Creating beauty everywhere

We have a motto around here, REDUCE- REUSE- RECYCLE, not because we are overly environmental, (although we try to do our bit for the planet) but because a FISHER PRICE LITTLE PEOPLE DVD told us that was a good thing to do. Hey go figure, as a parent you can say lots of things over and over again, to no one in particular, but if its on telly it must be true. Fortunately for me, I'm not going to argue with this one.

So in keeping with our motto, I'm am trying to come up with ways to reduce our waste. My particular focus at the moment is our baby formula tins. We go through about one a week and it adds up. So what to do???

This is a baby formula tin.



Since I LOVE SCRAPBOOKING so much, I copied the idea from a blog I found one night at 3am and turned the humble Baby formula tin into this....

Now you can display your transformed Baby formula tin and store all sorts of goodies in it. I used mine to wrap a present for the little girl next door. Be creative!

Appreciate the beauty

Maria Montessori held the belief that children and I guess adults too, should be surrounded by beautiful things in order to develop an appreciation for the world around them. Unfortunately many of us, parents, take away the beautiful things we surround ourselves with before we have children in an attempt to BABY PROOF the house. We do this because we are, as society, attached to our possessions.

I am guilty of this. When Genevieve began to be on the move, everything that was of value to me, mainly all the glass trinkets were packed in boxes to be brought out at a later stage in her life, when she could understand the delicacy of such objects. While I was waiting for her to learn this delicacy, her brother was born and we moved house. The delicate objects remained in storage. Again we wait,now for King Arthur to understand the delicacies of my trickets.( Can you see I'm still attached to them at this point in time) Again we moved house, the trinkets remained in the box. By this time we have moved several times and Sir Lucan is born. The trinkets remain in the box.

We have finally settled in our new home and began unpacking boxes. We decided every box was to be unpacked to see what was in storage. After so many years, we are talking about six, we came upon the trinkets box. Those beautiful, delicate things I held so dear. You the box marked FRAGILE, its precious, please be gentle. I open the box to behold the beauty within, the beauty I have denied myself since having a child, only to discover that my beautiful, delicate, precious trinkets are broken. Shattered beyond repair. For six years I kept those trinkets from myself and my children because they would be broken by little hands, only to in the end suffer just that fate.

Would it not been better to behold the beauty, touch it, explore it, appreciate it and then it be be broken than hidden away in the dark for no one to see?

Maybe Maria had it right. We need to feel, touch, smell, hear and taste the beauty that is around us to appreciate because I certainly didn't appreciate my trinkets while they were in their box.

Learning to read

Learning to read is big thing in a child's life. Its almost like an initiation into the world of the BIG KID. Reading creates the transition from preschooler to BIG KID.
Every child learns to read differently, there is no one way to learn to read. Many believe that learning the alphabet is the start of reading and for my children it has been. Learning the phonetic sounds of the alphabet would be step two. This can be a difficult process as not every child achieves this part successfully. As a trained teacher in the phonetic way to learn to read, it has been difficult to let go of this method. But for my son, it just doesn't work.
So I skipped it, we'll come back to it later. It is very important at this point, to really know the child you are working with. A child's readiness to learn anything, maths, language,science etc is half the battle won. Their eagerness to learn propels the experience forward in amazing ways.

So we skipped the sounding of the letters of the alphabet and moved him on to identifying sight words. It's no point hanging around an activity if he just won't get it.
Using the montessori 3 part presentation method, I introduced two new words - one, two. I also teamed this with a sight words book, that highlights these words.
The 3 part presentation allows you to isolate the learning.
Firstly I introduced each word separately. This focuses the attention to what you want the student to learn.

Secondly place both words in front of the child. Ask the child to "Show me......... Do this a few times, moving the words around.

Thirdly (and this may not happen straight away) ask the child to" Tell me what is this" .

We then read the book together to reinforce the words. This is not Montessori, this is a Mz Bel thing. Firstly I read the book, then we read together.

The absolute explosion of excitement and sense of achievement that my son experienced in a such a short activity was the reason I became a teacher.



It doesn't stop here. We will continue to read the book until my son can read it by himself. Essentially we are working towards knowing this book by heart and being able to apply this knowledge to other books but for the time being , learning by memory will suffice.