An Introduction to Magnetic

I put this together for my two year old daughter because she was very interested in her older sister's sorting magnetic and nonmagnetic lesson. All of the objects in the ice tray are magnetic. Because this lesson has small parts I always observe my daughter when she uses it. When I introduced it, I held the magnet by the loop over the object that was farthest to the left (always demonstrating left to right). Once the object was picked up by the magnet I pulled it off and set it on the tray. My daughter watched me do three of these and then she used it.




Having each object in it's own compartment reinforces the one-to-one math skill which will later help for counting.




As you can tell from the picture she thinks this is so much fun.

Easy Children's Craft Gift Idea

This bookmark was part of a package sent to us from Grandma just the other day. When I saw the bookmark I thought it was so cute and would be such an easy thing for children to make and give as a gift.



It is made from the craft foam material that comes in sheets. Two pieces of sticky magnetic tape hold it closed on the page of a book.



The foam has been decorated with a stamp and some glitter had been added. I'm thinking we will find seasonal stamps and maybe an "I love you"stamp to use. We will definitely be making some of these for our gift giving.

Montessori Question: Activities for Toddlers

I'm planning to use Montessori ideas/methods with my son when he is born in a couple of months (I know I'm an early planner). But the biggest question is how many activities do you leave out for the child to use (I'm thinking for a 18-24 month old)? How often do you rotate activities? For Montessori at home do you set certain times of the day for learning or just leave the activities accessible for whenever the child is interested?

Before being introduced to Montessori, I worked as a preschool teacher in a typical childcare setting. The co-teacher that was hired to work with me came from a Montessori school. (My introduction to Montessori) After she had spent the first day in our room we had a chance to talk. One of the first things she wanted to discuss was the shelves. Like most preschools, we had large quantities of toys and manipulatives. The shelves were full and many items were contained in large laundry sized baskets or in nothing at all and stacked on the shelves. My co-worker asked how I felt about removing half of the objects from the shelves(!) At first I couldn't see why, but then she explained. "Just because the blocks come in a package containing 150 pieces, doesn't mean you need to put them all out." She pointed out that large quantities of anything can be overwhelming in many ways. Visually, it can be overwhelming and overstimulating to see cluttered, stuffed shelves. Children get confused as to where objects go and can get overwhelmed looking at the amount that needs to be cleaned up afterwards. I questioned what about children who want the same thing at the same time? She answered, they learn patience and learn to take turns. As it turned out, removing the abundance from the shelves proved positive and the children never lacked toys and manipulatives. We often rotated the toys every 4-6 weeks because we had more this way.

The reason I share this experience is because having too much is a common mistake. When setting up an environment for a child, we want it to be as inviting as possible. In creating this environment, less can be more. Starting out 2 objects per shelf allows a very young child to return objects to their spot easily. Low shelving is important and a rule of thumb is the smallest child should be able to easily reach the top shelf. In our home, for a long time we used the inexpensive shoe shelves for my daughter because they are low, inexpensive and can be used later for holding closet items. I had out about 4 activities for her to choose from on the shelves and after I saw her interest in it diminish, I exchanged it for something else. We had these activities on the shoe shelf near the kitchen because at least one of the activities usually involved water. In other rooms we also had blocks, puzzles, books, dolls, and other play based activities.

Some parts of Montessori work should be accessible at all times. This includes practical life clean-up materials, care of self items like clothing, hairbrush, facecloths, and food preparation activities (pouring water or spreading peanut butter on crackers type activities). How you set up the environment is dependent on what works for you and will most likely change as your child matures. I had found that at about 20 months, I wanted to set up more activities and have a more structured time and space, so I created a spot in our Montessori room for my youngest daughter too. She doesn't use the area everyday, usually at least three days a week, and she loves it. For me, I prefer to have Montessori time and play time separate but incorporate things like practical life into our daily routine.


Here is my youngest daughter's corner in our Montessori room. (This corner used to be for our treadmill, if you notice the inspirational woods mural.) As you can see I attached two low shelves to the walls and have about 4 activities to a shelf. The activities will usually occupy her for an hour, which is typical "Montessori" time for her.

Baric Tablets

The Montessori baric tablets help a child learn to discriminate slight differences of weight. The lightest colored wood tablets are the lightest, the medium wood color tablets are the middle weight and the darkest wood tablets are the heaviest in weight. I just introduced this lesson when my daughter turned 4.

Although I have read variations of this lesson, this is how I was instructed to present: The first lesson with the tablets is without the blindfold and using only the lightest and the heaviest tablets. The adult sits across from the child and demonstrates how to hold her arms up, elbows bent and palms out, fingertips slightly bent. The adult places one of the lightest tablets on the child's fingertips and says, "this is light." The adult places one of the heaviest tablets on the other fingertips and says, "this is heavy." Varying the light and heavy order, the adult continues with all the tablets. Next, the adult places a light and heavy tablet simultaneously on the child's fingertips, pauses, and says "show me heavy" "show me light" (At this time, if the child is not able to give the correct response the adult should not continue but smile and thank the child for the lesson and try again at a later date.) If the correct response is given the adult continues for the remaining tablets and the child makes a stack of heavy and of light tablets. The child can check his/her correctness visually because of the different tones of wood. This concludes the first lesson.


