Simple Purple Dye {Practical Life}

We've been having fun learning about the Phoenicians in our Ancient History book this past week. One of the recommended activities was to make dye. The Phoenicians used snails but fruit and vegetables work great too! 

Materials:

Blueberries (frozen)

Pots (one for cooking the blueberries, one for cold water)

Cheese cloth (for straining)

Material to Dye (old curtains, fabric, pasta)

Cold Salt Water

Simmer your blueberries on low heat for about an hour. I found that I needed to add some water to our blueberries. Strain the berries and keep the juice. Dye your materials. Rinse with cold salt water- it will dilute your coloring a bit- but the color should stay a little bit longer.  Lay out to dry! 

Once our fabric dries we are going to make some stuffed animals with the sewing machine. Check back on Friday to see how it comes together! 

Nouns {Using the Grammar Farm}

This week I introduced some work on nouns with the Grammar Farm. The Grammar Farm is more or less what it sounds like- just a farm with word labels to help teach grammar. You could use a dollhouse or train set- you just need a setting and objects. 

How to Introduce Nouns:

Before we pulled out the farm, I took a minute to introduce what a noun is. We played a game that I called "Find me Something." Ask them to find you an object. When they come back with an object, say "oh I'm sorry, I meant bring me that pencil." After a few times around I got a few giggles and a concrete example of how we use words to name things. These things are referred to as Nouns. This is a great time to introduce a word card with "Noun" and a few noun words along with the black triangle symbol for noun. 

Download Noun Cards Here

DIY Grammar Farm

Putting it Together:

Farm Animal Set (I like the Farm Animal Toobs, our craft store had it for a lot cheaper)

Setting (a barn or you can make a mat like we did)

Labels from Montessori Print Shop (print with the colors or use the b/w labels and attach to colored cardstock, Nouns are on Black)

Grammar Symbols (make your own or purchase)

When to Introduce:

after they have been working on the Blue Reading Materials. This would be when they can easily read many of the animal words without pictures. 

How to Introduce:

1. Tell them that you have something new to show. Reference the work you did with nouns earlier. 

2. Pull out the animals and place them on the mat one by one

3. Pull out a word card and read it.

4. Place it next to the object.

5. Invite them to read a few more word cards. 

6. Finish the work cycle and put away all the cards and the animals in the designated area. 

This set will get you through all of the parts of grammar- it's worth it to have. I bet chances are you have a toy farm somewhere already! 

The layout for introducing the other parts of speech are similar but be sure to check back for when we work on adjectives and verbs!

DIY 3-D Solar System

Watching the Curiosity land on Mars was so exciting!  The kids were jumping up and down and screaming- I'm still not sure they knew what was going on- but they were still very enthusiastic!

 I pulled out some solar system cards I had made up from a couple years ago to get them started. Bear was VERY excited I had some and kept asking for more to do. After looking online a bit, we were inspired to make up our own 3-D solar system and mat. 

We started with a kit from the store- it was cheaper than buying the Styrofoam balls separately. I like these ones because they do have the sun. Many we found don't! Go figure. 

Next we painted the balls according to the colors on our solar system cards. Saturn was the exception. Bear really wanted it to be blue. I gave him a little artistic freedom since we had good examples of what it should look like. 

After realizing that the Styrofoam likes to fall apart, we (I) painted the balls with modge podge to give it a finished layer. It actually looks quite nice. 

The coolest part of the system though I think is the mat. We were inspired by this post over at Montessori Print Shop. Instead of using puff paint I stitched white thread onto black felt. I used about 1/3 yard of black felt (I had to cut it and stitch it to make a square). I would probably recommend just buying more felt to avoid that issue- 1/2 to 1 yard would be ideal depending on how big you want it. The post above has VERY detailed instructions. Our circles didn't turn out quite right- but it's ok! 

Here are some activities I watched Bear work on:

Size Sorting the planets

Organizing by location in the Solar System

Counting Planets

Counting Number of times around the Sun (Revolution)

Rate of Mercury going around the sun vs. Jupiter

Spinning the Earth (Rotation)

We stored all the planets, the mat, and the cards in a shoe-box size plastic container and placed it with our Continent Boxes. 

Linking up this week:

Show and Share Saturday Link Up

Montessori Monday

Rough Smooth Boards

I love our DIY boards we put together a couple of months ago- My husband cut 10 boards 5inx5in and I glued 5 different grades of sandpaper with hot glue. This will allow you to have a set to match. 

 I introduced the rough and smooth boards to Indie (14 months) this week. She really loved feeling the textures. I also sat with her and asked her some simple questions- 

This is rough. Can you feel rough? (touch the rough board)

This is smooth. Can you feel the smooth board? (touch the smooth board)

Can you show me the rough board?

Can you show me the smooth board?

This age is a tad bit young but anytime I can sit down with her and she seems interested- I say go for it.

With Barrett (4 1/2) I gave him the five different textures and asked him to grade them roughest to smoothest and then again smoothest to roughest. I made the mistake of buying sandpaper that was different colors for each grade- I would recommend seeking out ones all the same color. It was a little tricky to get him to use feel instead of sight- a blindfold would help as an alternative. You can ask similar questions to the ones above but I added:

What is this texture?

What does this feel like? 
How would you describe this?

Linking up this week:
Montessori Monday

Beading- 6+ Months

Beading is a pretty classic activity so  I tried to adapt it this week for a little bit of a younger age range. For Indie I used a pipe cleaner and some really great wooden beads I found at our local craft store in the wood section. I tried to find beads big enough to minimize any choking hazard. 

You can buy beading activities pretty much anywhere, but I was set with a package of pipe cleaners and a bag of beads for less than $4. 

Introducing this activity: 

I picked up the pipe cleaner in one hand and the bead in the other. I slowly put the bead on the pipe cleaner and took it off.  Finally I handed it to her to try. 

Here's the container for the pipe cleaners and beads. The older kids are all pros- it's still a favorite. 

Come see lots more activites at
Living Montessori Now Montessori Monday
The Philosopher's Wife Teaching Time for Toddlers

DIY Spelling Tiles

We're taking this week off from school but I wanted to post one more really cool idea before getting swallowed in some much needed time off. 

I saw these really cool tiles at Home Depot a couple months ago... and had no idea how cheap they were! You can get a 14 x 14 square of tiles for anywhere from $5 to $15. Obviously, they are used for your house, but they are the perfect size for spelling tiles.  I made some puffy paint (recipe below) and painted the letters on the tiles. My original thought was that the puffiness would be a great sensory object for tracing the letters- but puffy paint isn't exactly easy to draw with. So after an hour or so of painstakingly trying to get my "a" and "e" to look right... I ended up just writing them on with sharpie. 

Here is the puffy paint recipe if you are interested. *note- the paint dries very matte and a little bumpy. it's a nice effect but just wanted to give fair warning. 

Equal parts salt, flour, and hot water. You may have to add more water to get it the right consistency. Add a dash of tempura paint or food coloring to get the color you want. Put in a squeeze bottle (I had one leftover from a sand art project). 

Grand Total: $5 

Cyber Monday Give away at Living Life Intentionally