Play Is The Work Of Child - Montessori - Free Play Moments - 18 Months (VLOG)

Maria Montessori said - "Play is The Work Of The Child". Free play is very important for a child. It yields a lot, more than what meets our eye.

Here are some moments of free play of my 18 months old son. Joyful & eureka moments that I could film!

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Montessori Practical Life Activities For Toddlers - Taking Care Of Self & Surroundings (18 Months)

"Why is my child learning to throw trash in a dustbin, put footwear in a shoe rack or wipe off water spills when they should be learning how to do something more academic, like ABC, 123?"

Math, reading, and language all require one to have the ability to focus, to be able to complete a task with logical and sequential steps, to concentrate, to make intelligent choices, and to see a task from start to finish. This is precisely the intent of the Practical Life activities. Through the Practical Life work, children learn to calmly go about their work and to take pleasure and satisfaction from their efforts.

Practical Life activities are the activities of everyday life and they are involved in all aspects of life. The child observes these activities in the environment and gains knowledge through the real experience of how to accomplish life skills in a purposeful way. These activities help give the child a sense of being and belonging, established through participation in daily life with us. The child feels important and gains self-esteem. He learns to trust that he and his environment will be cared for and his needs satisfied.

During the child’s sensitive period between birth and 6, the child is constructing the inner building blocks of his person. It is therefore important for the child to participate in activities to prepare him for his environment, that allow him to grow independently and use his motor skills, as well as allow the child to analyze difficulties he may have in the exercise and problem solve successfully.

Montessori also saw the child’s need for order, repetition, and succession in movements. Practical Life Exercises also helps to aid the child to develop his coordination in movement, his balance and his gracefulness in his environment as well as his need to develop the power of being silent.

“A child who becomes a master of his acts through long and repeated exercises of practical life, and who has been encouraged by the pleasant and interesting activities in which he has been engaged, is a child filled with health  and joy and remarkable for his calmness and discipline”  ~ The Discovery the Child 

Here in this video, is my 18 months old son doing some such activities.



Do you involve your child in household chores? I would love to know about your experiences, questions or comments if any :)

Source: 
Info Montessori 
Montessori Guide 
Montessori Training 

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Janmashtami (Krishna) Theme Montessori Inspired Activities For Kids (VLOG)

Here are some quick to set-up Montessori inspired fun educational activities & crafts for kids for this beautiful festival of India - Janmashtami that marks the birth of Lord Krishna. 

After watching my social media news feed full of little Krishnas & Radhas, in the afternoon, I quickly brainstormed within myself & came up with some ideas for Montessori inspired activities based on Janmashtami theme from whatever stuff I had at home. After that, collecting the materials from all over the house & arranging them was just a matter of an hour or so, and I did this when A was taking his afternoon nap. The activities basically weave together the traditions, stories & rituals of Janmashtami, and also provide opportunities for the toddlers to practice their skills in different areas. 

All we did were we made some beautiful memories! Trust me, we had lots of fun! I hope I was able to offer my son some insights about this festival & Lord Krishna with these activities. Here is the video that explains all the activities.

This set of activities was also featured on Baby Chakra, so if you are not a video person, you can see some pictures & details HERE.

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What Can Vehicle Miniatures Teach A Child?

What a child can learn from free play is immense. Even more interesting is the way you can tap into the cues & interests of your child & drive learning through these interests. The child will be interested & enthusiastic in such learning activities. Read on how & what my son learnt, and is still learning following his love for vehicles!

My son who is 18 months old right now, is super duper fond of vehicles of any kind. When I realized this craze months back, I started hunting for miniatures of various vehicles. I did not want to stick to the routine cars, moreover wanted to encash this craze & encourage some learning. 

I finally bought a lot of vehicle miniatures like truck, bus, tempo, auto, bike, scooter, train, engine, fire engine, ambulance, boat, aeroplane, helicopter, tractor and some construction vehicles like dumper truck, digger, mobile crane, cement mixer truck, bulldozer, road roller and what not. This was not a one day purchase obviously. Whenever I found a deal somewhere, online or local market, I hoarded this stuff. Also, I did not give him all the vehicles in one go. It is overwhelming for the child. I looked for his cues, for example, there were days he got super excited seeing an auto. So I gave him the auto miniature & he would play with it endlessly, even sleep holding it. It was so amazing to see him so engaged with that little auto. Same happened for tempo (goods carrier in India), bus, truck etc.

There is a construction going on just in front of our place, so he used to stand at the balcony & watch those construction vehicles work with great interest. That was the time I pulled out his construction toy vehicles from the almirah & gave him to play! He would hold the cement mixer in one hand & watch the real cement mixer work on the construction site for long.

"Play is child's work." ~ Maria Montessori

I did not know how enriching it is to play with these miniatures before I actually saw my son playing with them! I am sharing how his love for vehicles facilitated in so much learning for him, I am sure I have missed a lot more points to enumerate but nevertheless!

