Valentine's Day Activity Trays for 5 Years Old

Hello! I'm back, friends! There’s so much to blog about and discuss regarding homeschooling and the educational activities we've been involved in over the past few months. However, I’m currently feeling a bit overwhelmed with things at home. I did want to take a moment to share some activities I prepared for Max this Valentine's Day. As he gets older, I find that we can tackle more challenging activities while still sticking to the themes he enjoys. 

TOP TRAYS:

• Max enjoys spinning and building Valentine's Day pattern blocks; he really loves this activity! 
• We also trace lines using manipulatives or marker pens, and the printable comes from a Valentine's Day Mini Unit. 
• Additionally, we create shapes using geosticks, which offer a hands-on opportunity for Max to construct shapes instead of just matching them.

MIDDLE TRAYS:

• Counting clip cards from 1 to 10, part of the Valentine's Day Mini Unit. 
• We will use color sorting activities to enhance fine motor skills; the materials can be purchased here. 
• We have beginning sound mats with a Valentine's Day theme available in my shop. I collected several miniatures from our toob collections and toys for Max to sort based on their beginning sounds. We also did a similar activity for Winter.

BOTTOM TRAYS:

• Pin poking magic! It’s his first experience, so let's discover if he’ll fall in love with it. 
• We’re diving into counting mats with a vibrant rainbow mandala set from Grapat, complemented by a printable from our Valentine's Day Counting Gumball Mats. 
• And we're creating a charming chocolate box for our Valentine's Day craft this year! This is part of our  Valentine's Day Craft set. 

Get the printables here:

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Winter Animal Life Cycle Studies

Happy Winter Solstice!! What have you been doing so far in celebrating the arrival of winter?  In our home, I read books about the shortest day of the year to the kids and how other places in the world welcome this new season.  You can check our winter books collection here to see what we have been reading so far.

Parts of a Leaf Study for Kids

Autumn is the time for our leaf study and while doing so Vito keeps calling the leaf's midrib as "stem".  Instead of correcting, I decided to give him a proper lesson on the parts of a leaf.  This is for him to know what each part is called and be able to understand how these parts function. 

Easter Eggs Letter and Number Cards

Our Easter Egg Letter and Number Cards set is now up in our shop, ready for you to enjoy and use in your thematic activities this Lent and Easter season!

Animal Characteristics (Vertebrates) Learning Pack

Introducing our Animal Characteristics (Vertebrate) Pack with tons of activity sets that will suite your young students' needs.  This learning material is more than just sorting or matching activities.  What we have in this learning pack are realistic illustrations of each characteristics for better retention of concepts and tons of hands-on learning opportunities for young students to work on.  This Montessori Vertebrate Characteristics learning pack was basically designed for children ages 5 years and older.

With this learning material, your students will be able to learn the characteristics of amphibians, mammals, reptiles, fish, and birds through visual representation and hands-on activities.  There are 8 characteristics provided for each animal for you to explore.

Life Cycle of a Frog Learning Activities

Nothing beats hands-on learning, but because we have no access to tadpoles and frogs, we just rely on books, educational toys and create meaningful materials to achieve the "hands-on experience".  With the success of our Water Cycle activities, I made a similar learning pack for our frog life cycle.  The learning pack is perfect for kids ages 4 to 7 years old, something that will grow with your child through the years.  It contains different activities for different stages of learning for the child. All you needed to do is print the one that suits your needs.

Montessori Inspired Blue Series - Learning about Consonant Blends

With Vito reading CVC words and sight words, we are now moving to the Blue Series.  The Blue Series is a Montessori approach in learning consonant blends and digraphs.  I made an entire set of blue series materials for Vito to use in the course of his learning.  We will work on these materials  and move on to the next set as he progresses.  In this post, I will give you an overview of the materials and how we are going to use them.

It is important to note that the blue series (blends and digraphs) comes after the pink series.  Once the child is familiar with letter sounds and can basically read CVC words (pink series) then he/she can move on to the blue series.

St. Patrick's Day Preschool Mini Unit

I'm so excited to share our St. Patrick's Day Mini Unit!!!  I am delighted to hear that you are enjoying all of our Mini Unit series and Full Preschool Centers! We have been developing these activities for years, ever since my eldest child was in preschool. However, I did not share the printables in the shop back then. Now, I am thrilled to be able to share them with you so that you can enjoy the benefits of these resources too.

