lady bug , this time for real

Jr S loved to play with this little lady bug for a few minutes, then the lady bug flew away.This is actually an old picture , and that's my nephews hand . Both of them played with her. Just found the pic so decided to share it .

farm animals again!!!!

I have no idea why Jr S loves farm animals so much . But I am glad she does. So I opened one of her bday gifts the other day and it was  a beautiful wooden puzzle with huge pieces. And we had a fun time trying to solve it. I think my nephew's obsession with puzzles is rubbing off on her and I am thrilled about it. We talked about corner pieces, continuity of pictures. I know she is retaining this information because when I got her some smaller puzzles , she would talk about it even though I still had to guide her through the puzzle.

Rodeo

Jr S has a Go- Texan day at her Montessori this Friday and so we decided to decorate a cowboy hat with pink and purple flowers and stars. She enjoyed it a lot but after finishing the decoration, she took them all off and started all over again. She did this about 3 times, ripped many flowers so we ended the activity by saying goodbye to the hat .We plan to complete the ensemble with pink bandanas and button down white shirt and jeans. It will interesting to see if she actually will let me put all that on. Till Friday then… eee-haw

Matching game

I saw a pack of games at walmart the other day , for about 2 $ , It had a bingo game , 24 piece puzzle and these cards for Crazy eight. Now I confess , I have no clue what Crazy eight is but Jr S opened the pack of cards and before I knew it she started arranging them in a line and match them up. So It was great , good for visual discrimination and fine motor for handling those cards .
 Sorry about the photo, but thats exactly how she lined them up.

Fun shaped parathas

We had a blast making these fun shaped parathas (obvious cookie cutters from Christmas...star, snowflake, gingerbread man) . She loved to eat them too. Plus they were healthy too .  Jr S loves to play with dough, she mooshed it so much that I had a "fun" clean up too.

Patterning activity with hearts

We made patterns with different colored construction paper hearts and Jr S copied the last pattern. I have used some patterns from Montessori for everyone in the past but I found better success with presenting atleast 2 full pattern sets for her to seee before trying to imitate. She loved to do it the first time. the second time I let her choose the pattern and she was ofcourse much too happy about it.

farm animals again!!!

This time we sorted farm and wild animals using the plastic figurines from Target with tongs. She loves to keep the farm animals safe from the wild animals. Spring and Summer visits to the farm are in order.

Valentines Day art

Jr S has a Valentine's Day celebration coming soon at her Montessori , So we decide to make a shirt with little hearts. I applied masking tape all over the shirt except for the part to be colored and let her run a riot with fabric paint and brush. She absolutely enjoyed it . But the best part for her was peeling off the masking tape . She really wasn't into the finished product so much as much as she was into those masking tape hearts. So we nade  a pink cardstock heart and she proudly pasted her masking tape hearts on it.

Cute little S had a farm, EIEIO.....

That was the song we were singing while playing with tiny and big farm animals. I got them from the dollar section at Target, then we pulled out an old Fisher-price farm toy , which became our center around which we built houses for the animals with Megablocks and jenga blocks . Finally we built a round fence using cardboard blocks and megablocks. Jr S had a blast playing with the animals. She called the tiny ones from the multipack --Babies and then the big single ones were their mothers. She matched them, fed them, rode her tiny tractor around them, and gave them blankets while they slept. We briefly touched upon how birds give eggs and other animals had babies but I am not sure she really cared for this information right now. Anyways , we had a blast !

Counting in Marathi

I would love it if Jr S is able to speak and read Marathi, my mother tongue. So we started trying to count in Marathi, geting her familiarised with the numbers. For this activity, I cut the numbers from a Marathi calender( Kalnirnay) and we counted the number of beans for each number and finished the activity with a numbers song which my mother had taught us. I hope this goes along way. It is beautiful language.

Ladybug and Snowman

Jr S loves ladybugs and snowman, so we decided to make one out of the pack of no bake clay . It was very messy and not the best for her litle hands but it was fun for me and fun for her while she was smoothening out the product and inserting pipe cleaners. But she had the BEST time painting them, she chose red color for both and then added the deatiles with a Sharpie pen and she named the ladybug Elli, the snowman has  a different name every single time... We are soo proud of these sculptures.

Musical Journey !

I am musically challenged, but I really want Jr S to be able to enjoy music and hopeful that she  learns to play  an instrument . We started playing this game while I was dressing her and she enjoyed it a lot. I would sing out the tunes of her favorite songs and she would have to guess them and she did so well. We tried a few songs in English and Marathi. I think in a few months she will be ready to play "Naughty Note" a great activity I read in  book long time ago.

Modified Lacing beads

I attached 2 flexible straws and molded a foil piece at the end to make this semi-rigid "lace" for early beading practice. She like it initially and laced a couple of beads and then got fascinated with the straw piece itself . Ahhh... you never know what they think!

Measure all the way

I made these super simple bars out of construction paper strengthened with contact paper and Jr S loved to arrange them according to height and then proceeded to take out her measuring tape to see how tall they were. She absoutely enjoyed it . Then she tried to measure my hand too!