The Shape of Our Days

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There’s always a lot of talk in Montessori groups about routine and rhythm. It should come as no surprise that we’re slowly rebuilding our routines this week, after I took a couple week’s off to make some changes in my life – namely my career but also in my own fitness.  While I’m fairly settled in my new routine, I needed to figure out how Bella fits into it.

weekly visual schedule

I started by making a visual calendar.  Now, we’ve always used a visual calendar but I modified this version to include two activities per day – which was really a little prompt to remind myself that the day doesn’t end with the nap!  I should note that our ‘activities’ range from classes like forest school and cycling, to things we choose to do in our time like swimming and going to the park, to normal household activities like shopping and baking.

I posted on Instagram how much the visual calendar has helped us shape the feel of our week, but now I’m starting to feel the daily routine come together too.

A lot of people prioritise morning and breakfast time to sit down and work together, and rightly so because the brain is fresh then. But it doesn’t suit us, because I wake up and do a home workout immediately, while Bella eats breakfast.  This is really important because I wouldn’t workout at any other time of day, and it coincides with Bella having an activity that she can undertake almost entirely independently.  Three cheers for Montessori self-serve areas!

picnic lunch

Afterwards, we go back upstairs and wash and dress. By this time, it’s usually time to head out the door – whether to a playdate, the shops, the park, or in today’s case, forest school.  Another one of my fitness goals is to walk 10,000 steps, so I try my best to forego the car and get moving.  Bella loves walking at the moment, so it’s often a leisurely stroll down the various side roads – stopping to smell the flowers, collect petals, wave at dogs and stroke kitties.  We get back for lunch and this is often my favourite part of the day. Bella has really taken to having a picnic lunch outside and now we do it every day!

I’ve discovered that after lunch, sitting in that lovely spot of shade in our garden, that is our learning time. We observe nature – smell the jasmine growing, watch butterflies and ants, collect leaves. We also pull out the language objects and play sound games, as in the photo. I figure I’ll mix it up each day, maybe doing art or poetry or counting – whatever Bella’s into at the moment.

sound games after lunch

It comes to an end when Bella loses interest, and then we head inside for a nap.  It’s made the naptime transition much easier, as she’s starting to learning that this is just what happens when we come inside.

The time after nap hasn’t quite come together yet.  This used to be snack time and I’ve let that falter.  I’d like to get back to a proper afternoon tea – we used to make mint tea together, right from choosing the leaves from the plant plant, etc, but frankly it’s too hot now.  I’ve been pondering with making our own smoothies, which I may do after we go strawberry and raspberry picking this weekend.  And then we sit, and eat whatever snack we baked for the week (this week is cheese and bacon muffins), and avail ourselves of the time for a bit more learning.

Ideally, I’d like to make it Bengali time – we’ll read a couple books in Bengali, speak Bengali, Skype my mother, etc.  Unfortunately Bella only let me read her one book yesterday before getting frustrated, but as always, it’s a work in progress and the more we do it, the longer she’ll be able to handle (fingers crossed).

After that, it’s basically free play until Daddy comes home.  If it’s been a low day for the steps, I’ll often pop out for a quick walk by myself while Daddy takes over, or I’ll start making dinner.  On a good day, I just step back and pull out my Kindle, while Bella plays with her dad.

We have dinner, then tidy up, Bella has a bath, followed by books and bedtime, and then the rest of the evening is ours.  Whew!

Self Care

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I focused on myself this week.  Things are going pretty well with Bella, we’ve got a good routine and rhythm to our days and weeks, but I feel like my own goals are falling by the wayside.  There were two things I wanted to focus on: my health and my ‘addiction’ to my phone.  Ironically ,this post has no photos due to the latter issue.  I refuse to wait and take photos before I hit post, so there we go.

Sadly, I’m in the worst physical shape I’ve ever been in my life, and I’ve always had a tendency to the larger side.  I like food, I like eating, and I’m not keen on exercise.  It doesn’t make for a good combination.  I used to go to the gym, but with Bella, that would mean signing up to an expensive gym with a creche.  Once you factor in travelling to and fro, it simply didn’t feel like a good use of our time.  Instead, I’m jumping on the home exercise bandwagon.

