Benali Montessori-day 1

I got it in my head that we should make an abacus with dowels and copper pipe pieces, so after breakfast I drove to Lowes with the littles.  We bought dowels, nuts instead of pipe because it was much cheaper, PVC pipe pieces because it was fun to put together a la Blue Man Group, finish wood pieces for the edges of the abacus because it had perfect slots for the dowels, cork board for mats to sit on and sandpaper for sandpaper letters.  I bought a montessori math kit and a few other supplies I will have to wait for Amazon to deliver.  I also grabbed three sets of colors from the paint samples for color theory.  When we got home I started to set things up and the kids got right to work.  We crammed in lunch and brought the twins to school.  When we got back Adam went down for a nap and I worked on the alphabet tiles.  I had to wake up Adam and Aya for school pick up.  When we got home the kids got right to work, Tayeb worked the longest, until 5:30, but Iman and Adam did a good job focusing as well.  Tayeb skip counted by tens with the dimes ( I also have jars of pennies, nickels and quarters for more skip counting, addition, making change etc.).  They built with the PVC pipe making sculptures/ pretend phones and marble mazes.  They counted with the marbles and by adding the nuts to the dowels.  They built with the magna tiles and the rainbow cubes.  We organized the letter tiles by singing the alphabet and Iman and Tayeb spelled their names with the tiles. They learned about Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Complimentary colors by sorting the paint samples.  I reinforced this by painting a color wheel in watercolor and Tayeb made his own color wheel.  All in all an awesome day one!

Montessori

Adam and I visited a small Christian Montessori School today.  I looked past the prayer and saw a nice little program with a diverse student body, the pricing seemed fair and I was happy to see Adam quickly come out of his shyness in the new surrounding and join their circle time and get straight to work after just like the other students.  I was then essentially slapped in the face when the director told me that it was too much work for them to take on a new student who would not continue with them in the fall.  While I appreciate that they would like students to continue at their school, it is unfortunate that it means Adam cannot attend this spring.  She said "it's March and there are only two months left in school since we only go for one week of June".  Maybe I don't want Adam to learn math from her anyway if three and a half months is seen as two months in her mind.  She has convinced me to purchase Montessori materials and resources on my own and teach my kids myself.  Bravo educator and businesswoman.

On a positive note, Iman has asked to wear undies to bed and has woken up dry for the past two nights.

Benali Montessori-Day 1

Invincible

When you are the parent of multiples you start to see yourself as a superhero or at least a super parent.  You leave the house with twins, you keep your cool in public most of the time.  You are so cocky that three kids seems reasonable and you elevate to new heights when you 'master' your new self imposed level of difficulty, then four kids seems possible.  Heck you are already down the rabbit hole, you again shift, adjust and manage most of the time.  Onlookers (ok, Grandpa) assumes you 'need help', you scoff, and Amine's new, very flexible schedule has given you a false sense of confidence.  You manage shopping with four, school drop offs and pick ups, extracurricular activities, most of the time observing what is a reasonable challenge and what is too much.  All this leading up to just that, the huge, probably crazy challenge, the road trip to North Carolina.  Clearly the confidence has gone to your head.  This kind of road trip is just what you need to set the world right again, to see your limits.  I am seeing flashbacks of our ridiculous drive across Morocco with four month old twins.  If that weren't enough why don't we send mother nature out to bury our route under a fresh coat of snow and ice, especially across areas that have no clue what to do with it.
It should at least provide some stories to recall upon 'for better or for worse'. Giddy up.