Post-Christmas & Post-Baby Occupations

In case any of you out there are having difficulty keeping your little people occupied through this interminably long winter, here's a couple of our Christmas gifts and new work that are taking the edge off the boredom these days. This animal matching game was a Christmas gift to Rosebud from my parents. The cards are actually real photos of animals as opposed to many memory games I've seen with cartoon drawings. Right now the girls use these to simply match the animals, but later they can play Memory or Go Fish with them. I love how my mom picks out thoughtful and beautiful gifts that will hold the girls interest and give them work to do past the Christmas season.

My First Mosaic was my parents gift to Turtle. She has been carefully completing the 5 pictures since Christmas and hanging them in her room. Its a very "big work" for her and she is very proud of it.

She has finished four so far!

This Opposites Game was a gift from one of my husband's clients after the baby was born. It was so thoughtful of her to think of sending something for the girls! And both girls have been really engaged by it. It has helped introduce Turtle to the idea of opposites and Rosebud can even do it too , I lay out half of each set in rows and she just matches the colors of the different pieces together.

Here are two other works I have put together recently. (And lest you think I have got it all together right now, never fear, I collected all this stuff before the baby was born and then one day when I had a rare 30 minutes when ALL of my kids were napping, I just dug around in my (messy!) "Montessori shelf" in the closet and pulled them out and set them out on trays.)

Toothpick Sorting

I got the idea for this work from the Chasing Cheerios blog. The child turns the dial on the side of the toothpick dispenser and either a yellow or blue toothpick comes out. Then they put it in the matching toothpick holder. Its way too easy for Turtle now, but Rosebud loves it. She is at a good age for sorting and this is actually the first sorting work I've ever given her. I got the dispenser and the jars from Walmart and finally, after looking forever, found the colored toothpicks at Giant.

Living/Non-Living Sorting
My mom had a work like this in our "school room" back to when I was a teenager. When I babysat/tutored for a family one year I would bring the work with me for the youngest little girl to explore. I was reminded of this work one day while browsing the Montessori for Everyone site (the "Living" and "Non-Living" cards I printed from here) I've been wanting to present this to Turtle for a long time, but it's taken a while to collect the objects and I still haven't found an uninterrupted moment to give her the lesson. But hopefully she will love it, as I think it is really cool!

The "living" objects are a turtle, ladybug, pronghorn sheep, bee, leaf, sunflower, mountain lion, tree, pinto bean, butterfly, and a bird. These are things that move on their own, or grow and "breathe."


The "non-living" items are a seashell, a mitten (cut out of felt), a clay pot, a rock, marble, a cowboy hat, key, penny, ladder, fence, and a guitar. (It's amazing what random objects you can find at the craft store. :)


Last ( but not least on the level of holding the girls interest!) here are my little slaves washing the kitchen floor. :)

The kitchen seriously had not seen a mopping in months and one day I couldn't stand it any more. As I now almost never have a "naptime" with 2 hrs to myself any more, and evenings are spent holding a fussy, wide awake baby, I don't get to do my cleaning alone in peace like I'd MUCH rather. So, I gave the girls cloths and we washed the floor together. It was a little messy (and thank goodness the baby slept through it all!) but the floor has never been so clean as it was that day. We even got so carried away that we washed the fronts of the cabinets and the fridge. I think my floor will definitely have to be washed every week now! :)