Redecorating and Play Kitchen Review

I love dreaming about redecorating my house and lately I've been looking at some modern rugs to put in Bear and J-jo's bedroom.  The floor in there is rustic wooden floorboards and it just begs for a rug.  After browsing the many rugs at All Modern, one of the many CSN stores, I ended up not even choosing a rug for the right room! I decided if I were to buy a rug, this round one is very pretty and would look good in the school room for circle time.  

Speaking of redecorating, Bear got a kitchen upgrade for her birthday. The pink and purple kitchen was placed on two bricks to make it taller for her and even on the bricks look how little it was!  J-jo could reach it with ease.  Bear almost had to kneel! This kitchen corner was always a mess too and really irritated me.

The new play kitchen we ordered from CSN stores arrived so quickly. 

Whenever I order things from CSN, they always arrive before the order confirmation says they will.  This was perfect timing for us as I ordered it not remembering we were leaving for a trip the next week.  I had nightmares of this kitchen sitting at the front of our house for two weeks before our return, but thankfully that scenario never played out!  The kitchen arrived so early.

It's the perfect height for Bear.

And J-jo will grow into it. (Though he already loves how the burners light up.)

Since this kitchen has cupboards, we can keep some stuff inside it, leaving more room in the cubbies on our cube shelves to better organize the remaining food.

What I like about the kitchen:

Lots of open ended play.  The cupboards provide extra storage space. The oven allows Bear to play at what she loves best - baking.  It's the gathering place during playdates.  The height is perfect for a 3 year old. 

What I wish was different:

Of course, my dream play kitchen for Bear and J-jo would be a wooden one (CSN stores sell those ones too), but that was out of my price range.  The kitchen we chose did have to be put together.  The longest thing was taking all the pieces apart.  I hid the box in the garage after it arrived and my husband and I put it together leisurely once the kids were in bed.

 

 Disclaimer: The kitchen was bought with a gift code I won combined with the other half of the giveaway I hosted here a few months back. (Note that normally one can't combine gift codes.) Even though I "won" this kitchen, the review is my honest opinion.

Look for another review of a CSN stores product coming up soon.

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Montessori Monday

Sensorial

knobless cylinders

knobbed cylinders

Practical Life

the various steps in folding and rolling this particular mat

The following trays were done once and never again.  I don't think I will be bothering much with trays until J-jo is about 18 months.

tonging erasers into the ice cube tray

spooning apples (not real ones - from Walmart - in the candle section)

sorting apples into three sizes

open and close basket (this one is popular)

Practical life will now be done in the kitchen.

Using those hand and wrist muscles is an important precursor to writing.  

Squeezing oranges to make juice is a great workout.

At first she dumped the bowl into the tall container, but I asked if she could spoon them in instead and she obliged.  Again, this is to work the ever so important wrist muscles.

Pouring the now pureed honeydew into cups.  We froze them to make "icecream."

Prewriting

Although a lot of our practical life activities are prewriting activities, this one is for actually practicing the letters and numbers in the sand.

 I'm linking up at One Hook Wonder and Mommy Moment for Montessori Monday.

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Teens Board Variation

We've been building the teen numbers lately and learning the names for these numbers in three languages.  I love how visual the Montessori method is for math.

You can use pony beads on pipecleaners if you don't have Montessori materials.  That's what we did initially.

We don't have the actual teens board, so we build the number with our wooden tiles and then put a number card next to the beads while we use the tiles for the next number.

See more great math ideas at Joyful Learner.

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Tot School

J-jo is 12.5 months

I love seeing the new things J-jo is capable of doing and just how more skilled he is becoming.

Pushing things into small spaces.

Opening and closing and putting cubes in and out.

Bottles filled with different things to look at and shake.  He isn't that interested.

Practicing pincer grasp on the geometric cabinet.  I probably shouldn't have let him play with it, but it kept him occupied while Bear worked on her geometric cabinet.  He was quite careful with it.

