Montessori Inspired March Activities for Preschoolers

With Vito’s current obsession with letters, I’m focusing on letter recognition, phonics and writing from hereon.  Our homeschool activities in March are mostly revisiting past activities and doing a lot of extensions. Check the details below to know more about it:

Animals Around the World Activity

Vito is 39 months old.

There is nothing more precious in this world than seeing your kids work together peacefully LOL.  During the midterm break, I prepared some activities which both of them can participate in.  It’s not just about the academics, but my main purpose is for them to learn how to work together as a team and bond as brothers.  So aside from learning about flowers, the boys also explored the animals of the world using our Montessori Inspired Animal Continents Activity Sheets.  Mavi was so ecstatic to do this with Vito as he loves animals (he said he’s an expert) and geography.

Montessori Inspired Parts of a Flower Activities

This midterm break (for Mavi), I’m trying to setup activities that both of the boys (3 and 8 years old) can participate in.  One of which is learning about flowers and what they are made of.  Now, even though Mavi has done this a lot of times already (when he was 4, when he was 6) , he’s still eager to do this activity with his little brother.  This is something new for me though, doing the activity with two boys, making sure that it is engaging to the little one, but at the same time able to relay information to my 8 years old.  Anyway, you can skim through the post to see how I made the boys work together in the activities I prepared for them.

My Blog Directory!

Hello everyone!! I’m so happy to let you know that I now have a blog directory!  This is a visual organization of all my posts (archives) categorized by age and topics.  You can easily access this by clicking the image on the upper right corner of my blog with this icon:

Montessori Inspired Trays for St. Patrick’s Day

Are you observing St. Patrick’s Day? We do! It’s usually one of the most colorful time in Ireland, where everyone is just so happy and festive.  Anyway, with all the green and rainbow decors around, I’m preparing Montessori working trays for Vito as we approach the celebration of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.  Mavi will be doing a lot of work for St. Patrick’s in his school so I spared him from this.  My aim here is to introduce Vito to the symbols of the celebration and he’ll be exploring these in our activities.

We Love MiniLUK

I remember playing this when I was 10 years old at my friend’s house.  It was addictive! The more I finished an exercise, the more I wanted to go on and on with the booklets.

Hands-On Learning on Common Flowers

Valentine's Day season is always the time wherein the boys and I would talk about flowers.  Not just because it is Valentine's Day, but because this is basically the time wherein we get to see spring flowers starting to bloom out from their buds.  We see them everywhere, in the backyard and front lawn, parks and of course in our neighbours’ houses.  My knowledge of flowers is very limited; I only knew of some tropical flowers from my country and Asian countries.  Of course, there’s always the rose, tulip and orchids… but no, I haven’t heard of daffodils, crocus and poppies not until I stepped foot in Europe.

Collection of Color Learning Activities for Preschoolers

Happy Valentines Day everyone!  I hope that your day is as colorful as my post today. 
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!

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This post is part of the 12 Months More of Montessori which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

Amazing blogs participating in the 12 Months More of Montessori that you should visit:

Easy Flower Science Activities for Preschool and Kindergarten | Natural Beach Living

Montessori-Inspired Skip Counting for Kids {Spring Printables} | The Natural Homeschool

How to Prepare a Montessori-Style Lenten Tray | Living Montessori Now

Montessori Practical Life - Caring for a Plant | Happy Mama’s Hive

Toddler Butterfly Theme for Spring | The Kavanaugh Report

Collection of Color Learning Activities for Preschoolers | The Pinay Homeschooler

Montessori-inspired Plant Activities with Free Printables | Every Star is Different

Montessori Flower Arranging: Practical Life Skills (Free Printable) | Christian Montessori Network

PB&J Bird Seed Ornaments | Sugar, Spice & Glitter

8 Must-try Insect Activities With Free Montessori-inspired Printables| Uno Zwei Tutu

Hands on butterfly themed learning activities | Welcome to Mommyhood

Educational Puzzles for Preschoolers

Because I’m often asked of the puzzles we use at home, I’m sharing what we have here to give you an idea on what my preschooler loves.   Some of these puzzles are way too advanced for Vito, so we usually start working the puzzles together.  But as he gets used to the material, he would at times insist on working it on his own and occasionally would ask for assistance. 

*We own all of the puzzles in the pictures below. 

Montessori Inspired Animal Continents Activity Sheets

I am so happy to share our Animal Continents Activity Sheets.  Mavi helped me assemble this learning material for identifying the different animals that thrive in each continent.  We’ve used the Antarctica and Asia sheets already and I can’t wait to try the rest with Vito.

Montessori Inspired ASIA Continent for Preschoolers

Vito is 39 months old.

This month, I’m helping Vito explore the Asia continent .  We’ve started continent study last year, which was followed by an exploration of the penguins in Antarctica.  We occasionally look at Maps and work on the continent puzzle, and based on my observation, Vito is ready to learn about Asia.

Animal Skin Covers Sensorial Matching Activity for Preschoolers

Spontaneous activity that Vito decided to work on this morning.  You’re seeing my Animals Skin Covers Matching Cards being used with Schleich and Safari Toob animal figures.  Vito enjoyed this activity so much that he kept on doing this over and over again!  And you know what else happened?

STEM Toy Learning Optics with Laser Maze Logic Game

 

The boys are crazy over this Laser Maze Logic Game.  I came across this logic STEM toy while I was scouting for learning materials for Mavi’s “optics” activity.   Mavi loves solving the problems in the task cards and Vito on the other hand is fascinated by the effect of the laser light on the target. 

Play-based Dinosaur Activities for Preschoolers

Vito is 39 months old.

We are exploring dinosaurs till mid of the month and we get to use our Playmobil dinosaur sets!