Moving to Monte

well i am getting myself organised! Montessori starts now

I will be started to make and purchase materials and do my best to set up a good environment for Jordy. Hopefully once i have a range of materials on hand for him to select from i will not need to schedule activities. And once i have arranged the room for him we can start on some basic courtesies and the proper use of the material and tidying up etc.

a revelation

i have been providing Jordy with activities for him for play etc and today i set up a frame that he could decorate with bits and pieces.  And he enjoyed it and had fun but announced that he was finished in about 15min.

Then i gave him some pasta shapes and dried chick peas and various plastic containers, a glass jar and a small metal bowl and he is at the moment loving pouring them, shaking them, tipping them out and has been hard at work for some time.

Actually, now i can hear him cooking them and saying they are hot but now they are ready.

Clearly if he had a choice of materials to play with at this time then that is what he would choose, so this is what he needs to have available…. i can’t wait to get a room done up for him that has these sorts of materials laid out for him.

July 21st

Here is our list of activity ideas for this week…

Monday  J feeling a little sick this week so no swimming.
                 He went to the park with grandma instead.
                 Wiggles DVDs!! (he’s sick! what do you do!)

Tuesday  Reading- Read a book, get J to make up a story about the book.
                 Puzzles-  a big success and he is loving them so we’ll do more
                 Movement-  learn the dance steps to ’The Bus Stop’
                 Play- asking to go to the park so we’ll do that too.

Wednesday Craft- play doh 
                   Art-  painting
                   Language- continue with alphabet song & the signs for each letter.
                     Pour water and rice and beans into containers on the deck.

Thursday  Craft- glue stuff on cardboard
                   Play- walk to the park

Friday     Visual-  play with arc puzzle, building blocks & memory game.
                 Play-  make up a story with his arc puzzle and animals.
                           play with the kids next door.

Weekend  Swimming Lesson.
                  go for a walk on the beach with Bundy

July 14th

Here is our list of activity ideas for this week…

Monday  Puzzles. 
                Swimming lesson
                play with his fishing game.

Tuesday  Reading- Read a book, get J to make up a story about the book.
                 Mothers Group.
                 Origami-  make something that we can stick on his rocket…??

Wednesday Craft- make some stars and comets for his rocket.
                     Art-  paint and draw on the rocket.
                     Language- find out the sign for rocket and moon etc

Thursday  Play-  make up a story with his safari animals
                  Reading-  play with his memory cards
                  Movement- play kick and chase outside with Bundy

Friday     Visual-  play with his arc puzzle and building blocks.
                 Play-  make up a story with his arc puzzle and animals.
                           play with the kids next door.

Weekend  Swimming Lesson.
                  Make biscuits together.

Don’t forget… the mobile we saw at swimming… get some crafty bits to make a mobile.

story telling

i need to do more stories with hi. I am going to come up with some little stories that can be told with a scene. Not sure what that is called… but we have lots of animals and trees, rocks and sticks etc so i should be able to come up with something…. i bought some coloured paddlepop sticks last week too so we might incorporate some craft and make a scene to tell a story on.

puzzles

i bought some harder puzzles last week.  The ones with individual pieces in a hole were boring him (and me!) so i got one that have more connecting pieces that make robots, and ones with letters and numbers. These are great and while he can partially do them they are also quite challenging for him.

Swimming July

Jordy is becoming more confident with blowing bubbles and putting his eyes under the water. He is also stretching out well with ‘the rocket’.

He was quite strong this morning with kicking back up to the surface when doing ‘under the sea’. Next week i will support his body a little less when he goes under and let him kick up more himself.

We need to work on floating on his back and doing ‘the starfish’.

Physical play

we went to Kids Crazy Maze earlier in the week and Jordy has really leapt ahead in his physical skills since we were last at a similar play park. He was totally in to everything and went down a huge spiral slide that i would have said that he would not have attempted until i saw him pop out the bottom all smiles and ready to go again…?

He was climbing and jumping and swinging on all the equipment- there was nothing he did not attempt.  The only thing he could not do was hang from the fixed flying fox thing as he is not strong enough to support his own body weight for long when swinging.

I will take him back there soon as it is a really safe enviroment for him to explore.

Verbal communication

Jordy is speaking in sentences and learns the names of things immediately- if we tell him what something is he repeats the word straight away and will continue to use that word in the future. But his words are not all totally clear. Sometimes it can take a few repititions of a word for us to understand what he is saying. And sometimes his stories consist of a lot of babble or the same few words repeated again and again although you can tell that in his head he is elaborating but does not have the words.

Not sure if squealing counts as verbal communication but he is certainly doing that too…. mostly to get attention or if he is overtired.  So far we are not responding well to it…

 

Sign Language

We have started to learn more signs for worlds that he already knows. As opposed to what we did with the Baby Sign where we learnt a sign before he could say the word.  I think it would be good for him to continue to learn sign language so i might each couple of weeks we might introduce a couple of new signs that relate to whatever activity we are doing that week. The problem will be me remembering to use the signs in conversation to back it up.