Colour-Matching Drop Box

This September I started training to become a Montessori-qualified teacher.  It’s been busy studying with a pre-schooler and a toddler at home, but I’m hoping the course will help me to facilitate my children’s learning and to enable me to share our experiences on here with you.

The inspiration to create drop boxes came from an attempt to apply the principle of “control of error” to the children’s activities.  Control of error refers to a mechanism whereby a child can perceive his/her own mistake when undertaking an activity because the activity is designed according to the principle of one-to-one correspondence.  A typical example of this would be a jigsaw puzzle in which every piece is different and only interlocks with the correct corresponding piece.  

The first drop box I created was for my 2.5 year old who has developed an interest in colours (or at least the names of colours).  He would point to a red car and say “I want the green car” and this would lead to some frustration on his part and confusion on ours.  Rather than correcting him each time, I thought it would be more effective for him to realise his mistake through a self-checking element incorporated into the drop box. 

I purchased a sturdy box from Hobbycraft and cut some windows into the lid.  Around the edge of each window I created a border using eight different-coloured marker pens to correspond to the different-coloured pom poms to be posted into the windows.  One of the pom poms was multi-coloured, so I represented this with a multi-coloured border.  (I added the names of the colours above each window so that my 3 year old could also use the box and become familiar with the words that correspond to the colours).  Inside the box across the base, I made coloured circles to correspond to the coloured edges of the windows, so that when my son posted the pom poms into the box, he could remove the lid and check whether he had posted the pom poms into the correct window.  To make the self-checking element more pronounced, I could have created sections inside the box (as I did with the letter-matching box), but as I used only a few pom poms in this activity, they tended to fall exactly on the coloured circles, making it obvious which window they had been posted into.  The decision to use just a few pom poms worked well as I found my son’s concentration was beginning to wane as he came to the end of the activity.

The drop box managed to grip my son’s attention and after six or seven attempts over the course of a couple of weeks, he was able to match the pom poms correctly and refer to the colours of objects in the room accurately. 

What we used:

• A sturdy cardboard box (a shoebox would have worked well provided the coloured borders were not obscured by writing/patterns)
• A craft knife
• Marker pens
• Coloured pom poms

Click here to see our letter-matching drop box

Sock-Matching Activity for Busy Parents

Whether it is the huge change of moving across continents, saying goodbye to friends and temporarily staying at two addresses before arriving at our new home or the fact that Wugs is going through a developmental change (he turned three last month), we are encountering some interesting behaviour from him.  For instance, he will often ask for a hug and when I go to give him one, he will reject it saying he doesn’t want it.  When I turn away, he will then ask for one again and he will repeat this seemingly contradictory behaviour over and over again.  The same is the case with certain activities, such as putting on his socks.  He will sometimes refuse to do it and when I turn away (finding socks just another piece of “unnecessary” clothing on top of jumpers, hoodies and jackets that we have managed without until now), he will then ask for his socks again.  We have spoken a lot about every stage of our move to the UK with him, even down to the finest details of what we will do the next day before he goes to sleep so that there isn’t any surprises the next day, but we have been very busy and my activities with him have ground to a halt, so I’ve been looking for ways to include him in the jobs we need to do around the house.

On this occasion, I had a basket full of socks that I had just pulled out of the tumble dryer (all of us have been walking around with odd socks over the last few weeks so I did a wash that only included socks in the hope that they would be easy to pair up) and I was facing the unenviable task of having to match up about 30 of them with Wugs lying on the floor refusing to wear any.  I decided to turn the situation into a game by laying one pair of each sock on the table and leaving one pair in the basket for Wugs to find and match up.  He jumped to it right away and happily matched up the socks, pointing out the images on them.  A picture of a car led to a discussion about traffic lights and our new black car and when we would be travelling in it again.  The game became more challenging when it came to his dad’s socks which are of such subtle and varied patterns and shades of grey, black and brown that I have frequently mismatched them.   

There you go!  A way to involve your three year old when you are knee-deep in washing! Thankfully at the end of this activity Wugs found a pair of socks that he was happy to wear.  

Hanging Up the Washing: Matching Uppercase and Lowercase Letters

With just two weeks to go before we move out, I decided to take advantage of the clear shelf space to set up this activity - a washing line with clothes (each marked with an uppercase letter) for Wugs to hang up (using the matching lowercase letter peg).   Everytime I take the washing out of the machine, the boys rush outside and "help" me hang it up.  Dooey likes pressing the buttons and Wugs is especially interested in the pegs, so I thought this sort of activity would appeal to them.

