Transferring

At any opportunity Lucia will transfer. Transfer is the term early childhood educators use that basically means to pour or spoon a material from one vessel to another. H and I first took note of her love of transferring in the spring when she would squat in the sand and shovel sand into pails for long periods of time. When we took the girls and Seth to the day care for the Easter egg hunt, Lucia found about three eggs and then started pouring sand into her basket.
In the first picture Lucia was supposed to be washing her hands. When I went to check on her, she'd pulled three bowls out of the other side of the sink and was using a measuring cup to (over)fill them with water. In the second picture she is pouring her drink into a small bowl she'd found.
In several of the books I have, the authors suggest letting your child play with dried lima beans to practice transferring. I gave Lu two bowls, a pitcher, a spoon, and lima beans and let her go to town. She loved it, occupied for a long toddler time.


Sometimes I have the babes take something I call IPT--individual play time. When we started IPT they would get to choose a few toys and go play in their cribs for fifteen or twenty minutes. I'd usually play music and open the shades to make the time feel different from naptime. They really loved having IPT. Now I am trying to incorporate IPT on mats. We are using the quilts our friend WEW made for the babes.

One Montessori principle is for children to play with their toys on rugs. Toys with lots of parts, like puzzles, are easier to focus on when they are contained in a boundary. Also, I really want the children to be able to play by themselves and not be bothered by their siblings if they want to play alone.




We've played with our beans on the quilts several times. I want to keep working on having IPT on the quilts. Eventually I want the children to go get a quilt and play with their toy on it if they don't want to be bothered by their siblings.