Mondays are my lazy days. Before parenthood, I worked in restaurants so I have never worked a Monday in my life. This has carried over into my later adult life. I don’t do much on Monday. I always say Mondays are like my Sundays. Pre-COVID, Mondays were the days that my husband was usually out of town for work so S and I had the whole house to ourselves. We take the day as it comes. We snuggle on the couch and watch movies, play outside, bake and just make a mess of the house because there was no one else to be mindful of. We still do the majority of those things now but I clean a little bit more during the day.
The other thing that I do on Mondays is assess our shelves. I look around at what we have out and think about if each work is still serving its purpose. I ask myself “Has this been used this week?” and “Have I noticed a new skill/interest starting to develop?”
This week I added some more math work for S. She has been very interested in numbers for a long time. I observed this week that she has a very strong sense of numbers and recognizes the numbers 0-9 well. I have been working on a DIY spindle activity but I’m starting off with these number peg boards to introduce values. I have had these since S was a baby but this is the first time I have added them to our shelves at a point where she can reasonably understand the concept of the work.
The last time these made an appearance on our shelves was when S got into the cupboard where I keep all of our materials. She pulled these out, put them nicely on a tray and brought them into our school space. She told me that she needed to do that work so I kept them out on our shelves for a few weeks. Even though she couldn’t recognize the numerals, the pegging aspect really called to her.
I keep them out of reach and hidden so S can’t take them unless she is supervised.
This math shelf is for Big Bro. He loves math work. It has actually been a struggle to keep up with how quickly he devours each new problem. I am putting together some new math fact slips for him this week. He loves addition and subtraction and I have recently introduced him to multiplication.
Big Bro attends a public school but I have picked up homeschooling him now that his school has closed down for the remainder of the year. He has been helping me DIY our coloured beads.
For S’s language work, we use sandpaper letters with language objects that match to the corresponding sound. I introduced this work earlier than what would be typical in a Montessori classroom. In addition to English, S and I have been using Signed English since she was a baby. I found that pairing the SPL and language objects really helped her signing comprehension. Being able to SEE and FEEL the letters made it easier for her little fingers to sign each letter. I found the same was true with words.
We also keep a basket of books out. I neglected to take a picture of them because I really need to take a minute to switch out the books we have. They’ve grown a bit dull due to being read so many times the past few weeks. I cannot wait until the libraries open up again. I miss new books every week.
Hope you all have a great week!
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