In-Home Hatching: Baby Robins!

A little 4 year old somebody in our house just LOOOOVES birds. Well, we all do around here but I mean she LOOOOVES them! She has two of those great Audubon singing plush birds (Male Robin and Eastern Bluebird) She also received a needle felted female bluebird from Santa (with a little help from mom) for leaving him such healthy treats to fortify him on his epic Christmas Eve journey. She left him blueberries and almond milk! She just loves to play "Birdies", finding new types of nests for them and now since those little fuzzy Easter chicks appeared in stores, the birds can be Mommies and Daddies. I was inspired to give her some robin babies as the Plush Robin has been father to baby chicks for quite some time. He seems perfectly paternal in his adoption of chickens but well....

First Hatchling

And Then There Were Two...

So Ugly They're Cute!

Feed Me, Feed Me!

Now to make a Female Robin. Over at our house it's not a question of which came first, the chick or the egg, its- which came first, the babies or the mommy. Babies came first due to lack of time in making a mommy bird. A. doesn't mind, the daddy Robin is a great Daddy just like her own!

A Froggy Family Birthday

Our sweet little A-Girl is 4! We had a wonderful family birthday with all of the Grandma's and Grandpa's and Great Grandma's. We now have two new friends at home who live in the Montessori classroom area and have become the object of much study! Grandma and Grandpa T purchased two African Dwarf Frogs (Hymenochirus Curtipes) at a great Educational/Toy store in Vernon BC called Vernon Teach and Learn.

Their classroom habitat

They live in harmony with Living Gravel TM (a bacteria infused gravel) and a Lucky Bamboo Plant. Essentially, the unique “Living Gravel” is acting as the natural filter for the water, filtering the dangerous ammonia left from waste material and converting it into nutrients for the aquatic plant. The plant feeds off of those nutrients and converts them into nutrients for the water and the wildlife. The wildlife then converts those nutrients into nutrients (waste material) for the gravel. It is a balanced ecosystem environment that is constantly cleaning and conditioning the water. Not only can A. learn about aquatic frogs but when she starts learning about ecosystems this habitat will be a simple example for her to understand. She can also learn about aquatic plants and bacteria! It's a 4 in one learning tool and the frogs are so cute too!

I call them Tiny and Mini but according to A. they don't have names!

Physical Science and Zoology shelf.

The top two shelves are dedicated to learning about our new friends.

Frog Life Cycle. The images are from Montessorimom.com's frog lifecycle cards

Frog Matching from Montessori Print Shop's free downloads

Laying out the Life Cycle with cards and little froggy miniatures

Frog Coloring Page courtesy of www.first-school.ws

Beautiful Bull Frog!

I long to find some frog eggs that we can nurture to frog maturity and then let go back in the wilderness. I was very fortunate to be able to experience that when I was young and I'll never forget taking care of those little guys from egg to adult frog! We've heard of a park fairly nearby that has an explosion of frogs every year. So many that there are signs posted telling cars to slow down or they may skid off of the road due to the thousands of car tire frogicides. Maybe we can save some from that fate. Will keep you posted!

First Day Back to Montessori Home-School

The anticipation, trepidation and anxiety (all on my part!) are mostly over with regards to restarting A-girl in her very own home Montessori environment. After a 2 year hiatus where she went to a wonderful Montessori Preschool called A Loving Family Montessori here in British Columbia, our move to a new location in the province has meant that I am her new/again directress. Just after the first work period here today I'm realizing how out of touch I've become with A.'s development and also how ignorant I am about an almost 4 year old's cognitive abilities. I have the master activity sheet from her old school which tracked which activities she was introduced to, and whether she achieved mastery or not with each one but still I was expecting her to be able to do things that she cannot yet accomplish just because of how she interacts with me and how smart I perceive her to be. Silly me!

Today has been a lesson for me in how my daughter perceives some aspects of the world and how the Montessori materials all mesh together to form the connections in the brain to allow them to recognize patterns and symbols in our world.

She was so ready to soak up all that she could. I pointed to and named each activity that she could choose to do and she ended up choosing each one for a total of 12 and still asked for more!