Dinner time is still a bit of the "witching hour" so I often stand him on a chair at the sink (an adult arm's reach from me at the stove).  This day I gave him some broccoli for him to "wash".  He explored the texture a bit and stirred it around in there and then I chopped it up to cook it.

Refining his page-turning.

Putting baby to bed.

Transferring balls from one basket to another.

His basket of colored objects was yellow this week and I thought I had a picture but I guess I don't. 

To see what other tots are doing see 1+1+1=1

 

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Matter - Science Unit 1

Here is a very quick introduction to matter, perfect for the preschooler/kindergartener.  Each presentation takes but a few minutes.   

(All the details are in Karen Tyler's albums.  These albums are very well organized and laid out.  I highly recommend them if you need a little more guidance in teaching your children the Montessori way but can't afford the expensive albums or courses.)

First Presentation: The Matter Tray - a rock, a jar of water, a jar of air

Second Presentation: Liquids - a) the tray of liquids
                                             b) pictures of liquids

Third Presentation: Pouring water as a physical experience of this state of the matter.

Fourth Presentation: Solids - a) Tray of solids

                                          b) picture of solids

Fifth Presentation: The water balloon experiment - fill a balloon with water, then put in freezer over night.  Remove from freezer and peel off the rubber.  Discuss the new state of water - a solid.  Watch it melt back to liquid form.

(hard to tell, but this is the science journal page explaining (on the right) that we put water in the balloon and then (on the left page) put it in the freezer (top of left page). The bottom of the left page shows the balloon in a bowl melting, though it looks to me like she drew three bowls.)

Sixth Presentation: Gases - a) Tray with jar of air

                                           b) pictures of gases

Seventh Presentation: Steam in a Jar experiment - here's a link that explains how to do this,
                                  but Karen Tyler includes it in her lesson.


Eighth Presentation: Inflate a balloon experiment (with the gas formed when baking soda and
                                vinegar are mixed together).

Follow up activities: a) Sort the liquid/solid/gas pictures into the right categories.
                                b) Look through magazines for pictures of solids, liquids, and gases.  Cut them
                                 out and glue them into a matter collage.

We're almost done these activities.  Bear and I still have the last three things to do, but I don't foresee being able to get good pictures of the experiments anyway so I will post this now and link it to Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom.

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MTH History Unit - Medieval Times

It was very challenging to find preschool and kindergarten learning activities for medieval times.  Here is my compilation.

There's lots of background information for the parent to read here and on this list.

Here's what we did for our unit.

First, we read The Knight at Dawn (#2 from the MTH series).

Then I read Bear one or two chapters a day from the research guide companion.  I think these guides are above her head and I have no idea what she is retaining, but I am finding them a fabulous way to gain more knowledge for myself.  I tried to come up with one activity per chapter to help her absorb what I was reading.

We built a castle using the templates and directions here.

But this castle was missing a lot of the parts so we also built a castle out of legos.   We included the barbicon and the portcullis and heavy doors and the watchtower with crenals and marlons, as well as a moat with alligators and crocodiles.  (I have to say that I learned a lot of new vocabulary myself with this book.)

Sang the songs from here.

Explored this interactive castle.

I printed out a picture depicting the feudal system and made name tags for her to match to the tiers.

I also printed out these cards from this ESL website (very good for flashcards for 3 part cards and games). I printed them quite small to save on ink.  Bear can look at them through the magnifying glass to add an element of interest.  I read her the cards and we talked about the pictures.

We made stained glass windows with tissue paper, contact paper, and black sharpie.

We recited all the nursery rhymes we could think of that had to do with castles, queens, and kings.

Some other books we read that fit within the theme were:


Sir Small and the Dragonfly by Jane O'Connor
The Knight and the Dragon by Tomie DePaula
The Princess Knight by Cornelia Funke
The Bravest Knight by Mercer Mayer
The Vegetarian Dragon by Julies Bass and Debbie Harter

linked to The Preschool Corner.  Click on the button to check out other preschooler activities.

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