Living
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Our Montessori Space
After our successful Montessori activites I was inspired to have ‘Montessori shelves’. Our house is small so space is at a premium. Looking around I found a place under the entertainment unit where I could store activities together. First though I needed to pull everything out that was crammed under there. Of course this then created a problem of where to place the games and puzzles removed from the unit. After thinking about it I found a shelf in the linen cupboard that could fit in some of the games if rearranged. Some games were sat on top of a bookcase. Here is my cupboard containing all the manipulatives and…
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Shell Nomenclature
Whilst browsing in the op shop last week I discovered a couple of bags of shells for 50c. I had been debating whether to set up this activity or not after seeing shell nomenclature ‘in action’ on Emily’s blog. I wasn’t too sure if the children would be keen or not. When I found the shells I decided I had found our next activity. With some help from my favourite source of information, my friends at 4Real, I found shell nomenclature cards to print. The children were most interested waiting to see what I was doing. After printing out the cards I laminated them, cut them up and then set…
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Fabric Cards
We’re on a real Montessori roll here in our ‘Home Among the Gum Trees’. On the weekend I started making fabric cards, I was inspired by Emily over at Sacred Heart of Jesus Academy it seemed like a do-able kind of activity to make. I looked around for some card to use as backing and found these index cards they had been sitting in Prince Charming’s shed of all places and he had been asking me to find a use for them, so I did. I then searched the house for different kinds of fabric and came up with eight different kinds, just a perfect number giving the girls a…
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Colour Sorting Re-visited
A few days ago I set up our first Montessori activity to discover that it needed to be more controlled, today we re-visited the activity, this time I used marbles from a board game This time the older children came upon the activity and declared that they must also have a turn
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What we saw when fencing!
Sunday saw us walking the boundary of our property checking for breaks. The cattle adjisted here were looking rather thin and needed more feed. We found a few trees over the fence which then led to some necessary repair work being carried out. The most exciting moment of the afternoon came when we discovered an echidna down a hole I know these are not the best photos as the echidna was rather shy. Further on Carpenter was pretty excited to make a discovery Searching up a log he found an old abandoned wild bees’ honeycomb. He was very careful not to encounter anything dangerous. Best of all the cattle are…
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Our First Montessori Activity
I have been spending alot of time lately at 4 Real reading, learning and discussing more about Maria Montessori’s teachings. There is so much to learn and so much to organise. However I decided if I waited till I had everything just perfect I would never be able to start. Last Friday Jelly Bean and I went op shopping for a couple of items. She was most excited with the baskets and tongs that we found. She came home all eager to use ‘her presents’. So although I wasn’t ready, not really, as I had intended to read the presentations properly first I set her up with her first activity.…
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Re-visiting Montessori
Many years ago….. it does seem like that at times… when my oldest daughter was a pre-schooler I began immersing myself in Maria Montessori’s philosophy. I read a great many books written by and about Maria Montessori’s ideas and ways to implement these in my home. During that time I made a few great homemade Montessori materials, the sand paper letters that Prince Charming and I made back then are still going strong today. As the years got busy and space was at a premimum I found we didn’t have Montessori shelves set up as such. However the ideas gleaned from those earlier years were never lost. I was always…
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Swimming Carnival
Yesterday we participated in our first ever swimming carnival. It was a homeschool carnival:) We had a lovely day and it was great to see all the children get in and ‘have a go’.This term and last our children have been attending swimming lessons and squad. Twice weekly the older two would swim up to four kilometres and the next three have been working hard at improving their strokes. So they were feeling confident at trying the various strokes.Butterfly, breastroke, backstroke, freestyle, medley and 400metres. They were very successful and we were most surprised to travel home with age championship trophies for the oldest four and a second place age…
