Acorns Montessori Rush

I'm watching you!

This magnifying glass is still the most popular piece of equipment in the class. Great conversation piece and fun for our little inspectors.

Magnet attraction.

Jake loves all things science and here hes exploring the way magnets work.

"In the library"

The children love to just sit and read at different times throughout the morning.

Word building.

In Montessori word building comes before reading.

Exploring bugs!

Good job Corm and Gracie with your big bug jigsaw.

Happy Birthday Alisha

Alisha's trip around the sun. In Montessori we sing about how many years the planet earth has made its trip around the sun for our Birthdays!

Animal grouping.

Grouping and sorting are important aspects of a child's cognitive development. Here Grace and James are sorting different animal groups.

Screw driver muscles!

The kids enjoy the screws block and its great for building up their fine motor skills. and coordination.

Indoor Obstacle course!

The kids love the indoor course when its too wet to play outside.

Blowing Bubbles!

The bubble race is on!!

Spike the hedgehog!

Natalia is enjoying sticking her spaghetti in to the play dough.

Creative Craft

Sometimes the kids just want to cut stuff up and create their own art.

Working together.

Corm is helping Natalia. The affection from the older kids has really brought the younger ones on and built up their confidence.

Maths Mania

Amelia loves her bit of maths! its lovely to see the kids becoming familiar with their numbers in an accessible and concrete way before they go into big school.

Flags of Europe.

Grace is helping Cormac sort out his flags, matching each with its Country on the map.

Cylinder blocks challenge.

Daisy takes out the 4 blocks out together. She loves to keep things ordered and neat.

Seed sorting.

Harry uses a tweezers to sort the seeds. Great for concentration and fine motor skills.

Mixing Colours

Caitlin is learning about red and white making pink with her paints. Its always a big surprise and the children feel like magicians when they shout out "I made white!!"

More Cylinder Blocks.

Good girl Annabelle, really testing her out her knowledge of dimensions.

Playing with numbers.

Daisy and Abigail count out buttons and match them to their numbers. Great for social and cognitive development.

Tower Mania.

Lots of tower building going on this morning.

Red Cylinders.

Putting that last cylinder on is harder than it looks! This requires developed dexterity and concentration (becomes harder again when you get older and that shake in your hand makes a come back!).

Alisha's Pink Tower

Good girl Alisha, real test of concentration and motor skills for this age group.

Carrots and hummus!

Annabelle and Amelia enjoying Tasting Friday! The kids learn early on that if we close our eyes we can concentrate on the taste and smell. Often the look puts the child off before anything!

Sister Artists.

Natalia and Amelia love to paint. Amelia has such a love of colours on the page.

Harvesting our Sunflowers.

Ellie Rose is busy at work collecting the sunflower seeds. in Spring time we plant these again and each child will take their sunflower home in June.

Tweezers Work

Abigail is enjoying this activity and its developing those little hand muscles to ready her for pencil holding and writing.

Two Buddies

James and Malik love to work together and here they are trying to make big triangles out of little triangles. Great for cognitive and social skills.

Cutting exercises.

Good girl Natalia, great cutting which is developing her hand-eye coordination and independence.

Working together.

Working together is great for developing social skills and taking turns.

Precision work!

Can see from this picture how getting that little top guy to stay on is tricky business!

Animal Jigsaws

Annabelle attempts all the animal jigsaws in one sitting. She loves a challenge. Again the peg hold prepares Annabelle for the correct pencil grip.

Peg Work

Harry loves the pegs. Again the peg work prepares for writing by mimicking the correct pencil grip and building up the hand muscles.

Stick insect care.

Ellie has taken her sticky out to play on a pine cone, but I think hes snuck away. Caring for the plants and pets teaches the kids about daily responsibilities and they really enjoy it.

Weather time!

Every day we have a new weather person who tells us about the day, month and Season. Then we have good ole singsong. Anna loves to make up her own songs.

Science Week

For Science week, we had a day with sink or float!? Here we made a lake skater and Abigail is well impressed that he can glide across the surface!

Science Week

Do sponges float? Grace tries the sponge first squeezed and then soaked with water. Learning about the concept of an experiment. We had so much fun!

Science Week

More Sink or Float. This times its Malik and Cormac making the predictions.

Science Week.

Kids made rainbow bridges using tissues, water and food colouring. They were fascinated to see how water travelled up the tissue.

Science Week

Emillie is playing with the magnets and has made a lovely turtle with her shapes.

Science Week

Daisy had us all amazed when she used sellotape, lego and and magnet to make a crane. Her she is transporting a large nut and bolt.

Science Week

Magnet guess work. First the girls take a guess and sort them into the yes or no categories. Then they test their answers!

Science Week

James testing the load bearing limit of his bridge!

Science Week

Learning about air and how even though we can't see it we can discover its there by moving it. Here Annabelle is checking out her blower with little balls made from recycled tinfoil.They all loved this one!

Mixing it up!

Good man Harry. Correct order isnt always important. Harry knows the order already but it trying out something new and learning about balance and weight in the meantime.

