First language shelf and other areas

In the last post I took you through some of the sensorial and practical life activities we have out and today I'm going to quickly show you another shelving area that is set up for rogue. (I will show you what binx is up to at some point, honest!)

We'll talk about the top shelf first which is language, the box on the back left holds my homemade sandpaper letters (not made of sandpaper - I'll post the process I used soon), at the moment it only holds the four that he is working on a, m, s, and t. Next to that is a white board where I write one of the letters. I usually change it each evening and he comes in each morning and tells me what sound it makes. Just in front of that are some little classification cards. He has to sort which objects belong in which room, (please be nice, I'm not an artist, I'm just trying to help my kids learn!). Next are some 'what-goes-with-what' sorting cards which were a free printable from montessori for everyone. And lastly on that back row are just some precut squares of paper for the 'metal' insets. So...yes...as you can see the front of that shelf holds our 'metal' insets, which I made from card! 

The bottom shelf holds an A3 minisun light pad. The light pad is not a traditional montessori material but we love it loads. Next to it I change out different baskets of manipulatives to experiment with. At the moment we have, coloured perspex 3d shapes, some stain glass window effect shapes that I made from black card and coloured kite paper, red and green glass nuggets and stars and a selection of mirrors and clear prisms. This gets lots and lots of use every day, it's so much fun.

There are a couple of other areas set up for rogue but they are less structured. There is a very small roll top desk that he can use if he wants. This has a few of his favourite puzzles on top plus another whiteboard for letter learning. There is a little draw under the desk which has some coloured pencils in and Inside the rooster box is a basket with another puzzle.

There is a small selection of books available all the time which I swap around frequently and also a basket of instruments which is not available all the time because it quickly descends into chaos! I think that is everything that rogue has going on at the moment but it changes so frequently, in fact I took these pictures last night and this morning I made something new for the language shelf and a simple colour sorting activity so regular updates will be needed. Any thoughts on improving my set up will be much appreciated.

On the shelves

At the moment we have mostly sensorial and practical life activities out but we have a few language things too. Rogue developed a great interest in letters a month or so ago so I have been showing him a few sandpaper letters, we are taking it slow though.

Here we have sensorial and practical life. On the floor in front is the pink tower on a little stand I made. (I say made...it's a box upside down with a square of pink paper stuck on). The bottom shelf holds the brown stair and a bucket with matching bean bags.

I didn't get a photo of the little bags but they are very simple, all sewn out of the same fabric. There are 8 of them, (4 matching pairs), one pair have dry popping corn inside, another pair have 5 pieces of dry penne (large pasta) in, another pair are stuffed lightly with cotton wool, and the last pair have some nice crinkly (washed!) crisp packet! They are layed out on the rug and matched by feel and sound.

The next shelf up holds these land, air and water cards. 

I couldn't find a place where the light didn't reflect off these but you can still see what they are. At the moment I don't have any storage to keep the title cards and the other cards separate so I have been trying to teach rogue to collect up the pictures in a random order and put them on one side of the basket and then to collect the title cards separately and put them in the other side. Sometimes happens!

Next to those on the middle shelf is cylinder block 1, this is a real favourite and gets taken out at least once a day.

On the top shelf, first on the left is a tiny little tin which serves as our colour box one. It is super simple, just some rectangles of card in the three colours to match.

There are two practical life trays on the shelf next. The first is a little coin purse with matchsticks in which are taken out and 'posted' into an old spice jar with little holes in the lid. The lid then has to be unscrewed and the matchsticks put back in the purse. Lots of fine motor skills there. The second is a classic, using tongs to put the wooden cubes into a paint palette.

Next is a stacking, bear puzzle which rogue loves, he does the puzzle on its own but also brings them out regularly to climb the pink tower! And last are some big beads for lacing.

There are some language things out and a couple of other areas I'd like to show you but this post is long enough so I will do that tomorrow.