A Montessori Morning

We've been spending so much time playing on the beach in the mornings this week that we've had very little time to do our Montessori work (we sing our circle time songs while playing on the beach on the mornings that we skip circle time). Since we got an early start Thursday morning, we were able to have "school" for about 45 minutes after coming in from 2 hours on the beach. O really enjoyed her work!

Matching balloon textures.


 




Hammering golf tees. She always chooses this activity.


 




Completing the What doesn't belong? cards.


 

Matching triangles







She chose several other activities, and we took turns doing several things. When it was my turn, she ran to get her wooden camera so she could take a picture of me :)

Wool Felt Baby Shoes

I recently made this pair of shoes for Little Kicker using a pattern from this book. They aren't perfect, but I'm happy with the end result, and I can't wait to make more. I just need to order more wool felt!

Collecting a Rainbow of Nature's Colors

This activity was on many, many blogs last summer, and I've been wanting to do it ever since! I painted a cardboard egg carton with different colors of the rainbow. O and I went on a nature walk/scavenger hunt to find items of various colors to match the colors in her box. We had a great time, and I'm sure this will be a summer long activity :)

Have You Seen My Duckling?

Our book of the week is Have You Seen My Duckling? by Nancy Tafuri. We've enjoyed reading the book along with several other "duck" books and discussing the stories. We've done several simple things for story stretchers from this book. We learned the Spanish word for duck and the sign for duck, and we sang "5 Little Ducks Went out to Play." O matched miniature plastic insects to the insects in the book as we read the book.
We went outside to see the ducks. We didn't see any ducks, but O had fun trying to catch minnows. We also played "Have you seen my duckling?" O was the duckling, and I pretended like I couldn't see her (don't worry mom. She was NEVER out of my sight!), and I asked everything around me "Have you seen my duckling"? This game was a big hit, and we've played it several times since then. O knows, of course, that she is never to be out of our sight while playing in or near the water. We have a very strict rule that we never play hide and seek outside, and she is always amazed when she sees children in books playing hide and seek outside since that is the ultimate in naughty/dangerous behavior :)


 
We took bread out to feed the ducks, but ended up feeding the minnows instead. The minnows were excited. We also practiced being very still. If you stay very still in the water, the minnows will nibble your toes!

O's favorite story stretcher was this pond/lake habitat that we made using beach sand and water. I gave her several ducks, plastic insects, and people to play with, and she was engrossed in this activity for quite a while.

 

Making Butterfly Prints

The idea for this activity came from A Bit of This and That.

To make the butterfly prints, O squeezed paint on the paper, folded it in half, smooshed it, and opened it to see the butterfly. O LOVED this activity! I loved hearing her explain exactly how she did it to Elliott when he got home from work :)




Here is her favorite butterfly.




We used double sided tape to attach it to a toilet paper roll to make a butterfly that could fly around the room :)


 

Nostalgia

My sister and I loved our Holly Hobbie nightgowns so much when we were little that our mom bought an extra nightgown for each of us. She put them away in the closet to give to us at a later date. She didn't realize at the time that it would be about 28 years before she thought about the nightgowns again! Thank goodness we both have little girls who also love the nightgowns! O was thrilled with her very old "new" nightgown!

Monoprinting

This fun and easy painting activity came from The Artful Parent.

First we used a mini roller to paint an acrylic frame. O enjoyed rolling the paint on at first, but eventually I was the paint roller for all of the artwork :)




Then she drew her design with a q tip. When she was finished drawing, we placed a piece of white cardstock over the design, pressed evenly, and then took the paper off the frame to admire her art :)




She decided to mix things up a little and dip the q tip into the paint to paint on the frame.




Surprisingly, blue was the last color she chose. You can see a few of her finished masterpieces in the background of this picture.




Here's one of her finished masterpieces. I'm not sure why the yellow turned out so splotchy. Maybe we should have used more paint on the frame...

Little Cooker

 
Guh-guh told O they could cook anything she wanted for lunch on Tuesday, and she chose to cook macaronni and cheese. I was shocked since we haven't even eaten macaronni and cheese since Thanksgiving. Although, maybe that's why she chose it...

Independent Artwork

O spends A LOT of time at her art shelf! She loves it, and I love that she is getting more and more creative everyday. She recently (within the last 2 weeks) started drawing faces. She calls them "a people." Here are a few of her recent creations :)

She said this is the bald headed man that she saw at the grocery store. He can't hear (he doesn't have any ears), he ate too much candy so he has lots of cavities and fillings, and he's a little grumpy :)




She made this collage while my mom and I were organizing. She said 2 girls are playing in the grass, 2 girls are swimming in the lake, and 3 girls are playing in the sand.





She glued the whole sheet of stickers to this collage. I asked if she wanted to take them off and place them on the paper, but she was not interested. I guess I should know not to question an artist's creative spirit :)


 




Another collage...she loves cutting pictures out of magazines, especially Pottery Barn Kids catalogs.




I was not very happy when I saw that she had cut up the suction cup thingy. She looked at like I was crazy when I questioned her about it and said "but mama I needed it for the man's eyes." Well, what was I thinking! She agreed to only cut things after asking. It's partly my fault since I told her she could take the suction cup thing to her art shelf. I just had no idea she'd use it in her art. I should've know better...