Crafty Tuesday - Montessori Learning Activities

So for the last little while I have been struggling with which learning method best suits my family or part of a learning method. I really liked the idea of Waldorf learning but after some reading and investigation I learned we are not a Waldorf Family that we are more suited naturally to Montessori learning. So I have been doing some reading on that method and really liked the activities and the hands on learning. Then a week or so ago I received a facebook link Counting Coconuts and well after some exploring I was more committed than ever and started doing some research. One thing from Counting Coconuts blog that stood out to me was the sensory tubs what a great idea and I knew my crew would love it! She offers a little tutorial on how to set up your own and answers questions on how she does hers just follow this link and with that information off we went last Thursday to search out things to create our own! Well we headed to Micheal's first which was maybe not the best choice price was but we did find a lot of treasures on sale for our tubs! After that we made a trip to the dollar store for some more odds and ends then home to start the sort of colors. I have to admit it was a lot of fun and even the sorting was fun with some yummy chai rooibos tea and cadbury mini eggs! Also on Counting Coconuts she usually does a play dough theme activity too in conjunction with the sensory tub and being that we love our play dough here we so did a playdough too! So this months theme is Green for March, St Patricks Day and the beginning of Spring (soon maybe!!!) It is a good time to be gathering all things green, I found at our local Zellers a bag of assorted buttons for $4 and then also a few interesting things at the bead store which is half price on Tuesdays. Then we found puffs, gold coins, clovers, glass beads, a tub of more than a thousand different colored and shaped beads for only $6 and several other little things. I made green playdough with gold sparkles in it to go with our green tub with a little bit of gold too and finally I picked up a spring themed cookie cutter set at the grocery store on the weekend. I did end up spending around $100 on everything but I have enough for many different tubs and activities in the future not just this month. My learning goal with the tub is to have fun and explore, we are also using it to for math related activities right now as well like matching and visual number counting. They really are enjoying it and it is a treat to them when I bring it out for some learning fun, it is also working well for all the ages although I do have to tailor the activities to the different learning levels but we do them together as a group.