Goodness, I apologize for the lack of posts. Things just got very busy around here, very fast. Jedi’s out of school for the summer and our days have been filled with almost daily field trips, some Montessori stuff (it’s awesome to have Jedi home during the days to work in the room with Monkey and Bitty Bug!), and we’ve also been working a lot on landscaping. Honestly, that’s been taking up a huge amount of time–there’s only a small window of time during the year to do new plantings, and with a newly built house, landscaping becomes quite the task!
I do plan on starting up posting again, at least a few times a week! We’ve been going on so many great trips and enjoying the outdoors, and it’d be nice to document those as well! In the past few weeks, the kids have pet flamingos at the zoo, came face to face with zebras and giraffes at a safari animal conservation center, went strawberry picking, visited farmer’s markets, and went to the lake (for swimming…but they also observed minnows and shells).
We’ve been doing quite a bit in the montessori room as well. One of the big things we’ve been trying to work on with Monkey is colors–she has a very hard time identifying the names of the colors, but she can sort them just fine. I’m not quite sure how to help her with this (she has some processing issues that make understanding words a bit difficult for her. She’s always had delays in speech & language because of her selective mutism and other special needs, and verbal processing is one of the last things she’s developing). I did get her a “colors of nature” work where she sorts various animal figures and plant figures into the primary colors. She does pretty well with this (and Bitty Bug joined in…she hasn’t quite gotten it yet, but it’s interesting to watch her none-the-less. She definitely doesn’t sort, but she does carefully observe each piece–more on that in a second…). I do have to research some ideas on helping her get the names of the colors as well…three part nomenclature cards won’t quite work yet as she’s not ready for letter identification just yet. If there are other Montessorians out there who have worked with children who have processing issues, or if you have an idea for me, please do let me know!
Back to Bitty Bug and her little things obsession. This child *loves* tiny things. She will pick up every rock, shell, piece of carpet fuzz, you name it. And then she will observe every single inch of it. It is really quite interesting to watch. She enjoys going to the lake for this very reason…there are so many tiny little pebbles and shells for her to pick up and observe. She definitely will have an eye for detail, that’s for sure!
And here are a few pictures from the past few weeks…
Barefoot in Suburbia 