The World of Pouring

Over the last week, R. has developed a fascination with pouring. Pouring anything and everything. Water from one cup to another, rice from one bowl to another, her water onto her tray, blocks onto the floor. In the spirit of Montessori, I have created some homemade "works" in an attempt to hone her skills and explore her interest in this fundamental cause and effect action.

First, I started simple: two small glass bowls, one empty and one filled with uncooked dried penne pasta (a great use for the half-empty boxes filling the pantry!). I showed her how to take box containing the bowls off the shelf to t

he table. Then, demonstrated pouring the pasta from one bowl to the other. (I first did it one by one and then showed her lifting the bowl and pouring it in). I deliberately spilled some and put all the spillage back in the bowl. She pretty much immediately ignored the one by one method, instead, she chose the fast option - grab and pour. Needless to say, pasta has been spilt, but I'm reinforcing the clean up as much as I can. I'm thinking I will gradually switch the pasta to smaller grains like lentils and rice as har skills become more refined. She'll be pouring the wine in no time.

Today, I introduced a sort of extension - a work I'm going to call "Poker Posting". I think I read somewhere that posting in another important skill. I guess it's along the same lines as all the shape sorting toys out there. Like pouring, it's another cause and effect exercise. For this one, I took 15 white poker chips out of the unused set from upstairs and put them in a bowl. I took a glass jar with screw-on lid and cut a hole in the top. (I reinforced the edges of the hole with tape and labels to avoid sliced little fingers.) Voila - a posting game. I demonstrated taking one chip and turning the chip above the hole so it would fall into the jar. Such a satisfying tinkling sound. Once all the chips were in the jar, I twisted off the lid and poured them back into the bowl.

This one seemed to really spark her interest. She had some trouble turning the chips to make them match the direction of the hole, but worked through it. At one point she was posting two or three at a time. Twisting is still difficult, so she worked out she could just place the lid on top and it would still work. I'm thinking of extending this one with poker chips of other colours and maybe separate jars for each colour. Also changing the size of the hole so only certain things can fit into certain jars.