Every morning, after Bella and I have had a nice cuddle in bed, I change straight into my exercise clothes.  We go downstairs and I set Bella up for breakfast – she gets a tub of the cereal of her choice, a jug of milk, an empty bowl and glass, and she can dish them out as she wants.  As she does this, I press play and get moving.  I set up my laptop and mat the night before so that I don’t lose any precious time while Bella is occupied.  I usually have to dart to her help a couple of times through the routine, to give her more milk or wipe something up, but in general I can make it through a 20-30min routine.  Once she decided not to bother eating and stood behind me, copying my moves, but these days she’s happy to sit and watch me work out.

It feels good.  I’m really pleased that it’s not “dead time” for Bella, that she’s doing her own thing, being independent with her breakfast.  Working out first thing in the morning works well for me too, because it starts my day off positively which then influences my subsequent eating habits.  Part of me is also proud to be a good role model for my daughter and that she can see me trying to make positive changes to my own life.

The second thing I wanted to tackle was my phone addiction.  I really struggle not to continually tap away and check on the latest notifications, even when I’m not expecting anything to be happening.  Ironically, we’re really good at keeping Bella screen-free, but my phone is the one sticking point.

My strategy was simple.  I was going to leave my mobile upstairs in my bedroom all day long.  I’m allowed it at naptimes.  Otherwise, it simply stays out of reach.

 

I got to 9.46am on Monday morning when I couldn’t take it anymore and ran up the stairs to get my mobile.  9.46am.  It’s appalling.  The main thing I learnt was that it wasn’t the messages that I was after, but my camera.  I really wanted to capture those moments of Bella’s life, and that simply doesn’t happen without my phone.  And once it was captured, I wanted to post it to Instagram, and then my email notifications caught my eye, and so on.  I did manage to rein things in and put the phone down, but it didn’t quite inspire me to keep going with the experiment.  I have gotten better at not using my phone after Bella’s naptime until she goes to bed, but the morning is still a struggle.

The only solution I can see is to buy a stand-alone camera, but frankly our finances are stretched and I don’t want to spend the money on it right now.  I’m not sure where that leaves me.  Ideas on a postcard most welcome.

When you’re not feeling well…

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Bella has been ill for the past couple days with a tummy bug.  Her appetite has disappeared, the nights are full of vomiting, and the days are feeling longer and longer.  There’s fussiness, there’s endless demands for cuddles, and there’s a fair few meltdowns.

What do you do on days like this?

Lots of people default to screens.  Bella is now 2 years old, and most of us are aware that the recommendations are for under 2’s not to have screen time – something that we’ve tried to follow as closely as possible.  Some people have assumed that now that Bella’s 2yo, I’ll have done a 180° and allow her to sit in front of the TV for hours on end, but actually I intend to remain very light on screen time for as many years as possible.

Having said that, illness is a different story.  What I have learned is that TV can be really useful to reset our moods, especially when Bella’s having yet another meltdown and I’m that close to losing it.  The only show she watches is Something Special* (aka “Mr Tumble”) and she adores it, so we record the episodes automatically and it only takes a second to put one on.  It’s a nice way to let me have a little break from her clingyness and let her have something she enjoys.  Bella often asks for a second episode after we’ve watched it, but she also knows that that never happens so she just accepts my “No” and moves on.

Apart from the 30 minutes of TV, I’ve found that we need to keep busy.  But it’s a different type of busy.  It needs to be mentally busy, something that keeps her mind occupied enough to not notice the pains of her body, and obviously we try to keep things as physically undemanding as possible.  What can you do with a two-year-old that fits that bill?

Go for a walk

Obviously Bella is somewhat low energy, so we’ve been grabbing the heavy duty pram we bought for her at birth (as opposed to the lightweight one I usually use these days), reclining it back and letting her relax with her feet up while we pop to the shops or walk to the park.  I must admit, every time I hope that she’ll nod off, but that’s yet to happen.  At least when we arrive at the park, she doesn’t require much encouragement to sit on the swings and let me get the workout pushing her!

Sand play

I didn’t want a traditional sandpit cluttering up the garden, so instead I put some kinetic sand in a tub and threw in a number of tools and shapes.  Bella loves the sand tub and will often ask to play with it multiple times in a day.  I try to put it out on the patio when she wants it, because as much as I want the sand to stay in the tub, it rarely stays that way.  But I have now perfected a system where we can sit on a waterproof playmat indoors, and then gather everything to shake it out outside, without getting sand everywhere.  Win-win!

Water play

Bella has a water table outside and adores it.  She has a water turbine and a couple boats that came with the table, and then there’s also a few cups and accessories that we’ve added.  She’ll play for hours, and our only issue is usually the sun coming overhead.  I need to find a way to get proper shade on our patio!

