loving the practical life

I absolutely adore the Montessori Practical Life lessons. Of course, I love all the lessons, but the P.L. lessons are my favorite to set up and my favorite to teach at the beginning of the school year. For one thing, they're a great warm-up for a teacher who hasn't presented a Montessori lesson in over a year - systematical, straight-forward, useful! They also provide the perfect opportunity for me to bond with my new little 3-year-old students. :)

Practical Life lessons in the Montessori classroom serve many purposes. Most lessons that the 3- year-old does when she first comes to school are things she has seen the adults in her life do at home. She sweeps, she spoons, she opens locks. The first thing that one must realize is that the emphasis here is not necessarily on practical but on life. These exercises provide little ones with the opportunity control their movements and develop their coordination. This is the area of the classroom where students strengthen their fine motor skills, learn to complete tasks in an organized way, gain familiarity with left-to-right sequence, care for their person, become confident in the classroom, experience concentration...

Here's a picture of Sorting, the first lesson on the P.L. shelf. The child uses his fingers to separate the tiny objects into their own section on the tray. As the child does this work, so many incredible things are happening. He is using his pincher grip (thumb, pointer, middle) to pick up the objects. Visually, he is discriminating between the objects in order to separate and group them. He is also satisfying his sense of order. And, if he models the lesson the way it was presented to him, he is working from left-to-right, top-to-bottom. Not to mention, he's already carried a tray to a table and pulled out a chair!

Most 3-year-olds have this lesson dialed from the very beginning. Still, it tends to be used multiple times during the work period because it's a comfortable, satisfying warm-up, and the children love the tiny objects. I like to spice it up each month with different tiny objects and trays. As an added challenge, I sometimes put small tongs (possibly used for sugar cubes?) on the tray to sort the objects with.

guilt-free freedom

As some of you may know, I chucked my cellphone. This is a photo of its lovely replacement, purchased at the local thrift store for $10. AND, it's my favorite color! I can't even explain how satisfying this phone is to talk on - for one thing, my conversations are a lot briefer! Brief, but more meaningful because I'm not wandering around attempting to do all sorts of multitasking. Its ring also brings a sense of thrill to our household because neither R or I have had a land line since we've lived with our parents and because Rosie thinks it's the doorbell! There's even a faint crackle when you call long distance... talking to my mom has never been this fun! :)

mystery bags

This is a fun sensorial lesson that would be easy to put together at home!

Place six very different feeling objects in a bag. My mom made these beautiful batik bags for me... there's something very magical about putting your hands in a mystery bag. If you don't have bags, you could place the objects in a basket and cover them with a cloth napkin instead.

With your child, take each object out of the bag one at a time and identify what it is. Pictured: rock, pine cone, ring, turtle, star, and key. Put them all back in the bag. Take turns "seeing with your hands." Model this for your child first by sticking your hand/hands inside the bag and carefully feel an object. Before you take it out of the bag, say what you think it is. If you're confident with your young partner's memory, add more objects. This game is fun when played with a small group of children, too.

This is a slightly more challenging version of the first mystery bag. Place six pairs of very different feeling objects in a bag. With your child, match the objects as you take them out of the bag. Pictured: marbles, glass cubes, shells, hooks (not sharp!), nuts, and shells. Put them all back in the bag. This time when you "see with your hands," try to find a matching set without peeking in the bag. Model for your child feeling for a match with both of your hands inside the bag. When you have a match, bring the objects out of the bag to check. "They match!" I've found that children enjoy using this mystery bag independently as-well-as in a small group.
The third mystery bag is the same as the second, except more challenging. The six pairs of objects that you place in this bag should feel only slightly different. For example, these objects are all buttons, but you could use a variety of shells, coins, pom poms, etc.

