Kindness and Heart Health (2/7 - 2/18)

Kindness Week Decorations <3

We don't do Valentine's Day, along with many other typical American holidays, but I'm always trying to find a way to make our own special traditions for our family during these holiday times. Thanks to Deb Chitwood of Living Montessori Now I learned about the "100 Acts of Kindness Challenge." I was hooked from the start and thanks to Deb I had some inspiration to make this challenge toddler-friendly.

So we started out our week with some fun decorating (see above) and discussion of the word kind and what it means to be kind. Abe is really into vocabulary these days so he was very interested to learn a new word and how to implement it. Grace and courtesy is a big part of Montessori teaching, so we're always working on lessons in this category, but I introduced some new lessons that the kids needed, such as interrupting and how to cough and sneeze.

Kindness Challenge Chart

This sticker chart idea was inspired by Living Montessori Now and it was a huge hit. The kids loved putting the little smiley face stickers on the chart. We made it to about 70 acts of kindness, which is not bad for only one week! This chart was not hung up on the wall and stickers were not given at the moment a kind act was done. Why? In Montessori philosophy reward charts are not used. Rewards and gratification are developed intrinsically in a child by simply being able to do something themselves or in the case of being kind, "Thank you for being so gentle." or, "Being gentle with your sister is a kind act." rather than saying "Good job!" or "Good girl!"So instead of giving stickers in the moment I would make a mental tally and at the end of the day I would tell them how many stickers they could put on the chart, so for example "I counted seven acts of kindness today! You can put on seven stickers." All of this was completely inspired by Deb.

Working Together :)

Collaboration and cooperation are things I'm also trying to instill in Abe and Mimi. When they do it on their own it makes me so happy. Here they are (above) working on the pink tower together.

Some new things on the shelves:

Cutting Work

Transferring Buttons (Fine Motor Work)

Heart Health Week:

Since February is American Heart Month I decided to make some fun activities to teach Abe and Mimi about the heart. They love learning about the body so this was also a very interesting topic for them. We started out the week discussing the heart and learning about what it does. Thanks to my Mom they have their own stethoscopes, so we took turns listening to our hearts, which they always find amazing. 

Find the Hearts Game

Another fun circle time activity was "Find the Hearts." I printed and laminated 10 small real hearts in a tray of rice. This gets messy but is a lot of fun. 

Scavenger Hunt

I also set up this scavenger hunt that was very basic and simple for toddlers. I printed out some images from Every Star is Different. I simply cut out the cards and placed each card in an envelope and hid them around the house. When an envelope was found we did the action on the card.

 On the shelves:

Healthy Foods Match Up

Random pieces of wood

Busy building (yes, that's a real hammer)

Mimi is starting to explore the pink tower, too!

 Excuse the typos! No time to edit :)

Remember Who You're Working With

"A look at what goes on in most classrooms these days makes it abundantly clear that when people think about education, they are not thinking about what it feels like to be a child, or what makes childhood an important and valuable stage of life in its own right. "

My favorite excerpt from this great editorial piece. 

When I was working as a first grade teacher in an international school (following an American curriculum) I was constantly struggling with what I was expected to do and what I wanted to do with my students. In every weekly meeting my first grade team and I would discuss test results and testing for most of the time. There would be more exams and more strategies to get the students to get better results. In every meeting I would have to remind my co-workers that we are dealing with children! These are not little corporate puppets. They are just kids and we are worrying about how they do on some test rather than how they are enjoying learning the topic we are studying right now. How about how can we make this more interesting and engaging? How can we keep the love of learning and exploration alive in our students?

But instead we forced material down their throats to meet the deadline of finishing a curriculum to keep with the "standards." I was always behind all the other classes because I took time with my students to just let them be them. We had a lot of free time in the classroom ( and extra outside time, too!) and I almost never gave homework until parents started protesting. 

This is one of the big reasons I love the Montessori method and homeschooling because my kids can be kids. They can practice the alphabet in their underwear or do a firefighter puzzle and then be inspired to start pretending to be a firefighter for the rest of the morning. They are free to be who they are and to do what interests them. How beautiful is that? I hope and pray Abe and Mimi can go through their childhood free of being forced fed information, sitting in a seat all day and stressing over exams. May they be free learners to learn at their own pace in their own way and ENJOY it 😌

What We Did This Week (1/31 - 2/6)

Some highlights from the past week!

The sandpit is still a big attraction these days

I really need to get better at taking photos of what we are doing and what is on the shelves. We started our homeschool co-op and it has been going great. The kids are really enjoying the extra company and it's been nice having another mom around during school time. I'll have my details on our progress in the coming weeks.

Wash basin set up

So last week, I set up a wash basin for Mimi in the kitchen. It's plastic and more "Montessori-inspired" than authentic, but I'm really impressed with how excited Mimi has been to wash her hands by herself. I'm still guiding her with the actual hand washing part though because she just likes pouring the water and does so about ten times a day.

Dumping dirty water in the bucket

Emptying the bucket in the shower

A few other things we did this week:

Spooning Rice

Spooning rice was a disaster to say the least. I don't think we will be revisiting that one for a few weeks.

Abe using the pink tower in his own way

 One thing I love about the Montessori method is following the child. It leaves room for so much creativity on the child's part and the guide's (teacher). I introduced the Pink Tower and Abe loved it of course! He wasn't interested in making a tower but loved arranging the cubes as shown above.

Pouring water

Pouring water is still a big attraction. I leave this tray on the kitchen shelf and whenever they want to pour I give them a small amount of water in the pitcher.

The Creator

This week we started learning the names of Allah. This week's name was, Al Khaliq (The Creator). I just talk to the kids about God's (Allah) many names and introduced this name. I printed out this paper and we all worked together to draw things that God has made. Whatever they said they were drawing, I would say, for example, "Yes, Allah made the circles." We hung it up on the fridge where we can keep practicing this name all week.

Stay tuned for next week's post on Kindness Week!