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Kindness Week Decorations <3
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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.
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| 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.
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| 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:
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| Cutting Work |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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Scavenger Hunt
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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:
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| Healthy Foods Match Up |
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| Random pieces of wood |
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| Busy building (yes, that's a real hammer) |
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| Mimi is starting to explore the pink tower, too! |
Excuse the typos! No time to edit :)
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