Getting creative and dealing with mess!

Rogue has been in art and craft mode recently pretty much to the exclusion of all else! It's all good though, all that play dough squishing and paint brush wielding is great for hand strength, coordination, developing creativity and concentration. 

I like to encourage independence in art and craft by having everything (yes even paint) accessible to the kids. I know that sounds mad and I agree that sometimes, fairly often really, it does lead to quite big messes, but it is so good for them to be able to act on that creative impulse that I think the benefits outweigh the cons. 

Ways to cut down on the mess:

1. Have very small paint pots. We use tiny little pots to decant our paint into and on top of that I teach them to only fill them halfway. I think a big pot just invites the squeezing of the entire bottle of paint and that lovely squidgy mess of brown mixing that happens! 

2. A place for everything. We used to have a box, one very big box with everything in it. Of course, whenever anything was needed the entire box would get dumped out to find it. Now we have things separated into small draws and jars and we can just get what we need out.

3. Make cleaning up fun. Ok, so I know this is going to sound really naff but sometimes the simplest things work the best. We have an old cloth and I have drawn a face on it, he likes to eat paint off the table and he eats really noisily (think Cookie Monster esq.). Yup, that's it... Rogue thinks it's really fun to be the paint eating monster cloth! 

Well, I started writing that list thinking I would have lots to share but that's about it. Fact is I have a tiled floor and an old table and the kids don't often wear smart, valuable clothes so a bit of mess doesn't bother me that much.

Happy crafting! 

Days of learning - elementary

Lots of good work on the bead frame this week. Binx has been working on addition of 4 or 5 addends in the ten thousands. One (of the many!) thing I love about the montessori materials is that really complicated processes are achievable and enjoyable because of the way they are taught. Just being faced with a huge addition sum on paper might have been intimidating but because we got to know the bead frame and worked through the steps then it is just a natural progression and before you know it you are working on problems that seemed really difficult before.

Binx is working on learning division facts here, this is an activity designed for younger children but she wanted to revisit it because she still has difficulty recalling division off the top of her head.

We read a good book about Van Gogh this week and that set off an impromptu art session that everybody got involved in.

Looking at the notation of squares of numbers in a very hands on way. Sneaking in some times tables practice too! 

Binx is always one for the science experiments so I usually do them at the end of the day because I know she will spend ages on them. After looking at the properties of solids, liquids and gases last week we looked at solids in more depth today. We looked at the properties of rigid, elastic and plastic solids (using a ping pong ball, a sponge ball, and a ball of clay), and we also looked at how a solid can be made to change by applying weight. The experiments involved changing the amount of weight, and also the length and thickness of the solid. Lots of fun!