Hi friends and family, happy Sunday! I have decided to dedicate Sundays to sharing our Montessori-related posts. I know a lot of my followers don't have young children anymore, and may not be interested in these types of posts. That is why I have dedicated a specific day to share and if this isn't your thing, you can check back in later in the week for other fun things. Montessori is something that is very new for our household but also very close to my heart right now. It's sort of been my 'project' during this period of staying home. I talk a little bit about it here if you're interested in hearing how we got started.
For today I am going to be sharing our recent family room shelf rotation. This is the toy shelf that we keep behind our sofa in our family room space (the only living space we use right now.) I try to keep 8-10 different activities out for Ella at all times. We have other activities and toys in our play room, but in all honesty we do most of our playing in this room. By limiting the number of toys and activities she has, she maintains much better interest and focus on the ones she does have access to.
This post does contain affiliate links for some of the activities we use.
Here is her shelf for this week! Any activities she shows continued interest in we will keep in our rotation. We will keep it either on this shelf, or we will move to her play room.
Math Shelf- Shapes bean bags
These bean bags are great math activity, as they teach Ella the various shapes. However, these can also be used for many subject areas! Sensorial because of how they sound, feel and use of color/shape identification, motor as we can use them for throwing activities and language as we point to the names written on each shape. Right now I have excluded the hexagon and the pentagon until she masters all the basic shapes first. She knows star, oval and circle pretty well. We're still working on square, rectangle and triangle. Ella is currently playing with her shapes bag as I type this... I'm not even kidding!
Science/Culture Shelf- Felt planets and solar system
Most of our science work comes in the form of animal science or little experiments we can do at home. However, I do have a few things in storage that we bring out to her shelf. This is one of our favorites and it was only 3$! Ella works on matching the various planets to the correct spots on the felt solar system. Right now she is basing it off of their size, which is a great sensorial activity as well. After she places the planet, I tell her which one it is (if I am present with her.) Otherwise she is just 'playing' which really is the best way to learn. I removed the planet names, as that is a little advanced for her.
Sensorial Shelf- Knob cylinders
These knob cylinders were a Christmas present and we just love them. Ella works on placing each cylinder in the correct place, as they all vary in width and depth. When we got this activity, we only gave her one block at a time. Once she mastered one block, we added a second, and so on. She is now so close to mastering all 4 at once but seems to get bored of the activity before accomplishing all 4 blocks. I highly recommend this activity for parents of toddlers. This really works on their critical thinking skills!
Practical Life Shelf- Pouring rice
This is a simple practical life shelf activity that Ella always enjoys. She loves pouring and transferring activities. This was easily done using a small pouring vessel and a small coffee cup. Pouring from the cup back into the white container is a lot more difficult, but she has almost mastered that without spilling. Both containers are breakable, so this also teaches Ella to care for her environment and to be careful when using this activity.
Language Shelf- Sea animal figurines and matching language cards
This activity is typically done with language cards that match the figurine exactly, but Ella is advanced enough now that we use real life images instead. She can now match a fake shark to the real shark picture and we work on saying the name of each sea creature out loud. We got the language cards for free via Carisa on her homeschooling blog. She has tons of great information if you are interested in checking out some learning activities for your child.
Pretend Play- Babies & accessories
I always try to keep out a pretend-play activity or something open-ended for her to play and explore. Ella loves her babies and their accessories. She almost always has access to them! Another toy she plays with all day long that isn't pictured here is her play kitchen. It's basically a permanent fixture and I don't see any reason to take it out of rotation since it entertains her so much.
On top of her shelf she has her play barn that I made recently out of cardboard. It was raining and I was bored, so that's what we did. It's amazing what you can build with some cardboard, paint and a hot glue gun. We recently got the safari ltd farm animal toob and I just love the detail on these animals. Our larger animals are from The Dollar Tree and a lot more affordable, but not nearly as detailed and nice. I want to get Ella more mini figurines like the safari ltd toobs, but without spending $13 on each one. If you have any suggestions on alternatives I would love to hear.
We also keep a stack of her favorite puzzles, as she has been OBSESSED with these recently. I used to only keep out 1 or 2 puzzles, but she goes through every single one and wants to do them again and again. I have a feeling these puzzles will be staying on our shelf for quite some time.
And this is how we'll be playing all week long :) Thanks for checking out today's post. I hope to be back this week to share a bit of life lately and maybe some Friday favorites... it's been a while! Have a great rest of your weekend.
-Ashley & Ella
xoxo
I used to love ideas like these for my kids!
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