Mad Science

Make Shift Activity #2 - Mad Science

Soooo this activity was suppose to be an experiment with color – Mixing primary colors to get secondary colors (yellow + blue = green), but it turned into more of a pouring activity. Which is fine! We got in some good talking in about colors; I showed him how to make green and purple and we also had a good talk about glass and how careful we should be when using it.

Supplies:

Glass Jars
(Note: Don’t be afraid of glass! One of the biggest things with Montessori is using aesthetically pleasing supplies; the sun shining through a plastic container would not look nearly as nice.)
Food coloring
(Note: you only need the 3 primary colors (red, yellow, blue) don’t be a dummy like me and pre-make green….DUH!)
Water

What you might want:
A dropper of some sort (turkey baster, eye dropper)
(Note: this would probably keep this a color activity instead of turning it into a pouring activity)

What was supposed to happen was:
Take one color and add to empty jar
Take second color add it to jar.
Presto change-o you have a new color (ewwww ahhhhh)

What really happened :
Presto Change – O you have one color and a fun water mess to splash around.

I am not to concerned that the meaning of this activity was lost. In the end we had a lot of fun. We will revisit it again later, maybe with a dropper.

Make Shift Montessori

So it's Saturday morning 7:00 am and your 2 year old is wide awake and ready to go...whats a mama to do?

Gear up, start the coffee and oatmeal and find something to keep his brain busy for at least two minutes.

Which brings me to Make Shift Montessori activity number 1 -

Marble Motor Skills and Muffin Tin counting:

Supplies

Muffin Tin

12 marbles

Child Sized tongs (I saved this from a Deli tray- perfect fit for little hands)

This is in no way a hard activity to master. The whole point of this activity is to help learn hand eye coordination with a little math thrown in.

We started by counting the number of holes in the muffin tray.

Then we broke out the bag of marbles and counted out 12.

I didn't have to show Jake the next step on how to use the tongs to put one marble at a time in each hole. He gathered as much

And off we went one by one

Simple, free and easy! And a great way to get his little brain pumping in the morning! We worked on this for a good 30 minutes before he got tired of it and wanted his oatmeal. Counting and showing me how he could use the tongs with either his left or right hand. This activity also got him counting things all day long on Saturday.


The number theme started in our house with this book:


The Original Chicka Chicka Boom Boom book was SO awesome in helping us with the alphabet that I couldn't not check this book out!

A lot of my ideas for "activities" come from other mamas and Montessori principals. As of right now I don't have the whole Montessori shelf set up going on (right now), but a lot of what we do around here is based off the learning principals behind Montessori. Motor skills, practical life, sensory, etc. At the same time most of what we do has to be budget friendly. There is NO way I could justify spending 100 bucks on one toy. Trust me I have thought about it and concluded that it is much more fun finding things around the house and using my crafty wit to make it into a fun activity. Coffee cans, muffin tins, lentils, pots, pans...what ever.


I have a bunch of pictures of other make shift activities that we have done before and some cool ideas for the coming weeks. I think next week we are going to start with some Geography. I just got an giant map of the world at the thrift store so I need to put it to good use.