Walking on Water and Mentioning the Unmentionables!

Today we started out by extending A.'s scissor cutting activity(Motor activity,S ensory). I added thicker pieces of paper, thin plastic squares, stiff ribbon, raffia and some yarn. When I was putting it all together I tested out all of the materials by attempting to cut them with her scissors myself. I tried to emulate what I thought her skill and technique would be like and found all of the objects to be cut quite easily. A. had a different experience however! She was getting very frustrated and started to tilt her scissors to the side and rip everything apart. The stiff ribbon , thick paper and raffia seemed to have just the right balance of being challenging but not to the point of frustration. Yarn and plastic were verging on tantrum level frustration so those will be saved for future use! Lesson learned: start off easier than you think they may be ready for because you can always increase the challenge. Now I may have alienated her from cutting with her scissors for a while because I made it too challenging. ;0(

I remembered that A. had lids with built in stamps from a paint set that had long ago been used up and discarded. (Sensory, Motor) We pulled them out and she created for a while. I watered down some paint and poured it into a sponge set on a plate. She learned to gently press the stamp onto the sponge to pick up a bit of paint and then leave her mark. Not bad for a first try. Next session I think I'll make two different colored sponge pads for a more dramatic effect!

Inspired by Jen at Montessori Beginnings, I made up A. a fishing hole. (Motor) So Cute! It consists of:

A plastic tablecloth cut out in a pond shape, sea creature finger puppets with paperclips slipped onto them, A dollar store fishing rod with a magnet "hook", Basket for the creatures, Tray

She caught them all in no time, probably helped immensely that she can walk on water!

I attempted to extend A.'s Sorting By Category activity (Cognitive) by adding another category. She now has pompoms, balls and clothespins. Well that was done in about 15 seconds so I think I'll either have to add about 3 more categories for a total of 6 or start doing a category matching activity such as match the baby animal to the mommy animal. It was interesting to see A.'s developing Order of Mind. She chose to pick out one category and put it in a bowl and then move on to the next category and the next after that. I wonder if this means she will start to finish one type of food on her plate and then eat the next one in succession. I myself like to sample a bit her and a bit there!

A couple of months ago I introduced lacing beads to A. (Motor)She seemed interested but grew frustrated easily. I think part of the problem is that I neglected to reintroduce it enough times. So I've backtracked to using a chopstick instead of the lace as suggested by my inspirational friend Jen. It was a great hit. Soon We'll get back to the laces and if I do it right I'll be hearing "A. did it!" instead of "It's too hard, it's too hard!!!" accompanied by wildly flapping arms.

This is not a practical life activity as endorsed my Maria Montessori! When I state that I'm going to go get dressed A. likes to race ahead and pull out my "unmentionables" and give them to me to put on. Today I neglected to tell her I was going to get dressed and she came in while I was half done. Not seeing how she could help, she proceeded to put on most of my underwear. She managed to get one on correctly and the rest ended up on her hips.

To understand the amount of underwear she managed to get on (18 to be exact) check out the wad on her backside in the mirror! My underwear never looked so cute. I also just noticed that it looks like her feet are disappearing into the carpet! wooooaaaahhhh.....