School Days: 9-9-2011

We started out by checking the weather...

Then we reviewed the letter A and decorated the lowercase 'a' with jewels

I really love the Montessori educational philosophy. I had the opportunity a few years ago to work at a Montessori preschool in California, so I was able to observe day-to-day how the philosophy works in a classroom. I fell in love with this style of educating (at least for children through the age of 5). So, when setting up our homeschool preschool, I wanted to include a daily "work time", which is where there are activities out, at the child's level, and he chooses which activity he wants to do. Once finished with that activity, they are taught to put it away and choose another activity. It is basically independent learning time, and the kids LOVE it. They love anything that involves independence.

I don't have most of the resources that the Montessori preschool had, of course, but each day I set out at least 5 appropriate activities, each targeting a different skill, and let Elijah "work". Today was only our 3rd day of school, but he walked into his room when we were starting and asked "is it my work time yet?!" He was just so excited about "work time". And, of course, its the last thing that we do, so he asked that about 10 times before it was actually time! ha!

So here he is playing with play food and dishes. This is the creative play center for today.

Blowing out birthday candles

Having a yummy snack!

Here is another creative play center, but it also goes along with our Farm Animal study this week. (this set was out each day this week, and it was always the first activity he chose)

This is his "reading nook". I would like to get a comfy pillow or something to put there to make it more inviting. He did not choose to go to the reading nook at all this week! I will have to think about how I can make it more appealing. But, he rarely ever looks at books on his own. He loves for us to read to him, but he's not in to looking at them by himself.