Monday, May 18, 2009

Abuzz with Technology

We Montessorians tend to be skeptical about technology in the early years of a child's life, so my older daughter Booster has had limited exposure. There has been TV, but not every day and with very controlled content. I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons (and loving every minute of it, by the way). Not my daughter. She has grown up watching Mr. Rogers and ballet DVDs, including many versions of the Nutcracker. Currently she has been checking out a series of ancient cultures videos from the library because her class has been studying ancient Maya civilization. We taught her to have nerdy tastes, and I am so pleased about that.

Fortunately, my daughter hasn't been pushing for more. She enjoys what she watches. Quite honestly she scares easily, so she tends to shy away from Disney movies and the like. When my aunt sent her Peter Pan (and I hesitantly OKed watching it), she didn't make it too far. Captain Hook was just too scary.

So now we are at a new phase with the internet. At times, we have used the internet as an encyclopedia and an almanac. What do cardinals eat? What does a badger look like? What will the weather be like today? But now, she knows how to do it all by herself.

She is a big, no, I should say BIG Laura Ingalls Wilder fan. Recently, I found a good website that features all of the homesites of the Ingalls family, Frontier Girl. Booster was in heaven. She had figured out how to navigate from one spot in the site to another, to listen to the music, see the videos. She's found other items on youtube. She was on fire and had to reluctantly pulled away from the computer.

Yesterday, I caught her entertaining her sister with home video clips that are on my computer (No wonder they were so quiet!).

My little Montessori babies have entered the computer age.

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