DIY Montessori Permanence Box For Infants & Toddlers - 8 to 12 Months

I was digging through my old photos, the time when I had not started to document my motherhood & Montessori journey through this blog. And I found this DIY Montessori Permanence Box that I introduced to my son when he was 9 months old. How time flies, he is now 25 months old!

What Is A Montessori Object Permanence Box?

The object permanence box is found in a Montessori environment for infants & toddlers. It is introduced when they are able to sit up without assistance, usually around 8 to 12 months. The aim of this material is to help them develop their sense of object permanence - which means that if an object is out of sight, it does not mean it does not exist. That is the reason why peekaboo is played too.

Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget believed that the development of object permanence, or the ability to understand that objects exist even when not seen, is one of an infant’s primary developmental accomplishments.

This material indirectly also develops focus & concentration, improves their whole hand grasp, and works on fine motor skills too. They learn hand-eye coordination.

Why DIY?

Montessori materials are awesome but they are expensive most of the time because they are wooden mostly.



I have made a lot of DIY Montessori inspired learning materials for my son, including this DIY Montessori Permanence Box. It is super simple!

Materials Needed

• Cardboard box
• Colored papers (optional)
• Adhesive
• Scissors or a cutter
• Ball

I took a small cube shaped cardboard box and cut a hole according to the size of the ball I had. I also made a door kind of opening on another side of that cube. And then I stuck this cube on to another cardboard tray (it was the lid of a shoe box). I pasted colored papers to make it look attractive. 

How To Present The Material? (Source HERE)

1. Put the work mat in place and put the object permanence box on the work mat so it will be in front of the child. Encourage the child to help.

2. Sit facing the child with the work mat between you.

3. Name the box and the ball: “This is the box. This is the ball.”

4. Slowly and deliberately place the ball in the hole.

5. When the ball rolls to a stop in the tray, smile and pick it up.

6. Repeat the action.

7. Invite the child to place the ball in the hole.

8. Once the child begins putting the ball in the hole, quietly move aside and allow her to work undisturbed.

9. When finished, invite the child to put the materials away on a low shelf so she may work with them again when she wishes.

Unfortunately, I could not find any pictures of my son using this material in my archives :( But I remember how happy he was exploring this material, which included eating it too! At that age, they are mouthing everything around them!

"One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child." - Maria Montessori

I would love to know what DIYs have you done for your child? :)

Happy Parenting!

Read More »

Toddlers As Surprise Packages - They Learn As They Play - How They Self Learn

Self discoveries of a toddler, do I really need to teach him or even interfere? :) I'm just sitting back, relaxing and enjoying the observations and conversations of this curious mind!

Shadow

A (my 2 years old son, walking after dinner in the society premises along with me) : mumma, shadow shadow! [And he walked along, the shadow disappeared and shifted to another position because of the new street light positioning]. Mumma, shadow gayab! Oh, shadow is here now! [And he walks ahead and continues to discover how shadow size and positions are changing]

Music Instruments 

He takes out all the music instruments he has, from the polythene and does some research on each one by one carefully listening and engrossed how the same instrument makes different sound when played with hand or stick, when hit on the leather or wood, etc etc.  This goes on uninterrupted for some 15 minutes and then he arranges the instruments in some fashion and asks his dad to play dholak and he chooses to play the manjeera. My home grown bhajan mandali )

Indian Classical Music Concert

We managed to take our son to an indian classical music concert last weekend - Panchatattva - that had maestros like Pandit Jasraj, Sanjeev Abhyankar and the likes. He attended the program for 1 hour 10 minutes to our SHEER surprise. BTW thanks to Surekha for her post, I pushed myself to bravely decide that my son is old enough to attend a live show. He particularly saw solo instrument performances of tabla, mridangam, kanjeera, flute and some vocals. The experience was so enriching that after we came back home, he wanted to again attend the concert. When asked, he enacted how do you play a flute, a kanjeera, a mridangam, tabla. As a musician myself, what could I have asked more for!

Wood And Fire

We did a bonfire at home on our terrace with family as a part of holi celebrations... Holika dahan. He observed and commented that after burning wood, it is finished! And became black powder. Smoke is rising from fire. Some great science lessons coming in for free :)

Awareness About Air

He has been telling us about air since long now, for example fan is giving air, AC is giving cool air, air is blowing (while playing outdoors). But today while travelling on our bike at night, he said, mumma cool air, I'm enjoying it mumma. And then the bike slowed down and he said mumma air is finished now. Again when the bike gained speed, he said, mumma air has come back again! He was beautifully making connections about the relation between the speed of the vehicle and the impact of air.

Toddlers are everyday surprise packages! Their curiosity and ability to learn from anything and everything amazes me :) We need to follow the child's lead, give them ample opportunities & exposure & enjoy!

Read More »

How Enriching A Simple Supermarket Visit Can Be For A Toddler

A simple supermarket visit is also so enriching for a toddler! Provided we do not make him sit inside the trolley & just watch what we are doing. In fact toddlers are so mobile that they will not even sit in the trolley for more than few minutes. They need to explore every thing around them!

I am sharing here an account of our super market visit & how my 21 months old had a blast!

