FREE Number Symbols for Counting and Number Recognition
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Montessori Math Counting Beyond Ten: The Teens
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Vito loves counting. He may not know yet how to count from 1 to 100 but he knows how to integrate math and numbers in daily life. He mastered his 1:1 correspondence early on and now he’s learning how to count beyond ten. I was surprised the first time I heard him counting from 11 and up. I didn’t introduced that to him yet but he already knows. It’s like self taught, but I was thinking that he might have learned it from his brother. And because he might be in a sensitive period on number now, I decided to give him a few exercises to recognize and name numbers from 11 to 20, and understanding what those numbers represent in quantity.
Montessori Inspired Bird Unit Activities for Preschoolers
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Introducing the Life Cycle of a Chicken to Preschoolers
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Beginning Letter Phonics Cards
Saturday, April 15, 2017
Ancient Egypt Learning Materials for Kids
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
This holy week, Mavi revisited ancient Egypt after rereading the Ten Commandments story. We dug up our Egypt Picture Book materials so he could work on some readings and do some activities to follow them. In this post, I will share the contents of our Egypt Picture Book learning pack, which you might want to try. It contains reading materials, activity pages, picture cards and outline cards for colouring.
Montessori Inspired Layers of the Ocean for Preschoolers
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Guide to Math Homeschool Materials for Preschoolers
Sunday, April 2, 2017
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!
Teaching Land and Water Forms to Preschoolers Through Play
Friday, March 17, 2017
Montessori Inspired Phonics Mystery Bag Game
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Flags of the World
Monday, March 13, 2017
Montessori Inspired March Activities for Preschoolers
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Montessori Inspired Trays for St. Patrick’s Day
Monday, February 20, 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.