Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Setting up Montessori inspired homeschool

I have a ton of "stuff" that I've acquired over the last two years that I thought we would use FOR SURE and they are untouched! At least I don't ever buy anything priced unreasonably, I too love post-season clearance, ebay, Amazon sales and the dollar store oh and the local kids resale store as well. But I have piles of crayons, coloring books and other things and games I thought would be great and the boys have zero interest in them. And if they do find any of the say coloring books interesting, it's NOT to color in them. DS3.2 loves to trace pictures and letters with his fingers (but it takes him awhile to warm up to even open any of the books) and DS4.9 turns any picture and activity in those same coloring books into mazes or connect by number / letter type of task. At least they are creative! lol But I still have about 20 of those books untouched. I have boxes of crayons, but both boys hate crayons. DS3.2 doesn't like to use anything other than doodleboard and chalkboard on occasion and Ds4.9 loves watercolors and white board. I mean, seriously ... WHO likes drawing with crayons? They are the biggest pain to work with!
But at least we have a lot of friends with kids the same age so I've been downsizing our stock up closet and giving things away for Birthday presents and smaller things for party favors. The boys are turning out very different than what I figured a "typical" child would be like. Right, TYPICAL? WHAT WAS I THINKING! I should had just thought of myself as a child and could had saved us quite a lot of $! While my friends were coloring pictures, I was drawing up construction plans and while other girls were playing with dolls, I was putting together car and plane and radio models. I should had known better! lol

So now rather than buying stuff for our house I find things they would enjoy outside of our house. Frequent visits to children's museum, parks, stores. DS4.9 is at a stage where he finds math in everything around him. It's always about numbers he sees, how big / small something is, percentages, etc. So the world around us right now is the classroom with it's resources.

Yes, thanks so much for sharing your favourites!

We recently did a toy purge and I realized just how little most of the conventional baby toys (shape sorter, ring stacker, peg puzzles) were used...once, maybe twice. Such a waste of $$.

I'm nodding like a bobble head.

Well, but my mom kept telling me how "normal" DD was. So clearly it was me. I was just doing it wrong.

Y'all have NO idea how much fortitude it took me to bite my tongue and go outside to laugh when I invited my mother to 'teach' my then 5yo something...

Got "teaching montessori in the home: the school years" book by Elizabeth g. Hainstock from the library. I would recommend it for anyone who wants to DIY but adhere to montessori teaching methods.