What's in our shelves? @ 2 years old

I have been offering some new work for Adelaide every once in a while. (In Montessori it's called work, to show respect for the child's most important work, which is, or at least should be, still play. In Latvian and Estonian we call it work sometimes, darbiņi, but often also play. She says: I'm playing! When she does them. Es spēlējos! Ma mängin!) And I have been taking pictures of everything, even though I haven't gotten to sharing them in a long long time. I will try to do it now, finally. Here are some things that Adelaide has been doing from being around 2 years old till now, when she's almost 2 years and 4 months. (Wow, she's approaching 2,5 really quickly, I hear that's a big deal!)

There isn't overly much to show, as mostly it was summer in between, and during summer I don't concentrate on shelves and this sort of work that much, it's so nice to be outside, that we are doing that as much as possible - swinging, gardening, taking walks and going to the beach..

But when I did want to introduce something, I felt a bit stuck, I must say! I did some shelf cleaning and emptying once, to remove all the things that hadn't been touched for a long time, and they stayed quite empty for a while. I couldn't figure out, what to put there - Adelaide seemed to be too advanced and done with some too toddler-y work, like spooning, scooping or sorting, she had mastered those already a long time ago, and at the same time she wasn't ready for the real Montessori materials as well, I felt like she's somewhere in between and I wasn't sure, what to offer her!
I did a little googling and searching around, what other Montessori 2 year old's are doing, and soon enough came up with a few interesting tasks, that for the most part Adelaide has been enjoying a lot. :)

Many months ago, sometime in May, just before turning 2, Adelaide quite liked this shape sorting work. She liked finding the correct shape, however, she was putting them randomly, not in lines according to colors/heights. I should bring this out again now and see, how would she do it now.

Doing some threading work, that she actually invented herself! I had these out, I guess, but they were for some different purpose. But she loved putting the balls on the wire.

Play-dough is something that children always like, I suppose. She takes it out once in a while. Here she's working with our self-made one still, but I got tired of it getting old, so I recently bought her the shop one. Her skills with it have improved, both her rolling and cutting with knife skills.

Adelaide has been using scissors for a while now, still learning how to use them. This was one cutting work that I tried, must admit, that not very successful, but now after my homeschooling course I'm smarter and will have better cutting work for her soon. :)

For a long time she enjoyed the gluing work that I had made with the glue stick and little cut out pictures of children. This was really a hit. Also, because she really enjoyed these pictures, I think. It proves, that the work has to be fun and enticing to the child. Now, however, we will move on to some different gluing work.

She likes puzzles, but this is a difficult task - finding ones that are just right - not too hard, not too simple. (This means also buying them, and I'm not a fan of buying overly many toys and materials, especially if they will not be used a lot.) I bought her a couple of new puzzles, and some were really not just right. But this she liked, she could do it, but it offered also some challenge for a while.

Tangram. Was too hard just plain as it is (as it was too hard for most adults :D ), but I got a good hint of drawing the shapes down, then she could do it very well, maybe too well. I know I could prepare all kinds of new, cool tasks with tangram, as she has mastered it now, only must get to it.

This is one puzzle, that I have given to her recently, it's just 4 pieces that together form a picture (a house in this case, I have many more pictures, but we're starting with one). And she doesn't yet put it together correctly.. She puts it together like this. But she still knows that it's supposed to be a house. And likes this a lot.

Some more drawing, more recent one. When it comes to arts, then we started with crayons, oil pastels.. And moved on to watercolors. Then I introduced gouache colors, and she loves them. She wants to paint quite often.

This is a more recent one. Adelaide has been recognizing and noticing colors all around! And if before she often messed them up, then now it's surprising, how correctly she names them. So as I noticed this, I wanted to give her some more advanced color sorting work (she has had some in the past). And, actually, you could say this is one of the first real Montessori works. Only a do-it-yourself version. Color tablet box 2. (I think we are pass the 1, and I want to make 3 sometime later.) I didn't have time to make it any very fancy or nice, but I just bough some colorful carton and cut out the matching samples, I chose the right colors that should be in the real Montessori material. I must say, that she was interested in it, but I think I didn't model it well enough (how to match the pairs), so she hasn't been choosing it much. Also, it seems that she is not that interested in any picture (as this is basically a picture) to picture matching activities. (I have tried offering some before, with animal cards, and that wasn't a big hit for her either.) Maybe she's not quite there yet in the abstract phase? So it's not that interesting for her.. Maybe, as she just loves the picture to object matching, that I offered lately.

