Montessori Mom

Cultivating Dharma is a wonderful Montessori resource. I like all the great ideas and free printouts. It’s a blog worth visiting every day!

I love going to Sølvi’s blog. She has lovely handwork examples of quilting, knitting and cozy Norwegian living. Makes me homesick for Norway!

Montessori wanted children to relate to real items and experiences because like a scientist, they made their assumptions from real life, not from fantasy. The first real life experiences in a Montessori classroom are found in the practical life exercises. Here are some examples.

Sometimes our own family members show us how wonderful life can be. My husband’s father was such a happy and thankful person. He made a positive impact on everyone’s life.
I was amazed by my father-in-law’s attitude despite his hardships. He was disabled from a brain injury during World War II. He was considered over 80 percent disabled. His gross motor skills were affected the most. In fact, he should not have been able to walk. In spite of this, he lived a full life, walked, and even played golf.
From the beginning of his injury as a young man to his later years, he appeared to improve even though he was more disabled according to medical testing. I noticed he always was working on a hands-on project, painting, mowing the yard and swimming.
He told me he was making his body and brain work together.

Montessori observed that a preschool child’s brain absorbs information much like a sponge. She understood young children learn by doing activities over and over within a positive environment. I have always wondered if adults retain some of this sensitivity to learn in a new way. Recent information shows that adults have a plastic like brain that can be rewired. I am always amazed how awesomely we are made.

You can use a metronome, marching music, rhythmic clapping as an advanced lesson to walk the line. This activity uses the sense of hearing and movement that helps with dancing skills.
Here are some more references for walking the line:
AMI Walking the Line
Montessori World-Walking on the Line

When you make your next pie, show your child how to pinch the crust to flute the edge of the pie. Here is a great video to show you how to do this. This is a fun and tasty practical life skill for your chef in training.

The formation of the earth is part of Montessori’s Great Lessons. Here is a newsletter that could be used as a key lesson idea. There are free printouts too.

Montessori Primary AMI has a great step by step lesson for setting the table.

Archive:
Setting Table Activity

Sunflower before the rain.

Here are how my sunflowers grew in pots
They did really well in this hot and wild climate.

I use all the leftover ketchup packages from restaurants as wonderful copper and brass polish. Ketchup is a non-toxic way children can polish copper for Montessori practical life skills. The packages don’t dry up and are ready to use. Make a tray with the ketchup packages in a small basket, a damp piece of sponge for cleaning, a copper ornament and a duster for polishing the cleaned object. I find that you need to wash the ketchup off the cleaned piece with soapy, warm water and then rinse well.

I was watching BBC’s, “How Clean is Your House” and they provided a great, non-toxic silver cleaner for kids to use. They used this cleaner on silver plate. You can purchase this type of silver very cheaply at thrift stores and yard sales.

Here is how to make your own kid friendly sliver polish for Montessori practical life skills:
Use white chalk powder, mix with water to make a paste. Dab a clean cloth in the paste and rub your silver dish or mug until clean. Use a soft duster to buff the object to a brilliant shine.
You can grate white chalk sticks to make chalk powder.

Provide a cleaning activity tray lined with a placemat, a dish of chalk powder, a small jug for water, a cleaning cloth, a soft polishing cloth and the dirty sliver object. Show how to make the silver paste, clean the silver and buff it. Just do a small patch of the silver piece to demonstrate the activity. Let your child do the activity. My kids always loved polishing silver.

This game can be made with note cards. I would create your game cards and go through it yourself to make sure it works correctly before playing with your children. What nice way to end dinner and make learning fun.
Check out the rest of the site for more activities for home and school.

Setting a large table can be over whelming for a young child. Try putting together a place setting on a tray using a Montessori placemat with outlines for cup or glass, plate, and silverware. You can add a cloth napkin too. Teach your child to fold the napkin by either sewing or marking lines for folding it.

“Let’s learn how to set the table.”
Introduce the the ” setting table activity tray” to your preschool child by carefully taking off the items from the tray and putting them back on the tray correctly. Let your child do the exercise next. This is one of the practical life experiences that children like to do many times.
The second step is to set the table with one or more table settings.

*You can purchase wooden trays at craft or thrift stores.

Plotting out where you live, or where you are traveling to your next destination can be done with grids on a globe or map. Here are some free 3 part cards and activities to help your children understand about latitiude and longitude. Check out the games too.

Archive
The Sky
Free Nomenclature and 3 Part Cards for Landforms

I got up at 4 a.m. this morning to take my 82 year old mother to the airport to catch a flight to San Francisco. I thought a direct flight would eliminate any problems. The plane left the gate at 6 a.m. and turned around 20 minutes later because of mechanical problems. After a 2 hour delay, the airline decided to reroute everyone. So I called my brother, who was going to pick mom up that morning in San Francisco, and told him the flight and time were changed.

A few minutes ago I received another call explaining that the airline had “found another plane” and mom left from our hometown after all. Of course, everyone was rushed onto the airplane and we found out was going on after she landed in San Francisco three hours later than the original flight. In the end everything turned out fine.

Air travel is getting more chaotic. I feel compassion for parents traveling with children when flights are delayed, or even canceled. It’s hard enough for adults, but kids seem to need extra tender loving care when this happens. If you pack extra snacks, games, books and buy bottled water after you go through security, your children will be much happier. Make travel delays a time for family fun, and your children won’t even notice the hassle.
Hope everyone has a great summer traveling.

You can buy baskets for Montessori practical life, materials and art supplies at your local thrift store or yard sale. They can be actually cleaned by soaking them for a minute in cool water with a mild dish detergent. Gently rise and dry in the sun. Most willow, reed, bamboo baskets wash up like new.

Grin Mama Blues has some very nice and varied ideas to bring Montessori into your home. It has lots of lessons and articles too.

Preschool Power has daily ideas for summer activities for your children. Here is July’s Calendar.

Tomorrow, July 2, Barack Obama is stopping by Colorado Springs. You can only see him by invitation only, which is too bad. I think it would be a great opportunity to take your older children to listen to either presidential candidate.