I was testing my box of permanent markers out today, and was left with this pretty cute looking peice of paper. I didn’t want it to go to waste so I set up a process art tray for Atlas. It also included scissors, glue, and a circle punch.

When Atlas saw the tray he was pretty excited!

What is this thing? Where did this paper come from?

How do I do this?

Where did the circle go? Atlas found a little flap that held the circles after they were cut.

This one’s not a full circle! Problem solving why some circles weren’t full circles and how to fix was tricky.

A pretty pile of decorated circle!

He did end up glueing two circles to a small off cut of paper, but that wasn’t our focus. I love how this activity used so many different fine motor skills and co-ordination.

Who says art has to be messy or that you need a tonne of art supplies?No one probably but anyway...

Atlas was exploring simple materials with a focus on the process rather than the product that he was making. I love process art especially as this was all self directed. It helps that all of this was easily accessible to him.

Materials:
Cardboard
Scissors
Felt pens

Step 1
Cut up some cardboard, any shape you want. Atlas cut a long strip.

Add some colour using felt pens.

Fill the whole piece up with colour.

Chop your product up into small bits.

Sprinkle you pieces where someone can appreciate them. Atlas left it on the bed beside his sleeping his dad 😀

Quintessential outback shot with the windmill. We stopped in at Charters Towers Maccas for lunch - our first Happy Meal since Christmas time. Although I’ve vowed not to have any while we are away, Atlas does live for the nuggets so we’ll indulge him while we are in the city 😅


While we are near the shops I’ve been we’ve been enjoying buying up art and craft materials. You can imagine the rainbows of colour 🌈 and glitter ✨ we’ve bought!

Atlas bought some new sticker books, well he snuck them into my basket as I was perusing paint 🎨 😂 I didn’t mind. He also chose an Avenger’s Crayola travel pack of crayons.


Included in my shop was some cards and envelopes and some Crayola Silly Scent pens. Before we headed for dinner with friends I asked Atlas to make a card to give them.

I bought this material on sale at the end of last year as on of A’s Christmas presents and then hid it away, and forgot about it.

I found it late January and got it out for A to play with.

He really enjoyed it, sorting the bolts and figuring out which way to turn the nuts.

To be honest, if I lived near to a hardware store I could have made this one myself but I don’t so... I really want to get the activity with the screw driver!

I think purchased this from A to Z Montessori from here.

Such an easy activity to prepare! Fill a jug (I added food colouring). Put out cups. Add a sponge. Let the magic happen.

Concentrating on trying to pour even levels.

Opps! Time to clean up.

Oh dear! Most of the water didn’t make it back into the jug.

That’s better!

Pour the water back into the jug... then clean up that mess 😂

Grandma’s garden has lots of flowers in it, so we’ve been enjoying picking and arranging flowers.

Pouring water into the little vase. We are using Grandma’s good crystal 😱

In goes a jacaranda blossom, he does like the blue and purple flowers. I don’t often include face shots of A but look at the joy!

Gently arranging the rest of the flowers.

Here’s one we prepared earlier.

I am so glad I packed the Hape wooden numbers for our holiday. I just knew that A’s interest in numbers would keep growing.

I was at a discount store and spotting packets of cats. They came in a pack of 6 so I grabbed three knowing I would have enough for A to use them as counters up to 5.

I introduced the toy cats to A just after we were playing with our real cats. ‘I love these! These are my favourite animals!’

I started with the number 1 and then we worked out way down the mat; going back to check if A had enough cats for each number.

After this I also added the zero and showed him how there were no cats beside zero because it means ‘none’ or ‘nothing’. Such a hard concept to understand!

I think I’ll go back and get some more packets of cats so he can keep counting up to 10.

A has been disappointed lately that he can’t read, so I’ve been slowly introducing the sandpaper letters, well the concept of them. A week or so ago I demonstrated how to use them.

On the weekend when we were playing, A identified that Transformers started with the ‘t’ sound. So I pulled out the t sandpaper letter. I didn’t take any photos when we were working with just the t though! Sorry as per usual I’m not prepared!

So after presenting the t, and having A trace the letter and say the sound A identified that he had a t in his name. I took out ‘s’ and ‘a’ because they are also in his name.

We went through each letter, A loved guiding my finger over the sandpaper too!

He took over, and as he traced I repeatedly made the ‘s’ sound which he started to copy.

To finish this session off I asked him to identify which letter can make the ‘s’ sound etc. He’s getting pretty good at this but far from perfect!

I got my sandpaper letters from Wood Puzzles. They are made to order, using Queensland cursive, but you can choose other fonts. They are also made here in Queensland. I highly recommend them and will be buying more from there.

The method I used for this is based upon the three-period lesson which is used a lot on Montessori. You can read more about it here and here.

I remembered that I had kept some wooden Christmas craft buttons and shapes, so I got them out to see if I could use them as counters.

There was enough to create counters from 1 to 5, and A was interested in counting them with me. I got the Montessori numbers and counters puzzle down off the shelf so that we could also put numbers to our counters. Basically I showed A a number and said, ‘This is the number 2, can you find the collection that has 2 in it?’

I then put the Christmas counters to the side and pulled the counters part of the puzzle out of the box.

I repeated the activity, pointing out the number and asking him to find the puzzle that had that many dots.

A then grabbed some cars and started using the completed puzzles as car parks or truck pads. 😅

You just got to ‘roll’ with it.

I really wish I owned the sandpaper numbers. I want to DIY some basic number tiles instead of buying them but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

I do like this puzzle. I could have DIYed them easily, but I like the tactile warmth of the wooden puzzle that a laminated piece of paper doesn’t have.

I have removed the parts for 6 through to 10 to make it easier for A. When he can count the dots half of the puzzle, and it actually matches up to the number half it’s pretty satisfying. A was proud of his efforts during this activity.

Our shelves needed some rotations!

We’ve swapped out the scales and weights for a number puzzle and a stacking game!

A really enjoyed the puzzle - an improvement from last time I had it out.

I asked A to pick up a number and I told him the name of that numeral. Once he knew what the numeral was, he could then count the animals on the jigsaw before putting the number in place. I think this is also helping with estimating how many items are in a group which has a name but I can’t remember it.

The other shelf we swapped over is the miniature tray. We put out the Safari Toob Nativity set.

I printed out a picture from this link which was from this YouTube video. We watched the video and A had to find the figurine as it was displayed.

We can match up the figurines with the image for a later activity.