This Week’s Montessori Activities

Cutting: Here is another instance where the actual Montessori directions are too complicated, in my opinion.  I just have the scissors and cutting strips in a basket.  The strips have lines drawn on them-zigzag, curves, and straight.  I showed her to cut correctly.  She practices cutting and then carries the strips to the trashcan.  She’s a huge fan of this exercise. 

Color Box: See my original post at this link. She’s gotten bored with this and thinks it is too easy. 

Mystery Bag: I put 10 objects in a bag-rocks, pennies, shapes, and etc.  She reaches in, feels the objects, and describes how it feels.  See my original post on this here. 

Sorting Exercises: I mixed white and brown rice together.  She used tweezers to lift and separate them. 

Folding: I have found that burp cloths work really well for folding.  They already have the lines sewn in to practice folding.  For some reason, she really likes folding. 

Geometric Solids: I brought out some solid wooden geometric shapes.  I showed her how to feel the shapes.  Next, we put a scarf over the solids, she felt them underneath, and would announce with shape she was feeling. 

Smell Jars: I put different spices in small bottles, put a blindfold on her, and had her match the smells together. 

Tasting Bottles: I have two salt water, 2 sugar water, 2 tonic water, and 2 lemon waters sitting out.  She basically tastes and matches them on taste.

Washing Table: My daughter puts on her apron.  She fills a jug with water and puts half of it into a basin.  You are supposed to use a brush to clean the table but I always forget to use one so we just use a wash cloth.  She makes medium circular movements left to right starting at the top left corner of the table.  She wets the sponge.  She  wipes soapsuds top to bottom, left to right.  She then picks up a dray cloth and uses the same movements to dry it.  Then she returns all items back to their spot.  In Montessori, the child is supposed to place the items back each step but we don’t do this.  I think the main points still occur-she learns to independently wash a table, control of the hand, and sequence of actions. 

Setting a Table:I have a placemat made with outlines of objects to remind her of placement.  She does this three times a day. 

Sweeping: For my original post about sweeping please see here. 

Sandpaper Letters: We have been doing sandpaper letters. 

Insert Work: I made my own “metal” inserts.  If you do a search on my blog, you should be able to find them. 

Dressing Frames: I have an earlier post on how to make and use dressing frames if you do a search on my blog. 

 

 Mopping: Zhana did a little mopping work.  I simply showed her where to put her left hand around the handle with her thumb on top and her right hand under the left.  Then she mops left to right and then back to left.  She LOVES mopping.

A lot of the steps are missing in this post.  In most of the pictures we aren’t doing things perfectly.  I’m a mom with no Montessori training-who works out of the home-trying to supplement my daughter’s learning.  It works for us! If you are a mom who feels intimidated by all the required tools, steps, and perfections that it seems Montessori would demand, these posts are for you! Your child will still love it and learn from the exercises without all the perfection…

**My daughter has the same outfit on the last three posts.  I took pictures of activities for the last three posts all on the same day.  I just felt the need to point that out, lol***