Babel School in Taiwan

Yet another threading exercise for Little Ones - this time you can let them ... eat their finished work! In many countries you can buy small breakfast cereal called Cheerios (or something similar), which is perfect for threading and making eatable necklaces and bracelets. Materials: a bowl of Cheerios a thick thread a tray to place the bowl and thread(or a bowl similar to the one on the photo) You may want to show the child how to tie a knot around one Cheerio at the end of the thread. This way Cheerios are not going to end up on the floor. Time to eat!

Continuing my previous post about threading wooden beads .  After the child has completed the threading exercise with big wooden beads he can try threading some small colored beads. This exercise is very appealing for little girls as they can make necklaces and bracelets for themselves. Boys can be asked to make "jewelery" for mom, grandma or sister (or for themselves too, if they want to). You may want your child to start with threading beads onto a fishing line (or thin wire) which is much more durable and not as limp as a thread. There is no need to use a needle with fishing line (or wire).    Later the child may start using a thread and a needle, although at first she may need help with threading the needle. She may also want to thread the beads in pattern - color patterns or shape patterns. You may encourage her make bracelets or necklaces as presents for grandmas and aunts.

Threading is another very popular activity in a Montessori classroom. Children can thread all kinds of things: wooden beads small beads Cheerios (or other circular cereal) pasta buttons They can also thread onto all kinds of things: wooden stick string shoelace pipe cleaner straw You can choose the material depending on the age and abilities of your child as well as what you have available at home. You may want to start with bigger wooden beads threaded onto wooden sticks and then move onto pasta threaded onto shoelace and later small beads onto a thin string. In the next posts I will present a few of the threading exercises that Ania has done in the past. Threading wooden beads Materials: wooden colored beads wooden sticks thick string or shoelace Purpose of this exercise is to develop: fine motor skills hand-eye coordination patience concentration       As an extension to this exercise you can ask the child to thread t...

A great exercise to strengthen little fingers and prepare them for later pen holding and writing is using clothespins. There are many ways a child can use them, I will show you three of them. I chose the nice wooden pins which are more appealing to the children than the large plastic ones. Using clothespins Materials: small wooden clothespins a box  You can use any kind of a small box, I used a transparent one. I keep the pins inside the box on the shelf instead of on a tray, this way the work takes up less of my precious space. The objective of this exercise is to pin the clothespins around the edges of the box. When a child gets enough practice with pinning the clothespins around the box, he can try pinning some small clothes to a cloth line. Materials: a string suspended between two rods (I used a thingy for hanging bananas :-) ) small pieces of material (I cut some colorful felt into the shape of T-shirt, pants, shorts and skirt) small cl...

 One of favorite exercises both in the school I've worked and at home is  SETTING THE TABLE   Materials: a set of children's dishes   cup saucer   plate a set of children's silverware (in a silverware tray) teaspoon spoon fork knife teapot sugar bowl tray for the above materials card with the table setting drawn on it Of course the materials may vary depending on the things that you have available at home. I found that the best place to look for children's dishes and silverware is IKEA. Gradually the child will 'graduate' to using the 'adult' size dishes and silverware and setting the family table. At our house table setting is always left for the children and they always do a splendid job. Show the child how to place the dishes and silverware on the card. Instead of the card you may also use a photo of the layout. After the child is familiar with the layout you can remove the card and let him set the table without ...

I decided to continue the "Montessori Practical Life Exercises" series which I've started last year.  As a reminder, previous exercises included the following: Polishing silver   Using a dropper Opening and closing bottles and other containers Transferring water with a sponge Sorting colored beads Spooning pasta  Today let me present to you an exercise called Transferring beads with tweezers. Materials: small beads in a small container tweezers rubber soap pad tray The objective of this exercise is to transfer all the beads onto the soap pad using tweezers. This exercise helps to strengthen the muscles in the child's hand (needed in developing a proper pencil grasp) as squeezing the tweezers requires some strength. Transferring the beads requires also precise movement and helps in hand-eye coordination. Finished work

Last week I've introduced a new Practical Life exercise: polishing silver Materials: a dish with silver polishing paste (or good old plain toothpaste) a small cloth a small tarnished silver object (fork, spoon, ring) All the materials should be placed on a tray: The objective of this exercise is of course to clean the silver :-) Show the child how to dip the cloth in polishing paste (ours was very soft) and how to rub it onto the object that needs cleaning. The child may need to rub really hard to get the stubborn tarnish off. Show him that he needs to work on the whole object not only on one part and that he may need to reapply the paste onto the cloth or even change the cloth if it becomes too dirty. After the object is cleaned, remember to wash it in warm soapy water and dry it with a tea towel.  The big brother LOVES polishing silver so he just HAD TO help . Before and after

More and more often people ask me how do I homeschool a three year old.  What does a three year old do at home? Let's take a look at Ania's week, here are some of the things he was busy with: Making bubbles - it's a favorite of all the kids. I also use play-dough as a material for teaching letter shapes. This is first time Ania rolled the play-dough to write her name. Time for math - it was Ania's idea to combine two different math works. Polishing silver is also one of the favorites. After polishing the silvers it's time to set the table. :-) Working with so called Montessori Metal Insets is important in developing the correct pencil grip as well as good control over the pencil (drawing parallel lines). Very often Ania takes a piece of paper, rolls it into a tube and looks through it. That gave me an idea to make with her binoculars out of toilet roll paper tubes. Now she carries them all over house and looks through th...