On kisses and other displays of affection

You can imagine how delighted I was this week when my 13-month-old son kissed me for the first time. It was totally unexpected and spontaneously and at the beginning it took me aback. His sister might have been past 2,5 years when she learnt to kiss. I first thought it a coincidence but after three clear attempts at putting his lips on my cheek and making a little noise it was clear to me. In the previous weeks he had been doing some biting instead. I wonder now whether he was practicing. How sweet this little dude is!!

We like snuggling up and are all sort of loving but I clearly see differences between my children in this sense. Marina is pretty much her own and definitely introverted. She often refuses to be kissed, has very seldom kissed anyone but her parents, and we totally respect that. The fact that we don't encourage (let alone force) our children to kiss anyone, not even relatives, might be a bit of a contrast when we meet relatives who do, which happens once or twice a year. Someone may think we are raising unfriendly, unsociable children but I really believe it is a way to show them to trust themselves, their sense of safety and comfort. This is very important to me.
Marina's displays of affection tend to be shy so I had a secret feeling of joy the other day when matter-of-fact and out of the blue she declared "I like Cristina Coll, Irene (both friends of mine), you and Mazda (invented character) very much".

Homemade blocks

Here is the other novelty this week. After saving square and round boxes for a while, I have turned them into huge blocks. I had planned to make square, round, and triangle boxes and then wrap them in colored glossy paper. The square ones should be blue, the round ones red, and the triangle ones yellow. I was thinking ahead a matching activity to be done using Dick Bruna's book "I know about shapes", which you can see in this older post.
You can find square boxes anywhere, round ones are a bit more difficult to get and that's why I have only made one block out of a tin box of Danish cookies -another one on its way. But the hardest to find are triangle boxes. Although the idea was reusing, I dropped by a dime store looking for a triangle box. There were none but I stopped at Schlecker afterwards and unexpectedly found out a triangle box of tissues. Well, it was actually my niece Alba who saw it -thanks sweetheart-. It couldn't be more practical. We are all sort of cold... so we will use the tissues and then make the box into our first triangle yellow block.

To make these you only need:
boxes (you can reuse all kind of boxes)
scissors
glue (to glue the glossy paper)
glossy colored art paper (I would rather have one single color blocks but you can use any paper you like)
sticky contact paper (to make the blocks more resistant and water-proof)

You wrap the box in glossy paper, line it with contact paper and voilà: your homemade blocks.

Homemade huge dice

Hey!! This is our latest (although not new at all) novelty. I made this dice many years ago and for some reason had completely forgotten about it. Now I realize my passion for homemade toys is older than I thought. Should you want to make your own dice, it is very simple. I made it with a piece of foam and a remnant of light blue velvet. I adore this color! My mother was getting rid of a mattress at the time and I cut out a cube of the foam, wrapped it with the velvet and sew it -not very accurately, btw- and sew buttons (=dots) to the surface. The result could be neater but I didn't think my dice would last so long as to be passed on to my own daughter... I must have been 14 or 15 when I made it!! M likes it very much.

Self-inspection

I must confess every time there is a great change in my daughter's life I seem to fail to recognize it at once. I wonder whether I am the only mother who, despite knowing her own child very well, is taken aback by changes and is kind of slow in her reaction.
I don't mean to sound pretentious when I say I know my daughter very well. What I mean is that after having been with her night and day for nearly 14 months (outside // 9 inside) -having never been apart for more than 4 hours in a row- and having observed her closely, I feel I can say I know her. I have observed her a good deal. I try to attend to her cues and follow her lead. And, however, to my surprise some changes seem to skip my observation.
When she started crawling, for instance, I didn't understand that she no longer needed me to carry her everywhere right away. I was so used to having her in my arms that I sort of felt this was going to be so forever... I failed to connect her new ability and her sudden dislike for the baby carrier. Since she didn't like strollers either and absolutely hated the car, we spent some weeks rarely going outside. I have already mentioned this in another post. Babies grow so fast...
I guess the root of my "mistake" is an inner feeling of stability that is challenged by the natural passing of time. When we are pregnant and imagine the future baby, it seems difficult to figure out life with the baby. It feels as if we were going to be pregnant forever. I've felt this way. Inside-outside. There is such a difference. Then, the baby comes to the world and it is nearly impossible to remember how things were before. We "naturally" adapt.
Something similar has happened concerning activities. I used to prepare an environment trying to follow M's current interests and intended it to last for a fortnight or so. Now I see the error. In intending them to last I was actually sort of ignoring her lead. I took her motivations into account in general terms but acted as if I knew how long they would last.
Some weeks ago I started noticing she was dumping objects. At first I thought it could be a non-directed way of trying to find out the use of a certain material. I guess I was wrong, for some days afterwards she spent much time focused on another activity. Then I realized she had only been bored.
Here I esteem it appropriate to bring up one of the basis of Montessori education, the balance of support and challenge. This is in my opinion an interesting idea regardless of your interest in Montessori. I will quote from Paula Pol Lillard and Lynn Lillard Jessen's book Montessori from the start: "Chidren need challenges but they also need to live in a positive and secure environment" (...) "when parents become rigid and too goal-oriented, there is an imbalance between challenge and support: support is too low, challenge too high. (...) In homes where there is high support and low challenge, children do not develop focused attention".
I have been trying to put this idea into practice for a long time but I must confess I feel I am not quite successful at it. I keep observing M to see what engages her in order to provide materials and activities that in my opinion may lead to moments of focused attention. There have been weeks when she spent some minutes concentrated on one activity -mainly "thing in a slot" sort of activities, but there are many days when she wanders about picking now a book, then something else, moving to and fro... I have had to stop and ask myself: Am I asking too much too soon? Is free education incompatible with the Montessori approach and the emphasis on focused attention? Have I missed a chapter and all this concentration issue applies only to older children? Should we spend much more time outside?
Up to now I have been able to answer that last question and guessed the third one. And I change the main environment at least every couple of days. I set up a sand area in our garden last week and M had a great time playing in it, feeling the sand, getting handfuls of sand, transferring it to a pot, and so on. We have also spent some time in different settings outside our home this week. On one of our outings we went to our local library where apart from books there is a cozy soft area with little couches and construction cushions. M enjoys climbing into the tiny couches.
If you relate to my experience anyhow I would love to hear yours. If you have an answer to my questions, please write to me!

