Days of the Creation for Preschoolers
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Montessori Inspired Layers of the Ocean for Preschoolers
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Guide to Math Homeschool Materials for Preschoolers
Sunday, April 2, 2017
Montessori Sensorial Activities: Stereognostic Mystery Bag
Thursday, March 30, 2017
I finally introduced the Montessori Stereognostic Bag to Vito. The Montessori Stereognostic Bag is often composed of 10 matching pairs of wooden shapes that is drawn in a bag to feel and match. This activity develops the stereognostic sense of the child, using touch to create a mental image of the object. Stereognostic sense is defined as the ability to perceive and recognize the form of objects in the absence of visual and auditory information. Other version of this is called “the mystery bag”, wherein most homeschool moms customized the content of their bags by putting nature objects or just about anything from around the house.
Montessori Sensorial The Brown Stairs
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
So I gave in to my desire and bought Vito the brown stairs, and boy oh boy, I didn’t regret it! Similar to the way he responded to the pink tower, Vito loves and enjoy using our Montessori brown stairs! I realized that there’s so much more we can do when he used both of the materials, the extension activities are limitless and pattern making is even more challenging!
Old Tracks New Tricks for Train Enthusiasts
Saturday, March 25, 2017
Oh the boys and I love to play trains! And in fact, I love creating train tracks with them too. The only problem these days is that, our train sets were long forgotten due to Bruder trucks which they recently received last Christmas. But boy, oh boy, that changed when Old Tracks New Tricks arrived in the mail one day, and my 3 years old upon seeing the book immediately requested to play with his Thomas Train!
Montessori Inspired April Activities for Preschoolers
Friday, March 24, 2017
I am so excited to share our April activities! We will be revisiting some activities we did in the past, and there are new ones too! I only prepared a few activities for April because (1) we still have to work on Earth Science activity trays (2) it’s Mavi’s Easter vacation so Vito would probably prefer to play with his brother than “home” school with Mommy and lastly (3) weather permits, we’ll be spending most of our days outdoors or do some field trips here or there. Anyway, just to be sure that I have something for Vito to work on in case we needed to stay home, here are some preschool activities for him!
B4FIAR: Caps for Sale! (with FREE Counting Cards)
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Montessori Inspired Activities for Earth Science
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Flags of the World
Monday, March 13, 2017
The Montessori Number Rods
Monday, March 6, 2017
I love Montessori math materials. They are so engaging and well thought of that the child can easily absorb concepts and retain what is learned. Take for example this Number Rods which I recently introduced to Vito. We are mostly using counters in our math activities, it’s more abstract and quantitative. With Number Rods, counting here is more linear and sequential. My goal was for Vito to learn:
- how to sequence ‘one’ to ‘ten’ (they form a staircase)
- to understand the value of each number
B4FIAR: Harold and the Purple Crayon
Friday, March 3, 2017
I love book extension activities. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy doing Before Five In a Row with the boys. So when I introduced the book Harold and the Purple Crayon, I knew that its a story that we can explore beyond than just reading. The book itself is enjoyable to read, engaging and the boys found it funny. Vito was glued to it for a long time. At times, he would even “pretend” to read it by himself, mimicking how I read it to him at night.
If you love this book, or if you plan to get one (highly recommended!) I listed below the areas of learning we touched by just doing this simple easy to set-up activities:
Montessori Inspired Land, Air and Water Transportation Cards
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
My kids are obsessed with vehicles, but I think most boys are! They love their Bruder trucks and figures from Safari Toobs which they use a lot in pretend play and play-based learning. When Mavi borrowed this amazing book from the library (DK Visual Encyclopedia of Vehicles) Vito can’t stop identifying the vehicles in the book. It’s either he would ask us around (what’s this?), or identify the toys he own and match it to the pictures. It’s pretty amazing how much interest he has shown! To widen his vocabulary and knowledge of vehicles, I created cards for him so we can start with the Montessori three lesson period and later on, do some sorting.
Montessori Inspired March Activities for Preschoolers
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Animals Around the World Activity
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Montessori Inspired Trays for St. Patrick’s Day
Monday, February 20, 2017
We Love MiniLUK
Friday, February 17, 2017
Hands-On Learning on Common Flowers
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Collection of Color Learning Activities for Preschoolers
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
For the month of February, my entry for the 12 Months More of Montessori Learning is all about how we learn and explore colors at home. If you are looking for more ideas on how to extend your color activities at home, then this is definitely for you! At 39 months, Vito is knowledgeable of all basic colors and I just have to nurture this knowledge through planned and spontaneous activities.
LEARN COLORS THROUGH NATURE FINDS
Last year, Vito and I started bringing home “nature finds”. This was the time when he turned 3 years old and stopped mouthing objects. We would bring simple things like sticks, pinecones, flowers or rocks, then placed them in a basket for more exploration. We discussed the objects’ texture, shape, weight (heavy or light), size (big or small) and of course the color/s. To simply demonstrate how to extend the “nature table” activity by focusing on colors, Vito and I collected and glued some flowers, leaves and sticks on a white cardstock and then matched them to their nearest colors in the Montessori Color Tablets (3rd Box) .
Because they are placed in a white background, Vito can easily identify the color tablets closest to the petals, leaves and sticks. This is a simple activity that’s so easy to replicate. You can work on rocks, different hues of leafy greens, flowers and more.
COLOR GRADING
We are now using Montessori Color Tablets (3rd Box) for this activity. This is a sensorial material for visual discrimination and perfection of colors. I was a little bit hesitant to purchase it at first so we used a DIY. If you skim through my blog, you might have read about our previous color grading activity using water and food coloring.
I will talk about the Montessori Color Tablets (3rd Box) in a separate post but for now, here’s Vito trying out the yellow color (we worked on it one color at a time). We talked about the dark and light yellow… and on how it gets lighter or darker.
COUNTERS
I love Learning Resources’ counters and we use them a lot at home. We extended its use not just for counting but for color sorting and fine motor skills activities too! What you see here are the Mini Motors and the Backyard Bugs counters. Vito arranged the counters on their corresponding cut-out colored strips.
IN FOODS
We worked on fruits and vegetables last year too and sorted out their colors. Vito loves our play pretend Farmers Market Color Sorting Set and he would often sort them according to colors. But you don’t need to use this, you can use whatever you have in your kitchen. By the way, in this activity we are using the Montessori Color Tablets (2nd Box).
RAINBOW COLORS
Nothing beats learning colors through the rainbow! We love our Large Grimm's Rainbow Stacker to pieces and the boys are using this in so many ways other than stacking it and learning colors! I love that it provides different hues of red, green and blue. Because Vito is constantly exposed to this toy, he’s able to identify the dark and light green, red and blue. Mavi even made a LEGO Bricks version of this rainbow!
ARTS
Of course, there’s the paints, watercolors and markers! Explore colors using these inexpensive art materials. We are not yet talking about primary and secondary colors, but occasionally I would show Vito that we can combine colors to produce another color.
COLORS IN BOOKS
There are so many books on colors but this book is our favourite. Vito enjoyed this the most because he loves flipping the transparent pages of the book to see the result when colors combine. Colours (My First Discoveries) is perfect for toddlers and preschoolers!
COLORS IN SCIENCE
This was an experiment we did last year and Vito loved it! This is one of the many ways we show our kids how secondary colors are formed. See how Vito studied color mixing through this post "Color Mixing: Green, Orange and Purple".
EVERYWHERE
Colors are everywhere! Don’t limit yourself to the ones you have at home (objects). Go out and explore the colors in forests, beaches, parks and just about anywhere… and it’s free!
This post is part of the 12 Months More of Montessori which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.