Lilypie Kids Birthday tickers
Lilypie Fourth Birthday tickers
Lilypie First Birthday tickers

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

3... is a magic number

Rachel here. Day 3 of preschool (I promise I won't do this everyday... just days we have new and great activities to share.) went super well again today. We've been doing practical life and sensory activities in the morning until lunch time... which leads to nap time, and then take it easy the remainder of the day. I still keep the materials out for her because she'll wander over at the most random times to do one of the activities. Today Reese got to play with her new ABC puzzle... she adored it! It was one of her bedtime rewards. She's reverted back to being a little screaming crying hellion at bedtime, so we created a chart for her with a reward at the end. It's a small chart with 5 boxes. In 4 of the boxes there is a single number 1-4, and in the 5th box there is a picture of her reward. If she is well behaved at bedtime, follows her routine, and doesn't act nasty, she gets a sticker the following morning to put on one of the numbers. When she reaches the 5th box, she gets her reward. Her first reward was her Toy Story LeapFrog Tag Junior book, and the second was her ABC puzzle. It's working GREAT, and we've gotten 10 straight days of a well behaved and sleepy Reese. :)
I took out the rice transferring activity this morning and replaced it with water and liquid measuring cups instead. She did great, and it kept her busy for quite some time. She did spill a couple of times, and the sponge wasn't cutting it, so we had a towel on back up. :)

When I first showed her her Tag Junior, she wasn't all that in to it, which devastated me. These things are EXPENSIVE! I happened to stumble upon it at Once Upon a Child for only $6.50! We got the case, the pen, and 2 books... the girl who rang me up was shocked and realized it had been mispriced, but I still got it for $6.50. :) I pulled it out for Reese yesterday, and she really took to it, which made me very happy. Her next bedtime reward is a Curious George colors Junior book, which she is super excited about.
We also had Alphabits cereal for our morning snack. She kept pulling letters out and telling me their names. This cracked me up because yesterday during rest time, I was trying to teach her the letter A, what it looked like and it's sound. She looked at me like I was a moron and could care less. I gave up. I'll be darned though if she didn't take an A out of her bowl and tell me it was an /aaaaaa/ A. :)
After doing some more reading on the language portion of Montessori, I discovered that we should work on skills such as sequencing, matching photos that go together (for example... photos of a broom and a dustpan, or an anchor and a boat), etc. I looked up some of the activities that you can do and realized I had some flash cards that played those exact games. Instead of starting letters sounds, working with the sandpaper letters for letter formations (which I planned on making, but am realizing what a feat that will be, so we'll just buy them next month), and letter names, I've decided to laminate and start these games with Reese in the next couple of days as I get them done. The best part about all of this is that I don't have a "schedule" that I need to follow. We just go with the flow, get the activities done throughout the day when Reese is most interested, and there is absolutely NO STRESS. I love it! I also looked up some of the fall "classes" that the rec center offers, and we're hoping to take a music class, a bouncy class, and an art class again in addition to story time at our library. Hopefully we get in!

0 comments: