Thursday, September 18, 2008

"Tea Party Breakfast"

Because we are doing these activities at home and there are no other children for Sophie to play with-I am trying really hard to make all of the basic Montessori lessons I find as fun for her as possible. When we sat down to have this tea party breakfast, I had already made her crust less toast in little heart shapes with her favorite strawberry jam. I put the crust in her crown plate and added a few dollops of jam to dip in if she preferred. (I also stuck in her little box of cookies she wanted from the store that week because they were pink and looked cute on the table.)

As far as skills go, Sophie practice pouring and was even able to hold the saucer while she poured. She really had fun pouring (I used sugar-free cranberry juice in the teapot and we pretended it was our favorite passion herbal tea from Starbucks) and kept offering me more tea. I ended up drinking a lot of tea that morning, but that's OK, she really had a good time.
We also practiced some manners and used lots of words like, "May I" and "Please & Thank You." She was also getting a kick out of being the 'hostess' and kept offering me and Belle more and more things.
The only flaw was that she wouldn't take 'no thank you' for an answer and kept pushing. Hmmm, I wonder where that came from?
After breakfast I showed her how 'bus' the table and take everything to the sink where Sophie went ahead and washed all of the dishes. She had a ball!
We were spending way more time than planned on this activity, so I jumped in and dried the dishes for her.
I think it was a great success. She has excellent manners AND can manage to pour very well. Every bath time since she's had tea parties with her tub toys and has even added some 'foam' (suds) like they do at Starbucks.

If only I had stopped there for the day....... but oh no, not me............

Sophie grabbed her binkie/bunny right after she finished the dishes and said she wanted to watch TV. Well, I had already planned an afternoon at the pumpkin patch-including a fun little car picnic for lunch. I intended doing this for fun rather than using it as a learning activity. However, the petting zoo was empty and the workers really wanted someone to 'educate' on all of the animals as we walked through--the result was we were bombarded with TMI and by the time we got home we were exhausted and more than a little overwhelmed! We fed goats and pet the baby chicks and saw a giant pig just about to give birth and even pet the little baby horses and tried to feed them some corn as well. It was one LONG day! We did have a good time though.

The hay ride was her favorite part.

She sure does love these giant jumpy things though.



She got a big kick out of the train ride too.