Outdoor Painting

Call me a bad artsy mom, but a few days ago I realized Ellie had never painted before. She's used water on chalkboards, dot paints, done water paint books, but never actually used paint and a brush on paper. Eeek. We had to remedy this, so I took her easel outside and strapped a smock on over her beloved horsie shirt and she went to town. She only tried to paint me once :)

P & O

The past two weeks we did our best to cover P & O in the alphabet. I made lesson plans and we were up in the playroom either in the morning or afternoon completing whatever tasks I dreamed up. Ellie has had a lot of fun, but she hasn't shown much interest in the recent letter O.

She made muffins, did all sorts of crafts, made a purse, did dot painting, played with her new ABC beanbags... and a lot more that I can't remember right now (because I'm finishing this post a week late!).

Currently, I have decided that Ellie isn't very interested in the alphabet, rather she's interested in animals, colors, and concepts (like wet vs. dry). Plus, Dan came home a few days ago and told me that a developmental specialist was telling them (at work) that at Ellie's age ABC's and 123's are strictly memorization. What I need to focus on is comprehension, such as Ellie being able to tell me the difference between colors. Things she's actually learning and interested in learning. So I have decided to do more research and make some animal activities for her to do and ditch the alphabet for now. Maybe I'll try it again in a few months, or wait until she's 3 like Montessori recommends. Who knows!

This Weeks Activities - B

Peanut butter "kisses" from one of my favorite kid cookbooks given to me by my friend Elizabeth.

Who cares if the knife is upside down??

Cleaning up from muffin-making and peanut-butter-kiss-making.

See my sad little herbs grown from seeds in the oval pot? I started them too late.

bean counter...

Just some of the stuff Ellie produced this week. I'm putting it all in a binder so she can look at all of her handiwork.

I wanted to make Ellie some sort of sandbox to play in outside and Dan suggested (since he had an almost full 25lb bag of feed corn) I make her a corn box. So I did.

It was actually a little cool this week, which was a nice change from the humid Louisiana-ish weather we'd been experiencing last week.

This week I actually made a "lesson plan" for the week and was able to stick to it fairly well. The first letter we're focusing on is B, so everything centered around the letter B. [Side note: Ellie actually already knows several letters, but I decided to focus on one per week, that way she really learns about it and isn't just regurgitating information]. I never realized how many words start with the letter B! There was no shortage of examples to use this week. This weekend, we went up into her playroom/schoolroom and showed Dan all the stuff she worked on, and she walked around rattling off everything she had learned. She showed Dan the balloons, bean pouring, books, b artwork on the wall... and probably more that I can't recall because it's late and I'm tired.

Other fun stuff we did this week:
Made peanut butter kisses, made muffins, practiced cutting, washed dishes, watered the plants, played with corn, played on the swingset, rode the tryke, took care of all the baby dolls, harassed Levi, picked out most of her own clothes (and requested ponytails to go along with it), went swimming, ate at Chick Fil A, watched Finding Nemo (Memo, as Ellie says), and worked on potty training (while wearing panties) for 2 days before I decided to try again next week.

Whew! We've had a great week!

Hey you Montessori Moms...

The author of this blog is a Montessori teacher or assistant (I'm not really sure, I haven't been following it very long). She posted a link to flickr of her classroom and all the activities in it. It's an infant/toddler classroom and she has some really interesting things. Check it out if you have time!

http://thesecretofchildhood.blogspot.com/2009/06/montessori-infant-toddler-program.html?showComment=1245979117363#c246229311191220238

Current Activities

We've had a busy past few weeks and have been getting back in the swing of our life here in the Raz household. Ellie has been doing lots of her Montessori activities lately. It sometimes seems like anything is a Montessori activity... but it all requires a little planning and preparation (sometimes something I'm not very good at).

Ellie has been cutting, gluing, cookie-cutting wonder dough, button sorting, sipping tea, and cooking! She's learning her favorite colors right now which are blue, pink, and purple. I decided to teach her what she was gravitated towards (as opposed to the primary red, blue, and yellow) first. That's where the flowers come in. I have several seed catalogs laying around and Ellie had fun "directing" me which flowers were pink, blue, or purple to cut them out. Then she cut each and every piece before gluing them to the appropriate color page. Green, yellow, and white are next on the list.

The buttons were a big hit. I was reading through a Montessori book and the author made the point that here in the US, people are overly concerned about children choking on small objects. In turn, this postpones the necessary dexterity that they learn from exploring small objects. Of course, all of this is to be under strict supervision by... ME. Dan actually came in when she was playing with buttons, so there were two of us watching. Not once did she try to eat them.

Tea time is always a hit in this house. Ellie has perfected pouring the tea (er, water) and has now moved on to delivering it to whoever is in the next room. This particular day it was Dan. He got lots of tea (as did the floor).

And lastly she is quite the pot-stirrer. She helped me make Minestrone and after that experience, any time she heads over to her little kitchen to cook, she says she's making "soup."

I think that's all she's been up to lately!
E 23 mo