FunFelt Book

To satisfy my latest obsession with felt board, yesterday I finally found (surprise surprise coz we usually don't have such stuff here in Pakistan) and right away bought this extremely cute Felt story book "Monkey's Tall Story" by Keith Faulkner. It is illustrated by Jonathan Lambert and has more than 35 felt jungle figures.. initially I was not planning to show this book to M yet because i thought she is too young to understand the concept of creating a story as it is being told.Pluss it had animals that are small and in silhouettes So i was afraid she either wont recognise them or the large number wont let her concentrateBut I was surprised to see that she can actually recognize many animals and had a lot of fun creating her own jungle on the small felt board provided in the book while i read the story to her.
hmmm this just reinforced my interest to create a felt board for her!!
she even put the pieces back after wards isn't that neat !!!

Open and Close

This morning i introduced "open and close activity" to M . She already knows how to open and close simple stuff; that just needs pulling and pushing back, so i also included a few screw tops as well...though I fear this will make it difficult to deceive M in future ... (when she wants to open something and we want otherwise we pretend that we are pulling real hard and still its not opening) but that has to end eventually. and those screw tops were the ones she was more interested in.
Another thing that i introduced with this is the concept of proper "activity mat" I should have introduced it a long time back but to tell you the truth I was not sure how does it work or why was it so important.
First of all it helped giving a structure to the activity, it was much more focused and there was a definitely neat ending giving both of us opportunity to put things back so i guess it will reinforce the concept of tidying up once done * fingers crossed*And then there was this opportunity to pretend :) Here she is putting roll on deo and in the next one the essence bottle is her nail polish

Book Rack and Toy Corner

Well I am not much of an organiser my self and doesn't want to pass my bad habits to her M so I guess its high time we get organised and also start her early on it. So the first thing first have to put all my stuff back to there original places after use and the comes M's turn ...but where is the proper place to put her stuff !!!! the answer is "M's corner"we already had this great toy box that holds most of her toys and also serves as a vehicle and a home and God knows what in her pretend play
but her books and other stuffed toys still needed a place of their own. So here comes our nice and simple book/toy rack. It is a simple chip board box which still needs finishing, it is screwed on the wall right beside our computer table in lunge at a height convenient for m so she can pick books and puzzles whenever she wants to and has a proper place to put them back herself .... ( she still needs a lot of practice on the second one)now our toy box has an additional purpose its also a stool now
i am planing to rotate the books and other activities as our collection grows

Birdie by M (drawn on 1st Dec.)

Life really is like a joy ride ever since we got her in our lives.No day has passed since her birth that she didn't surprise us by something utterly cute and undeniably intriguing, we were still fascinated by her portrait and here she is with her BIRDIE .... don't know what to say about this one but sure it is as cut as M herself !!! cant take my eyes off this cute thing with her small beak ( which reminds me of my sweetie's pout) and the open wing ! The best part is that she knew what she was drawing (the flag on the right is drawn by irfan i guess)

Cool Finds

Finally i got this very very cute ticker from the ticker factory for our blog and i got another cute one for my facebook account too (i have been trying to get one for a long long time )
And there is more, i found two very nice sites brightly beaming resourse and Hubbard's cupboardwith all the curriculam planned, activities organised and guidlines set even i feel confident to home school....naaaa just kidding :) i dont really want to "home school" M, I am just trying to give her an enviornment that i hope and pray will inculcate the love for learning and knowlege in her ( blieve me its not as dull and boring as it sounds, its a lot of fun for the two of us ) and i guess thats what Maria montessorie's philosophy is all about.