All My Children

A dolls‘ house reveals the past in all its intimacy and detail. From period furniture to lace curtains, almost every object has its miniature match.

Antique doll’s housescome in all shapes and sizes, from single rooms - often with collapsible sides - to fully equipped shops for working dolls and large residences for whole families. The earliest to be made in any numbers came from Bavaria and Holland in the mid- 16th century, although the remains of a possible 15th^,century Italian example are in a museum in Jenain Germany. Most of the early versions resembled cabinets more than houses, and were sometimes known as ‘cabinet houses‘. Not until the 10th century did more realistic house shapes become the norm. Continue Reading »

Children need to develop a range of skills in order to utilise play experiences to the full. These can be considered in six areas and generally, there needs to be a fairly balanced development in each one. The six areas are:

Social — where the child shows an interest in other people and begins to develop empathy

Communication — where the child wants to communicate through verbal and non-verbal communication

Fine motor skills — where the child develops fine motor co-ordination and dexterity

Gross motor skills — which are related to mobility and body posture Imagination and thinking skills — needed for pretend play

Attention — where the child develops concentration and focused attention

It can be very useful to use the following tables as a checklist to consider children’s strengths and the areas in which they may need support at different ages and stages. Continue Reading »

Each guest is given something to wear to indicate a Pooh character. To decorate the room make a tree (using a large branch from the garden or cardboard etc.) over the doorway, and this can be Pooh’s house. If you have a hatch into the kitchen, make this the entrance to Pooh’s house instead, and serve ice-cream or even a meal through it. Decorate the rest of the room with greenery to look like the forest.

An Easter Party

Primroses and other spring flowers, and fluffy chicks are all you need for table decorations, with perhaps Easter bunnies for place-markers, unless you are going to paint or decorate Easter eggs beforehand. Continue Reading »

Not only is there delay in the language development of children with a language disorder, but the pattern of their language is also deviant. Deviancy implies uneven and atypical development. The path to recovery, the eventual emergence of language, may not follow the predictable route. These children may never completely overcome their difficulties and will require a great deal of specialist and professional attention. Continue Reading »

Norm-Referenced Tests

Most ’standardised’ tests have at their core an assumption that abilities are evenly distributed across a population, such that an equal number of cases will fall above and below a statistical mean. Tests are constructed so that children’s scores will spread out across this range. In using a standardised measure we expect half the children to whom it is applied to be below average. Continue Reading »

Teaching by Example

A child usually learns far more by the attitudes of those around him than he does from books and formal lectures. For example, what he sees and feels in the family ordinarily makes a greater impression on him than what he reads when he is older. Here in his own home he will gain a better understanding of the breadth and depth of family living. Here he can see what it means to be a mother, a father, a husband, or a wife, and he also knows what it means to be a child. Continue Reading »

Enriching language

Before attempting to encourage your child to learn to read, be sure that you are giving him lots of enriching language experiences. Talk to him as much as possible, involve him in conversation, teach him new words, and tell and read stories to him. Show him that reading is an enjoyable experience so that he learns to love books. While sitting on your lap looking at the pictures of a story he will eventually begin to notice the words and may recognize some of them. Involve him in the story by encouraging him to ask questions and tell you what is coming next. Children like the same story repeated over and over again.

Action songs, finger-play stories and rhymes

By being actively involved children understand the meaning of words, and sentence constructions are enhanced. Songs, too, often introduce children to new words and help them to hear the sounds in words more easily. Continue Reading »

Dixi

AGE 4 TO 6 YEARS

The game can be played in its simplest form at first and then it can be made more complex as the child get older.

How it helps your child

This is a game that enriches your child’s language development. It is particularly helpful as it develops vocabulary, listening and communication skills, encouraging the child to use whole sentences, all of which are important preparationfor reading. It is also designed to be played in a group, which develops co-operation. Continue Reading »

Pictures of the Natural Environment

AGE 2 TO 3 YEARS ONWARDS

How it helps your child

After a walk in the countryside or even time spent in the garden observing nature, you can look together at pictures or books about the natural environment. Encourage him to talk about the pictures he sees and give him new words and information.

You can supplement his learning by making label cards to be placed next to the pictures and you can use the Montessori botany and zoology cards to teach your child more about each plant and animal.

How to play

You can make this into a game by sticking the pictures on to thick card and then cutting each of them up into four, six or eight pieces, to make a puzzle. He can then play with the pieces by himself, putting the pictures together again. Continue Reading »

The Globes

Start with the globes. There are two Montessori globes. The first is the land and water globe which has the continents covered with sandpaper and the sea painted blue, so that initially the child learns two things — the shape of the world, which is a sphere, and that it is made up of land and water. The second globe has the continents painted in different colours — Europe is red, Asia is yellow, Africa is green, Australasia is brown, North America is orange, South America is pink and Antarctica is white — and the child learns the names of the continents and oceans. (If your child goes to a Montessori school she will most likely be introduced to these globes there, but if she doesn’t you can still help her to learn the same ideas from an ordinary globe.)

Puzzle Map of the World

The Montessori world puzzle map is made up of two hemispheres, each with the continents removable as whole puzzle pieces. The colours are the same as those on the globe. It is easier for a young child to see how the world is represented on a flat map if she can take out the pieces and compare them with the same continents on the globe — the shape, colour and size will match. (This piece of apparatus can be easily made at home by tracing round the continents in an atlas, then cutting them out in coloured paper and sticking them on to cardboard.) Continue Reading »