Morning share at Montessori

Hannah kept me busy with classwork during morning share last week. First she showed me this counting exercise in which she lines up the beaded wires sequentially with one on top and ten on the bottom and then finds the numeral that matches the quantity. Number recognition!

Then I asked her to show me the movable alphabet because she'd been talking about it A LOT. The movable alphabet is a huge box of wooden lowercase letters. The consonants are pink, and the vowels are blue. After removing the lid, Hannah grabbed a basket of objects and began laying them out: hat, map, bird, box, ox, etc. Then she grabbed the rat and proceeded to sound it out. "Rrrrrr," she said, and grabbed the "r". Then "aa aa aa," and grabbed the "a". Finally, "t t t," and grabbed the "t." Rat!! This kid is so obviously from Baltimore City!

Eager to show me everything, she put away the rat and the movable alphabet and the box of objects and took me over the sensory section. She picked up a bowl with some soap, a sponge, and a scrub brush in it and handed me a rock to carry back to the mat. After donning a rainbow striped apron, she filled the bowl with water from the sink, added a few pumps of soap, and showed me how she cleans the rock with the scrub brush....

...and how she wipes off the soap with a sponge.

As tends to happen, what started with a simple rock cleaning soon turned into a full blown classroom deep clean. She attempted to clean the chairs and tables, but they were full due to parental visitors, so  she tackled the window instead. Hannah showed me how to use the squeegee to catch the drips of water before they trickled down too far and then let me try it for myself.

That was the end of the cleaning spree. On to braiding!

As her teacher was making the rounds to each parent, quietly giving the 5-minute warning, Hannah pulled a tulip stitching out of the sewing box and showed me how she sews, threading the purple yarn in and out and over to of the tulip outline. I admired her patience and then hugged her tight and left her to finish her flower.

I love being able to share in her school day, even if only for an hour, and I'm also especially grateful that Mary Cate was able to watch Jacob so I could actually focus on Hannah and really let that hour be hers alone. The two of us don't get a lot of time like that since since baby brother came along. Seeing how eager she was to share her daily activities with me makes me even more certain that she is in the best possible educational setting for her, and since it isn't free, that's a nice certainty to have.

Pretzels at the Aquarium

Chip and the boys came to visit at the beginning of this month, and we took everyone to the Aquarium. It's dark in there and not really worth trying to take pictures unless you are a talented photographer and have an amazing solution for low light. I don't bother trying anymore. I did bust out the camera phone when we stopped for a snack at the high-up snack bar. Love the backdrop!

 

Weighing down the heavies

"What's that dinging sound mom?" Hannah asked me while getting ready for school on Thursday morning.

"I don't know, hon. I don't hear it."

"Oh, I know what it is. It's because you're so big, it, um, it weighs down the heavies."

"Mmmm...yep. That's probably it."

Conversations with Hannah...

Upside down family photo!

Thank you Bianca for taking and sharing these super fun family photos!!

Pad Thai fingerfood and his first hair cut

Guess who loves Pad Thai?? This kid! I wasn't sure how to serve it so I just plopped it on his tray and let him go to town. He had no problem with that.Yum!

After dinner we gave him his first haircut.  It was getting a little business-up-front and party-in-the-back. When pregnant I hoped he would have crazy wild curly hair (I love how little boys look with crazy hair), but I figured the odds of that were pretty low. This is a family of straight, thinnish, anti-wild hair, which means we all need to keep it pretty short or it just hangs listlessly down our faces like a drab curtain.

So Eric stuck the 5/8 inch guide on the razor, and I zipped away the baby's lovely hair. I didn't touch the front or the Alfalfa spikes up top; I love those.

He's 11 months old today, he eats pretty much everything we do, and he's sporting a his first haircut. Every time I look at him I try to burn his image into my brain so I can carry it with me even when he's a grown man. It's hard though; I already can't remember him as a newborn, and the only baby images of Hannah that I can conjure are those that are photographs, but a memory of a photograph isn't at all the same things a memory of real life...It's all so fleeting.