Lately, we have been spending the majority of our time playing outside with our water table but usually just before he goes to bed, L catches a few moments to play with toys from his shelf. This is L’s current shelf at 17 months.
On his bottom left shelf L has basket with first four letters of the alphabet.
I noticed that L shows enormous interest in letters and numbers. That actually started two months ago when he pointed to letter B on his playing mat and I pronounced it at loud. He found that amusing so he just kept pointing to letters and I kept pronouncing them. Now, two months later he still constantly points to letters around him and asks which letter is that. So far, he knows and pronounces letters A, B, C, and P (P because of all parking signs around our neighbourhood) so we also added letter D in the basket so he can it as well.
Just above the letters we have basket with four nesting stacking cups.
L constantly tries to fit all the cups, bowls, and plates together so this activity is perfect to satisfy that need. He still hasn’t figured out how to discriminate sizes while nesting cups but his trial and error method serves him for now. The mistake I made was putting too many nesting cups in a basket at first. Every time he started to play he got frustrated pretty fast because he still can’t figure out where which cup goes. By removing a few cups he is not overwhelmed when he plays and he actually tries to figure out how to fit cups together for a much longer time.
Above the nesting cups, we have a hammering board. I bought it in Lidl when L was around 8 months old and it was a real bargain but he really loves it. It was hidden for a month and a half now so L was pretty excited when he saw it again. Also, I noticed that he plays with it in a different way than before. He is not only hammering those pegs but also pushing them with his finger and then observing what is happening on the other side.
Next to hammering board we have simple pull toy. Recently we bought push toy that he plays with every day so now I am letting him figure out the difference between pushing and pulling. I think this toy is from Kaufland and it was really cheap. It is made completely out of wood and I often see many similar branded toys that cost twice as much. In its original form it has a round shape sorter that you can put on this pulling part but I am really seeing the point in Montessori principle that every Montessori activity should target only one skill so I tend to disassemble this kind of toys and present them on a shelf as two separated activities.
Just below the pull toy we have the round shape sorter that in original comes with the pulling toy. L really likes shape sorter toys but gets pretty frustrated when he doesn’t guess which shape goes where so for now he mostly turns this toy upside down and then just drops the shapes inside through the big hole on the bottom.
