The Beauty of a Montessori Mind at Work!

Ty woke over two hours earlier than normal this morning. This Mama really, really needs rest. I had gone to bed a bit early to assure I would get it. Sigh. Nothing is a sure thing. I pushed through the first few hours, feeling kinda short-tempered, dragging, grumbling a bit...really not like me at all. Then I observed Ty at work this morning! What a mood changer!

First off, ignore the photo quality if you can. I was too lazy to go grab my camera and just used my phone. Sometimes when I get up, even if I'm not really involved much with what he's doing, it distracts him and he stops to follow me. Being Montessori-minded, I of course really hate to break his focus. 

Okay, that said, and I'm not sure how much of this intro is necessary, but Ty started off by putting puff balls down his shirt. We had just been using them for a gross motor activity that I'll blog about soon. Putting things down his shirt is a new (and adorable) way of exploring for him lately.

Then Tyler ran off to pound pegs into his M&D hammering/peg toy, a newer interest for him. After a bit of intense pounding, he made the connection that he also uses a hammer to pound things with his M&D Pound and Roll toy (an old favorite) and ran over to use it there. He then grabbed some puff balls to put down the pound a roll toy and noticed that they rolled down too, but that sometimes they got stuck, so he tried to pound/roll some balls down to get the puff balls out. Okay, nothing too incredible, though I really liked his problem solving. I could tell his brain was fired-up.

Tyler then started alternating between the two hammers, looked at me (quietly observing from across the room) and held one hammer up saying "big!" then the other saying "small!". Indeed! The handle on one is almost an inch shorter and the hammer head a bit smaller! Nothing that I really thought he'd take note of. Ahh, sensorial works are sinking in! 

It seemed like he wanted me to participate, so I moved closer and made some vocal observations. After a while of experimenting with the puff balls and pound and roll balls, he suddenly reached over and said "big!", touching the biggest Pink Tower block in a basket on the nearby shelf, then found the second smallest and said "small". Aha! Something else that's big and small!

He soon decided that he would demonstrate this idea to me further, lining the Pink Tower (we are only using five right now) horizontally saying "big" and "small". I also gave him the word "medium" for the middle block, something he paid more attention to today than last time I told him. He started using it correctly quite quickly. He then decided that he would put his extension cards in order as well. I can't say he uses them very often, so I was happily surprised. He talked again about his hammer sizes as well. Connections, connections! His brain was so ready to do this, and all on his own!

He then decided to match the cards to the blocks and did it perfectly.

Ty then built the tower vertically. He did this over and over, laying them on the cards then building them back up. After he was done with this, he started talking about how some of his puff balls are big and small as well!

Though I'm still awfully tired today, that beautiful Montessori moment really rejuvenated my spirit. It's one thing for Tyler to do a work that I've prepared, but those moments when he uses that knowledge so eagerly in other ways, independently, is always such a special delight. Montessori works!