Art

Watercolours are Bella’s favourite at the moment, and they involve sitting nicely at her table which certainly works in our favour right now.  We’ll grab some watercolour paper and paint away until she loses interest.

Board games

This can be a bit hit and miss, depending on the brainpower that Bella has at that moment in time, but we have some great Orchard Toys games that she’ll usually be happy to mess about with.

Thankfully it’s a long weekend here in the UK and it helps that my husband is at home to help keep her entertained.  I’ve got my fingers crossed that the bug will have passed by the time he returns to work!

[* I get lots of questions about why we watch Something Special, and not say, Peppa Pig.  Something Special is largely based in the real world, with real people – not animations or anthropomorphised animals.  This was particularly important as we follow the Montessori concept that children in the 0-3 plane shouldn’t be exposed to adult-led fantasy.  We actually learned about Something Special from a mum in the baby signing class I took Bella to, because the show is designed to use signing to communicate with children with learning difficulties.  So, we have a lovely way to keep learning new signs even though we don’t go to the class anymore, gain exposure to children that often don’t look or act similar to the children Bella knows, and keep learning about different aspects of the real world in every episode.  Need I say more?!]

A Day in the Life

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A lot of homeschooling starts by talking about rhythm and routine, so I decided to take a step back and look at ours.  Monday is always a good day, because I try to take some time on Sunday evening to look at the week ahead and plan activities.  Here goes!

Bella sleeps in a toddler bed and can get out on her own.  There’s a stairgate preventing her from going downstairs, but my preference is for her to join me in my bed (my husband is long gone, having woken up at 5.45am).  This is the only part of the day that I sometimes feel guilty about, because she’s up and playing while I’m struggling to wake up.  I am not a morning person though, and finding a way to let myself to rest means that I’m a much better person and mother for the whole day, so I’ve largely made my peace with it.

Today, she found various jars of mine and practiced screwing the lids on and off, while I slowly got my act together.

We both got washed and dressed and then headed downstairs .  Bella chooses her own clothes, but I often have to influence decisions that aren’t weather-appropriate.  I haven’t quite figured out a way to have a subset of her wardrobe of only acceptable choices available to her.

Bella has cereal for breakfast and eats at her low table.  I present her with a bowl of dry cereal, an empty glass, and a jug of milk.  She gets to pour the milk where she wants.  Today, she poured milk in her cereal, picked out the cereal and then poured the milk from the bowl to her glass.  Obviously, milk went everywhere, but there was a damp cloth ready for her to wipe up with.

Eating breakfast

When she’s finished, she washes her hands using the “running water” in her water dispenser.  There’s a small piece of bar soap that she can use as well.

Washing hands

After breakfast, we water the plants.  I fill up the watering can, and then Bella walks it over to the birds of paradise plant and gets to work.  She loves watering.

Watering plants

She asked to go outside at that point, but I asked her if she would like to do some art… and she said yes!  We’re in the middle of birthday season, where it’s her and her 6 NCT friends’ second birthdays, and we’re making cards for them all.  Her art supplies are currently contained within one side of her Ikea Flisat table (how I love this table), and before I knew it, she’d gotten a pot out and filled it up with water.  It was time for watercolour painting!

Flisat table – art supplies on the left and Duplo on the right

carrying water

painting!

After she finished painting the birthday card, she asked again to go outside and this time I cracked the back door open.  It was around 9am.

“sawing” a tree like grandpa on the weekend

While she ran around, I put some verbiage on the card.  We had free play for an hour, at which point I started to get ready to head out.  We were going to try a new music class that was located around the corner, but unfortunately while it was convenient, that was the only good thing going for it.  I do really like having a class or activity/playdate on in the morning, it just helps get us out of the house and ensure we’re not pottering about aimlessly too much.  Our schedule for this week:

Monday – the awful “music” class
Tuesday – Bella’s birthday party!
Wednesday – Forest school
Thursday – free day, depending on the weather we may go to the sand park
Friday – I’m working; Bella will be looked after by my mother-in-law

having a little run around

When the class ended, we continued on out to the shops.  Every Monday, we buy food for the week.  I like to source our food as locally as possible, so we visited the local veg shop, the local butchers, and then had to go to the local Co-op because we lack a fishmongers.  Bella knows all of these shops well, and I hope that as she grows, she’ll join me in looking at the food available, learning about what’s in season, and choosing what we’ll purchase.

