Monday: Love, a human need

Today we started our week long theme of Human Needs. We talked about our individual needs and roles within our family at circle time then I read Dr. Sears' What Baby Needs, which is a great book to help prepare children for a new baby in the family but it also touches on the older sibling's continuing need for love from Mommy and Daddy. They were especially excited about the skin to skin topic in the book. It had been awhile since we read it and they made me read it three times! We also looked at some Mary Cassat  paintings and talked about the different human needs being met in the paintings such as keeping clean, drinking water (tea time is a setting in many paintings) and being loved. I then had them each pick a painting that they wanted to hang above their desks to replace the Botticelli paintings we hung in August. I find it interesting that they both chose paintings with naked babies held by their mothers in them. We did some other work too and T. concentrated well during his introduction to sight words, a list I got from the New Child Montessori curriculum I use. He then used the movable alphabet to write out two words, the objects I put on his language shelf for him, mug and ant.