‘my’ theory works

It’s not really mine, it’s as old as the hills. It’s sort of maths.. and It goes something like Input in + time to simmer in child’s head = new ideas, even output. The Montessori method has the concept of the great lessons where you have a big reverent display of a big idea like…

$2.99 beads

Children have creativity in spades. When I was pestered to purchase a tower of plastic containers with beads all I saw were a few necklaces. On the way home Helena talked about necklaces while making music with them. So far the beads have had to have buddies, are babies, have a slide, a stage and…

This weeks little bits of random…

Why does she have to do this at night… (well apart from her mother and grandmothers being night owls) “I  JUST want to see if different countries have different weights of coins”. Or this one… Possibly she’s just delaying bed time by wanting to learn to tell the time- worried I’m sending her to bed…

Home baking

Or is it kitchen chemistry? I did baking at school as a teacher – it’s a common learning tool, process cooking is the lingo at playcentre. All that measuring, lots of language, kids like it, and that following of the instructions thing, with all those steps and the essential instructional language. Well Helena can follow…

Cr#p my kid makes…

I have been having something of an existential crisis, again. I went to an art school years ago and have a zillion ideas. Recently I went to a gallery and it had an exhibition of the finalists in The Wallace award. I am arrogant enough (confident in my ideas and of my ability to execute…

Watching Tv

We are soooo tried, I’ve hardly slept!  I’m so tired, we NEED to watch TV (accompanied by some over the top acting ) Mummy? Of course I say “er NO” leading to foot stamping and complaining. How there isn’t anything else to do, really there isn’t. So her friend and I start a game of…

“The road of life…”

Initially this was just a road for a remote controlled car, actually the ramp was made first which led to the road being made. They called it “the track of life” which led on to more ideas and more building… This became one of life’s “challenges”. This is an “obstacle”. A hard bit… This is…

Just us trips…

We are in Wellington, where we use to live and it is my place, the place where I feel at home. There are poems up on the waterfront about Wellington and one calls this beautiful city the headquarters of the verb and it so is, I love the way both the landscape/hills and the weather/wind…

To sport or not to sport?

The Steiner schools think sport is for exercise, health, agilty and enjoyment and competitiveness isn’t encouraged except against one’s self. Montessori schools de-emphasise competitiveness and encourage cooperation. Why? There is a certain pleasure in having rules as defined by someone else governing your game, an abdication of responsibility and it’s easy. For me this pleasure…

Topics…

I can’t say ‘doing’ a topic seems to work like I imagined. Mostly I don’t know what sort of topicish stuff Helena thinks about, I suspect that she sort of thinks about lots of things in the back of her mind while doing something else. We occasionally talk about stuff (as in not what her…