Montessori dressing stand...Homemade!

I think the Montessori concept of "dressing frames" is a good one....to allow a young child to play with various clothing fastenings like buttons, zips, poppers etc because it will aid them in their learning to dress themselves inshallah....and kids love opening and closing things!

However, the cost of purchasing these frames is outstanding! I think I remember a set of 3 cubes (so each cube having 6 sides....6 different fastenings) costing £199 and that didn't include 20% tax which is added at the checkout!

I made a single dressing frame for £1 yesterday alhamdulillah, using an old shirt and a photo frame from the pound shop!

I used up an old shirt because I just wanted to see basically if this would work using a photo frame or not. Alhamdulillah it did, so  I hope to make some more child-appealing looking dressing frames inshallah with brighter colours and patterns etc.

Here is how I did it......

I took out the glass and board, leaving just the wooden frame. (I've kept the glass aside...thinking I'm sure one day it will come in use for some sort of craft project inshallah!....agh I have just thought of something....window painting/glass painting! hurray!

Then roughly framed the area of the shirt I wanted and cut out - leaving a wife gap to allow the fabric to be pulled over the frame sides.

 Next, I folded over the top and bottom edges and stitched down to neaten

although I didn't take a picture- I folded the sides over the frame and sewed down, leaving what is shown above, the finished item (poppers closed)

This is the frame with the poppers opened. (picture also upside down!)





life cycle of a butterfly

Today we completed our lesson on the life cycle of a butterfly. Yesterday we watched a couple of video clips on youtube showing the life of a butterfly from the egg.
Then we did a couple of worksheets, the first a simple colour-in sheet showing the life cycle, followed by a cut and stick - arranging each stage of the life of a butterfly in order and finally another cut and stick, cutting butterfly halves and matching them up (which also served as a 1st introduction into symmetry!).

Today, we made a large poster display to stick up on the wall, showing each stage from egg to butterfly. We made an egg out of a small piece of playdoh, a Caterpillar out of scrunched up tissue paper which we stuck down with pva, a cocoon with wool stuck with pva (the glue still has not dried almost 12 hours later!) and the butterfly with paint.