Park, ducks, fun with friends - 3 hours today!

Today was one of those days when my 1000 hours outside challenge was an easy one. It was a glorious day today.

At 9:30, Addie and I were sat in the car with a sleeping Bear, and we read one of our Alphatales books, talked about it, practiced our poem The Tadpole, which Addie loves, looked at our frog lifecycle toys, and read a book about the frog lifecycle. We were meant to be raising tadpoles starting from today, but alas the frogspawn was eaten by a friendly fish apparently!

We did about 45 minutes of school in the car - who says it has to be at home?! Then we went to meet up with friends from church. In total, there were 6 children, 4 of whom are around Addie's age, and then the two younger brothers, including Bear... We played in the park. We had a picnic (Charlotte Mason talks about eating outside is a good thing). We fed the swans, ducks, pigeons and gulls LOTS of bread! We walked along the river with the boats on it. We went to the bandstand where the 4 friends played, and one gave a great musical performance! And then we walked back to the park. We said goodbye to our friends and stayed in the park a little longer, before going back to the car to pick Jay up from school. It was such a lovely day. We all had fun, and it really lifted my spirits too. If only every day could be like that!

My 18-month old does chores

Too young? No way! Babies and toddlers have more potential than we usually give them credit for, and can do a lot more than we normally let them. Addie has only a few simple chores, not to overwhelm her and we keep them fun. This is what she can do:

- Put her clothes in the wash basket (she loves doing this, and will often put ours in too!)
- Clean up her spills - she wipes the table, wipes her face, picks up things she has dropped. She has also taken a liking to the broom and dustpan and brush - 2 weeks before I was going to show her how to use them! She is telling me she is ready to do this now, so I probably won't wait the 2 weeks.
- When it is nappy changing time, she collects her nappy and wet wipes and takes them to the bathroom to get changed. We have started the association with the bathroom so she knows this is where things like that are done!
- She puts her rubbish in the bin. Actually I was very surprised that she knew what I meant when I said 'Go put this in the bin' and she went straight away and did it! Martin was even more shocked and told her not to put things in there (until I told him she was doing what she was asked!)

Other things she does which are independence-building, but not necessarily chores:

- she gets herself in and mainly out of bed herself. We put her in a toddler bed at 16 months so we had no problems with her climbing out of a cot. We involved her in the building of the new bed and taking down of the old one, and it seemed to work really well. 
- She takes her own shoes and socks off (don't they all?!) and we are happy she does this rather than getting frustrated with her that she repeatedly does it.
- She likes to try to get herself dressed. If that means trousers on arms, and socks on hands, then so be it! She normally takes them off, then we put them on right anyway, but try to encourage her to help in everything. 

There are other things we will start introducing over the next weeks and months, so watch this space!

We are raising them to leave us

Short post, but important.

A concern at times of people is whether a child can cope without his or her parents, and whether parents can function without their children. As in the example I gave in my previous blog post, some home educators keep their children at home because they don't want to be parted from them. I must admit that I never want Addie to leave, but I have witnessed the damage imposing this on a child can do, and a benefit of my Montessori training is being able to reflect on how I act, teach, behave etc, and I am very conscious that even if I feel I want my babies here forever, I am raising them to be independent, self-disciplined, self-confident people who will go out into the world and, hopefully, make it a better place. They can't do that at home tied to my apron strings (not that I wear one, but you know what I mean!).

I think some people are horrified when I am not sympathetic when Addie falls over and tell her 'Oh well, up you get' (unless she really has hurt herself), or when I let her play by herself instead of me being on my hands and knees all day playing with her. Well, I do not want a clingy child, who has no confidence to make mistakes or do things independently. Addie is very content, very happy and loves to get on with her own explorations of the world, and as long as she is safe, and not harmed (apart from the normal childhood scrapes), then that is fine with me.