Circle Patterns:

using knobless cylinder patterns A. attempted to duplicate the pattern with the colored circles we have (don't know what they are called and can't find them anywhere on the net. We got them from A.'s former school which closed a sister school and had a lot of materials to sell. We got a SUPER deal and these unknown circles were a part of the package.) This was the first activity of the day which proved to me that I need to prepare the activities more thoroughly and start with presenting the easier versions first to see just where A. is in her abilities. I thought presenting two colors at a time to place in a large to smallest sequence would be easy but I was very wrong. Lesson learned for me!

Punching out a traced triangle from the Geometric Demonstration Tray (Persistence is the key! We have some work to do on that)

Close-up of punching (that's a lot of holes!)

Flower shaped Sewing Card

Rough and Smooth Boards

Spring Themed Memory Game

Visual Discrimination Cards (Can you find the frowning face with only one eye open?)

Knobbed Cylinder Blocks #1 and #3

Numeral Cards and Counters

Tracing some Sandpaper Letters

Tracing Sandpaper Numerals

Matching Sandpaper Numerals to the Moveable Numbers

AAAAhhhhhh, having a little quiet reading time after a hard day's work!

Madly Making Materials- Teen and Tens boards

These were so satisfying to make. From sanding the wood to gluing the wooden divider strips to the boards and especially applying the non-toxic wood polish.

Some of the supplies which include:

*(2) 15.25" x 5" from 1/8" birch ply boards

*(2) 19.00" x 5" from 1/8" birch ply boards

*(22) 5" long 11/16" oak trim strips

*(18) 2.5"x 3" from 1/8" birch ply boards * weldbond glue

* 120 grit sandpaper

* green Sharpie permanent marker pen

* beeswax polish

For assembly, cut wood to size, then measure out spacing of the oak spacers and glue in place. Make sure to test all of the 18 wooden numeral cards in between each slot on the boards for a good fit. I made the mistake of using only a few of the cards as spacers to position the wood divider strips instead of measuring with a ruler and then when the boards were dry I found that some of the cards didn't fit in between the slots as they were all not the exact same size. I then had to sand some of the numeral cards down to fit. Next I used a sharpie marker to draw numerals on the boards and cards. This was my quick and easy method which I would not recommend if you have the time to paint on the numerals. The marker bled a bit beyond where I wanted it to be by running up the grain in the wood. I left the marker to dry for 12 hours and then the last step was to apply the wood polish. Just like when polishing shoes etc. I just smeared on the polish and rubbed it in with a rag and then buffed with a dry cloth. The marker I used was an old one that didn't have a lot of wet ink oomph so (as I later found out in making the small and large numeral cards when I used new markers) the ink didn't smear when I applied the wood polish.

YUM. beeswax.

Smells so divine! For a wonderful child friendly wood polish melt 1 part wax with 2 parts mineral oil in a double boiler, pour into glass jar and let solidify.

Almost finished!

You can see the difference in color between the polished pieces and the unpolished pieces. Love the golden glow and they smell good enough to eat!

Fully Friends and Family Fun Day.

I needed a well deserved break from spending all of my waking hours making Montessori materials, setting up the school area and studying the presentations. So A-girl and I spent some quality time in the kitchen whipping up some healthy raw treats.

First we made raw lemon shortbread cookies and being the Montessori mom that I am I couldn't resist offering the numeral cookie cutters for use. I'd ask A. to find certain numerals and she didn't balk at doing this since it was incorporated into a fun activity.

We'll be eating numerals in no time!

(well actually they have to dehydrate for 8 hours!)

A. put some oat grain in our super duper blender to grind into flour. That went into a big bowl and then she put some almonds into the blender to grind... and that went into the bowl. Then some coconut flour, some melted coconut butter, fresh lemon juice and some agave syrup. Little hands mixed well and tasted too many times! I kneaded the dough and then we got rolling.

There were some major motor skills involved

in trying to roll out the slightly tough dough.

Cutting out the numerals.

Last step, put on the dehydrator trays

and into the dehydrator to crisp up until tomorrow.

Now I will inevitably hear "when will they be done Mommy?" every hour or so until bedtime. And I will say then "they will be done in the morning and you can have some at breakfast time!" "Yayyyyyyy!" The great thing is we can have cookies for breakfast because they're so healthy!

We also whipped up some raw "cheez-its" (vegan but taste amazingly like cheddar cheese!) and raw onion bread. (this one takes two long days of waiting for it to dehydrate until you can savor that oniony flavor!) Do we learn patience around here? Yes!