spooning, more latches, and other bits…

The latches board is still getting a good work out! It’s one of the first things Jordy chooses to work with most days.  Apart from doing the locks and latches he spends a lot of time reading the letters and counting what’s behind each door. I almost always leave him to work with it alone but if i am nearby I have started to ask him to find the circles, rectangles, triangles etc.

He is also chosing the cylinder blocks (1) regularly. I might show him how to arrange them outside of the block. I don’t want to introduce block #2 yet as i think he has enough other materials without adding to them but i will introduce it soon. I might spend a few days working with block 1 with him and getting him to select a missing cylinder or a few other things rather than just leaving him to work alone with it.

And today i introduced the spooning materials. He is working with it now so i’m about to go look and see how much of it is on the tray and how much he has decided to pour elsewhere!

… we just tidied it up. He went quite well with it. And the “Tidy Up” song is helping immensely for cleaning up afterwards.

He is really starting to enjoy the order and routine of things too and packing up is becoming less of an issue (sometimes! not always!). But brushing his teeth and hair, and getting dressed and going to the toilet before getting in the car and those sorts of routines are also becoming fun and playful for him- which is nice!

The phonetic pockets are good but i need more things for it. I am learning so much from each thing i introduce. I should have sewn the velcro tabs on the pockets before showing it to him as they keep getting pulled off! And i should have found a full selection of items for the pockets. I had a few items in most of the 6 letters i gave him but i had a couple of empty ones (nothing around the house that was suitable). That bothered him and he wanted to fill the pockets and move the letters around. So i have removed it until i can present it properly.

mr busy

Jordy has been in to everything this morning. Again just for 15min or so for each activity before he moves on.

He did his alphabet puzzle and then he asked for his blue sandpaper letters. I had wanted him to work with the lower case so i had removed the capitals from the shelves but that’s what he wanted so….? I gave him 6 to work with for a while before he moved on something else.

He played with the colour cards for a while but did not complete them (although he can).

We used a length of wool to form a circle on the floor and he did in and out, running around, backwards, etc etc. We have not done walking the line yet so i should draw something on the tiles.

I am going to get up an area on his little table in the dining room for him to prepare snacks on. Today i put a tupperware container out with some fruit, biscuits and sultanas and he has gone back and forth getting snacks as he has wanted them automatically closing the container up properly when he finished. I showed him how to cut up a banana into pieces so i’ll get him a small chopping board of his own and leave it there. As well as a small jar of peanut butter and some cruskits or something that he can prepare.

He likes the animal three part cards that i have just finished. I hope to find time to make up the insects and ocean cards. After doing all the animals i realised i don’t like the font!!! It has the ‘a’ like the one here rather than an ‘a’. 

We worked with the spindles for quite a while. I was asking him the number and he would count in that many spindles. I was just doing 0-4 with him but he asked to do the next one. It did not go so well from there! He wanted to put them all out of order and all over the place and then emptied them on to the floor…. He knows all the numbers and can count objects up to 6, beyond that the actual quantities can be hit and miss. It was the first time we had worked at length with the spindles so i really should have just left it at 4.

Funnily enough one of the spindles was missing and we looked everywhere for it. As i typed here he came in and was playing around me, he got a paper bag off the book shelves that has been on the shelves for yonks and is not something he plays with, he reached in and took out the missing spindle!! I was totally surprised and asked him where it was. He said in the bag. I asked him if he was playing with it there earlier. He said no. I asked how he knew it was there… he said MAGIC!  ????

And although i had shoed him the touch boards ages ago he has not gone back to them. He did today and after just generally playing with them i got him to close his eyes and match just the roughest and the smoothest boards. In another learning moment for myself i then chose to get the blindfold out which we have not used before. Then it became a game of on off on off. So while he continued for a while to match the boards and feel them i think the blindfold only distracted him.

a busy morning

well, it’s only a little after 10:00 and already Jordy has had a big morning! He’s played with his nature basket and sat in the dark again to make more sparks with his quartz, worked with the cylinder block, drawn with his magnadoodle, played ball and, most interesting to me, made shapes with some sticks.

He was playing with some parts of another game that have four wooden posts and he made a triangle and was trying to make a square. I watched for a while and then foolishly interrupted by giving him some coloured paddlepop sticks to use instead. I should have just let him be to work with it himself! We continued to make shapes and straight lines with the paddlepop sticks but he wanted me to do it with him and would often say it was “hard work” when he was successfully doing it alone before i interrupted.

So that’s my lesson for today- to step back and let him work as he chooses. I should have just noted his attempts and tomorrow presented the sticks as new material. I wonder if i should present the geometic demonstration tray soon?

catch up

Over the last week i have found Jordy has a preference for the latches board, puzzles, and sandpaper letters.

He has also chosen to work with the colour cards, sandpaper globe, globe of the earth, cylinder blocks, lacing animals, balls, plastic animals, shape sorter, building blocks, books, and cooking set.

His imaginary play consists of his cardboard rocket and car, imaginary shop play, hide and seek. 

His main focus has been on letters and numbers. He spends a large amount of time each day reading individual letters and numbers wherever he can find them, as well as counting forwards and backwards.