When I am browsing blogs or visiting a friend's home - I love to look on their children's shelves, take a look in their trays and baskets. Even if our children are of different ages with different interests, I aways find it interesting and very often I leave with a new idea or feeling inspired. So have decided to start a Friday link up. Please feel free to leave a link to your website or blog showing what is on your shelves this week. 

Being the first week I have taken a lot of pictures to give an overview of our set up. Also it's the school holidays so we have made a lot more changes and perhaps have more materials out than usual. 

Otis loves to have artwork or a letter from a friend on display. This week he is displaying some new feathers. We also have Banksia seedpods on a tray as we recently found them for the first time - and they are really fascinating (there are also some pinecones on this tray). 

We have in the left jar some letter stamps. Our letter writing tray in the middle. The boys have in the tray letters to reply to and they have over the holidays written many letters. We now have our typewriter out and they are also using that for letter writing. We are always adding new sharpies, stickers, postcards, coloured envelopes to make it interesting. The right jar contains lots of old stamps collected by my Aunt. Some are very old and they are all very interesting (some beautiful!). 

Otis' Glockenspiel on the bottom. I still have most of the music book to translate however he is working on the one english song in the book. It's hard to see but the notes on the book match the colour of the notes on the Glockenspiel. On the bottom shelf to the right we have a chalk board with the 's' sandpaper letter. Otis loves writing his name but always gets stuck (and frustrated) with the 's' so we are giving it some practice at home. 

I have taken these off the shelves to get a better look. On the left are Frog life-cycle materials. The right tray is scissor cutting a spiral. This is very new to Otis and challenging. I found the spiral print out here at Montessori Mom.  

On the top shelf is hammering materials, handmade opposite books and Geometric shapes (still being used for this game). Middle shelf is the Mobilo materials which is very popular at the moment and then Schleich African animals. On the bottom there is a basket of Miss Rhonda's Readers and an Alphabet Puzzle. 

On the low shelves are handmade letter books, CD player (they are currently listening to Beethoven's Wig: Sing Along Symphonies!) and Caspar's MiniLuk. 

On the bottom shelf is a basket of musical instruments on the left and the boy's sewing basket (I hope to write a separate post with more details on this soon) on the right. 

Ok, it's your turn please feel free to leave a link to a tray, a basket or an activity - whatever is on your shelves this week. (Can at least one person try this so I can see if the link-up works!!)