• Gross Motor Skills - See his large muscles at work while making a vehicle move. By the way, I made this maroon & yellow parking lot with a ramp for him from an old Flipkart box. All his vehicles were being dumped in a box, they certainly needed a better home ;) 

• Fine Motor Skills while holding & manipulating the vehicles

• Vocabulary Building - Learning about names of vehicles & parts of the vehicles in a hands-on way like wheels, headlights, tail & wings of an aeroplane, blades of a helicopter etc. In the picture below, I was having my lunch & he wanted my attention. So I asked him to get me one vehicle at a time from another room. I asked him, "please get me the dumper truck", and he would get me the dumper truck. So this huge collection you see below, he brought to me rightly according to the vehicle's name. This was at around 15 months if I remember correctly. In another picture below, he is trying to tell me where are the wings, jet engine & tail of an aeroplane

• Counting the wheels in a 2 wheeler, 3 wheeler & 4 wheeler. 
• Learning Shapes - wheel is a circle, window is a rectangle, so on & so forth
• Enhancing Imagination & Making Connections - My son would play for 15 minutes at a stretch with his vehicles (which is a LOT of time considering the super short attention span of babies & toddlers). I am sure in his mind he is doing some kind of imagination & role play. Once he starts talking more, I may get to know what went in his mind while playing with his vehicles all this while. Moreover, seeing a real world vehicle & a toy vehicle side by side helps a child to make connections in his brain, helps to make one to one correspondence, which is a pre-math skill.

• Related Book Reading - I invested in books that were based on vehicles, picture books, story books, sound books, lift the flap books & books of all kinds. He already loves reading books. And books with his favourite vehicles, all the more interested! He matches his toy vehicles with the pictures in the books every now & then. By reading books, he also gets to know more details about how these vehicles work. He LOVES these vehicle-based books! Sharing just a few of them that I already had pics of (along with other non-vehicle titles too). There are a whole bunch of more of such books inside!

• Visual Discrimination - Based on his interest, I made some DIY activities for him to take his interest on a different level & he LOVED them too! These are some color, shape & vehicle matching activities that he started doing successfully from 15 months onwards.

Printable courtesy - Welcome To Mommyhood

• Peeling Off Stickers - I got him puffy foam stickers of cars to peel off. Using stickers is a very good fine motor skill. He loved playing with them too! This sticker sheet had logos of some car brands & he would ask again & again what they are. I told him these are logos & he could remember the names & pointed to the right logo when I asked! This further gave way to learning of logos. We used to go to our society garden every evening & he would point each & every car & ask for the logo name. Now he recognizes some 7-8 logos on paper & on the vehicles on the road too. While in the car, he starts shouting Tata Tata after seeing a Tata bus on the road!

• Perceiving Finer Sounds - My son now knows what sounds some vehicles like aeroplane, fighter plane, train, tempo, truck, car reverse horn etc make. In the middle of anything, when he is playing or reading or roaming around, whenever he hears these sounds (amidst all the noise, believe me!), he stops for a moment, points his fingers to the direction of the sound, says car or whatever is the name, if he can utter that word, smiles, does an eye to eye contact with me or his father, and goes back to his work again! Many times, we do not manage to hear the sound until he tells us to listen & acknowledge! 

• Hands-On Learning & 3D to 2D Matching - Once a 3D object picture is stored successfully in children's brain, it is very easy for them to relate to their 2D counterparts. If we teach vehicles just from the books, they would see a 2D view of it, and would not know how it looks from other angles. They will tend to store a limited view of that vehicle in their brain. We also did shadow matching activity of vehicles & to my surprise, he could do it very easily! Also, anything that anyone can actually experience (hands-on), rather than just read, goes into the long term memory. 

I will link up all the books, toys & puzzles we have related to vehicles in a separate post! For now, you can search them on Amazon & Flipkart.

I also wanted to share a beautiful vehicle set that I got as a gratitude gift from Creative Express because I reviewed their awesome concept calenders. These vehicles are sturdy enough & lovely to play with :)

Next, we plan to do 2 part, 3 part & eventually jigsaw puzzles based on vehicles! We will also do some vehicle painting and sorting of vehicles based on where they go - land, air & water. Later on we will attempt pre-writing work with small vehicles, like tracing the shapes or different kinds of lines using vehicles.

Do you have more suggestions as to how one can use vehicles? I would love to hear. I would also love to know what all activities you did with your child using vehicles :) Do share in comments!

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India Theme Montessori Inspired Activities For Kids (VLOG)

Here are some ideas of Montessori inspired fun educational activities & crafts for India's independence day for kids. Also mentioned are India themed books for kids that you can read aloud. 

I am following Montessori & fun learning philosophy for my son who is 18 months old now. This independence day, I set up India theme activities for him. Here is a quick video of all the activities on his Montessori shelf. 

Now this is another YouTube video showing how he enjoying doing these activities! 

Do subscribe to my YouTube Channel! Printables in the activities are from Mumma Diaries.

Apart from these activities, we are listening to some patriotic songs like Ae Mere Watan Ke Logon, Saare Jahan Se Accha, Vande Matram, I Love My India, Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna, Mera Rang De Basanti, Zindagi Maut Na Ban Jaaye etc. I have also put some India theme books on his bookshelf for this week. These books can be read to an older child as well. They are not just for young toddlers! Different age children have some different interpretation of the same book.  So go on & add them to your personal library :)

I am sharing the links for these books if you want to buy them online. 

Few that are not available on Amazon -
Handmade in India - Olivia Fraser
Dhammak Dhammak 
My Country 
Krishna with the Fruit Vendor - I got this from Iskon temple store in Pune

Hope you liked our independence day celebration in this special way :) Please share how did you celebrate independence day with your child. I would love to know!

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Do not forget to follow "The K Junction" on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori & Waldorf inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!

Hope to see you around. Happy Parenting!

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