We eventually made it home at 12pm, and got lunch on, with Bella helping to make herself an omelette.  Then there was another hour of free play (see bubbles below!) followed by a nap.

bubbles

Nap time is so important for me.  I get to recharge (today I watched on the latest episode of The Good Fight), I get to do personal admin (I had to book my car in for a service), and I get to do work of my own choosing (today it was this blog post).  I keep wondering when Bella will drop her nap, and how I’ll manage.  I know that I’ll need to instate “quiet time” of some sort, but I need to really think about how that’ll look.

After she wakes up, we’ll hopefully bake – I have my eye on using up an overripe banana to make a banana butterscotch pudding – and there’ll be more free play until daddy comes home.  We’ll continue to play, eat dinner as a family, play some more, and finally head up for the bedtime routine.  First a bath, then books, and then to sleep.

Cultivating your space

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It’s been awhile.  We made the decision to renovate our house a bit, and the building work started at the end of February.  We’ve converted our garage into a study and utility room, and we’re also building a 7x3m extension to the kitchen.

The original plan was to make the garage into a playroom and utility, but the more I thought about it, the less well it sat with me.  You see hundreds of photos of playrooms in the Facebook groups I’m in, all beautifully decorated and espousing a child-centred view of the world.  But how does it work in reality?  I don’t want Bella off playing in a separate space, as if the rest of our house isn’t for her.  I want her to be a part of all of our rooms, but I can admit that our current rooms don’t feel ideal for her.  So we made that garage room a study instead, and looked at how else to make our space fit her, and us, better.

We landed on doing a rear kitchen extension.  Our kitchen is very well proportioned as it is, but as Bella’s stuff has been added (a small table, IKEA kitchen and easel), it’s starting to feel cramped.  The extension allows us to add a playing and seating area that will overlook our garden (there’s a 4m wide bifold door!), and by design will be a screen-free place for us to enjoy.  I’ve allowed myself to buy a sofa for the space, and everything else in it is going to be things that we already have.

I’m really excited at being able to look outside while eating breakfast at her table, talking about the weather and nature and actually able to take it in during that time. I plan to put in some high shelves to take advantage of the high ceiling, where I can store things that are out of rotation but yet keep them easily accessible.  I can not wait to watch Bella run around the open-plan space.  It’s is a huge change from the rest of our house, which is neatly contained into separate rooms with little space for gross motor.  In summer, we can go outside, but it was really this long winter which made me realise how stir-crazy we can easily get in here.

Do you need a big house to do Montessori right?  Of course not.  Plenty people do great jobs in smaller spaces.  But Bella doesn’t go to nursery and as she’ll only go to preschool and primary school 3 days a week, the majority of her time will be at home.  It felt right for us to invest in our space so that we could reap the benefit for years to come.  We are lucky that we were able to afford it, and I really believe that all three of us will enjoy a significant improvement in our quality of life.

Sunday reflections

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Another week, another Sunday.  How time flies.  This past week has passed in the blink of an eye, mainly because my husband (a teacher) has been on half-term holiday, and so it’s been a little break from our normal life.  I didn’t bother to plan like usual; instead I classify all of this time as family time and we just enjoy it as we please.  For us, that meant trips to the sandpark, gymnastics and pony riding, amongst other things.

Of course, now it’s back to reality – although thankfully, reality isn’t really that different.  The main difference is that it’s me on my own again. One thing that I really enjoyed about having my husband around this week was how his play with Bella was so different than mine.  He showed me that she was really interested in throwing (and in fact has a great underarm throw!), and while she often seems to mix up blue and red (which made me think that she wasn’t quite into colours yet), she adored running around trying to find objects that matched in colour.

So what’s the plan for this week?

The main aim is to get back in the routine of just being the two of us, and one of the main things that defines it for me is Bengali.  We’re going to go back to the mornings of late: lazing about in bed reading books in Bengali, and I’m going to really make a point of noting down when I slip back into English and which phrases I’m lacking.  Bella doesn’t get frustrated at all when I speak it now, which is great, and she understands an awful lot of what I say.  It’s clear to me that the limiting factor is me, so I need to step things up.  Thankfully my mum will be visiting us every week in March, so I plan to ask her to only speak Bengali too.

Other than that, my foci for this week are music and art.  I’m going to remember to put music on regularly (we’re loving the Maestro Classics series), play the bells at least once a day, and think about how to integrate our playsilks into music.  We’re also going to draw using a different medium every day (watercolours, tempura paint, crayons, colouring pencils, markers).  For some reason, we didn’t do any art this week and it makes me a bit sad.  Obviously, if Bella asks to use a certain tool then we’ll use that – but I kind of want to remind her of all the different options that exist.  She does use the chalkboard on her easel most days, though!

