For Mavi's midterm break, I am planning activities that both my 3-year-old and 8-year-old boys can participate in. One of the activities is to learn about flowers and their composition. Despite having done this activity before at the ages of 4 and 6, Mavi is still excited to do it again with his younger brother. This is a new challenge for me as I need to ensure that the activity is engaging for my younger son, while also conveying information to my older son. In the post, you can find out how I made the boys work together in the activities that I prepared for them.
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.
Montessori-Inspired Skip Counting for Kids {Spring Printables} | The Natural Homeschool
Montessori Inspired ASIA Continent for Preschoolers
Thursday, February 9, 2017
Animal Skin Covers Sensorial Matching Activity for Preschoolers
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Play-based Dinosaur Activities for Preschoolers
Thursday, February 2, 2017
We are exploring dinosaurs till mid of the month and we get to use our Playmobil dinosaur sets!
Montessori Sensorial Activity The Pink Tower
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
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
Friday, January 27, 2017
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
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
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
Friday, January 20, 2017
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.
A Penguin Project for Mom and Kids
Friday, January 13, 2017
Oh I am so happy how these turned out!! The boys and I enjoyed making these penguins using simple art materials. It took us around an hour to finish everything (with a stubborn preschooler) and we were totally blown by the result! This art project was from Deep Space Sparkle, one of my favourite artsy website and my go to for painting projects.
The Montessori Short Bead Stairs: Learning About Quantity
Monday, January 9, 2017
This is a Montessori math activity on teaching the child about quantities from 1 through 9. We’ve worked on this since last year (starting from 1 to 5) and has been doing a lot of extensions. This is a simple presentation of the work and I’m sharing some of the extensions we’re working on as well.
Montessori Inspired Penguin Unit for Preschoolers
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Learning about the Weather for Preschoolers
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Drastic changes in weather can be experience around January when you are in Ireland. Thus, I decided to introduce the concept of weather to Vito around this time. I will do this in the simplest form I can think of and that’s by using a weather chart.