Friday 5 | Feb. 10th
❌ Toy of the Week: Black & White Cards
Yes, babies seen things better when they are higher contrast, but that doesn’t mean they have to only see things in black and white! While these cards are sort of aligned to the child’s eyesight, they often are not aligned to their motor development. The child cannot typically control their neck until about two months old and spend much of their time on their back. Something hung (like a mobile) is far more developmentally aligned because the child can have the interesting object in their field of view AND can practice moving their head ever so slightly.
✅ Toy of the Week: The Munari Mobiles
Instead, check out the Munari Mobile, one of the four standard mobiles in Montessori for infants. This wonderful mobile is black and white to attract the high-contrast limited eyesight of the newborn, just like the cards, but also has other developmental alignments. High contrast is the key, not necessarily black and white. This mobile has a glass (or faux glass) ball as one of the elements. This catches the light of the sun if positioned by the window, which creates another opportunity for high contrast - light and shadow. In addition, the mobile itself moves gently with the air currents and each black and white card gently sways to give different angles and impressions without the child needing to move their head. And lastly, because the mobile uses three dowels (the horizontal rods), the mobile naturally moves around far more than a card or ever a mobile with a single dowel. That’s the Montessori way with toys - align as much as we can to the child’s development!
Practical Life Idea: Putting Toys Away
This is a fantastic practical life activity and can be started at birth. At birth to walking, the child is slowly getting a familiar sense of their environment and what to expect from that environment. Having a clean and visible order to the child’s space is key in the year before walking. Once the child is walking, they will have had a sense of what the order is and their developmental sensitivity toward order makes the young toddler a perfect candidate to begin getting their things off the floor and back on the shelf. Start with a modeled demonstration and you putting a few things away and then let the child have a turn. Remember, when you are happy to show them again, they will be happy to do it again. Don’t be so quick to “pass this off” to the child. They imitate from watching.
Children’s Book Recommendation of the Week
Purchase from local Black-Owned Bookstores for Infants/Toddlers centering Black Characters, Black Authors, and Black Illustrators, linked to Marcus Books, the nation’s oldest Black-owned independent bookstore in Oakland, CA (where The PEACE Program is based).
Great for read aloud in Kinder and Elementary; great for small passage reading + discussion.
Parent Question of the Week!
Great Question!
The child between 6-12 months benefits from a table environment of toys that they can start to rely on being available. So, rather than changing things out according to interest, have a staple set of materials within these basic categories:
Musical Instruments
Sequence Toys (stacking rings, puzzles, etc)
Object Permanence Boxes
Basket of Balls
Teethers
Trackers
Once you have those basic categories, you can add one more for various interests (like tying silk scarves together for untying and putting those in an old tissue box). It’s more important for the child’s development that the environment is predictable instead of catching their fleeting interests.
➡️ Masterclass Lesson Spotlight! Key Ideas: The Environment, Lesson 2: An Overview of Order for more information about the importance of predictability and order! Learn more & Join!
About The PEACE Program
Our Montessori Masterclass lives into our values of self-reflection, self-care, responsiveness to being/becoming Anti-Bias / Anti-Racist, and a deep commitment to the whole child within the whole family. We offer a holistic program meant to provide inclusive, practical, and supportive guidance for parents & educators from birth to six.
