Family Day at School
Katherine’s teachers were kind enough to host a family breakfast day last Thursday – where family members could come in, have a bite to eat and watch their child work with Montessori works. Katherine was beyond herself with excitement. Not only was I (Christine) attending, but also Allison. We promptly showed up at 9AM, spent a few minutes eating at a table and then headed off to do something called the “binomial” work. It’s an open cubes with three layers of multicolored, different sized wooden cubes. Only if the puzzler puts the pieces in correctly can the cube be recreated. Katherine was excited to show a smaller and larger cube work -and then the big coup-de-grace – the red rods. I’m not sure how they work, and I’m pretty sure that Katherine didn’t have them correctly arranged. But, Allison loved it. She said repeatedly (while taking off her shoes which her sister said had to be done), ” I want to work on red rods…” Thankfully they managed to put the work away without too much incident. Anyway, I’ve posted a few pictures so you can see Katherine giving her sister a lesson.
Sharing Adventures
Sharing continues to be the primary source of squabbling these days. Allison is starting to claim that everything is hers, even though she knows full well that objects belong to other people. I’ve also had to start putting toys away once the noise level rises and sharing becomes an issue with a toy. Thankfully some toys can be shared easily. One such toy is our train puzzle. Today the girls worked on two ends of the puzzle. I had to help Allison with the letters a bit:
Me: “Allison, where is the Sssss.”
Allison: “Where is SSS? I found it. I found the S. It goes right here. Excellente!”
Because Katherine was busy talking to her grandparents, we finished both ends at about the same time. They put them together. Katherine pushed the entire puzzle to the hardwoods, which then became a balance beam….
Before describing one other telling incident, I should mention that Katherine loves keys, especially keys that we no longer need. She puts them in the pretend ignition switch for the Beetle. Well, anyway, Allison really wanted to use the Beetle (“MY Beetle”) and she really wanted those keys. How did Katherine solve this problem? She stuck the keys under the Beetle seat and didn’t tell Allison.
