Homeschooling - Spray Bottle

A few of the Montessori activities involve a spray bottle.  One where you spray a house plant with water and wipe down the leaves and another where you spray a surface and clean the surface.  I was pretty sure anything with the spray bottle would be a huge hit with Bella, but it's been even better than anticipated.  I decided I wasn't sure if I wanted her wiping down the leaves of our house plants just yet because she can be a bit rough, so instead I decided to teach her to use the spray bottle to spray the dirt to water the plant.  It's sort of the best of 2 activities...she's learning to water the plants without dumping water everywhere and she's learning to spray without destroying the plant.  We can modify to the real activities once she's ready for them.

Even better...I can fill up the spray bottle, hand her a towel and a plant and set her loose for a good 30 minutes and she's happy as a clam.  Of course, the actual activity usually ends up looking like this:

Yes she's spraying herself in the mouth...which is why the bottle is always full of clean water and not old water or anything else. This came about because I explained to her that water helped feed the plant.  I might have also squirted her in the mouth and explained that the plant was drinking the water just like her...but I'm not actually admitting to that. I'm thinking I should maybe label that bottle nice and big with the word and symbol for water and teach her to look for that label before haphazardly spraying into her mouth...that's now on the 'to do' list for tomorrow.  She also thinks it's hilarious to squirt me (with permission, because it isn't so hilarious without permission) or Vinny (sometimes with permission, sometimes with a little secret encouragement from me) or to have one of us spray her.  Happiness...is a spray bottle. I think it will be even better this summer when it gets to double as a squirt gun outside!