What's on the Shelf?

As promised, here are the new activities out for E on her practical life shelf right now.

I switched up her pouring and used some of the red (orange) lentils and black beans from last month's sensory box.  I'm sure she's ready to try water pouring, but until she starts really paying attention to what she's doing with it, I'm not ready to try it on the school shelves.

Next to dry pouring is her spooning work: glass pebbles into a butterfly-shaped candy mold.  Which E, often as not, chooses to use her fingers instead of the spoon.

I pulled out an old activity that we haven't used for quite a while: sponging water!  E loves this activity, and will work happily with it for 20 minutes or so.  And she's gotten much better about not dripping water everywhere, so I'm happy.

On the bottom shelf, I FINALLY found a cheap appetizer tray with four sections to use for sorting.  Seriously, I don't know why this was so hard for me to find!  Last week, we dyed four different shapes of pasta into four different colors.  So her sorting can be done by color or by shape.

Next to the sorting work are our pumpkin life cycle three part cards.  I saw a neat tray/box for three part cards at Montessori Services - it had separate sections for the three sizes of cards.  I'm wondering if there is a way I could DIY it at home, it would be helpful to not have them sliding all over the tray all the time.

I also changed up our language shelf.  Nothing big over here, I just swap the letters out every week or so.  On the top shelf, we have our begining sound sort.  Right now E is working with /n/ and /k/. 

Our BOB alphabet books are on the top shelf as well, and I have the specific books with /n/ and /k/ out on top of the box.  E is always welcome to  take more books out of the box, but I like to put the letters we are working with on top for easy access.

Our Laurie CVC puzzles are on the middle shelf.  E loves these things!  I have eight different puzzles.  Right now, I try to put out ones that have no letters in common.  We talk about begining and ending sounds and she has to match the word to the picture.

Not pictured, but next to the CVC puzzles is our sand tray.  Right now, I will write a letter, and I have E trace it after me.  She wants so badly to learn to write her name, I thought this was a good first step.
On the bottom shelf is our alphabet puzzle.  I have a couple of different puzzles that deal with alphabetical order, and I rotate them to keep up her interest. 

Also on the bottom shelf, we have our geometric tile pictures.  These are another favorite and right now they get used almost every day.


I'll try to remember to post pictures again when I change out the shelf activities in a few weeks!

A Quick Question

I've been curious about E's language development recently.  She has her pronouns mixed up!  Instead of "I", when talking about herself she says "you."  And when she is talking to someone, that person is always "I" or "me." 

I understand where the confusion is coming from.  I am wondering how to correct it.  Or do I just ignore it and she'll figure it out eventually?  I have tried correcting her language, saying "Say "I" want a snack," or "Say, do you like pink, mommy?"  This just makes her mad!  She knows I understand what she's talking about!  I've also tried explaining to her (as much as you can explain to a 2 year old) that E is "I", and mommy and daddy are "you."

Any suggestions?  I'm not too worried about it at this point, more curious.  I do wonder if she will correct herself eventually, but she's so STUBBORN about it sometimes!

Pre-Reading Skills

I've been doing a lot of work recently with E on her pre-reading skills.  We play lots of games of I-spy around the house and when we're out at the store.  I recently came across some new BOB books that are for pre-readers!

I picked up the Alphabet set at my Barnes and Noble the other day and E has been doing so much better at finding the beginning sound of words.

Another activity we've been working on is our alphabet cabinet.  This is still a work in progress for me, but I do have a couple of drawers ready for E to work with.  This week, she got to work on /b/, /l/, and /c/.  In each drawer there are miniatures that start with the letter of the drawer.  I'm always on the lookout for good miniatures for our alphabet cabinet!

Since our Montessori materials arrived, I have brought out a new work for E - sandpaper letters.  I use them mostly for letter recognition now, she learned her capitals first through a couple of puzzles and our Leapfrog fridge alphabet.  She likes to feel the letters (not really tracing yet, just feeling them) and we match our capital letters to them as well, so she learns which letters belong together.

We also host a bi-weekly playdate with our friends, where we learn about a specific "letter of the week."  It's a fun chance to get together with friends, read a story, do a craft, and eat foods that start with the letter of the day.  Check out some of our previous letter playdates!

And of course, I can't leave out reading to E.  I think that's the MOST important thing.  We are constantly reading stories.  Fiction, non-fiction, fairy tales, picture books - anything and everything is fair game at our house.  Current favorites are: Skippyjon Jones, Olivia, Hooray for Fish, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and Mother Goose.

I-Spy Jar

Whew!  What a busy week we have had!  I totally meant to get this posted earlier, but we had 3 1/2 days of SUPER nice weather before another snowstorm hit today.  So we had to capitalize on that.  But as promised, here is our I-Spy Jar!  OK, well here it is in a bowl - but more on that later.

I love those little I-Spy bags you can find on etsy and such.  I am a middling seamstress, I could probably pull off figuring one of those out, if it weren't for my horrible fear of sewing vinyl.  Then I saw an I-Spy bag in a JAR on Mama Jenn.  Cool!  I could do that!  But I put it off as a project for another day . . . I think E was about a year old when I first saw the idea. 

It resurfaced a day or two before our trip to Kansas for Thanksgiving this year.  I was desperate for something to bring in the car to entertain E for the long car ride.  So I put one together for the trip, using things I had around my house. 

Our I-Spy Jar is a Ball canning jar - kinda on the heavy side, but we aren't usually running around with it, so that seems to be ok.  I filled it about 2/3 of the way full with plain white rice (these were our pre-rainbow rice days), and tossed in all sorts of random treasures.  Some of the items to "spy" are:

• a paper clip
• an old key
• a small hair bow
• several different colored/shaped/sized buttons
• colorful floral stones/marbles
• animal beads - we have a giraffe, lion, boat, and elephant
• smiley face pencil topper
• a tiny ball of yarn
• a google eye
• a penguin that fell off of one of my old earrings
• a screw
• a foam leaf
• a small piece of ribbon with a cow and pig on it

I did not seal our jar.  E does not like to open jars, so it's not an issue for us.  She does like me to pour it all into a bowl sometimes for her to sift through, so I'm glad I left it open.

To play, you shake up the jar and find something to spy.  Then you say "I spy something that starts with /__/"  For example, "I spy something that starts with /s/."  The child looks through the items in the jar and tries to find something that begins with that sound.  "/s/ smiley face!"  or "/s/ stone!" or "/s/ screw!"

To make a more individual game, you can print up a card with all the items on it and have the child find them on their own.  I have seen cards with  items grouped in numbers, such as find one coin, two beads, three paper clips, etc.  I have also seen cards with items grouped in colors.  The child can be challenged to find all the items in a category.  If you have two I-Spy bags or jars, you can see who can find the most in a set time, or who can find everything in one category first.

I do plan on getting over my fear of vinyl at some point and sewing an I-Spy bag or two in the future.  I'd really love to do a whole set for each letter of the alphabet.  They have those at the Children's Museum here, and they are AWESOME.  I could sit looking at them for hours, and E likes them too.