Mummyroo i spent the last hour on your blog , nikki is an adorable boy . Like you i was fascinated by montessori , i did teacher training course , i had very successful experience with doman with my first child ( specialneed ) , but i liked the hands on approach and developing independance in montessori . i spent lots of time making material , bought some and i am now the proud owner of beautiful montessori shelves hat unfortunately do not attract my kids much till later . my daughter at six is now enjoying some of the extensions of the sensoriel material . my 4 years old was always rough with them , and i kept taking them off the shelves thinking he is still not ready , he didn't want to do anything with the knobless cylinders the montessori way , he wanted to roll them on the floor like cars . now at four he is still very active , has great imagination and do not really enjoy three step lessons and montessori presentations . Whenever i say i like to show you something , he and his sister before him would take the material from me and say mama i show you , and they do whatver they want with the material . I complained about this to a montessori teacher and he thought my kids need more discipline . my kids still learn so much but they choose to learn outdoors in their own way and i think it put them off me treating the montessori material like gold . now i changed my attitude and although i have a special shelf for sensoriel i started putting the material in basket and bring it over while they are playing and let them use it . Only when i allowed them to use the red rod to build mazes for their cars that those red rods got used .
i have all the beads material , bead cabinet but i deicded not to use them , since i am working with rightstart with my six years old , her younger borther was learning in the backround while playing and found it made more sense to introduce all numbers a la right start , 6 as 5+1 7 as 5+2 and using the abacus .... instead of spending time with the colored beads . i used only the golden beads to demonstrate 10 100 1000 , but i cannot see my child sitting and learning skip counting by using the short and long bead chains in the bead cabinet . it is too slow and boring for them . there are many different ways to learn skip counting . So now my bead cabinet is packed with some other montessori material waiting for me to find the courage to let go and sale them .
i am writing this so you don't really feel bad about not being able to have all the montessori material , in montessori time and the kids montessori has worked with didn't have the learning opportunities our EL have . Yes i made sandpaper letters, moveable alphabet , but i found all i need is to spend time with my litle one playing with his small chalkboard and some kumon tracing cards . i was chocked when i decided to make more effort to teach him writing and sat with him telling him mama ket us try to write letters i write first , he said no he can write and asked me to name a letter , and we wnet through half of the alphabet , he didn't trace , he didn't copy from a model , he would stop think then write .This is a boy who loved the sand tray but not to trace letters but to create a dinosaur word or construction site for his vehicles. I just got tired from stopping him from misusing the montessori material .
so yes i have a montessori room full of material but we spend most of our learning time outside in the garden or cuddled up on the couch with a book . Not to feel all my effort was wasted i bring out like i said during playtime some material in a basket and let them explore it any way they like , if they like .
The only montessori material i never regret having and are used a lot are the puzzle and pin maps maps and my continent boxes . my kids are fascinated with all those miniatures from all over the words and books like children like me , and atlas ,many fiction books from all over the words .
their practical life activities they do it all the time ( in a messy way ) in the kitchen , in the garden in their sandpit . I was so proud of my sound activity , they used it once and as soon as i turned my back those containers were open and my kids decided to use the content in their play kitchen
thinking about it our kids have soft mozart , LM , they are already stimulated music wise , do they really need those sound eggs to shake and sort out ??
Anyway I am always happy to find another EL mum from UK . We live in Gambia in west Africa but we get our main supply of almost everything from UK , We have family and friends flying back and forth almost every month.I could use your help locating some of the material needed since I am not able to go out and shop by myself
anyway my post is getting long , i just wanted to say hi and happy to know a friend from Uk , looking forward to read more about all he fun you are having with nikki xxx
Digg
