Springtime activities(part 2)

www.fridayschildmontessori.com

Make paper daffodils

Make a cheerful piece of springtime

artwork with 3-D daffodils. Find

yellow cupcake frills and glue these onto

a circle or star shape of brighter

yellow.

You might need to cut this out for your

child if he or she isn’t able to do this solo – or it could be a good moment for teaching your child how to use scissors to cut things out.

Don’t forget to use the proper

Montessori teaching technique of

demonstrating slowly with a full

explanation, followed by the child having a go under supervision.

This flower head can be used in a larger picture to make a

floral scene, or you can glue/staple the flower head onto a

stem of green paper.

Or attach them to strings and hang them at different

lengths from an old coat hanger to make a mobile.

Plant a garden

Even on the Gold Coast, things slow down a bit in the

garden over winter, and fire up again

during spring.

This is the best time of year to get

your children planting vegetables

and flowers.

Children are much more likely to eat a

vegetable that they’ve planted and tended themselves.

Things that get really big are a lot

of fun to grow – sunflowers are

popular, but so are pumpkins and

melons.

Start the pumpkins and melons off indoors

in cardboard containers (you can plant them directly without any risk of

small fingers harming the roots) and move

them outdoors in about mid-September.

Spring cleaning

One of the things that Montessori

education aims to do is to teach

children how to be good citizens and members of the

community.

And knowing how tidy up is part of

this learning strand. It’s also a

means of self care, which is another

Montessori principle

.

Go through those cupboards with your

children and sort through things –

you’ll be surprised at what you find and what your children have grown out of.

Involve your children in as much

as you can – kids are great at chores

like dusting and vacuum cleaners are a lot of fun.

Who needs a pretend toy vacuum

cleaner when you can use the real

one?

If you have the sort of vacuum cleaner

that has a long hose and a head rather

than an upright one, you can have fun with it and try to

catch each other with the sucky hose…

And if you do any cleaning that involves warm

soapy water, wear rubber gloves to protect your skin

and make sure that lots of bubbles are

involved.

Observe a tree

If you have a deciduous tree

nearby that loses its leaves in winter, watch it come out

in leaf again.

Check the tree daily, every two

days or weekly to watch it changing

from bare branches to full leaves. If the tree has blossoms, so much the better!