What we used:

Card

Coloured felt sheets

Wooden pegs

Cord (we used the stretchy type)

Black marker pen

I created the clothes by drawing on card first and creating templates.  Then I drew around the templates onto the different coloured sheets of felt and cut them out.  I drew the letters on the pegs and the clothes using a black marker pen.  I extended the cord across the length of the shelf, tying it at both ends.  (Be careful, if copying this activity, of the dangers of hanging cords or attach one end with velcro so it pulls away easily).

The weight of the clothes in relation to the weight of the pegs matters for this activity. To ensure the clothes sit vertically on the line and do not swing upwards, the pegs shouldn't be too heavy or the clothes need to be larger and heavier.  Mine were just teetering on the edge so I might re-make the pegs using slightly smaller ones.  

Singaporean Shop Tiles: Exploring Patterns, Colour and Symmetry

A stunning decorative feature that you cannot miss in Singapore is the beautiful tiles that adorn the traditional Singaporean shophouse.  My parents bought me a book called "Singapore Shophouse", by Julian Davison and Luca Invernizzi Tettoni.  The book is full of the history and images of the shophouse and Wugs loves to flick through it pointing out the pretty designs. Following on from our coloured "glass" tile craft yesterday (that I've featured in the picture on the bottom left), I painted some more tiles in traditional shophouse colours for Wugs to decorate.

The craft yesterday made me realise that Wugs' interest would only last long enough to decorate possibly two tiles, so I decorated the tan-coloured tile using a black marker pen to show what an older child could be capable of.

What we used:
Egg cartons
1 Packet of Heinz Baby Pasta Stars (which looked like miniature flowers)
Le Fantasie flower-shaped pasta
White, red, green, tan-coloured paint
Yellow, red, blue food colouring
White Distilled vinegar
Ziploc/freezer bags
Black Marker pen
Fake flowers
Cornstarch/Corn flour Glue

Yesterday I coloured the pasta by placing it in Ziploc bags, adding the food colouring and a teaspoon of Distilled white vinegar and squishing it around until the pasta had soaked up the colour. Then I left it to dry overnight.

This morning I laid out the materials including the cornstarch glue we prepared for our tile yesterday.  (This was made from 30g of cornstarch/corn flour mixed with 150ml of water.  I mixed just a little of the water and cornstarch to remove any lumps and then I added the rest of the water gradually to the mixture in the saucepan over a low heat).  We covered the egg carton with glue first and then Wugs added the decoration.  The egg carton was a good material to use for creating tiles because it encourages a certain amount of balance not only because of its shape but also because Wugs has used one for counting and sorting before.  It also enabled him to explore the materials and colours without them sticking firmly to the tile.  In fact all day he has returned to the red and green tiles and added bits to them from around the house such as real flowers, pennies etc. I like the fact that the patterns are not permanent, so we might leave them that way, but if we want to display them on the wall, we can easily tap out the pasta that didn't directly stick to the glue and then add another layer of glue to seal them down.

This tile craft was easier (so definitely appropriate for a 2.5 year old) than the glass tile craft we attempted yesterday as it wasn't necessary for Wugs to cover the whole tile and the pasta shapes formed the intricate details and gave a sense of balance to the tile.

Matching Tubs and Lids

I'm on a mission to declutter after reading a fantastic book called Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne.  I thought I'd cross an easy one off my list by making a start on the Tupperware cupboard.  Wugs has loved rooting through this cupboard ever since he learned to open cupboards.  In fact his daily routine of emptying out the Tupperware all over the kitchen floor became so tiring (for me) that I bought a child lock to prevent him from going in it every day.  The idea of sorting it out with him there seemed impossible.  To keep him entertained, I decided to make a tub and lid matching game.  I put to one side some of the Tupperware  we would definitely be keeping and separated the lids from the tubs.  Wugs soon got the idea and started to match them up while I sorted out the rest of the cupboard peacefully in the kitchen.

Colour Matching Wheel

As Wugs only naps once or twice a week, I've been looking for activities that will keep him entertained in the afternoons when he is too tired to go out, but still requires some stimulation.  I've discovered the wonderful world of busy bags!  They are activities that can fit into a small bag (usually a freezer bag) and can be useful in occupying children when travelling etc.  The colour-matching wheel is popular on the web.  I created this one by drawing around a plate, dividing up the segments and colouring them and the wooden pegs.  Then I laminated the wheel.  This isn't necessary, but I didn't fancy doing all that colouring when the inevitable will happen - some water or juice gets spilt on it.  This was a good activity to teach Wugs about colours and by using the pegs, he got a chance to develop his fine motor skills.

What we used:
White card
Felt tip pens
Wooden pegs
Laminator