After the child is familiar with the activity, a blindfold can be added. The child can then use the two sets again, making a heavy and light pile. After using these two sets successfully, the middle weight can be introduced. This is done using light and medium and later medium and heavy. Lastly, the child can work with all three sets sorting into three piles.

A parent could make a similar activity at home using available objects to introduce heavy and light to their child. Although a homemade lesson might not be as controlled as using the Montessori tablets, heavy and light could be introduced with a variety of objects (rocks and feathers, balls of clay, I even thought of making my own with bean bags) and would accomplish the goal of discriminating different weights and heightening the child's awareness of weights in the environment.

Discovering Turkeys

Lately we have seen wild turkey out in the neighborhood fields on a regular basis. I found some turkey information from Enchanted Learning and used that and some clip art to create a turkey information paper- turkey tracks, what turkey eat, body parts, and turkey nests. I learned a few facts about turkeys myself, including the fact that they sleep in the trees to stay out of reach from predators, turkeys have better eye sight than humans, and wild turkeys average only a 4 year lifespan.






I also thought it would be fun for us to make a turkey. We started with styrofoam shapes and because they were white we painted them dark.



We looked at the turkey fact sheet before going out for a walk to see what shapes of things we might need. We looked for things that could be used for eyes, beak, legs, and feathers.


After the walk and once the paint had dried we stuck in feathers I had purchased from the store. I used the glue gun to glue on some leaves. We had found stems and dried flowers for the eyes, beak and legs. I used clay for feet so the turkey could stand.


This is definitely a wild turkey! He looks a little crazy, but we had a good time putting it together!

Montessori Question: Montessori For Toddlers

Question: I'm exploring whether to do Montessori/Waldorf type home education with my 18-month old. I'm wondering when is a good age to start, and what materials/activities would be appropriate. Also, if you have some easy-to-use resources you could recommend, they would be much appreciated.

The traditional Montessori materials are typically introduced between ages of 2 and 1/2 to 3 years. There are some Montessori materials available for younger children but they can be expensive. In starting with my own children, I preferred simple activities like large pegs, knob puzzles, stacking rings and blocks. (Check my toddler posts for more activities). Anyone can start Montessori with the birth of the child, by setting up the child's environment in a way that promotes independence. Montessori environments are simple, attractive, purposeful, and accessible to the child. The goals for Montessori at the toddler age are simple but important. One goal I had when introducing activities to my daughter was to introduce the "work cycle." This means she finds an activity on the shelf, takes it out and uses it, and cleans it up and returns it to the shelf. Simple, but important. She does not always clean it up before moving on and in this case, I clean it up to model for her. Eventually, she will clean up everytime. Another goal is to increase the length of concentration and attention. If she is interested and focused on an activity "Montessori" or not, she is learning to concentrate and focus her attention. When she starts working with the traditional materials she will be even more ready because she has learned to focus and concentrate.


Of course, everyone should read at least one book written by Dr. Montessori to understand her philosophy of education and views on young children. There are also a number of books written more recently which may help. A parent thinking about purchasing and using the Montessori materials would find Basic Montessori For Under Fives by David Gettman useful. Many people recommend How to Raise an Amazing Child the Montessori Way, Montessori Play and Learn 2-6, and Teaching Montessori in the Home. (I haven't read these but maybe readers can comment about them.)

The company For Small Hands and the company Little Red Robin have materials for the younger age group. I have found that by looking through catalogs like these I get ideas for activities that I can make at home without having to buy too much.

My daughter turned 2 last month. Here are some pictures of activities she enjoys.


Making the Tower. These are different sizes, but before this stage, I had a basket with ten equal sized cube blocks to practice stacking.



Filling up the cups of the balance scale with a variety of small objects. She is past the "random dumping things" phase and will pour or take them out carefully. If you don't have a scale, just use containers of different sizes on a table (use a tray or tub underneath). They love grabbing handfuls and filling things, and it is a great sensorial experience.


Setting the table using the control mats. (She invites me to sit and we pretend to eat.)


Using three of the nesting dolls (using all would be too confusing).



Using the mystery bag and matching objects to cards.

Classifying Animals

Before starting to classify animals we have worked on classifying Living and Non-Living and Animals and Plants. We recently began with Birds and Rodents. I chose these two because they are visually pretty easy to classify. I found some great nature clip art photography from NaturePhoto-cz.com (link on the side of blog and only to be used for educational purposes). To make the sorting a little more interesting we turned them all over and one at a time chose one and classified it bird or rodent. I added these cards and a little info about rodents and birds to my box.net folder. They can be downloaded at the side of the blog under Wonder Years Downloads. I will add more as we go.