New on the shelves

(Goblin is 26 months)

I have two new toys for Goblin on the shelves this week. The first is wooden cutting fruit. You may have come across these before. Melissa and Doug do a huge range but these are actually a slightly cheaper version from U wood toys.

Montessori methods seem to promote doing the 'actual' activity where possible rather than pretending to do the activity. I like this principle and therefore resisted buying this toy for ages on the basis that if Goblin wanted to play at cutting fruit I could give him a banana and a butter knife and let him do the real thing. And we do do that often. But you can't leave a peeled banana on a shelf all week - well you can but you wouldn't want your toddler eating it at the end of the week!

When we went to a friends house before Christmas Goblin discovered her velcro fruit and spent ages 'cutting' it. I noticed how many different skills it utilises - accuracy, fine motor, pressure, patience, balance, matching (to put the fruit back together). I realised that my adherence to my interpretation of this Montessori principles was daft - and probably wrong. So I bought Goblin a set of fruit for himself. It comes in a lovely wooden box so that you can put it straight onto the shelf rather than use a tray or basket.  I'm happy to report that Goblin loves it.

Goblin's other new toy was a Christmas present from Nanny. A set of scales. We had looked at the aesthetically pleasing wooden ones that hang.

But we realised at the age he is the strings would get in the way and be frustrating. So we opted for a slightly less pretty but much more practical plastic set from Amazon.

 At the moment they aren't being used as scales, just as a play thing. But he likes the seesaw motion and is starting to understand the consequence of putting something in one side and not the other. So there is learning involved in this play even when its completely unstructured.

I will be linking this to