Gracies Birthday!

Grace loved her trip around the sun and here she is blowing out her candle after.

In the Garden!

The kids love our new garden activities thanks so much to Colette (Emilies Mum) who donated a fantastic outdoors kit! Great for gross motor skills (meaning you coordinate big body movements). Super jumping Daisy.

In the Garden

Super hula hooping Amelia. I definitely think this is an ability you loose once you turn 30!

Fun in the Garden

Fingal Co Council eat your heart out!

In the Garden

Looking cool in those shades Anna!

Anyone for Tennis?

How to get the Balls?

Beautiful weather in the garden so we made a shaded area using our parachute. This inspired lots of new games in the kids.

Planting sunflower seeds

Anna, Emilie and Amelia are planting out the sunflower seeds that we harvested in the Autumn.

More fun in the Garden

Indoor Obstacle Course

If they can't get it outside they can get it inside with our obstacle course that they helped put together. They love coming up with a new roll on the yoga mat!

Me time with my book.

Grace loves to find a good book and have a sit and read. Nice to tune out of the busyness around her sometimes.

Painting up a storm.

Free art is so important for kids too. Let them create as they go. Then have a chat about what it is they see in the painting, that's the best fun and encourages imagination and language.

Blow Painting.

Emilie loves painting (especially her hands!). Here shes getting the creative juices flowing and discovering the fun of blow painting.

My Body

We did a week of "our bodies"...senses and limbs, skeletons and organs. Kids loved it. We used Cormac here to make our "Matman".

More reading.

Cailtin's reading the "Ravenous Beast". Each day its a different child's turn to pick the book for story time and its a big deal for them.

The Solar System

Good job Cormac and Ellie-Rose. Sorting out our planets and their position from the sun.

Nature Table Fun

Caitlin is enjoying sorting through the nature table basket. Great for conversations about what we find on our beaches and grouping shells.

The Solar System

Astronaut Emilie! 3,2,1 blast off!

The Solar System

We brought our rocket out the back for play time and it was great gas. Pretend play is super for developing imagination and so much more.

Tower Building!

You may not think children are learning much by building lego towers. BUT in fact its ticking a lot of boxes: Balance & coordination, motor skills, strength in the hands and arms, social skills and pure enjoyment!

The Solar System

Love this... Malik came in this week and said he was going to make a satellite and he did! From stickle bricks! and then he took out the Space book and showed me how they were the same. I love little minds.

Abigail's Animals.

Abigail loves animals and her amazing imagination is brought to the fore as shes moves them around with Anna and they go on big animal/princess adventures!

Planting Seeds.

Malik was first to spot the new activity on our Practical Life shelf and got straight into the planting of our parsley seeds.

Necklace for Mammy

One of the favourite tasks for the ladies in particular is a neck lace for Mammy. The threading is great for building fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Good girl Caitlin!

You can do it Ellie!

A group of them got so excited as they took turns to make this tower. You can see the excitement on their faces as they get ready to cheer!

Big Button dressing Frame.

Abi well able now for the big buttons. Great for promoting independence with her own buttons.

Harry's favourite pastime.

Inspecting the beach collections is definitely one of Harry's favourite pastimes.

Button Magic

Just like the old days, kids love the jar of buttons. Here Jake is using them to make his doggy picture. Great for the littler ones concentration and sorting skills.

Making Soup!

This activity teaches Aliesha about pouring and spooning. She got a bit cleverer too and added water to make soup!

Kids Scrabble

Fun way for kids to become familiar with letters.

More Button Magic

Great job Anaabelle!

St Patricks Day

Making our shaka shakas for Paddys day.

Spooning Exercise.

Jake develops his skills of transferring with a jug and a spoon. Enjoying it too much there Jake!

Hurling for St Patricks.

We made our hurls out of cardboard and sliotars from newspaper. Best craic ever!

Take it easy Anna!

Anna taking a little rest after exerting herself with the hurling!

St Patricks day.

More Hurling! No getting past Emilie!

Freestyle Painting

Good girl Anna. Great way for the kids to express themselves and develop their little arm and hand muscles. Like I said before, the best part is asking them for a name for their picture!

Mammys and Babies

Aliesha has done some lovely work on her mat with matching up her Mammy and Baby animals. Its great for the little ones to learn about order and keeping their activity neat on the mat.

Word building.

The older children are learning to put their sounds together to make words. Again its lovely for them to learn in a concrete and fun way before they head off to big school.

More word building!

Good work Corm and Gracie. My big guys!!

Maestro Jake!

Jake loves the piano. He loves hearing the different notes and like to explore soft and loud!

Dancing Queens.

Emilie and Anna having a celebratory dance together after they were picked for the Lunch job!

In love with numbers

Cormac loves his numbers and again I love seeing children work in the concrete form of numbers before they move on to primary school when it becomes more abstract and 2 dimensional on paper.

Maths Magic.

Great job James. James is always interested in getting things in order and also loves his numbers activities.