Then there were these, that I came up with, getting inspiration from The Kavanaugh Report, where was mentioned something similar. 

This is Hard/Soft sorting work. She has a basket of various little objects and two bowls, so she can sort them, choosing if it's either hard or soft.

This is not an ideal sensorial work, because the objects are very different, sometimes too interesting and she was getting distracted by them, but actually - she loved this! And for quite a long time, she would choose to do this often, so around this time I already was feeling quite good about myself. :)

And another sorting work - metal/wood. Again, various objects that she would sort into two baskets, depending if the object is made from metal or wood.
We had been mentioning this casually around some household items.. Whether some spoon is metal or wood, so this concept, the material, had come up. So I got an idea to make this sorting work, and she liked this a lot! These tongs were there as one of the wood items.. But soon she started using them as tongs to pick up objects on her own.

Our shelf around that time. Oh, the times, when Jasmiina could reach only the bottom shelf..  :D

And the book corner on some particularly orderly and picture-worthy day. I can't wait to have a better bookshelf!
The glockenspiel is now always on the floor for Jasmiina.

When I started taking my course, I got a notebook and started writing notes. I sat down and said to Adelaide - I'm writing now.
Soon enough, she started writing too. I got her a notebook and a pen, and one day she kept writing for whole 30 minutes! (Yes, I timed it, as it was so unbelievably long.)

And this is already the wisdom from my homeschooling course. Now I know, how cutting should really be introduced. :)

And turns out, that tearing (paper) is very important and, in fact, comes before cutting. Obviously, so true, because Adelaide was still struggling with the scissors, but this tearing she loved! Especially with the little pre-cuts. She could have done this forever, as long as I'd prepare them. So great for her hands, developing the skills and the strength of her grip!

Something new in our shelf, Adelaide is taking a picture of him. :D Yes, because I take pictures all the time and of everything.

More painting..

This is not exactly any work, but I brought out some toys that had been put away for some time, I brought them out kind of for Jasmiina.. But it proved again, how rotation really works - Adelaide was really interested in them and showing some totally new skills.

She was exploring Grimm's tower for a long time. And the stacking rings - of course, she could stack them more than a year ago already, but she never stack them in the correct order. Now it turned out to be the perfect work for her! It doesn't happen automatically for her - she has to really think, to put them in the correct order, but she can do it!

 

She likes rolling and unrolling stuff, so rolling the working mat is great. Sometimes she works on the mat (if Jasmiina is nowhere near) or other times on her table.

This is the other card material we have, matching some bugs. She kind of likes it, took it out again today, matches it a bit, but doesn't want to lay them all out and find all the pairs, puts it away again soon.

But this picture to object matching she loves. This is not actually a very advanced work, I see many Montessori toddlers doing this type of thing a lot earlier, but we haven't really before. Once I tried and it was not successful, so again I tried only now. And now she was doing it perfectly right away, that's why something more challenging would be great.. The problem is, it's hard to make this - find the objects and print out the cards too.. I made this matching some animal figurines that we have with the animal cards.

This is a very recent work, sorting small objects with tongs. Turns out, that this is actually a pre-math work. Right now she's sorting, taking it all in (strengthening her pincer grip, that will need later for writing), next step would be counting the objects, but we're not quite there yet.

And as one of the assignments from my homeschooling course I made also a Mystery Bag for her (another real Montessori sensorial work) - there are a few various objects in the bag, you're supposed to not watch, but feel - and guess, what object is it. Fun game that children seem to like. Adelaide, however, is not quite ready for this. She thought it was fun, she liked it, but she doesn't have enough self-control yet to not look in the bag. :) But feeling and naming the objects is still good and useful.

So these are the things in our shelf right now. Puzzles are elsewhere. In the bottom right basket are some baby toys for Jasmiina, even though.. she's kinda over those, I probably should remove them.
We need more space! I can only keep Adelaide's work with small items or paper on the top shelf. The middle one is.. questionable. On my own responsibility.

If I had a problem of finding work for her before, then definitely not anymore! Since I have taken my homeschooling course, even though it officially was for ages starting from 3 or at least 2,5, then I have so many ideas for Adelaide already! Now all I need is the time to prepare them. :)