Non-montessori Montessori

We are very fortunate that so far we've been able to work out our work schedules in our family so that Colin spends his days and nights with mommy and daddy.  While we expect to need some help in the coming months, it likely won't be close to half time or enough to justfy finding a school or day care for him.

Sometimes I wonder (read: worry) that there are things Colin misses out on not attending day care.  Gavin and I have spent lots of time discussing this.  We attend lap sit story time and make sure we schedule time for Colin to play with other kids his age.  We try to come up with new things for him to see, touch and do every week.

I was impressed with some of the activities I've heard about some of Colin's Montessori attending peers are doing.  I've spent some time googling similiar activities to try at home and I've done a few of them.  It's actually one of my goals for 2014!  But with being sick in December and the holidays, it's off to a slow start.

Today, we decided to take the infant container off of Colin's horse Tahoe.  Colin loves Tahoe, but has become increasingly irritate with the bumper which prevents him from throwing himself sideways across the saddle (no idea why this is such an important task).  He watched intently as daddy unscrewed the seat.  Daddy stashed the seat nearby incase we decided this was a horrible idea and we needed to put it back on.  A few minutes later, Colin picked it up and unsurprisngly grabbed the screw. I stood up to take it from him and was amazed to find him intently focusing on putting the screw back in the hole it had come out of.  He finally did it and proudly showed me his work.  I clapped and helped him take it out and try again.  I watched him learn that only the small end would fit in the hole and that after he put it in, it stuck out of the bottom.  For somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes (an eternity in toddler time) he worked hard on his task.

This moment made me realize that all of the activities and learning situations I create are great, but so is the everyday learning Colin will do watching as mommy and daddy do everyday things.  It also humbled me a bit.  My first instinct was to take the screw away from Colin before he ate it, stuck it in his eye, or damaged something.  If I had, we would have missed an awesome learning moment.

As I often am, I was reminded of the Laurie Berkner song:

Parenting is getting harder.  But I'm doing my very best and I hope if I can slow down and pay attention, I'll have more moments like today!