izumi..22 months ..spooning

 Izumi showed great concentration and balance today using this activity, she has used this many times before but today she was definately focused.
Her hand eye co-ordination was brilliant.


Check out how she is holding the spoon...definately working hand and wrist.

Find the toddler?

Izumi..22 months..washing dishes

 Izumi is so excited with the warm soappy water, she spend about 25 minutes with this activity.

She did wash the dishes a few times.

Izumi.. Table setting..21 months

Cai and spelling tests......age 10

Cai is working so hard with his spelling at the moment and is only happy with 20 out of 20 every week, being so far behind after missing 4 years of school it is a huge task...but wow he is already up to year 6 level just needs a little fine tuning so the spellings are important for 2 reasons, one is new vocabulary and the other the spelling. 
 
Cai is like Rei in the regard that he works best when things are broken down...so we take his new words and using the LMA (large movable alphabet) he spells them out , looks at them and breaks them down.  Then using strips of paper he writes the words and cuts the word into the parts that he broke down using the LMA.  We start with about 7 spellings.

Cai mixes all the parts of the words and puts them back together, remembering the names of the words, after 3 or 4 times of this game Cai closes his eyes and I take one piece away so one word will not be complete and Cai will tell me whats missing.  We continue taking parts away, usually I end up taking one part of each word.  Finally Cai will begin writing out the missing parts on paper leading us finally into a mock spelling test like school with just paper and pencil.

Montessori Magazine Jan/2012

So here we are on the front Magazine.....

Music Corner.....

Izumi has always a wide range of musical instruments in her basket but this Christmas both her sisters had guitars so the music corner has got a bit bigger........

The Pink Tower...

This is still a firm favourite......

Sticking....

Izumi is definately more interested in opening and closing the pots but I will leave this as a set and see if she becomes more interested in using the glue stick........

Izumi Walking the Line...

Room change.......

I was lucky to get some beautiful Tatami mats from Japan so I used these in the new layout......

She is also having fun with the Post Box we made from a left over cardboard box from Christmas.....

Izumis sisters are reading more to her now and she is loving The Gruffalo...we are slowly picking up the soft toys to make it a lot more interesting.....

2012.....Izumi and The Table Setting

I downloaded the place setting and lamiated it, then found the dishes and cuttlery that matched the best....Izumi enjoyed this very much so it will be on the shelf for a while..

Izumi and Auntie Morfydds Home made Santa x

Matching colors. 20 mth

Here she is matching the lid to the correct color pen......A self made and self chosen activity by Izzy.

The Bag and the Towel....20mth

At the moment Izzy is having great fun with blankets and towels, be they wrapped around her or on the floor like boats. Also shopping bags that she wanders around the house with filling up with all sorts of magical wonders.......

Knobbed cylinders. Izumi 20mth

Christmas cake......

Today we made our traditional christmas cake, I remember making this with my Grandmother and Mother. We will wrap in ip in foil and put away for a month.... so watch this space in a month when we can marzipan and ice...yum yum

Rei and Weekly Spelling

Rei brings home 10 new words every week so we have made this plan to help her learn....



2. Rei writes the first 3 words onto the paper and together we break them down

1. Spelling list, blank paper, pen and sissors.

Rei then cuts up the parts of the word and mixes them up, then she puts the pieces of the word puzzle together..a lot of sound and spelling here but also we are able to concentrate on the more difficult part of the word by seperating it from the rest of the word.                                                              3



4

5

  
When she is confident with this we play hide the letters, I take one part of a word and she will work out which one is missing by arranging the letters back into their words and then writing down which is missing.  We play this game taking more letters away as and when she is ready....untill there may only be a few letters left and she is nearly spelling the whole word...Finally we go back to basics with pen and paper and joyfully she can write all her words with ease......I like the movable alphabet here as well to give her more of a touch sensation...Well done Rei XXxxxx

Izumi..Spoon activity ..age 19 mth

This is a video of Izzy working with her spoon, it is 1 video but I had to break it up to put here.
She worked so hard and the smile at the end of this first video is magic.X

The second video she keeps working hard even with noisy sisters in the background, she also starts talking here, she is calling everyone mama at this stage.....

Here she works hard and at the end she comes to see what mama is doing....

 A very proud girl wants to show her sisters just how it's done...

 Big sis getting in on the act.......

 Finally she makes sure that Daddy is watching...Good Job Izzy  XXXXXX

Izumi meets a Fly!

Remember, remember the 5th of November

We have spent the last 4 Bonfire nights I'n Japan so I wanted the Children to know what this holiday is about.
I found the story of Guy Fawkes on the computer and Cai glued them onto a cerealbox. We discussed the story and later Cai told the story to his sisters using the photos on the picture box. So hopefully they will all remember remember the 5th of November. Happy Bonfire Night everyone. Xxxxx