with Shelly Birger Phillips
Montessori Inspired Plant Watering Activity
What you’ll need:
A tray that you don’t mind getting wet
A clear pitcher already filled with a small amount of water
A hardy plant that needs a drink
A nearby towel available for spills
Here my daughter discovers the activity and gets ready to pour.
Pouring!
Finishing the pour.
About six months ago I realized that Julia is ready for preschool. She loves to go to story time at the library, enjoys social interactions, is absorbing information at a phenomenal rate, and is beginning to test the rules and boundaries, all indicators of readiness for greater social challenges. So I went and visited a hand full of preschools in my area. Most of them wouldn’t admit a child under three years old and since Julia isn’t quite two yet my choices were somewhat limited to a few Montessori toddler programs with pretty steep price tags.
Julia’s first sink/float activity!
I simply wrote sink and float at the top of a piece of card stock, drew a line down the center and then laminated it.
Then I collected some items that sink and some that float. I poured the water into the bucket for her and she had a blast testing each item and putting them on her chart in the appropriate location.
After introducing this yesterday, she woke up and immediately wanted to do this work again. It’s a hit!
In the Montessori classrooms I’ve worked in, there are usually twenty-four children between three and six years old and just two adults. Each child has free choice of hundreds of possible activities in the classroom, and in order to maintain peace and order, we HAVE to create some rules and boundaries.
One of the rules is that we respect one another’s work. We don’t touch each other’s work, we don’t walk on someone else’s work rug, and we don’t clean up after each other. Each person is responsible for getting out, completing, and putting away their own work.
Kitchen drawer 1:
Kitchen drawer 2: