This was a really light week in terms of Montessori activities. DJ has been making a lot of progress with potty training and I’m wondering if that has him preoccupied. We’re so excited though to see success in that area.  Still a long way left to go though, but we’ll take all the forward momentum we can get.

Maybe there wasn’t a lot of “school work” this week, but DJ did his share of gross motor activity. We went to a park on Thursday and DJ had a blast. It had a water feature which is why he’s wearing his swimsuit. But it was this rope version of monkey bars that caught his interest. He really wanted to climb to the top like the bigger kids. Some day, little man. Just keep trying.

This is also one of the few playgrounds that has an old-fashioned merry-go-round. I was nervous about letting him on it because he’s fallen off similar toys before. But this time he held on like a pro. At one point, the merry-go-round was full of kids and an older boy took it upon himself to push – really fast. Fortunately he was conscientious enough to make sure the kids were holding on securely and he kept DJ in the center, where it’s safest. He rode for a LONG time and I began to wonder if I’d ever get him off of it.

Later we went to the local Children’s Museum. DJ really likes this activity where you put a small ping pong ball in a tube and air sucks it up through a maze of tubes on the ceiling before dropping it back along the wall.

This is another similar activity where a scarf is balled up and pulled in by air and drawn up to the top to be thrown into the air. DJ couldn’t do this for the longest time but he’s learned how to just recently and gets a real thrill from it.

The Children’s Museum has a playground set on the roof. I’m sure the age suggestion for this section is at least 5+ but just try to tell DJ that! In this picture he’s actually climbing down this ladder which is a bit more challenging than climbing up.

The museum also has this balancing activity. This is the first time DJ has been able to walk it himself. He’s only done it while holding my hand before. I was very impressed he made it all the way around. Montessori has an activity called “Walking on the Line.”  I’ve tried to think of a way to introduce DJ to it, but we don’t have room at the house and it’s also meant to be a group project, so I’m not sure how it would work even if we could have a line.  But this is something a stand-in for that activity for now.

DJ decided to exercise his fine motor skills by removing the legs from this stool. Daddy loosened the screws but DJ did the rest himself.  I really enjoy that he’s learning to use real tools and with a handyman dad, he’ll learn power tools when it’s appropriate as well.

We pulled these glitter glue tubes off the shelf this week and DJ had a great time doing some creative art with them.  The paper isn’t the right kind to use with the wet glue, but that didn’t stop DJ from having a great time.  He enjoyed it so much, he asked to do it again the next day as well.

And some more flower arranging. It’s nice to see him repeating practical life tasks on his own. Look at that concentration on his face!

Finally, this is a peg board I received free when I purchased some Montessori materials on Craigslist. It takes some finger dexterity to place and remove the pegs but for DJ it’s just plain fun. Often he’ll entice me to help him build a maze for his cars with it but this time he just wanted to place the pegs randomly. And you can almost see DJ’s new soccer jersey.  He attends a Daddy & Me soccer class on Saturdays and today Daddy stopped at the sporting goods store and bought DJ his first real soccer ball too!