What is your favorite Montessori material?

I'm thinking of buying a few more Montessori items, and I'm wondering what other mamas consider as "must haves." We love the knobbed cylinders, but O is a little young for a lot of the other things I've bought. I want to have sandpaper letters, but I can't decide whether to buy them or make them. I think I can make them fairly easily, but I don't know where to find the board to put them on. I also want the red rods, and I know they would be easy to make but I'm not sure if it would be cost effective to make them since I can buy them for $25. Any input is greatly appreciated!

Loving the Thrift Store

I bought 8 books, 1 shirt, 1 dress type outfit (both for O), and a basket for $3.72! Yay for thrift stores! I also dropped off a bag of stuff we don't need. I'm going to try to take a bag of stuff to donate each week. That way I won't feel so bad about buying things.

More Matching

Are you tired of reading matching posts yet? This is the last one for a while, I promise! I bought this set of Go Fish cards for O to match since its animal mamas and babies. O LOVES to label everything as mama and baby. She even calls our big tomato plant mama and the little one baby. She really loves these cards and was totally focused (despite the upside down sunglasses) on the activity. She looked closely at each card before matching it. After she finished she said "mama, baby, milk" and put the 2 cards together face to face so the baby could nurse. Then she swung them back and forth and said "rock, rock." She such a nurturer!

I Spy Matching Game

I bought this I Spy Preschool Game for my 3 year old niece for Christmas, and she really enjoyed it for about a week. By then she had it memorized, and it no longer offered a challenge. Since O loves to match, I thought I'd try it with her. I suspected that she was too young to do the game since its for ages 3 to 6 years, but I decided that it wouldn't hurt to try. I put out 3 cards and handed her a matching card one at a time. The first time we did it she got all of them right, and I was very surprised. Today we did the game again, and she barely looked at the cards and she didn't match any of them correctly. She obviously wasn't into it. Then she decided that Niney (Tiny) wanted to match. She held Niney's hand and had her match the cards. Niney matched them all correctly! It was so funny. O LOVES Niney, and she goes with us everywhere!

Unplug Your Kids: Food

I'm a little late posting this I think, but the unplugged theme this week is food. We weren't very creative, but we had fun! We made peanut butter cookies while we were at my mom's house this weekend. O had fun learning how to make criss crosses on the cookies with a fork, and the cookies were delicious. It was a special treat for O since her mommy and daddy typically do not let her eat sweets.

Feeding O's Matching Obsession

Since O loves to match, I'm always looking for matching cards. This weekend I found Brainy Baby Wild Animal cards at Fred's for $1.50. I bought 2 sets so she could match them, and she's really enjoyed it. The cards are super sturdy, and I hope they'll last a while. I'm also going to try to find some small animal figurines for her to match to the cards.
I also bought these puzzle cards by School Zone. There are 3 cards that the child puts together to make a picture. I put the 1st 2 together and handed O the 3rd card for her to match. (she was sitting directly across from me, but moved to the side while we were working)

Playing the Harmonica

O loves to play the harmonica!

The Great Puppy Rescue and other Fun Stuff

Blogging and homeschool activities have been put on hold this week while we tried to tame and catch 8 puppies that have shown up in our yard. We think that the mama dog was abandoned by her owners before the puppies were born, and they have been living wild on our street since they were born. My siser and niece came to visit, and they were determined to see the elusive puppies, so we found them and started coaxing them over to us. They gradually lost some of their fear, and we caught 2 of them and sent them home with my sister. O and I spent hours on Friday talking softly and sweetly to them while shaking food bowls and gradually moving the food bowls closer to us. They wouldn't get closer than about 10 feet to us, but that was progress. Today Elliott managed to catch 4 more puppies, and he brought them to my sister's house (she has a fenced in yard, and we do not. She also has several friends who may be interested in adopting the puppies). O has gone from being scared to walk in the yard (she's afraid of the dogs and she's very afraid of stepping in "doggie boop") to shaking the food bowl while calling "doggie eat food!" We plan on spending most of the next 2 days hanging out in my sister's backyard trying to tame the dogs before going home on Monday or Tuesday.
While we waited on Elliott to bring the 4 dogs, we walked down to a children's festival near my sister's house. O was tempted to try out the jumping thing, but she decided not to at the last minute. There were too many wild children running around! O and my niece, Marg, enjoyed a snow cone with no flavoring! It was just plain ice, but they thought it was DELICIOUS!
We ended our day with a bike ride around the block. My dad planned on buying O a tricycle for her 2nd birthday, but when I told my sister that plan she said that we could just borrow Marg's tricycle since Marg has almost outgrown it. O was super excited, and I love the handlebars. Its great to be able to push her comfortably on the tricycle. We are going to have LOTS of fun with this tricycle. Thanks, Marg and Mem! (and thanks to Grandaddy for buying Marg this great tricycle for her birthday years ago!)

My Reader

I heard O reading to herself and this is what I found when I came into the room. Can you see what she is reading? Its Teaching Montessori in the Home by Elizabeth G. Hainstock. I guess she wanted to find out what we'll be working on next :)

Planting Seeds

After we finished making our terrarium, O and I planted seeds in our egg carton. We got the idea from here. Hopefully, we'll have some tiny basil and lavender sprouts in a few weeks!

O's Terrarium

1st we spooned the rocks into the bottom of the jar. Then we added a layer of ground charcoal. Next we added a layer of spaghum moss (sp).
The next step involves putting a layer of soil into the jar. We put to much! Oops!
O lost interest after we finished putting in the soil. She went to rearrange the herbs in our herb garden while I put the plants in the jar. Unfortunately, one of our plants was too tall :( She came back to help when it was time to water the plants. She was a little overenthusiastic, and the plants may die due to overwatering!
Here is our finished terrarium. O really liked putting the rocks, stick, and animals in the jar. Do you see the gorrilla hiding in the leaves and the lizard peeking out from under the log?

Terrarium Trays

I can't wait for O to wake up. We went shopping after storytime this morning and got everything we need to make a terrarium. I just finished setting up the trays, and we'll get to work after she wakes up from her nap. I'm very excited, and I think O will be excited, too.

Unplug Your Kids: Books

We've decided to start doing some of the Unplug your Kids Challenges, and this week was a great one to start with since the topic is books! We spend the vast majority of our time reading, and it is one of O's all time favorite activities. We typically read 20 to 30 books a day, but she somehow convinced my mom to read her over 100 books one day when she was babysitting. My poor mom could barely talk by the end of the day. We have books spread throughout our house on shelves and in bins. Our favorite place to read is the reading chair in the den. We love to snuggle up with a big stack of books.

I'm actually trying to stop my book buying addiction. I check out 8-10 books every week or so from the library, so I'm trying to cut down on the actual buying of books. Although I do still go to the thrift store weekly to check out the children's book selection. I've made a few homemade books for O, and I plan to make more like this one. O loves to look at scrapbooks and photo albums nightly, and she is learning the names of family and friends that we rarely see.

We go to storytime at the library tomorrow, and I can't wait to read some new books with O!

O's New Sleeping Bag

On Saturday O's Grandmother gave her this turtle sleeping bag that belonged to O's daddy when he was a little boy. It was made by his grandmother. O loves it (and I do, too!). In this picture, she is putting her babies "night, night."

O Loves to Paint!

I've been feeling guilty lately that it has been so long since O has painted, so today we had lots of painting fun! We tried a variation on painting with marbles using a golf ball. It worked well, and O embellished her painting with a few brush strokes, too. Then she tried printing circles and dots using a bottle top. After that she had a great time painting on her chalkboard easel with water. What a great afternoon!