In addition, I’m going to be thinking about Sensorial a bit this week.  We have a set of mini knobbed cylinders arriving, and I’m keen to make up a couple more mystery bags.  Bella’s also clearly in a sensitive phase for matching (a blog post with more info to come soon), so I’d like to keep a matching activity available to her at all times, as well as playing matching games with her.

DIY Montessori Number Rods

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Today I made Montessori number rods!  Bella’s still a bit young for it, but we don’t go to the hardware shop often, so we figured we’d do it while we could.  I find that so much of home educating is like that for me – I’m the type to plan ahead, so I buy (or “stash”) things in advance when they’re on sale, I make lists of things I’d like to do in the future, or I make things that I know we’re far too early for.

The point isn’t to rush Bella into anything.  The point is that when Bella shows interest – there’s no delay!  I can pull out the material or take us on a day trip to the right place.  I like that.  I don’t like feeling like I’m one step behind, so it works for me.

So today we made number rods.  It was really easy.  £2.50 for a bit of wood from B&Q, £1 for a red tester paint pot, and £1 for the blue one.  It’s much cheaper than buying a set, but the obviously corollary is that I have to spend the time making it.

And you know what?  That’s the best bit.  I’m not an obviously arty person, but like many people, there’s an underlying creativity.  Making materials is part of practical life for me: I love learning how to do new things, and I love producing something tangible that Bella gets visible benefit from.  I also really like that Bella gets to watch us doing these things, so she sees Daddy sawing away and me painting.  I have people ask why I don’t just buy the materials when I can afford them, but it’s not always about the money.  I need fulfilment in my life too.  This is a major reason why home educating works for me.

Red paint on

Blue paint on

It was surprisingly easy.  As I said, buy a bit of wood and cut each piece to size.  The traditional classroom material goes from the initial 10cm piece up to the large 1m piece.  We sized down to 4cm increments because of the size of the wood we could get, as well as storage requirements.  Then I put masking tape on the “blue” segments and painted the red ones, and when the paint dried, moved the masking tape on the red segments and painted the blue bits.  Take off all the masking tape at the end, and ta-da!

Ta-da!

Learning time

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Last week my homeschooling course consisted of a lot of discussion about routine and rhythm.  This was a great exercise, because I got to analyse what we actually do and what I wanted to do, and make some concrete steps towards bridging the gap.

The main thing I realised was that we have a lot of free play.  And that’s great!  We’re looking at three hours of free play on a busy day, i.e. one where we have an activity on for a couple hours in the morning.  I feel really good about that, because while we do have a lot of activities on, that’s still a lot of self-directed play time.  Bella’s great at independent play and that has immediately answered some of my own questions about why that’s the case.

The thing that keeps coming up now is learning.  We’re at the age (21 months, approaching that second birthday) where people start talking about formal learning.  I have friends eagerly teaching numbers, letters, etc.  I’m one of them – every morning I work hard to get our Bengali time in.  But fundamentally, I don’t want our days to be full of lessons. I just want to make sure that Bella has the opportunity to explore activities with certain outcomes.  If she’s not interested, fine, but if she is – well, we’ll never know if we don’t give her the chance first!

What does that really mean?  How do you do this in a child-led way?

farm animal matching

Here’s an example.  Today, after breakfast, we settled into the living room and Bella naturally started playing with the toys on her shelves.  One shelf has her farm animals, and laminated photos of those same animals.  Before we knew it, we were matching the wooden farm animals with their photos.  Object-to-picture matching is one of those pre-numeracy skills, and a fun one for toddlers too.  That’s the reason that Montessori shelves are so popular: it’s the ease of having these lovely invitations to work available for children to choose independently.

After further playtime (which included a tea party with a china set, also on a shelf – not sure if that one can stay out; I worry about it breaking an awful lot!) we headed out to the swimming pool.  And then I spied my second opportunity for a bit of learning. Bella normally demands songs to be sung to her in the car, but I thought I’d try to entertain her in a different way, as I had the opportunity to sit in the backseat while my husband drove.

