Montessori Monday And Giveaway Winner

Julie Lentz, you're the lucky winner of my Back to (home)School Giveaway!  Please email me at onehookwonder AT hotmail DOT com with your address so I can get your package shipped out.  I need to hear from you by 12pm EST on 8/9.  Thanks to everyone who entered!!!!


The boys were so excited to return to their Montessori lessons last week.  I had explained to Short Pants that since he was a kindergartener now that I would expect him to complete a full 3-hour work cycle.  And both boys did for the first time ever!  We're talking 3 full hours of work - they didn't even take a break for snack. 

Pita Pocket was very pleased to be reunited with his old favorite, locks and keys.  I peeled the stickers off so that now he has to use trial and error to match them up.  Both boys pulled this off the shelf and worked with it several times:

Short Pants stayed busy with puzzles for a long time.  First up was parts of a leaf:

And then the United States:

He pulled over his desk and became a "scientist."  I showed him how to use the puzzle pieces to trace the states, and he really enjoyed doing that:

I gave a "living" and "non-living" presentation to Pita Pocket.  Both presentations are from Karen Tyler's albums, which I am SO happy with.  I definately recommend them!  I wasn't sure when I presented this to Pita if very much of it was sinking in, but when I asked him several days later what living things needed he was able to tell me that they need food, air, and water:

(there was a bug in the jar)

Short Pants' geography lesson was also from Karen's albums.  It was an introduction to simple mapping, which I knew he would love.  Short Pants adores looking at any kind of map, whether it's one of the world or one of the zoo.  I'm looking forward to doing more mapping lessons with him:

Another fun geography lesson was a map tower from Little Acorns.  Though Short Pants has this concept down, it was too cute to pass up!  Plus I know that Pita Pocket will find it useful when he begins to work with maps.  The nesting boxes go in order -Earth-North America-Indiana-Our town-Our house:

In the box for our home there is a tiny Short Pants and a tiny Pita Pocket!

Both boys enjoyed working with play dough last week:

And explored in the sensory bin together:

Pita also chose to do some painting:

Both boys also took a turn at sorting the circles from the geometric cabinet while blindfolded:

I put our new balancing game out on one of Pita's shelves, but Short Pants was the one who ended up working with it.  He was very proud when he was finally able to load all of pieces onto the moon without it tipping over:

Pita Pocket has progressed in our I-Spy games.  He is now able to identify the correct sound when presented with 2 objects to choose from.  I used these fun food-shaped erasers this week, which he really liked.  I've found our I-Spy sessions always go much better if he's intrigued by the objects!

Pita also worked at setting out the pink tower in the correct order horizontally:

And pouring glass "gems" between a narrow-mouthed pitcher and a wide-mouthed pitcher:

If you have some Montessori lessons/ideas to share, please link up below.  Please also make sure to either place the Montessori Monday button from the sidebar in your post or place a link back to this blog in your post.  And don't forget to check out all the links over at my co-host's Deb's blog Living Montessori Now!  Thanks for reading and participating.  :)