Sparkling this week

I  love sharing the various finds that spark ideas for my Montessori classroom, but aren't necessarily from Montessori-based blogs. Here are a few things that caught my attention this week:

• Sewing School shows us a sewing center set up in a traditional kindergarten classroom
• Something to keep in mind for rainy day/too cold to play outdoors activity: The cardboard box via  Simplicity Parenting
• Teach Preschool starts the year right by showing the children how to use glue bottles with brushes (I purchased these glue bottles from School Discount Supply -LOVE them!)
• A neat way to organize a music center via PreKinders
• A thought-provoking essay on following the child from Project-Based Homeschooling

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Scrubbing

I like having a small scrubbing work available.  I start the year off with a baby to be washed, but I find that I need to change the scrubbing object every few days in order to maintain the children's interest in the work.  One extension of baby washing is scrubbing a pumpkin. 


If you offer drawing faces on a pumpkin with a dry erase marker, or using play dough to make faces on a pumpkin then you have an authentic reason to scrub the pumpkin.  Otherwise, I am content to let the work be a sensory exploration of water.

 Pumpkin Scrubbing

 

The child gets the work from the shelf

 

The work is placed on the chair to make it easier for the child to place the materials on the table.

The child first lays out the rug, then places the tub, towel, pumpkin and sponge on top of the rug.

 

Using a special pitcher kept next to the sink, the child carefully pours in one pitcher of water into the tub.  Soon we will add the step of adding dish soap with an eyedropper. For now if the child wants soap, we add it in for them.  The child then washes the pumpkin with the sponge.

When finished, the child dries the pumpkin with the towel.  The tub is carefully carried to the sink in order to pour out the water. The tub is returned to the table to be dried with the towel. (If the order of the last two steps is mixed up, the wet towel is placed in the laundry hamper and a new towel is retrieved.)  The items are put back into the tub so that the next child can take things out in the correct order.

Trust

So picture Saturday morning.  Turtle (my 3 year old daughter) has had her breakfast already and is demanding another snack.  I am in weekend mode:  laptop and tea within comfortable reach of my perch on the sofa.

"Mama, I want something to eat!"

"We have some tangelos, would you like to eat an orange?"

"No, I want you to make orange juice!"

"Sorry Sweetie, I'm not making you orange juice right now."  I selfishly go back to reading my daily dose of blogs while she goes to the kitchen. Crash. Slam. Bang.

"Mama, I don't see the oranges."

"They are in the white bag on the counter."
Crash. Slam. Bang. Bump.

I look up to see Turtle carrying a cutting board, juicer, butter knife and orange toward the table. OK, I get it.  She really wants OJ and she wants it enough she will do it herself.  I let the go of the fear of the mess she will make in trying to squeeze the orange and I break free from the gravitational force of the sofa to help.  I get a bowl to squeeze the juice into and a bowl to put the rinds into after being squeezed.  I remove the butter knife and get a sharp knife to cut the orange into wedges small enough to fit in the juicer.  I show her how to place the wedge into the juicer, we squeeze the handles together.  We do it one more time and I'm told "Mama, I want to do it myself!" 

So I go back to my laptop and drink more tea.  Soon I hear  "I did it!" 

"OK, but before you drink the juice you need to clean the utensils."  I go to the kitchen to fill the sink with water for her.

She brings the juicer to me and says, "I want you to wash it."

"No, it is your job to wash it."

"I don't want to!"

"What do you do after you finish the apple work at school?"

"I wash up."

"Do you want a lot of bubbles in your water, or just a little?" When she replies "Just a little" I know I have won the battle. Soon she is happily at the table drinking the orange juice she made for herself.

I must admit that although I work very hard to maintain a prepared environment for my students, I don't make the same effort at home for my daughter.  We try to keep things neat and organized. But we live in a small, older home and I spend the bulk of my day with a large group of 3-6 year olds.  I need a break when I get home at the end of the day and thus my house is not a model of "doing Montessori in the home." But somehow, my darling daughter found what she needed to get what she wanted.  I trusted her to take the chance to do it for herself, and now we both feel better about ourselves.

And now that I know she can squeeze her own orange juice, I will NEVER have to do it again for her :D