Sisters, School or Food?

Calli and Marin have a funny little relationship. Marin follows Calli around and gets into whatever she's playing with...messing up puzzles, waking the Barbies up from their sleep, pulling all the books off the shelf and throwing them on the floor, scribbling on magnet board drawings.



You know, typical sister stuff!! Lately though, if Calli is upset and crying, Marin will come and give her a big hug! It's the sweetest thing to see them comforting each other.



The irony of this is when I try and have Marin give Calli a hug and kiss Goodnight, she just screams and pushes her away. It's like the love has to be on her terms only. Funny!

Calli had Family Day at her pre-school the other day. This was an opportunity for us, as parents, to come in and have the our child show us a few different activities they have been learning. When we arrived, the kids were all waiting at the front window for us. Calli was very polite and professional and showed us where to put our jackets and shoes, then brought us in from the "Cloakroom," and proceeded to do some of her activities. Each child had a name card with a pre-chosen list of activities she wanted to show to her parents.



Calli began with the Apple Counting boards. This is to help her learn to count and identify numbers.



Next, she moved onto the Flower counting basket. She had to lay out the numbers in the right order, then group the correct number of flowers beneath the corresponding digit. This one took a bit of time because she had to count each group of flowers individually and out loud!! It was really neat to see how well she is counting and recognizing numbers!



She was going to do the Canada Map Puzzle, but it seems all the kids wanted to show their parents the same thing, at the same time, so Calli settled for North and South America. She is learning the continents and will eventually learn the names of all the countries on each continent!!! Amazing!!! I thought the puzzle idea was a fantastic way to learn!



A large part of the Montessori theory is grace and respect, and we have been very impressed with how much more polite Calli has become and we really don't have to fight with her to clean up anymore!! When the kids do an activity at school, they have individual floor mats that they use and put away when they are done. This helps everyone identify who is playing with what and they know they have to keep off each others individual working space. Once they are done, they clean up their activity, then roll the mat up and put it away. Very simple concept, but we were amazed at how well it works! We are looking forward to her Christmas Performance in a few weeks! It should be fun!

Marin is a super picky eater. I am hard pressed for ideas on what to give her to eat. She will NOT try any food and has recently resorted to screaming if I try feeding her. She insists that she can do it on her own and will feed herself an entire bowl of food, providing it's to her liking. I have had to force a niblet of food into her mouth for her to taste how good it is, before she will take one bite of the rest of it. In this case, I was at the end of my wits, so I gave her Nutella on a piece of fresh French bread and the results are in the picture! She loved it. So...I should feed it to her every day!! But I know if I try, she will turn her nose up at me for my efforts. I guarantee if I tried again, she wouldn't eat it. That's just her nature.



She has a few standby's...Cheerio's, Goldfish crackers, rice cakes and apples, but anything else, including noodles, (which just doesn't make sense to me - don't all kids LOVE noodles?) just gets tossed on the floor. Oh, and she despises the taste of milk as well. She has been weaned, but refuses to drink milk. I've even tried flavouring it.... If you have any ideas on how to get her to eat different things, please share. I'm pretty desperate.