I am pleased to present our St. Patrick's Day Mini Unit, packed with enjoyable and stimulating activities for preschoolers, pre-k, and kindergarten children. This package includes various activities to help your child practice fine motor skills, alphabet tracing, hands-on math, and more! If you want more St. Patrick's Day-themed materials, please visit our website by clicking here.

Learning About Sharks for Kids

Vito has been really interested in sharks lately.  We had some Shark Unit Study (Montessori Inspired Shark Study for Kids) years ago together with my eldest, but Vito was so young then that all he could ever do was do some simple matching activity with our Safari Toob Sharks.  Now that he's a bit older, I prepared some simple activities for him to learn more about sharks, what's their difference with whales, and how similar are they to humans.

Asia Continent Study for Kids

We love to travel and going to places, thus geography is very important in our homeschool and I make sure that we do continent and country studies yearly.  Now, this is not the first time I introduced Vito to Asia.  We've worked with a lot of continent activities before and because he is much older now and able to understand and grasp concepts, I reintroduced Asia once again.  Below are some of the works we had for the past 2 weeks we spent on learning about Asia.  It took us 2 weeks to finish because he got sick within the time frame so we paused in between.

Here are some of the activities that we included in this year's Asia Study:

Our Montessori-Inspired Shelf for Winter

I’m back after a few weeks of hiatus!  I’ve been focusing more in our homeschool that I didn’t have time to write a post about our activities for the past 2 weeks.  Anyway, here’s the shelf that I've setup weeks ago and the main theme for this setup is “winter”.  This year, we’ll be doing small study units for science and culture but we will work our way thoroughly (taking our time) in reading, writing, and math.

Using the Four Seasons Addition Clipcards

Enjoy the fun in learning addition with this winter-themed addition clipcards.  Vito is currently obsessed with adding numbers so I made these seasons addition clipcards  for him to work with to help enrich his skills in addition.  These are so easy to prepare and use.  Below are the recommended manipulatives that you can use with the cards for a hands-on approach in learning addition.

Montessori Inspired Apple Activities

I'm sharing our apple activities for the past weeks.  Autumn is definitely apple season and it’s the perfect time to explore this amazing and nutritious fruit!  Below are our top 5 Montessori-inspired activities that you and your kids will love in learning about apples.

Life Cycle of Apples for Preschoolers

Autumn time is apple season and the perfect time to learn about them! We started our "apple" week last Monday, and today, Vito and I just finished learning where apples came from. I was so inspired by our Water Cycle activity (Vito loved this activity so much!) that I decided to do the same approach with our Apple study.

Spin and Trace: Alphabet Writing Game for Preschoolers

Last month, I made these tracing and writing sheets for Vito to add some spice in his writing activities.  He loves the salt tray and Montessori sandpaper, but these sheets are so helpful as they require less preparation and no mess.  The activity sheet requires you to create a spinner using a paper clip and a pencil (or a pushpin if you have one).  Colored pencils or markers are also needed.

Water Cycle Activities for Preschoolers

Rainy season can be a good time to introduce the water cycle to your child. Here are a few tips, resources, and activities on how to start.

Dinosaur Excavation Activity

I have a spare dinosaur excavation kit which I kept for years, waiting for Vito to be old enough to work on it.  Well, that time finally arrived and I gave it to him so he’ll experience what it’s like to be an archaeologist, even for a day.  Here’s a pretend play of how scientists are able to put up dinosaur bones in the museums!

Fruit Unit: Inside and Out Matching Activity

We had a fabulous time last weekend examining the insides of fruits.  We did a similar activity years ago, but I didn’t want to put paints on fruits this time so I made this gorgeous matching learning material for Vito to work around with instead of recreating the insides using paints.  More details on this fruit learning material here.  This is easy to prepare and fun to work with kids!

Hands-on Learning on the Human Body for Preschoolers

Vito is getting more interested in how his body works, especially that a few months ago, he got sick and I have to discuss some important things to him about his health and body.  With this, I started reading to him some of our body books, explaining what happens to the food that he eats, to the water that he drinks, and why he has blood when he has a cut.

Montessori Inspired Space Themed Learning Activities

We are moving to new things this week as Vito’s interest is starting to be directed more about his body and senses.  For the past few weeks, we’ve been doing work about the moon, the planets, and space.  Here’s a roundup of our activities in learning about the solar system and space in general (in no particular order).