We are busy around here, so the past few weeks have been slow in the school area. Alexander has been practicing letters and numbers, putting together puzzles, and playing with his new animal figurines most days. We've been reading more as well.
But I was feeling the urge to change things up, especially since I've been thinking about the curriculum ideas I've had rolling around in my brain. So I moved forward with that, and it made sense that the shelves would change up too.
Here's a tour of our shelves for November! We still have two tall shelves and two short shelves, a bin for train tracks and trains, and a table with two chairs.
The Shelf on the Left
Shelf One
On the top I still have lowercase cursive letters (split into A-M and N-Z) along with matching uppercase print letters. One set is magnetized, and he seems to like that one better. I just haven't gotten around to magnetizing the other set yet. (It could also be that he is more confident with A-M.)
Shelf Two
This shelf is still a few puzzles he likes. The first is just stacking rings (The Tower of Hanoi). Sometimes he puts them large to small, sometimes dark separate from light, and sometimes it's seemingly random. In the middle is the Melissa & Doug owl puzzle that he really likes. And I added a small mirror with a small flashlight that he is able to turn on and off.
Shelf Three
This shelf is some animal stuff. I have his animal figurines in the basket. And in the 3-compartment bin, it's silhouettes, animal skin/fur, and the animals themselves.
Shelf Four
Down here, it used to be a few trucks and cars, plus a book about things that go. But he lost interest in that. Now, it is number stuff. The little jar has 10 lollipop sticks and a dry-erase marker. In the middle is a set of wipe-off cards for tracing the numbers 1-10. And on the right are some more cards for tracing; they are random lines, some curved, some straight. The lollipop sticks are for quantity. I'm going to see if he can use the cards in the middle and then match up the proper number of sticks to each card.
The Shelf on the Right
Shelf One
The top of this shelf is more animal stuff. It's the salt dough animal tracks I made, plus a set of matching cards. One set is images of animal tracks in real life. The second is images of the actual animals. That blog post is forthcoming.
Shelf Two
Here, it's the gradient tiles with matching cards. And it's also pipe cleaners plus some beads. The pipe cleaners work very well for this. Soon we'll try a regular string again, but for now, this works for him.
Shelf Three
The pouring station is still there; it's got two little pouring pitchers and felt balls for the actual pouring. We tried water for a while, but it was a mess every time. Since I can't always watch and help, I switched to the small balls so he can do that activity without me. Next to the pouring station is cutting! I took away the scissors about a month ago, and I'm bringing them back. We will see how he does with them this time.
Shelf Four
This is fun stuff. It's two colors of Play-Doh on the left. And on the right, it's some pieces of cardboard plus stickers. I'm not sure how those are teaching him anything, but they are at least helping him with fine motor movements.