Learning About Fruits Inside and Out

Here's a fun and engaging activity you can try with your kids or students whether in a classroom or homeschool setup: fruits inside and out! Yes you heard it right, this learning activity is not just about identifying fruits but it is also about exploring it's taste and how the fruit looks like from the inside.

Oceania Australia Animals Math Packet

This math learning resource set is a perfect companion to our OCEANIA ANIMALS 3 PART CARDS AND OCEANIA ANIMALS LITERACY PACKET. This pack contains 12 different sets of math printable activities designed for preschool through kindergarten. You can introduce each set in any order depending on the child's capacity to learn and interest. This is a high quality material made with attention to detail and contains beautiful illustrations.

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:

Montessori Golden Beads Bank Game

Vito currently loves using our Golden Beads material.  We are done with presentation of materials and have worked the layout (Montessori Decimal System with Golden Beads) as well (we will do this again) and now he enjoys playing the Bank Game.

Learning Multiplication Using Montessori Colored Bead Bars

My previous post on Multiplication using the Montessori Multiplication Bead Board has been very popular, and I’m so happy that many people find it useful. In this post, I’m sharing that using Bead Board is just one of the many ways of teaching Multiplication in a Montessori classroom. Another favorite of ours is the use of colored bead bars. This is usually introduced after the Multiplication Bead Board or the Charts (though I will share about the Multiplication Charts soon!). We’ve worked with several multiplication activities using the bead bars, but I will highlight the basic presentation in this post.   Again please note that this is based on a home setup.

What You Need to Know About the Early Childhood Montessori Math Materials

I adore Montessori math materials and how it enables the child to experience the true meaning of quantity and numbers.  Montessori math is not just about memorization, counting and abstraction, its main goal is to build a relationship between the child and the materials, learning with ease and enjoying the work through engaging activities.  I own most of the Montessori math early childhood, and starting to collect the elementary for my oldest child.  They’re quite pricey, but worth it. On how to use these materials, I have albums from The Montessori Parent, Cultivating Dharma and Garden of Francis, and I also administer other extension activities that I could think of (I love doing this!).

My Favorite Montessori Books

I'm sharing the Montessori books I read and has been using at home.  These books will give you a better understanding of the Montessori philosophies and will give you ideas on the activities that you can do with your child at home.

Food Preparations That A 3 Year Old Can Do

I don’t often share the practical life activities (in the kitchen) of the kids because I seldom take photos of them while working.  Mostly, because they handle some delicate materials and I wanted to give my full attention whenever we work in the kitchen.  Now that Vito is quite adept in this area, I started taking pictures to demonstrate some of the things that he can work on independently.  These are mostly breakfast and snacks preparations.  And because our main meal involves boiling oil or water and meat, only the big brother can participate on this not Vito (3 years old).

Montessori Sensorial Activities: Stereognostic Mystery Bag

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

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!

The Montessori Number Rods

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

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:

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 Sensorial Activity The Pink Tower

Vito is 39 months old.

We fell in love with the Montessori Sensorial Pink Tower right after we unboxed it!  I observed that Vito has a liking in blocks and patterns, so we’ve been using the Pink Tower almost everyday recently. And just when I thought that this is just an ordinary material of stacking and building a tower, I was totally wrong. This is one of the Montessori materials I should have bought early on when Mavi was just a toddler/preschooler.  I thought of exhausting the use of the Pink Tower with Vito so he will fully obtain the benefits out of this amazing material.

Sorting Game Using Alphabet Sound Cards

Vito is 38 months old.

I am so excited that I finally found a way to keep Vito engaged in the alphabet sorting activity.  You see we always sort out objects according to their letter sound (see it here), but my problem is that Vito is more interested with the objects rather than participating in the activity.  The moment I opened the box for us to sort, he would take away one object at a time and he refuses to do the activity and would play instead.  Now this is fine, I have no problems with it.  In fact, this happened to Mavi too.  I let them play with the objects first but then would ask them to participate in the activity right after.  It was temporary for Mavi, he loved sorting objects according to beginning letters rather than playing with them.  As for Vito, it’s different.  He is still in a stage of being “playful” so our sorting activities are sometimes a struggle.  He knows how to do it, but refuses because of the object.

My solution:  I tried using a printed image instead of the objects and tada, he finished everything in a matter of seconds!  With this, we are going to work on printed materials for now, and maybe mix them with objects occasionally just to test whether he has overcome his obsession with tiny figures.

Montessori Knobless Cylinders Sequencing

Vito is 39 months old.

Vito and I have been working on Knobless Cylinders a lot lately and many have asked what this  Montessori sensorial materials can basically do and how can they use it at home.  Though I’ve talked about this before, I realized that I didn’t really explained the method that I’m using, how to use it in the beginning and how to extend the use of the materials once the child has mastered the basics.  So I’m starting a series of post on Montessori Knobless Cylinders ,  from the basics to the extension activities. 

Montessori Inspired February Activities for Preschoolers

Vito is 39 months old.

Thank goodness January is almost over!  I really don’t like January, it’s that time of the year where we get to experience the worst weather condition.  Fortunately, we have fair weather this year, it’s actually warm!  But, I am so looking forward to spring now, and I can’t wait for all these gloomy days to be over.  And speaking of spring, this month, I’ll start adding “spring” activities into our homeschool activities.  We will be using traditional Montessori materials for most part and in some, we’ll have themed activities.  Hope you like what I prepared for Vito for this month.

DIY Montessori Smelling Bottles

I kept so many spices in our kitchen that I decided to make smelling bottles for the boys.  I can’t believe that it is so easy to make!  Read through the blog and learn where you can purchase the Montessori smelling bottles and materials for the DIY.

Montessori January Activities for Preschoolers

Happy New Year to all!

Vito is 38 months.

Starting 2017 by sharing what’s on our shelves for the month of January!  For this month, we will be working on penguins (preschool style), along with other Montessori traditional work.  I’ve been wanting to introduce penguins since December but we were so busy with all the holiday preparations that I decided to postpone it a little bit and introduce it at the time when “all is calm and all is bright” (more sun in January!).  Feel free to skim through Vito’s activities and you can leave comments if you have queries.


I post photos in my Instagram everyday for the activities. You can check them or follow me to see how these materials are put into action!

Montessori Botany Learning Materials

Last month, both of my sons fell ill and were bedridden for almost a week. During that time, I had plenty of free time during the day, but was busy taking care of Vito at night. To make the most of my available free time, I decided to enhance the Montessori botany cards and booklets that Vito will be utilizing this spring. I personally handcrafted some of these materials, and I'm proud of the results. If you're interested, feel free to come take a look!