Izumi 2 Years..In the Box..Out the Box / Where's it gone..here it is

In the Box

Out the Box

Where has it gone?

Here it is!

Izumi..23 months ..Sorting and eating

 Izumi likes using the sound boxes for building towers and is getting very good at it but today she used them for sorting her colors.

 We have a color basket with a Blue side and a Red side and she is recognising these colors.

Today she used the sound boxes to sort Red and Blue by herself, it was nice to see her freely chose this activity herself and have the confidence and concentration to put the Red in one box and Blue in the other.

First of March and St Davids Day.........................Izumi is wearing a traditional Welsh outfit minus the hat.  She is feeding herself Tomato soup and enjoying it.

The Welsh hat..XXXXX

izumi..23 months ..Pincer grip, hand eye coordination and repetition

Izumi enjoyed this activity, The butterfly is an icecube tray and she is putting marbles into the holes.

The difficulty for Izzy is using her pincer grip to take the marbles out and put them back into the dish, but she did not give up and returned all the marbles back to the dish.

Izumi uses this activity every now and again but always gets frustrated when she cannot thread the beads.

Today however she succeeded and the quite joy she showed in her face was priceless.

izumi..23 months ..Balancing

 Balancing playmobil people on an African drum......for about 20 minutes....such concentration and lightness of touch XXX

Stacking the sound boxes...X

izumi..23 months ..Spooning, Money Box and Pots

We put a packet of rice in this pot and added a few pots for her to fill...instant hit...this pot also has a lid so we we can put it away for later.

This money box is cute and has a popper on the bottom.

These bead boxes are so cute and as there are 3 she can open and close and also stack.

Beautiful Indian Elephant money box.....

izumi..22 months ..Tea time

I am thinking to upgrade to a teapot and let her practice her pouring skill..X

izumi..22 months ..Transferring, Pouring

 Izumi had such good control here, her hand/eye coordination is spot on and she held the pot strongly showing good muscular control.

She did a few times then got very interested in spilling the peas onto the tray, they did make a great sound, she enjoyed picking them up one by one which was great practice for her pincer grip.

And finally a larger spillage which she also enjoyed, we worked together to pick them up and Izumi completed the cycle of activity by replacing the activity back onto the shelf.

izumi..22 months ..Order

Izumi was building with these lego blocks and suddenly went of and started to line them up, she showed good concentration and order.  I think she found some independence in chosing to use the lego blocks her own way.

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