Colours, Colours, Everywhere!

As those who have read My Montessori Classroom and Supplies know, I skipped over the first and second colour boxes. By the time we began a structured "school time," Ella would not have found them the least bit challenging. So I simply ordered the Third Box of Colour Tablets. I knew she wasn't quite ready for it, so rather than putting all the colours and shades out, I put two shades of each of the nine colours in a box.

I'm not specific as to what order she puts them in, as long as the two tablets in the same colour but different shades go together. She likes laying them out like a railway track. Here's Ella making sure that the "railway track" is nice and even.


As you can see, she has put every tablet next to the matching one:


The colours, because of the flash, are difficult to see, so I shall list them (from left to right): dark grey, light grey, dark orange, light orange, light purple, dark purple, light blue, dark blue, dark yellow, light yellow, dark brown, light brown, light green, dark green, light red, dark red, dark pink, light pink.

Because she now was finding the dark/light matching a bit too easy, I ran into the office next door (where I keep extraneous supplies) and got another shade in each colour - a medium shade.

Here she is naming the new colours. Then I had her add the third colours to her "railway track" in the proper position (between the light and the dark). This task proved a bit difficult because she wanted to keep her "railway track" perfectly straight. She started with the medium orange:

Despite how it looks, it's not really an easy task. Especially if you're working with all nine colours, each with seven shades. The darkest orange is remarkably close to an orangey-red, making it hard to differentiate between it and the lighter red shades. And the darkest pink poses a similar problem. The darker shades of grey and brown can be difficult to distinguish, depending on the light. And some of the shades of the same colour are so close that you can only tell which is lighter and which is darker when they are in context with all the other shades of that colour which are already in order!

For now, however, three shades each of nine colours is enough of a challenge. Here she is going after the reds:

Having already matched the darkest and the lightest, Ella had little difficulty putting the medium shades between the correct colours. I shall have to add a fourth shade soon!

The addition of another shade for each colour really seemed to add to her fun - and it made her railway track much longer!

Ultimately, I hope that she will be able to use the colour tablets to make more elaborate designs, such as the colour wheel I made:


Because we're not yet to the point where we're using all the shades, I bought a cardboard box at the Dollarama to hold the tablets currently in use. If I add one more shade, I'm going to need a new box!

New Montessori Activities

I'm constantly adding and adapting the activities Ella does for school. Here's some of the newer stuff...

This is a practical-life activity. Essentially, she's learning to use tongs to transfer an item (in this case rocks!) from place to place. She soon figured out that she could get more if she sort of "scooped" up as many as she could before closing the tongs together.


This is a colour-sorting activity, which could fall in the category of "sensorial" or "finger dexterity."

For a long time Ella's favourite colour was blue (it's now green), and she still always begins with blue if green isn't an option.

I'm not 100% sure yet, but I suspect that my greatest challenge is going to be making mathematics fun and interesting. We've used the small number rods (pictures previously, but not in use), but in order for Ella to do it, I need to be completely with her, helping, showing, and creating games in order to keep her even semi-interested. Since until now that has been our only math-oriented activity, I've added my version of the spindle box. It was very easy to make. I got a few long, thin dowels and had Dad cut them into 5-inch lengths (45 spindles are needed for the activity), and sanded them. Then, using a "snap together" desk organiser that I got at the Dollarama ($1 for three parts, I needed ten, so I bought 4 - anyone need 2???), which didn't snap together very well! So I glued them together in two sets of five (easier to move, and takes less space), and using a thick permanent marker, I made the numbers 0 through 9 at the ends of each section. She's either not "up" to doing it on her own, or is not able to maintain interest in it on her own yet, though. So we're doing it as a game and we take turns putting the correct number of spindles in each section. I try to be sure that I alternate between doing the even and odd numbers.

She does really well until about 5 or 6, and then (quite honestly) I think she gets bored and doesn't bother really trying to do it correctly anymore. Math just doesn't have the fascination for her that other subjects seem to. I can't really blame her; neither of her parents were fond of math either!

WARNING - NUDITY AHEAD!!!

That is to say, our anatomy lesson - which (strangely enough, lol...) is anatomically correct! (To see the "nudity" you may have to look closely).

I got this anatomy layer-puzzle at one of my favourite toy stores, Hot Toads! (you can peek at my links, if you want to see other great stuff). I never have enough money when I go there. They are primarily an online store, but they do have a small store in Oromocto, New Brunswick, and the owner really knows his stuff. It's put out by Beleduc-Hape Toys.

This was an excellent activity. The bottom layer is the skeleton, then organs and systems, musculature, skin/nude, then dressed. As she did the puzzle, we talked about what the different parts were called and what they were for in a fairly informal manner. She did catch a lot, because I over heard her explaining to her grandmother that the skeleton was bones inside you and those are you "hard parts"!

Perhaps our favourite subject of all - geography! We're doing world continents. Ella adores maps and globes, and I've always like geography and cultural studies. I've made some "Antarctica" cards that we play with, and we're still planning an "Antarctic Expedition," which will take place in a snowy, barren location (maybe our back yard!). I had been hoping to do it tomorrow, but the weather might be against us. Freezing rain - yep, okay, they've got THAT in Antarctica, but by noon it's supposed to be just plain rain, and that will be wet and miserable. I need a cold day for it, not a wet one!

Ella had a surprise visitor - Nanie! Mum, being off from school (yea March Break!), came down to see Ella at her school, and to play. Every time Ella takes a piece out of the puzzle and lays it on its corresponding "shadow" above the written name of the continent, she'll say, "This is _____" (fill in the blank with whatever continent it is). She doesn't get them all right yet, but when she's stumped, she looks up at me and says, "I can't bemember this one!" and I'll tell her. She'll then repeat the name and continue. When re-assembling the puzzle, she also says each name.

She was so proud of herself - she got them all out, on the right shadows, and said all their names correctly when showing Nanie! Nanie (being a typical grandmother) was pretty proud too!