today’s activities bought to you by the letter…..

I love the sound of the day!! For our very first sound i chose ’ssss’. Montessori language exercises start with more commonly used and differentiated letters rather than starting with the beginning of the alphabet song (and the alphabet song does absolutely nothing to help teach a child to read anyway so it is not something we will be working with).

Once i started looking and thinking about ’ssss’ i was amazed at how many things we could use. Here is the table and mat that i layed out for him before i went to bed.

i have the sandpaper letters for him to feel, the sand tray (filled with polenta!) for him to feel how he can create the shape himself. And then a mat with various items that start with ’ssss’ as well as the fingerspelling auslan sign for S. I have sun, snail, sponge, snake, star, spoon, sock, scissors, sultanas. I also added a stick after taking the photo. I was going to put his sandels in too but just in case he called them shoes (which starts with sh and not ssss) i left them out.

Here he is making the shape of the letter. The first one is a bit backwards! and the second one he did not leave himself enough room to make the while letter. But he played around with it for a bit and made curves and circles and got the idea of the sandtray.  I think i might make him abnother bigger one to just draw in.

As well as naming the items, practicing the sound ssss and making the shape of the S we also talked about things you can do that start with ssss like swimming (he has swimming lesson today), and scratch and spin etc.

I was going to so a walk through the house and find more things that start with ssss but i will leave that for tomorrow. I will put the mat out again for him in the morning and build on the activity.

I also added another practical life activity with some rocks, tongs and two metal bowls. I have used metal bowls so that if he drops the rocks it will be quite noisy, and i have demonstrated how to do it as quietly as possible. He enjoyed it yesterday and has chosen to work with it again this morning.

And i finally found an Australia map (at Timbertown yesterday). The puzzle itself is not all that challening but he is asking the names of the states and has noticed the star (Canberra) and where the capitals are marked.

today’s activities

Jordy is wanting to pour water and although i do not feel that he has mastered dry pouring i gave him a jug and some containers this morning to play with. I think during the week i will work on pouring rice and refining his skills so that he is ready for the wet pouring.

He has also chosen to work with the sandpaper globe today and with his “tell the time” book.

I added some items to his nature basket today including two pieces of quartz that we found in the dry riverbed. I showed him how you can make a spark by hitting them together which he thought was amazing.

I am hoping to spend some time this week with his sandpaper letters or perhaps even try him with a sand writing tray. Although it is sooner than i would choose to be working with writing the shape of the letters he is totally fascinated with letters at the moment and goes out of his way to find letters to read. I am hoping that if i show him the shape of the lower case letters i can make their phonetic sounds more concrete for him rather than just the name of the letter.

I think i might just select the first several letters (a,s,t,b,c,m) to work with as when presented with the entire alphabet he gets a little excited and just goes from letter to letter.