Valentine's Day Sensory Box

Our snow dough hasn't seen much action since Christmas, so I decided to use it as our Valentine's Day sensory box.  I took out a few things and added in some Valentine's objects from the girls' Montessori shelves.  They LOVED it!!!



We had a lot of fun hiding and finding red treasures in the various containers.

Valentine's Day "Work"

I LOVE setting up Valentine's Day "work" for our girls' Montessori shelves.  They have been excited by all of the new additions!  Here's one simple work that E(2) has enjoyed...



She puts the toothpicks in the shaker.  She got a little frustrated that they leaned to the side, but she handled it well.




O(5) also enjoyed completing this work.  She calls this type of work a "relaxing work."




The Valentine's toothpicks are cupcake decorations that came with a pack of cupcake liners from Dollar General.

Matching Textures While Blindfolded

I recently brought out the tiny pillow matching activity that I made for O(5) a couple of years ago out for E(2).

E quickly matched the pillows, but wasn't interested in covering her eyes to do the activity.




However, O(5) was really excited to see this activity back on the shelf!  She immediately wrapped the playsilk around her head and matched the pillows.  It was too easy for her, but she still enjoyed it.



Her favorite thing was hiding the pillows when I had my eyes covered and was trying to match them!  Silly girl!

Dates with Mama & Daddy

I love the "Year of Dates" on Let's Explore!  Since we've been trying to have more one-on-one time with the girls, these "date" printables are perfect!

On New Year's Day we told the girls that they would be getting cards in the mail telling them about dates with mama, daddy, or both of us.  So far, they've had 3 movie dates with both of us (family movie night is SO much more exciting when they get a letter in the mail telling them about it), and one individual "date" each.

Here are the ideas for our dates:

watch a movie
go out for ice-cream (we did this after O(5)'s ballet practice...she's an inchworm in The Little Mermaid ballet!)
go shopping to pick out a small toy (this just happened by chance when we went to get groceries after getting ice-cream...neither O(5) nor I could resist the teeny, tiny half price teacup piglets)
go out to eat at a restaurant of your choice
go for a woods walk
go fishing
bake cookies (E(2) and daddy did this one today!)
drive daddy's remote control truck with him
go for a kayak ride
make a craft

Hopefully, we'll have at least one individual date per girl each month.  The girls have been thrilled to find the envelopes for their dates in their mailbox. There's always lots of squealing and excitement when they find mail in their mailbox :)

Ways To Play Fun Box

This year I decided to compile "10 Ways To Play" Fun Boxes for the girls since their "subscription" to their Monthly Fun Boxes were their favorite Christmas gift last year, and the box was the highlight of each month.  These great printouts from Let's Explore are making my compilation of fun boxes much easier this year and the focus is on doing more instead of getting random stuff that I gathered throughout each month.  
In their "10 Ways To Play in January" Fun Box the girls received the 10 Ways to Play handout, cotton balls and straws, and organic lollipops.  They were THRILLED!  We immediately played freeze dance and then listed words that rhymed with snow.  We've been collecting rain in a jar all month, and we'll do a couple more activities this weekend.  Thanks to Amy at Let's Explore for the idea and printouts!

"T" Week

E(2) had "T" Week a long time ago (November) , and I never posted about it.  Since I plan to make an ABC book for her using these alphabet posts, I'm trying to catch up and get everything on the blog!

 She recieved a tiger puppet craft kit, a T coloring page, and a growing turtle in her ABC fun pack.





She matched the tiger to her sandpaper "t."





Both girls love the letter stories in the Amazing Action Alphabet book.





We went exploring on a nearby island and noticed lots of tracks!





The girls especially loved the raccoon tracks since they look like "eeny weeny it's so teeny" baby handprints.





She played with the turkey felt board set. E dressed like a tiger.

We made a tiger puppet. 

Our Treasure Table

Our girls are collectors, and they always bring home pocketfuls of rocks, leaves, seeds, shells, etc when we go on walks.  I remembered that I had these old printing boxes in the garage, so we got them out to use as a treasure table.  E(2) especially loves arranging and re-arranging things on the treasure table!



The printer's box is sitting on a low table, so it is at the perfect height for both of the girls.

The Pink Tower

I finally bought a pink tower.  I've been thinking about it for years, but decided not to buy one since O(5) has one at school.  Then, since E(2) won't be going to Montessori Preschool until she is 4, I decided to go ahead and get one for her.  I'm so glad that I did, and I wish I'd bought it sooner (maybe 4 and a half years ago!).

I bought our pink tower from Amazon, and it came with an instruction booklet which lays out how to give the pink tower lesson.  That was helpful, so I gave the lesson to E(2).  She really just wanted to play pretend with the pink tower, so I related the different sized blocks to the different members of the Ingalls family...the biggest was Pa, then Ma, then Mary, then Laura, and so on.  This made all the difference, and she loved it!  I know that probably wasn't very "Montessori" of me, but it's what she loves, and it worked for us!








After building the pink tower vertically and horizontally, I let her just play and explore with the blocks.  She grabbed the instruction book and said "Let me see the designs!  I want to make designs!"  Unfortunately, there aren't any designs in the book, but she still loved looking at it.  I'm going to make some design cards for her soon.

Dinosaur Roar! and A Dinosaur Felt Board Activity

Dinosaur Roar! was one of E(2)'s favorite books during "D" week, so I was excited to find printable story props for this book on KizClub.com.



After printing out the dinosaurs, I cut them out and glued small pieces of sandpaper to the back.  The sandpaper works perfectly, and they stuck to our felt board.   Both girls LOVE playing with the dinosaurs.




After they played with them for a while, I read the book and we put the dinosaurs in order as I read.