A Year in Review

DJ started Montessori preschool one year ago when he was 2.5 years old so he has now completed the first year of the three year sequence. Since Montessori is child-led, the first year could look very different for each child but I thought it would be fun and informative to do a recap of DJ's first year.

Life Cycles for Spring

DJ's grandpa Dennis has signed him up for the subscription service from Brainy Kits. We received the third set last week and it is their best one yet, by far. Although I might be a little biased because I needed to be putting together a study on life cycles but I was dragging my feet as I wasn't really sure where to start. Brainy Kits solved that for me!

Letters & Numbers

As we're winding down the first year of DJ's preschool, the work is all about letters and numbers. He still occasionally chooses cylinder blocks, geometric solids or lacing cards but those seem to be more like downtime for him rather than real, challenging work. In addition to the official school time work, I hear DJ counting his toys during playtime and he's analyzing the sounds in every word throughout the day... t-t-tiger, scared-d-d-d.

School Days

Geography: I presented the USA puzzle map last week. This is a BIG work for DJ. In this photo he's pointing to the state where we live. I showed him the states where his dad & I was born and all the places we've each lived. I also showed him where his grandparents live.

Sound Games galore!

DJ has been in love with sound games lately and is asking to play them all.the.time! It is so much fun but they don't really lend themselves to photos so I don't have many pictures.

Continent Boxes - North America

Part of the Geography sequence includes Continent Folders or Boxes. Folders would include pictures of various cultural aspects of each continent while boxes hold cultural objects. I chose to go with boxes and started putting them together last fall. They are still a work in progress but they will be used for years so as I collect new items, they'll be added to the box. But what I have now is a good enough selection to show what I have and how they are used.

Some old favorites

I'm terribly late in writing this post. It should have been written at the end of last week but I just didn't feel like it. So thank you for waiting patiently!


Since there wasn't anything new on the shelves last week, DJ selected some old favorites. The Land & Water forms hadn't been touched for months but he started off the day with an eager "let's do these!" I was impressed with how much he remembered. He still can't say isthmus, but then I can't either. I had also made a point of telling him a peninsula was like a thumb of land sticking out in the water, so he always holds his thumb up to the picture to help him remember the name. We also made some more homemade playdough so he could re-create several of the shapes.