One more Farm week

As usual, books have been a great hit this week. For this reason, and following our main topic "the farm", I have changed the display of the shelf every couple of days. While doing this, I have seen that what works best for us is to change materials every couple of days. We stuck to the farm topic for over a month but have mixed many other activities and several changes of the way materials were displayed. As I said last week I would probably do, I went ahead and and got M a special treat; two beautiful Schleich farm animals: a horse and a foal.
We started the week with horses on the shelf, then switched to sheep and cows.

Another of the top activities this week has been climbing. I rarely post pictures of M's gross motor activities and there is a reason for that: she is way faster than I and by the time I've got the camera ready she is already on the floor again. This time, though, I could take some snaps.

There she is climbing into and out of a hassock.

And here, climbing into an umbrella stroller we have been given and has unexpectedly turned out to be a success.
Tomorrow I'll talk about other activities we gave a try last week and will show you our latest creation.
I am off for a much needed rest!

Our week in pictures

Welcome to M's room. Apart from our shelves, located in the living-room, there are several activities that often take place around here. One of them is looking at books. Another, putting dolls to sleep - together.

Before the weather changed, we tried artwork with finger paint outside but I was unsure whether it might be toxic and changed it for a mass of flour and water...

I set a basket full of shoes and M showed interest in gathering them by pairs. This is a good activity to stimulate visual discrimination.

I saw this activity in Montessori Ici. M took all the pencils out and put them in the holes again but lost interest after the second time.

Some of our farm animal magnets on an oven tray.

This tray belongs to a larger activity I set on the shelves. The books were, as always, a hit, specially that one called "Farm". We will have it again this week and I'm thinking on getting M a treat. You will soon see...

What are you doing these days? I'd love to hear!

On our shelves last week

I was about to consider last week's environment a complete flop but after having a glimpse at the pictures I took I've been able to see M showed more interest in some of the activities suggested than I could remember. For part of the week she was dumping objects not knowing what to do with them. It was there when I realized my idea had not been too good.
I had set up a mono-thematic work station, as you can see, and it was a bit too abstract for M.
Dick Bruna's book was one of the things she liked best. The 7 shapes puzzle was of course too difficult and I knew. It has no knobs and I had been wanting to make a 3 shapes knobbed puzzle but I kept running out of time.
On the lower shelf, the stacking shape blocks belong to a wooden train M got for Christmas. The house for sorting shapes is a recent acquisition. She has been toying around with the blocks but has not sorted them at all.
The second picture, where she can be seen comparing the real dish to the one on the book (I was lucky to find one the same color, uhu?) was one of those flashes where you tell yourself "this must be coincidence". Maybe not, who knows.
The bit of art work I suggested was not a flop. She was interested in the stickers and sticked some of them to a kitchen paper roll.

Any of you with 13 months old? What activities are you doing? Has it ever happened to you that a suggested environment was a flop?

Our shelves

Showing interest in the round shape

Comparing real plate to the one on the book

Having a close look at the new exhibition

Working with blue square stickers

Homemade materials and toys

Some of the homemade materials and toys we've recently made have been dictated by the kind of activities M is interested in but there were some that are either timeless, see discovery bottles, or planned for the near future.

 A simple box and toilet paper roll for coordination skills. M found this way too easy so I am currently doing another one with three cylinders -small, medium, and big.

 Bottle caps and handmade box. We used a small box, strengthen it with construction paper and covered with sticky contact paper. The interior of the drawer is lined with purple velvet. It was very easy to cut a slit with the paper cutter, and voilà!

 This sensory bottles are merely bottles filled with water and (red / golden) glitter. Easy, cheap, and very nice. M likes them a lot.






Having dressing skills in mind, I have designed a sun with detachable rays. M is not ready to button her clothes yet but she is always willing to help me dress her so I feel it won't be too long before she starts noticing buttons, hooks, zips, and so on. This activity is intended as a motivation. For the ball I used a knitted ball (thanks, mum, for helping me with that). The rays are made with felt. The buttons were removed from an old jacket before trashing it.