Montessori 3rd Great Lesson: Coming of Humans
“Human consciousness comes into the world as a flaming ball of imagination.” –Dr Maria Montessori After the “Coming of Life” great lesson follows the “Coming of Humans” story. We have been studying the different eons and eras, and we’ve studied fundamental needs of humans by going camping and visiting a wool farm; here’s some of…
Knot So Fast, Practical Life for Big Kids
Happy to add this cool “Knot Tying Dexterity Game” Knot So Fast from Timberdoodle to our shelves this week. I remember seeing a knot-tying guide book once before and thinking if only there was a way to make this simple enough for small hands to understand, it’d make a great practical life activity to add…
Model Heart Review
If you’ve been reading my blog for longer than a hot minute, you may know I’m super-spatially challenged. I’m not great at construction sets, puzzles or building things. I was a writing major; I do know how to use semicolons and commas. Can’t do it all folks. I mean, I can’t. I do, however, have…
Timeline of Life Mural
Speaking of “painting windows” in my last post… I always forget to share activities we do to the blog. So here’s one of the activities we did at the end of January for the Second Great Lesson (Coming of Life). I keep reading about the “Mural of Life” used in Montessori classrooms. Aside from the…
Making a Model (scale) Solar System
Do you know how big our sun is compared to our home planet? Can you visualize that? After our model solar system activity, we got a good idea for the sizes of the planets. Originally I’d really hoped to take the kids on an adventure around town showing the scale and distance apart, but even…
Creative Fun Making Thinking Putty
Timberdoodle sent us a Crazy Aaron’s Mixed By Me “Glow” Thinking Putty kit to review. We have actually reviewed a similar set in the past, so I was happy to get our hands on this one. To summarize my personal stance on messy activities, I am typically a fan. You will find us painting our…
Making Faces, An Interactive Toddler Book
We are trying something new. Will is 22 months old today, and we’ve been doing a little formal Montessori work here and there: practicing unrolling (and remembering) our work mat, sensitizing fingertips in warm water, grasping, spooning and pouring transfer work between bowls. He’s still really young for too much primary work, but I’m anxious,…
Fundamental Needs of Humans: Wool Field Trip
Life’s gotten crazy lately; I know I don’t have to tell you that. With everyone stuck at home lately corona-quarantining, how about we take a virtual field trip together? Recently, we were very privileged to meet a local artist who keeps sheep for wool and weaves beautiful textiles. What a fantastic opportunity to learn about…
“Mini Bricks” White House Homeschool Project
Sing with me: Do you want to build a… …white house? It isn’t just any white house… Ok bye. We built a tiny replica of the White House thanks to this cool set from Timberdoodle. That’s right it’s time for another Timberdoodle product review. I received this item free of charge in exchange for my…
Primitive Arts and Stone Age Festival
We recently went on a field trip to a Primitive Arts and Stone Age Festival to learn more about the Third Great Lesson. The main highlight of it all was learning to throw the atlatl; we took turns hunting down a Wooly Mammoth. Having recently visited the skeleton of a real Mammoth, we determined we…