Setting Up a Peace Table

A Peace Table is a Montessori inspired space that provides children with a quiet spot to sit, reflect, and regain composure when they are feeling overwhelmed. I shared back in February that we started using "quiet spots" when the children needed some extra space. After about a month of use, it was clear that our quiet spots weren't working for us quite like I wanted them to. Because they were down on the floor, they didn't provide the kids with any sort of privacy when they wanted to be by themselves. Instead, the rest of the children were curious and crowded around the quiet spot, having the opposite effect.  When I saw the idea for a "Peace Table", I knew we had to give it a try!

 So far it has worked wonders for us. I highly encourage you to consider setting up a peace table in your home or classroom!

All You Need:

- a child size table,
 -1-2 child sized chairs
- something soothing to look at or do.

 The number of chairs depends on how you want the table to be used. Sometimes Peace Tables can be used for conflict resolution where one child can invite another child to the peace table in order to peacefully resolve an problem. For our purposes, I chose to only include one chair because my main goal for this space, right now, is to provide a retreat away from others. With very young children, an open chair suggests an open invitation and I think they would have a hard time understanding that they are only allowed to join someone at the table unless asked. If you are interested in using your peace table for conflict resolution I Heart Montessori has a great post on how to get that started!

As far as your soothing activity or object, it can really be anything. Think of  your child, and what best soothes them. Right now, we have our Buddha Board set out on the table for a quiet and soothing activity. Other ideas might be a sand timer, a feather, worry beads, some soft fabric, some soothing scent jars, maybe even a head set and some music so they can shut out the noise. The options are endless and you can incorporate as may or as few as you like. I plan to change our activity out every so often to keep it fresh and inviting.

Where Should it Go:

- away from the action

- beautiful and inviting

Since the purpose of the peace table is for the child to take a break from the action, you obviously want to set up the table in a place where that is possible. Putting the table in a high traffic area would make it difficult for a child to seek the quiet they need. Another thing to consider when deciding where to set up your table is to make sure the space is visually appealing. A well lit area facing a window would be ideal so the child can be soothed by the natural light and sights of nature. If that is not possible, you can always add photographs, potted plants, and other beautiful objects on or around the table to create an attractive and calming environment. With a little thought, it is possible to arrange a great peace table that any child is sure to love and enjoy!

Tot School: Around the Farm

What a great week! Fall is at it's peak around here. With beautiful displays of leaves and wonderfully crisp temperatures, it was a perfect time to dive into our new October theme, "Around the Farm".  This has to be one of my favorite units to cover. There are so many fun and cute activities that I am always excited to revisit it year after year. Before I jump in and share our activities from this week, I thought I'd take care of some quick business first. I have been meaning to officially introduce our new friends for over a month now, but I never seem to have the time to type up of a post specifically dedicated to that. In honor of Little Man's birthday this week, I will go ahead an introduce both of new friends here and now!

Meet J and her little brother L!

These adorable kiddos join us for Tot School 3-4 days a week and are such a joy to care for and teach.  They bring so much to the group with their fun personalities and interests. All together we have J (3.5),  E (2.5), L (12 months), and M (5 months). The wide range of ages has really proven to be a blessing. J and E share many of the same interests and play together wonderfully. E is always eager to keep up with J and has already learned so much. L is quickly gaining mobility and is mainly interested in chasing the big girls around (much to their chagrin) but as M becomes more involved in play with each passing week, I see them interacting more and more. I'm sure they will soon make a great pair! The big girls are such great helpers with their younger siblings and enjoy their role as teachers and protectors. The babies are fascinated with watching the older two and are soaking in all kinds of information from their older peers!


Now that the formal introductions have been made, we can finally move on...


As you may have noticed, I have not yet posted our monthly lesson plan for October like I had previously been doing.  I was finding that by the end of the month, I was so far off from my original plan that it was not really benefiting me to plan that far in advance so I am going back to weekly planing for now.  Without further ado here our activities for the first week of our "Around the Farm" unit. enjoy!

