Breaking out the Sorting Bears

Everett is going to be 2 at the end of this month, and his vocabulary is really starting to grow, so I broke out a few Montessori activities yesterday to see if he is ready for some more structure in his learning day. 

I pulled out the sorting bears, grabbed some colored pieces of paper and started showing him how to do the activity.  (I tried this a long time ago and it quickly lead to him showing now interest in sorting and bears flying all over the house, so I had zero expectations for this trial run.) 

Ethan and I showed him how to sort a few colors and with pauses of him running around the room, grabbing the bears and making them eat us and the other items in the room.  Overall, we eneded up sorting about 10 bears.  With all the chaos, we didn't get to the second activity, as my frustration started to rise and I decided he wasn't ready for structured "school time" yet.  But, as I found out today, it was not for nothing. 

This morning, Everett came into our room carrying the bears in a bucket that we had sorted yesterday.  He wanted to sort them so I got out the colored paper and let him to sit and do the activity on his own, expecting colored bears to be flying around the bedroom in less than 30 seconds.
To my surprise, he pulled out handfulls of the bears, sat still, and sorted all of them on all 4 colored paper sheets!  I couldn't believe my eyes!  Amazing!!

I was surprised he sorted all the bears on his own.  Every now and then he would get the wrong color on the wrong paper and say "nope" and then move it to the correct place.

After all the bears were sorted, he still wanted to do more.  (Maybe he has caught the Montessori Bug?) So I got out the second activity that we didn't get to the day before.  Ethan was chomping at the bit to do this with him as soon as I got out the bag of the magnetic pieces, but he sat back and let Everett explore on his own after I explained this was Everett's "school" time.  Hopefully this will lead to many more days of semi-structured lessons.  He is really growin up and every day amazes me how much he knows and wants to learn.

As he gets older, this activity will advance with him making pictures with the magnetic shapes, but right now just putting them on the board is a fun activity. 
Plus, he has to figure out what side sticks and what side doesn't, as there is only a magnet on one side.