Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Montessori Learning at Home

We have started to recently incorporate some of the Montessori techniques in our home. Today was the first day with the girls sitting at their own table, setting their plates and cups and cleaning up after themselves. It has been a long day of teaching! But I can see how beneficial this will be for them already. They love having their own special cupboard with new plates and bowls. And of course, they really enjoy pouring their own water from the pitchers! In about a month we will introduce some other routines until they know this one well enough without as much instruction.



Thursday, December 5, 2013

Celebrating Advent

We are celebrating Advent this year by doing different activities every day until Christmas. Since we got back from our Thanksgiving travels on the 1st, we didn't really get started until the 4th but the girls will never know ;).

I have made a board on pinterest with inspiration projects and crafts. There are so many good ideas it's hard to narrow it all down!

Yesterday Dahlia colored a snowman decoration (the kind that comes in the $1 Kits at craft stores) and Dallas practiced making snowflakes. Since her preschool teacher wants her to work on her scissor skills, this will be something we do all winter long! I used coffee filters to make the snowflakes.

Today, Dallas went to the library with me and checked out a few more Christmas books. I have started displaying the seasonal books on our bookshelf in the living room, which is free decor and helps the girls want to read them! We also made ornaments for the tree, using a cut out small circle wreath from cardboard and gluing Pom Poms around it. Dahlia didn't really understand you were supposed to keep the Pom poms on, but she had fun taking them off and putting them back on! Dallas' survived but needs a lot more glue than I thought for it to hold up. This was more of a good idea in theory!