Tag: 18-24mos

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.

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.

Nature and the Outdoors

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I am not an outdoors person.  I have never been an outdoors person.  No, I was a bookworm, the girl who hated bugs and dirt and always wore socks.  But now, I have a child and I want something better for her.  I don’t want her to be scared of the outdoors.  I want her to understand how the world works, through first hand experience of the world.

So how do we do this?

Meeting a horse at the Ada Cole horse rescue sanctuary

The first step is to get outside.  It’s much easier said than done, but it’s all about the baby steps.  This week, we went to the village green on Monday, the park on Tuesday, the back garden on Wednesday, a walk to the shops on Thursday and today, Friday, we went to a horse sanctuary!  Next week, we’re meeting friends in the forest on Monday, and the rest of the week is yet to be determined.

The second step is to have a couple drivers to keep us going when we aren’t feeling motivated.  I bought a copy of Exploring Nature with Children, which gives a year long ‘curriculum’ to guide you through a year of nature study, based on Charlotte Mason’s vision of home education.  This is great for simple activities and doesn’t make me feel bad for not being that nature-loving parent you often see.

The final step is not to let the weather thwart you.  You know the drill.  There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.  So get the right clothes.  Today, it was pretty cold out at the horse sanctuary, but Bella was dressed in wool leggings, fleece trousers, wellies, a long-sleeved top, cardigan, coat and a balaclava-style hat.  She didn’t seem fussed at all.  I’ll be honest, I don’t tend to go outside if it’s really pouring it down, but I know that a light drizzle is fun for the little ones, and we’ll often go into the back garden then.  At least it’s easy to get warm and dry on a moment’s notice if we change our minds!

No more nappies

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Well, I said we were calling it a day on the nappies, and we did.  Friday was our first full day nappy-free, and we haven’t touched another one since.  Bella’s been absolutely amazing.  She can sleep through the night, 11 hours (or even 12 hours in last night’s case) and stay dry.  No issues with naps.  No problems in the car.  I’m incredibly, incredibly proud of her.

Our bathroom setup

I’m also pretty proud of me.  It sounds wrong to say that, but it’s true.  I’m proud that I was watching her, observing what she was telling me, and I’m proud that I didn’t let my own fears mean that she wasn’t allowed to take this step that she has been clearly ready for.  Toilet learning is an emotive topic, and I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times that I’ve heard a parent say “I don’t want to rush them.”

I know that people think that I’m “rushing” Bella.  Their opinions aren’t relevant to how I raise my child, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t hear the words.  It doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a seed of doubt in the back of my head – what if she isn’t ready, what if I’m trying to make her grow up too fast?

But you know what?  You can’t rush it.  You can’t force a child to be ready for this.  They either are or they aren’t.  I sincerely believe that a lot of parents wait too long, because they aren’t ready, because they don’t want their child to grow up.  I never, ever want to be that parent.  I will support my girl to be who she is, when she makes that decision.  And I know that I’ll do it at the right time, because I’m observing her – which is the first and most important lesson of Montessori.

Night time toilet learning

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Six months has passed since we day trained Bella.  Six months.  Where did that time go? But they said that eventually, you wouldn’t think about the potty all day long and you know what, they’re right.  I haven’t thought about the potty for awhile.  It just happens when it needs to.

That’s all going to change tomorrow.  Tomorrow, I’m going to jump out of bed the second that Bella wanders into my room in the morning, and I’m going to take her to the bathroom.  I’m going to take off her nappy and tell her that we don’t wear nappies anymore, make her throw it in the bin, and we’re going to use the toilet for the rest of the day.  And the next day, and the one after that.

There are a few tests ahead for me.

The first is going in the car.  We struggled with car travel when we day trained.  Bella likes weeing in the carseat.  I have no idea why.  She’d go in the potty and five minutes later she somehow found some more wee for the car.  So I made my own life easier and introduced “travel undies” i.e. pull-ups.  It’s time to get rid of those.  We’re going to the toddler gym tomorrow, it’s a 15 minute drive, and she’s going in real undies.

I’m going to pack a lot of spare clothes.

Then, after we get home from the toddler gym, we’re going to race through lunch, have an hour of no liquids, use the potty and go down for a nap.  Again, in undies.  Bella’s frequently been dry during naptime so I’m hoping that that is fairly pain-free.  Her bed is loaded up with sheets on top of sheets and training pad protectors.

