A Day in a Life - Keeping it Real-ish

Over the past week or so, there have been several discussions on the Facebook Montessori groups I frequent about how blogs can be disheartening because they seem so perfect. Picture after beautiful picture of adorable kids doing amazing Montessori work.

Well, I'll never claim to have beautiful pictures but I am guilty of mostly only posting about our successes. And that's likely not going to change. This blog is about celebrating DJ's growth and achievements. But just so there is no illusion of perfection when the camera isn't rolling, I decided to do a post about an entire day, warts and all, or at least mostly. For one I'm doing this from memory and for another there are still some things that don't need to be put in print. As a warning, this is a really long, wordy post. Detailing an entire day is a lot of detail!

Invertebrates vs Vertebrates

Over the past few months DJ and I have worked through the Biological Classifications starting back in October with Living vs Non-living. I remember he struggled with that initially and it took quite a bit of prompting with "does it eat? Does it move? Does it poop?" DJ particularly liked the last question. That was followed by Plants vs Animals which took him a good two months to master. My adult brain was going, "Seriously, you don't know if a tree is a plant or an animal?" But I am constantly humbled as my son's teacher to realize that, no, the whole world is new to him and things I take for granted are challenging to him.

Language Work

We did very little school last week but we did do some language work. DJ is very interested in writing but he hasn't wanted to learn any new letters.

Art Folders (well sort of)

The Montessori language album that I use has a section titled "Art Folders". The purpose is to expose the child to various forms of art and to stimulate conversation about art. I love this idea and it's something I'd really like to do.

So very much activity

Happy Valentine's Day! Although I don't do much with themes, DJ did participate in a Make & Mail Valentine exchange in his toddler playgroup this year. I was so incredibly impressed with the way he chose to paint the hearts. It made me a little sad to not be able to keep them!

Montessori Bells!!

I am so excited to finally present this new work I can hardly sit still. The Montessori method is genius in many ways, but the way it introduces music is just incredible. Montessori bells are two sets of either 8 bells each (white only) or 13 bells each (white and black). Children are taught first to match each bell to the control set and then to grade the bells from Middle C to High C. The "official" set of 26 Montessori Bells costs in excess of $2000. So imagine my surprise when I found an imitation set of 16 bells on Craigslist for only $100. Wow!! The only thing left was to have somewhere to put them.

Science Experiment & More North America

DJ received this Primary Science Lab Set for his birthday a few months ago. It's been upstairs in his playroom until this morning when he came downstairs caring the whole box and saying, "Let's do this!"