New Book!
Pipe Cleaners
Pouring her own water
Breakfast!
As if this parenting business wasn’t hard enough, we’ve decided to start using the Montessori method to educate our little Chookie (aka Maddie). Sounds easy, well at least to me it did. So I had started to pin some stuff here & here, oh, so cute, they put like colors into like containers and what-not, easy peasy. And then Santa delivered a book to me on the subject, “Montessori From the Start”. And then I got scared. I thought, oh boy, I’m 15 months behind. Apparently this process is supposed to start even before birth. So I guess I am even more behind when you take into account her time in my womb. Ok, ok, not to worry, we can do this, we can catch up – I was out of school for like 1 whole week b/c of Chicken Pox, I got this.
So I started with clearing out her play area, limiting the toys with batteries, non-sense toys, etc. Then I set up her weaning table (which I think is a little big for her but we’ll try it for a while and maybe buy a cheapy set from Ikea until she can grow into this one). Now on to her bedroom, this is pretty easy, cleared stuff out of her closet to make room for the toys that I removed (for now), put most of her stuffed animals in the closet as well and transferred the bookcase/bench that was in the play area to her bedroom. Everything has been pretty easy except for the books, oh books how we love you so much. They are by far the greatest thing to Maddie, right now at least. So how to whittle them down? Hmm, I’m not sure what Montessori recommends for books so I guess I need to do some research before I edit these too. And don’t worry, I won’t deprive Maddie of her coveted books, I’ll just switch them out every so often.
Alright, so things are pretty good. Now let’s get started on the first activity – pipe cleaners into a colander. She did it! Awesome, “okay Maddie, do it again” (and again and again and again until you’ve mastered it) Ha! she did it once and then walked away, and then my heart broke. After the next activity, I quickly realized that this child has no concentration what-so-ever. So this is where the real challenge comes in. I know Rome wasn’t built in a day so I have hope that she will eventually build up her concentration but I’m still sad, kinda feel like I’ve failed her already by not starting sooner.
Well I have an update, without any prompt, I found her diligently working on the pipe cleaner activity. My heart sang and everything was right with the world again. This gave me hope – it’s going to be a long road but I have faith in the both of us that we can accomplish this.
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