Self initiated preschool work

SENSORIAL:

Now that I have decided not to follow the Montessori sequence with J-jo, I have had to re-evaluate just what it is I want for him.  It's still Montessori in essence - J-jo is in control of what he does, with guidance and presentations from me.  You just won't see too many Montessori materials anymore, except for perhaps the binomial and trinomial cubes, which he loves.  The binomial cube is now mastered, and the trinomial is still difficult.  He's just realized that the binomial is in the trinomial and that was an exciting discovery for him.

READING:

He loves his MFW work - the sheets in which he cuts out the words and has to glue the words to the correct pictures.  He loves this.  He is good at reading single words now and is working to read phrases like "Ann hid," or "Dad is on the sled."  He did read two entire Bob books to me, though it was slow and tedious. 

He also likes to play the Bob app on the iPad.  He plays the last level in which he has no visual clues to the letters in the word (ie, he isn't matching the letters like in the first two levels) and he is presented with more letters than he needs and has to choose the correct ones.  He requests this app a lot.

PRACTICAL LIFE:

I found these size sequencing things I had printed out for Bear when she was 18 months.  She never wanted to do them:-P  But I gave J-jo a glue stick and he glued the pieces on and that made it fun.  He did several strips in a row.  I don't know where I got those, sorry, but it's been too long.  I guess sequencing is a sensorial thing, but I put it with practical life in this post because of the glue stick:)

I had a rubber pompom tonging activity out for him and the next thing I knew, he had initiated his own whole fist transfer activity of colored alphabet pasta into the basket to cover the rubber pompoms.   You can see one green one poking out in the front end of the basket if you look closely.  When he was done, he carried the very full basket all the way down the stairs without spilling! I was very proud of how carefully he walked and carried that.  I had gone downstairs to fix lunch and  J-jo had wanted me to see his "soup."

I set out this tonging feather activity thinking it would be a hit, but it was a complete failure.  He wouldn't even try it! I am still posting it in case someone wants to try it.  It looked fun to me! I think it would be a great complement to a Montessori bird unit.

Pushing pushing pins into a corkboard was a favorite for a bit.  The pins and corkboard are from our diy multiplication board.  We aren't using that anymore so I repurposed it.

Great for pincer grasp.


MATH:

I had him place Cheerios on the numbers in a row and he could eat the Cheerio on the number I called out.

He likes the Montessori Intro to Math app for tracing the numbers.   (That's what his finger is about to choose.)  I'd rather he trace sandpaper numerals, but this is good as it is self correcting, so he can do it while I cook dinner and I know he isn't picking up bad habits.  He is in a sensitive stage for tracing numbers and letters.