Inchpebbles And Milestones: The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other Montessori toddler activities.

Using the learning poster from ABC JLM, we started with the following for our first week:

At this time, Ant is 2Y and Ate is 3Y6M

Theme: Jesus is my Shepherd (we read the psalm almost every morning)

Bible Story / Verse: Psalm 23 "The Lord is my Shepherd"

Poem: Itsy Bitsy Spider

Song: played our Kindermusik CDs

Book of the Week: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Letter: A

Number: 1-5 emphasis on 1

Color: Red Pula

Shape: Circle Bilog

Self-care & Manners: Sit quietly and wait

Information: her name

Fine Motor: painting on a vertical surface, thongs, marbles & ice cube trays

Gross Motor: lots of play out doors and played "Put the Fire Out"

I got a a good number pictures of what we did throughout the week.

We started with a paint brush. She kept it mostly in the circle I drew.

But she eventually wanted to get her whole hand in the red plate that had the red paint.

Ate loves painting with her hands. I cut the circles, placed tape behind them and with hand over hand assistance, Ate stuck the circles on the table.

And with HOHA again, she painted them green and 1 red.

I drew circles with numbers at the back of wrapping paper left-overs.

Ant stuck the circles Ate painted earlier.

"A" words she learned this week were Apat, Alin, Ako, Aso. The idea is to get her familiar with the letters and words. I simply wrote them on paper and she used her wooden blocks to match the letter on top. There's not letter "I" among her wooden letters. So I got a magnet letter "i"

I have these tiny assorted wooden beading things I got from divi and I had fun sorting them myself. So I got a few at a time for Ant to sort. I labeled the shallow paper cups.

Originally, they were to be done separately. Each had it's own tray. One for bears and flowers of the same color. And another orange one for shape sorting hearts and stars.

She would do them both at the same time and it seemed like it was too easy for her. We had been playing with a lot of her sorting toys before so she didn't get confused with anything. I guess it's more for the fine motor skill that came with picking up the items. Though she had a lot of practice eating her cereals already.

Red wooden beads in assorted shapes originally were stuck on board paper - with tape. She carefully placed the matching beads on top of each. She then yanked them out!

So I had to get shallow cups and a stuck them with hot glue. She took them out of the stack, matched them and then poured it out. And then stacked the cups again.

I had printed numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 with red dots beside them. One by one I laid them out while she took her stickers and stuck them on the red dots.

She had fruit flash cards which we used. And I cut out the English and Tagalog words, stuck them on black strips of board paper. I decorated a coin bank to make it look like her caterpillar. At first it was difficult slipping in the words. I knew she could do it with coins, but with the strips it was more difficult. Eventually she learned she had to hold it at the tip closer to caterpillar's mouth to get it in. To challenge herself, she would sometimes hold it at the far end (farthest from the caterpillar mouth) and wait til the paper would be steady enough to slip in. It was also a challenge to get the strips of paper out of the Dr. Edwards bottle (which she is learning to open by herself)

Chopsticks came in handy when I printed 4 images of the thin caterpillar (behind the fat caterpillar) and the cocoon (behind the butterfly). I used this to make a puppet show for her. I used also the fruits I cut.

I stuck these on the white board and she had to sort colors, and food images.

She would get them in these containers. I hot glued tiny magnets at the back of my print outs. Since I had no laminating machine, I used clear packing tape to make it last a little longer. The circles were part of the assorted wooden beads I had. They had pretty and intricate carvings like lace.

These foam blocks were of no interest until I stuck the outlines I made against a wall. For her visual perception skill, she knew how to match it and build the shapes. She wondered though, how she could get the half circles floating on top so I drew them on top of the other shapes instead. I originally placed the outline on the floor which turned out to be a dumb idea on my part! hahaha! That's why the blocks are 3D! Not flat puzzles!

One of her favorite was her sorting clock. She wasn't particular on showing the number or picture side. Sometimes even getting the picture or number upside down. Often she would confuse between the octagon and the pentagon.