Just as an F.Y.I., the purpose of the mystery bags is to isolate the sense of touch, and strengthen fine motor skills. The way you model laying out the objects may also reinforce sequence if you lay them out left to right, top to bottom. Also, I'm not sure on this, but using both the left and right hand to find matches must exercise both sides of the child's brain! The control of error would be seeing if the object is what you think it is or if the objects match when you take them out of the bag.

august skiing

Well, we finally did it - we got our August day of skiing in! It was kind of a late day, last minute decision, considering it was the 31st and all. The weather was cool and breezy - which was perfect for hiking with skis and boots hanging off your back. Thunderstorms settled in on us after our second jaunt down the patch of snow, so we kind of hustled out of there. It was a fun day, and, yes, the skiing was worth the hike. (By the way, I love this hike, and getting to ski is always worth it!)

Rosie went crazy for the snow! She was definitely impressed that our hiking destination turned out to be a patch of snow. It was by far her favorite day of August.

xeriscape gardening

R and I have never lived anywhere that allowed us to experiment with landscaping. But, now that we have our own house, we can do what we want! Yay! We don't have a very big yard, so our philosophy is that everything we do should be beautiful and good quality (we feel that way about the house, too). We decided to start out by landscaping one of our boulevards - we live on a corner, so we have two. The one in front of our house has grass, and we decided not to mess with it because it looks fine. I personally think grass on the boulevard is a huge waste of water. I've spend many hours watering it this summer, and the grass still turned brown by July! Anyway, the other boulevard was just dirt. Except for some gravel and potentilla, that side of the house was all dirt, too. Here's a picture taken in early spring - the aspen trees are alive, they just don't have leaves yet. Pretty bleak, huh?

The purpose of xeriscape gardening is to conserve water, and it is much more beautiful and easier to maintain than grass (or dirt). I found the xeriscaping overview on eartheasy to be very helpful when I started planning my landscaping project. One of the principles of xeriscaping is to choose plants that are native to your region. I don't live in Colorado, but Colorado Springs Utility has a website that lists plants according to how much water and sunlight they need, how tall they will grow, and what color their blossoms will be. Although it's not really kept up to date, Raven's Nest, a blog written by a landscaper out of Helena, Montana provides some great ideas and inspiration.

Okay! On to my project! I am so happy with the results!

Here's a picture of the boulevard. R and I collected all the flat rocks ourselves! As, you'll probably find out, I am a serious rock hound! We dug up the sagebrush the from the side of a road (at the landscaping store they were $10 a plant). We also planted fescue, feather reed grass, some kind of purple, spikey mint, and two kinds of spirea. I really like the mulched mounds around the aspen trees. They're supposed to be good for the aspens, and I think they make the boulevard look more interesting.

Rosie and her pheasant (not real) - she loves laying on the sidewalk while I weed.

This little garden is on the side of the house.

The zinnias are blooming like crazy. They look so sweet in a bouquet! And, they attract bees! I really wanted to plant flowers that bees would like. Save the bees!

The silvery-green plant is called snow-in-summer. It's a perennial from my mom's garden, and it had tiny white blooms earlier in the summer. The pink flowers are on a succulent called sedum - I'm not sure what kind of sedum. The purple flowers are lavender, and the big green leaves are on an echinacea plant. I'm going to move it to the back of the garden next year because it is so much taller than the plants around it!

This sedum (pink flowers) is called Variegatum. You can barely tell in the picture, but it has beautiful green, white, and pink variegated leaves. It is my favorite, and it only cost $2.95! The little purple flowers behind it are alyssum. I planted them from seed, and they grew like crazy this year. I've heard that they reseed themselves, so we'll see next year.

One last picture. This little shrub is a mock orange. The boulevard gets that intense southern sunlight, so I hope the mock orange provides a little shade someday. I can't wait for it to bloom next year!

I would love to hear about or see pictures of anyone else's gardening adventures, so send some my way! Oh yeah, the picture at the top of this post is of my coleus - a shade and water loving, very spoiled annual that I started from seed.