At the time I decided to do a monthly early learning theme for our little one, our daughter was 8 months old. Some old theories tend to suggest that children are empty vessels and need to be filled with information and knowledge from expert adults. I believe that the contrary is true. The below quote from Dr Maria Montessori sums it up very well:
The child is not an empty being who owes whatever he knows to us who have filled him up with it. No, the child is the builder of man. There is no man existing who has not been formed by the child he once was.
Maria Montessori
I feel there is no better time then now, to start to expose her to a variety of themes, seasons, animals, and everything else this beautiful world has to offer.
For the month of April, we have Zoology as our early learning theme. Zoology relates to everything in the animal kingdom, from different types of animals, to ecology, behaviour, physiology, development and origin of animals and how they interact with their environment.
Now for an 8 month old baby, this is a simplified as follows. Here are our zoology related activities:
- A visit to the zoo
- Printed animals in movement area
- Printed nomenclature animal cards in movement area
- Exposure to our amazon parrot Socrates
- Exposure to our dogs and puppies
