Tuesday, September 9, 2008

A New Favorite Activity

I've decided to take a little different approach with Lucy - sort of Montessori style. I have about 4 different acitivities on the shelf in the basement and when Norah is working on her reading lesson, Lucy chooses an activity. She puts it on a tray (if necessary) and carries it to the floor. When she finishes, she picks it up, puts it away and chooses a new acitivity. The activities will stay out for a while, unless she acts bored or they are totally theme oriented. I will add new ones as I have them ready.

Today was our first day to try things this way. I think it worked well because she could take ownership of what she was doing, instead of being told what to do. The activities that are available for her now are noodle sorting, matching blocks, puzzle, and farm animals and blocks (these 2 are together).

Her new favorite activity is noodle sorting.

I just bought a bag of Wacky Mac and then added some noodles that I already had. Lucy worked for about 20 minutes - I was just hoping for over 5. She went back to the noodle sorting between all the other acitivities. In the Wacky Mac there are purple, orange, green and plain (yellow, as Lucy called it). I added plain twisty noodles. Lucy wasn't sure how to separate the plain shells and the plain twisty because they were the same color. I ended up dying the twisty one blue - that made Lucy quite happy.

2 comments:

Erika said...

What a fun idea!!! Sounds like she had a great time!

Melissa (aka Kitty) said...

I read your Grant's Farm post. I think you guys need to move closer to us. It would make it so easy for you to have lots of field trips.