7 Months: Reuben

It's important for me to set goals and to track my efforts otherwise I am prone to getting distracted by other things. So (hopefully) I'm going to give a recap of what Reubs is up to each month after being inspired by How We Montessori.

Our montessori inspired activities for Reuben at 7 months:

Building towers

I picked up a great set of cups from Ikea that stack and Reuben loves to see them stacked and tries to either pick the top off the stack or pick up the whole stack which inevitably leads to it being knocked over, he then rolls/crawls around playing with the individual cups.

Treasure baskets
I had intended to give him a new one each week but we were away often so we only did one - round objects. I put in it all the round things I could find. He loves it. Initially he would just dump the basket and play with that, then he would dump the basket and find one thing on the floor but now he sits in front of it and pulls things out one by one until he finds one that really takes his fancy.

Finger painting
I thought that Reub would love finger painting, I imagined that he would giggle and be amazed. He liked it but wasn't fussed when it was over. We made his painting into little gift cards for each of his aunties and uncles for Christmas, I'm not a big fan of stuff so it was a nice way for us to meaningfully use his first paintings. He didn't eat the paint nearly as much as I expected him to, he was still quite interested in mashing it into the paper.

Reuben is at the beautiful curious and interactive stage. It's lovely to just sit and watch him play with things, anything really we went camping and he gravitated towards the broom. He babbles to himself and says "mumumumumumum mum" and almost whispers "da da da da". He's got 5 teeth with a 6th not far away and loves putting everything in his mouth. For the most part he's an excellent eater, a terrible sleeper and generally happy and smiley. He's had a big December - travel to WA, a week in Melbourne before Christmas, his first Christmas, a week camping at the beach, swimming in the pool and the beach for the first time (hated the waves, loved the sand), he's started crawling and being able to sit himself up.

Reuben loves:

• pulling hair
• touching faces
• playing with cups, ribbons, things that roll, things that he can bang
• reading books
• when we sing (twinkle twinkle little star is very calming for him) 
• eating fruit especially apricots, grapes, apples and also loves cucumber and celery 
• being pushed in his pram
• patting our dog
• drinking from his shot glass

xx