Farm Busy Boxes
Busy boxes are basically a variation of the tot trays that we were doing before.  I'm hoping that this new set-up will help work out a few kinks that we were having with our old system (or lack there of) and allow these activities to actually get some attention.  Inside each box is one Montessori inspired learning activity. I keep the boxes stacked inside one of my kitchen cabinets and the girls are usually only allowed to play with them during certain times of day when the babies are sleeping. While I like the idea of having these types of activities freely accessible to the kids throughout the day, it just wasn't working for us. The small parts made me nervous around the babies and the materials were not being used as intended. Having the items contained inside a box helps keep all of the pieces together and having them only available certain times a day has made them more appealing. They help keep the girls relatively quiet and calm during the baby's nap time too which is an added bonus!!!

1)2)3)

4)5)

This weeks boxes include:
1) play dough planting beans
2) tonging apples
3) three little kittens milk pouring
4) see and spell farm words
5) feed the pig tweezer work

This weeks favorites:
Milk pouring ( not really milk but actually water with a little bit of white tempera)

 Bean planting.

 Apple Picking

*Tip* As I have mentioned before, my little E is not innately fond of work like tonging, tweezing, pouring, etc. I have found that if I incorporate little animals or figurenes into the activity, such as with the kitty milk pouring (I also added a horse to the apple tonging box - not pictured) it adds a little depth to the activity and makes it MUCH more appealing to her.


Nature and Science
The girls enjoyed collecting fallen leaves on a nature walk.

 They worked as a team, sharing and helping each other find leaves to fill their bags!

 We talked about how farmers use milk to make a lot of the foods we eat and even had our own go at making homemade butter out of heavy whipping cream in a mason jar.

 It was a hard work but the girls decided it was well worth the effort when they got to enjoy their yummy snack that they made all by themselves!

J and E love love love to pick crab apples. They always try to pick them off of other people's trees when we go for walks (which I don't let them do) so they were thrilled when I let them get their fill of "berry picking", as they call it, after a picnic lunch at the park!

  

                                                                                      She insisted on wearing her scarf to keep warm - lol

The babies enjoyed the fresh air too!

Arts and Crafts
We have been doing lots and lots of crafts lately, so it was nice to get back to a good old fashioned open-ended art project this week with some fun tractor painting! The girls got down and dirty making muddy tracks and even got some farm animal and their own feet in on the action :)

Perhaps even more fun than the art itself, was cleaning up. A soapy bowl of water and a couple of scrub brushes keep messy little hands busy while mom cleans up the real mess!

 The girls made these cute sunflowers out of paper plates, yellow tissue paper, and sunflower seeds. I think I had more fun with these than they did :)

We used Popsicle sticks cut in half to make our f is for fence craft this week.

Happy Birthday 
The highlight of our week was celebrating little L's 1st birthday. The girls really enjoyed helping make cupcakes for our party. They did 90% if the work themselves including their first try (at least for E) at cracking eggs! I was impressed with how helpful these little bakers were!

 They each decorated their own cupcake...

and after nap they woke up to find that it was party time !!!

We sang "Happy Birthday"

and although he wanted nothing to do with his cupcake...

 he enjoyed some yummy frosting dipped stars as a birthday treat,

 and hammed it up for the camera with his adorable smiles :)

Happy Birthday Little Man!



Linking up this week with:
1+1+1=1

Montessori Monday - Lego Water Color Sorting

Legos are, by far, E's favorite toy right now. Ask her what she wants to do and 9 times out of 10 it will involve building something out of these brightly colored blocks. Don't get me wrong, I think Legos are are one of the best toys out there, but I can only build camel houses and rainbow stairs so many times in one day. To extend here interest, I've been trying to come up with new and different ways to use them lately. A couple of days ago we decided to bring the Legos into the pool for a fun new way to play. Our exploration turned into a fun color sorting exercise that really engaged E!

I filled the pool with red, yellow, and blue Legos and provided 3 tubs of colored water to match. My little girl is not into sorting unless there is a practical purpose, so I put a bit of soap in the colored bins and told E that the Legos needed a bath. The red Legos needed to go in the red bath, blue Legos in the blue bath, and red in the red. To add a bit of fine motor work, I gave E a net to catch and transfer the blocks with. I also spread the colored bins of water around the yard for an added gross motor component. 

She really enjoyed this activity and it was a fun way to sneak in some sorting work!