Vito is 34 months old.
I am so excited to share this with you! Last week, I set up an apple life cycle to Vito (and Mavi on the background) for a little science exploration. Apple is his favourite fruit and he was so delighted to see these materials in our shelf! Now if you take a look at our activity and materials, they’re pretty simple and easy to follow by a young preschooler. I assembled it in such a way that it’s not too overwhelming for him, yet enjoying and engaging.
Vito is 34 months.
“Cards and Counters” is a Montessori math activity that introduces the child to the units of quantity. This is to reinforce the sequence in numbers (one to ten) and to give the child a visual experience of quantity.
Vito loves to count. He counts pictures, objects and anything that interests him. So for his preschool math, I decided to give him a jumpstart on cards and counters. Take a look at the different ways we explore counting using Autumn-themed objects.
I couldn’t resist getting these magnetic letters from Early Learning Center because they were on sale and its the only magnetic set I found that’s using the Sassoon font (text standard in UK and Ireland). With these on hand, I set-up a sorting activity of letters for Vito.
We started our preschool unit with letter R and I divided the activities into two: (1) phonological awareness and (2) pre-writing. The pre-reading activities is scheduled on Mondays and pre-writing on Tuesdays. Vito does no more than 20 minutes of “school” per day. The rest of the activities, Vito considers it as “game” or “play”. During “school” time, I would quit the activities once I see that he’s bored or not interested. My experience has taught me that it’s not about the quantity of activities that I give to my kids that matter. In fact, they get tired so easily and bored when I do that. Especially with Vito, I learned that I should do things slowly with him, and that I should respect and follow his own timeline of learning. Mavi was different, he absorbs anything… he’s always interested, Vito is very choosy.
Going back, this week we’re starting with the letter R. Vito can name the letters of the alphabet if he’s in the mood so I decided that I should be giving him pre-reading activities so he won’t get bored. Below are some of the activities this week for pre-reading and pre-writing.
Vito always wanted to join us whenever we play board games but we don’t allow him because it’s too much for him. Too many cards (and paper money) to scatter, dice which he couldn’t figure out how to use and what to do with it and so much more. So when I was making Autumn-Themed Math Activities, I made sure that I include a game that’s suitable for his age.
It’s been awhile since my last post! Sorry for not updating. Vito is starting “preschool” at home and I’ve been busy planning for his curriculum and preparing materials. Actually the curriculum is just a guide, everything will still depend on how he progress and what’s his current interest.
Anyway, I gathered some of Mavi’s old language materials and assembled a letter sorting activity for Vito next week. You’ve seen this a lot, like the booklet, the matching of pictures. But this time we’ll be working two letters a time and sort out objects that matches the beginning letter sound.
For this month of 12 Months of Montessori Series, I’m sharing our simple shelves organization at home. I’m sharing our set-up at home and what works for us.
VIto is 32 months old.
As we continue our wild animals exploration, the boys and I watched documentary shows in Netflix about animals in Africa. Vito enjoyed watching the shows and kept on naming the animals that he can identify. With this, we worked on vocabulary words by identifying other wild animals that he’s not familiar with like gorilla, panther and rhinoceros. We used our Safari Toob Wild animals for this activity together with the matching cards we got from The Wise Owl.
I think is one of the best example of explaining to a 7 year old that sound travels. I enjoyed playing with this as a young child. But instead of using styro cups, we were used tin cans which I think is more effective.
As we continue our Sound and Music Unit, I also introduced the different musical instruments. Of course, it would be best if we have all of these (LOL) or least own one, but since we don’t these beautiful musical figures from Safari Toob will do.
Vito is 32 months old.
I prepared a few simple activities for our Sound and Music Unit. It was the week of heatwave so I grabbed the opportunity to bring the boys outside more often to practise their biking and scooting skills, and as for me, able to run and lose a few pounds LOL.
Joking aside, this musical hand bells was a favourite of Vito. He loves using just to listen to the sound it makes and at times ringing the bells together to make “music”.
Vito is 32 months old.
The appearance of the honey bees in our front and backyard has led us to look into the lives of these beautiful creatures who are the main source of honey. Vito is terrified of them but not Mavi. We were out the other day catching a few of them, observing how they produce the buzzing sound and freed them up again.