And then.  Then, she’ll wake up and oh my goodness I am going to give her water.  After a morning of setting her up for success in her undies, I intend to let the girl drink.  They say you want to build the bladder up, so she can learn to hold a reasonable amount of liquid.  So she will have her water, and then we’ll have dinner a touch earlier than usual, give her 1-1.5 hours without drinks, a good potty, and then to bed.

That’ll be the real test.  I’ve chosen to start this whole malarkey on a Friday night for a reason – so I’m not doing it alone.  We haven’t decided yet whether to wake her up for a wee when we go to bed, or whether to leave her alone with instructions to wake us up if she needs a wee.  I suspect we’ll go for the latter (especially if the day went well) and see what happens.

It’s scary, potty training.  I don’t know why it’s so scary, other than the mess, but perhaps it’s because our children are growing up and this is actually all on us to do right.  My baby won’t need nappies anymore.  What a crazy thought.  I want to do right by her, I want to keep things calm and easy and not upset her.  I hope it all goes well.

Looking Ahead

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What’s coming next?

The main thing that I’ve put on hold due to not being home is night time potty training.  Bella’s had a good amount of dry nappies during naps and sleep lately, so I think she’s about ready and I really don’t want to miss the opportunity.  I hope that our lives will calm down so we can tackle this neatly in February, before I start freelancing again March.

I’m also looking forward to the weather perking up a bit.  I know that I’m a bit of a homebody, the outdoors is not my natural environment.  I’ve tried really hard not to make it obvious to Bella, and she certainly seemed to thrive outdoors over the summer.  But now that it’s colder, she seems to have turned into a bit of an inside person like me, and we’re struggling to get out.  I’ve bought Exploring Nature With Children and really hope to be able to work through it.  I love that not all the activities actually require going outside (e.g. having a week where you view the moon every night and discuss it, or making a rain gauge) so I think there’s lots to help us reconnect with the outdoors while still being the homebodies that we are.

We’re also continuing to work on music.  I haven’t quite managed to figure out what my strategy is, but Bella has a set of C major deskbells which she loves.  I try to play at least a couple songs on it every day (just the normal favourites that she likes – The Wheels on the Bus, It’s Raining It’s Pouring, etc) so she can keep on developing her sense of pitch.  Soon I’ll introduce clapping exercises and start playing more classical music on the iPod.  It’s all stuff I keep meaning to do but haven’t quite managed to put together into a coherent structure.

A quick recap of the past few months

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Things change quickly with a little one.  They change frequently, too.  We’re coming out of a tough few months, where we were called to help a close family member and had to give up a lot of our own structure and routine.  We just had seven consecutive days in our own home, which hasn’t happened since the beginning of November, and soon I think we might even just get a couple weeks in their entirety.  I can’t wait.

What’s been going on with us during that time?

Bella’s gotten free access to water.  We set up a water dispenser which drips onto an ice cream tub with holes punctured into it.  This has worked remarkably well for us.  She loves washing her hands, getting a glass of water, washing her toys, etc.  It’s lovely.  Yes, there’s some extra water on the floor these days, but that’s life.

After the water success, I decided to go the full Montessori and moved some of her art supplies in reach as well.  This did backfire on me, when I walked into my kitchen to find crayon on the walls, but you learn.  Particularly, you learn that WD-40 removes crayons from painted walls.  I hope that Bella has learnt that we draw on paper, not walls.  We’ll see how well that lesson has sunk in.  However, I’ve been delighted at how often she reaches for her watercolour paints now that they’re in sight.  She loves to dip her brush in the water in between each colour.  She also received an easel for Christmas, so she can draw with chalks on the chalkboard whenever she fancies.

We’ve massively stepped up our efforts to be bilingual.  I have been trying incredibly hard to speak more and more Bengali to Bella.  Bengali is my parent’s language.  I understand it fluently, but unfortunately my parents always prioritised English and so I never spoke it beyond the age of 3.  I never learnt to read or write it.  Bella and I have had a few great mornings where I think I’m hitting 95% of my speech being in Bengali (the 5% being words I don’t know).  I’ve got a tutor that I see once a week, and I’m learning to read it too.  Every morning, Bella hops into my bed and I read her some Bengali nursery rhymes before we get up.  It’s a lovely way to start the day.  We also watch occasional Bengali YouTube videos.  We’re generally screen-free, but this is my one exception.  I think it’s really important that Bella understands that Bengali isn’t just about me, but all these other people that speak it too.  I’m still working on getting the grandparents to speak it more to her!

 

Whew!  So there’s been a lot going on, despite not being at home!  In my next blog I’ll talk about what’s coming up next for us.