom closet. He loves dragging them around and pretending he's "sweeping sweeping!"

J loves to try to take these nested mixing bowls out of the cabinet, so I finally decided to just let him play with them. We'll probably have a breakage incident at some point, but in the meantime, he has a field day arranging these bowls. He only uses the smallest four or five so far. Disregard the giant smear of drool on his shirt--his canines (incisors?) are coming in so he's a drool machine lately.

Juicing citrus fruits is a classic Montessori practical-life thing, but this was just an ill-considered exercise on my part. This grapefruit was way too meaty and heavy for him to really work on. We have some lemons coming in on our tree soon so we'll try again with those.

Drinking drinking! After giving the kiddo a fair shot with both halves of the grapefruit, I did the juicing myself and Jackson loved drinking the fruit (juices) of our labors.

I need to chit some potatoes anyway, because I'd like to try to grow potatoes in buckets in the spring, so I put Jackson to work placing grocery store potatoes in an apple box divider. If these don't sprout soon (they haven't so far), I'll go to the farmer's market and get some organic ones. (Many grocery store potatoes are sprayed to prevent the eyes from sprouting in the produce drawer.)

Scooping! Jackson found the measuring cup in the dishwasher (he loves "helping" with the dishwasher) and wanted to do "scooping scooping!" so I dug some coarse salt out of the high cupboard and let him do scooping from one dish to the other. He had fun pushing the salt around and scooping it to many far reaches of the house, hee. (The proper Montessorians don't allow such chaos, but he's still so little, who cares?) I think I've got it all cleaned up now (we'll see) and I used the excess as an ad hoc Bermuda-grass-killer for some cracks in the driveway. Next time it rains it should soak into the soil around the weed roots and hopefully both kill the roots and prevent further growth.

 Not pictured: I've also been getting out the mortar and pestle and trying to get him to grind egg shells for me. So far that seems beyond both his strength and his attention span, but he does help take the shells out of the carton and break them down a bit with his hands, which seems like a great first step!