I introduced these Emotions cards to Bella a couple weeks ago, and she loooooved them.  Most children love seeing photos of other children, and the fun expressions just add to the enjoyment.  Bella has a couple that she’ll copy, and there are a couple others that clearly still thwart her.  It’s a great way to introduce vocabulary, and also discuss those big feelings that toddlers often have.  Bella already says “baby sad” when she’s feeling upset, which is great, but I’d love it if we could work on angry, surprised, etc.

So I brought the cards along, and for 20 minutes we chatted our way through them.  It was a lovely way to spend a car journey, and a great 20 minute so-called learning session that may not have occurred otherwise in our day.

The moments are often there – it’s just a matter of being able to grab them when they come up.

Trampolining

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Today we went to the trampoline park with friends.  Long story short: it was amazing.

It’s actually part of a larger venue which is a full-on leisure centre, from swimming pool to gym to cafe to soft play for the tots.  The ticket we purchased gave us entry to soft play as well as the tots trampoline session.

I wasn’t fussed about going to soft play.  Something about it has never appealed to me.  It feels like the opposite of real life: it’s a sterile, baby proofed environment that children are encouraged to go into because the parents are guaranteed that there are no risks inside.  I have friends that spend their days going from one soft play to another, never setting foot outside.

I’d much rather be out in nature, letting Bella walk on uneven ground, stepping on stones that have somehow formed a path, dealing with the elements and having as much fun, if not more, on the journey.  Of course there are more risks, but the reward is that much greater too.

But I had no choice today, if I wanted to go trampolining.  And I did really want to do that, because Bella has taken a real shine to the trampolines at the gymnastics session we go to.  I thought it would be a nice way to do something new, while engaging in a familiar activity.

The best thing about the trampolines was that there was nothing else there, save for a couple balls that had snuck in.  There were 18 trampolines all attached to one another, and literally nothing else.  The girls ran from one end to another, bouncing up and down, falling over, laughing, giggling, tugging on ours arms to join them, and they spent three quarters of an hour doing this over and over again.  There was literally nothing else there to amuse them, and it did not matter in the slightest.

I loved it.  I loved watching these girls, all just under two years old, have fun learning how these strange new ‘floors’ worked.  I loved watching them explore how things changed when there was more than one of them on a trampoline.  Their curiosity and energy never abated.

People often think that you need so many bells and whistles to engage children.  It’s not true.  At this age, they’re still figuring out how their own bodies work.  It’s time for us to let them get down to that important business and get out of the way.

The first week of February

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Time for a new ritual: on Sundays, I’m going to spend some time reflecting on the week just gone, and the week to come.  I want to be a touch more thoughtful, more deliberate, more aware before the week is upon us.  I want to be clear in my own objectives and priorities.

Our weekly routine

What does this week hold for us?  

I think my main priority is routine and rhythm.  Last week wasn’t a good one for Bella in many ways.  We were only just settling in back at home after two months of caring for my mother-in-law, and we didn’t quite get things right.  I prioritised going out and seeing people because she was so lacking in peer interaction and outdoor time, and instead naps and our daily rhythm suffered.  I’m going to try to find the right balance this week.

That means that every day, we’ll be home by 12.45pm and heading for a nap by 1.30pm at the latest.  We’ve also had a bad few days in terms of the night time toilet learning, so I’m hoping that getting to bed at the right time will help her wake up refreshed and of sound enough mind to hold her wee until we get to a potty.

I’m also keen to make post-nap time more pleasant as I often struggle to fill the time left in the afternoon.  I have great plans to introduce afternoon tea, where we drink actual tea (and have all the fun of pouring!), eat some nice treats or light sandwiches, and chat about art.  I just got a set of the Usborne 50 famous paintings cards, and hope to be able to use them at that time.

And finally, I want to observe Bella more.  I did some of this last week, and there were some beautiful moments as a result, but I need to do more.  I’m setting the hopefully achievable goal of observing Bella for 30 minutes every day, ideally each time at a different time of day.  You can only follow the child if you know where the child is going!

Is anything special happening this week?

My homeschooling course is starting this week!  I’m really excited to be doing an 8 week Montessori homeschooling course.  The first week is about Routine & Rhythm so it’s even more important to me to focus on that myself this week.

Also, the Winter Olympics starts on Thursday!  My husband is a big sports fan, and I’m a big travel fan, so when you put us together, you get a crazy couple that plans to take their daughter to every Summer Olympics.  (The Winter ones don’t time well with school.)  That doesn’t mean we’ll ignore them – no, I plan to use it as a way to learn about sports, cultures, competitive activity, etc.  But I haven’t prepared anything yet, so let’s see what I can come up with!