You can see how a child can learn so much while you shop! And guess what, no stress at all. The child will absolutely enjoy. The only thing you need here is your patience & time. Let your toddler explore the entire supermarket while may be your partner do the actual shopping separately ;)

Some Practical Life skills being learnt at the supermarket. That trolley is for him exclusively. He picked up lot of stuff in his trolley while we were shopping. We revised vegetable & fruit names & other grocery items, a great language building exercise. It was a sensorial experience too, to touch & feel them. For example, pineapple, he knew it's a pineapple but when I gave it in his hands, he realized it hurts! He opened the fridge & checked out cold items, chanting cold cold himself. He saw this weighing balance & termed it a swing. He took a cucumber to the balance & started giving that cucumber a swing ride. I told him it is a balance & showed him how the needle moves when you keep something in the tray. A quick cause & effect lesson & a pre math lesson. It was a great gross motor activity too, he roamed around with quite a heavy trolley towards the end all over the place.

And did you notice that whole bunch of brinjals in his trolley? Looks like he wanted to have a brinjal party back home ;)

So the next time you visit a supermarket, let your little helper explore the area freely :)

;)

Read More »

Sanskrit Mantras By A 20 Months Old (VLOG)

I have been reciting some Sanskrit mantras to my son since he was 3 months old. After bath, when I get him ready, I recite the mantras. The motive behind this exercise was to impart some positivity & stimulation of his senses. I never expected him to learn the mantras.

Two days back (he is 20 months old now), I just said a part of the mantra & he completed that particular line & I was literally happily shocked that he had learnt many of those mantras. I am sure he had learnt a lot earlier but he is able to articulate them only now.

Why Sanskrit?
It is a well known fact that the recitation of Sanskrit language improves the speech of the children. And of course there is so much positivity in these mantras.

Here is the video of Sanskrit Mantras recited by my 20 months old son.

Vakratund Mahakaay
Gayatri Mantra
Tvamev Mata

Children absorb so much from their environment, we cannot even comprehend. So let us give them a rich environment which stimulates their senses, give them exposure to lot of things. You never know when they surprise you. Kids are a total surprise package!

Read More »

Montessori Inspired Busy Bag Ideas For Toddlers (VLOG)

Diwali vacation is approaching, lots of travel planned & fearing how to keep your toddler engaged during the travel?

Here are some Montessori inspired busy bag ideas that I compiled for my then 17 months old son. We took this busy bag to our vacation & we never had a difficult moment during air & road travel & in the hotel room! 

Watch the video to get some ideas for your busy bag!

Read More »

Learning Through Multiple Senses - A Delightfully Shocking Example

I'm delightfully shocked!

We had played with this world map foam puzzle (got it from Creative Express) when he was may be 17 or 18 months old. This was after a lot of simple matching activities that he showed interest in & did beautifully starting from 13 months. He would ask what every piece is & I used to tell him names of the continents. That was it. He had not even started speaking words back then.

Never did I show him a globe. Or any kind of spherical manifestation of the world map.

He turns 20 months today.

Today he was playing with this inflatable ball, he threw it on the floor, Australia faced him, he bent over the ball & with a eureka expression, he said 'Australia Australia'!

And I was shocked, literally!

It's not about teaching continents at this age. I know it will be rote learning. Neither am I interested in memorizing him names of the continents.

I am amazed, how a hands-on learning approach is so powerful. How a child learns & absorbs if more than one sense is involved. How a child can map a flat surface shape to the same shape on a sphere. How they make so awesome connections in their brains.

This is the reason why I love miniatures & figurines too.

Read More »

5 Reasons Why You Must Stock 3D Miniature Toys at Home

My love for miniatures and figurines is immense. It has become more so after I’ve seen how effectively they’ve worked in improving my child’s ability to learn as compared to learning from a 2D point of view in books or flashcards. 

So, I keep my eyes wide open and whenever I find interesting little miniature toys, I grab them. Now, I proudly own a huge collection and they range from vehicles to animals and birds; fruits to vegetables and equipment to even utensils.

Here are 5 reasons why I feel 3D miniatures and figurines are an awesome addition to your child's toy collection.

My article has been featured on BabyChakra. Click HERE to read. 

Read More »

Adlabs Imagica – A Review Through The Learning Lens!

Adlabs Imagica – badi interesting jagah hai!Their advertisement has always made me giggle with those two birds & two human beings having a serious talk of their lives! Being a hard core fan of adventure & thriller rides, I always wanted to try those inviting roller coaster rides. But having an eighteen months old super energetic toddler with me does not give me the luxury to experience rides like Dare 2 Drop, Deep Space or Nitro! But one fine Thursday night, we decided to visit Imagica on Saturday with our son. I was not sure how much he will be able to enjoy but nevertheless, we headed to our destination. After spending an entire day there with a toddler, I must say, as their website says, “Built For Kids”, it is indeed very true! My husband, son & myself, we had a gala time there. There are enough accounts & reviews of Imagica from an adult’s perspective. This review is focussed on how a child can enjoy & learn at Imagica.

Read my review HERE for more, specially from a parent's point of view. It has been featured on Indian Moms Connect

Read More »

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!

Read More »