The Best History Books for Early Childhood

If you are looking for child-friendly books in introducing history to little children, I highly recommend this Usborne Beginner's History book set. I bought this entire box set recently and it contains 10 books and it is absolutely worth it! 

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 a lot of people find it useful.  Now in this post, I’m sharing that the use of Bead Board is just one of the many ways of teaching multiplication in a Montessori classroom.  Another favourite of ours is the use of the 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 in this post, I’m just going to highlight the basic presentation.   Again please note, that this is based on a home set-up.

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!).

Introducing Kids to Construction Tools

If you are like us, who has no means of doing some carpentry work, then this post is for you!  For one thing, my father and his entire family are carpenters.  They make furnitures, build houses and buildings in my home city and I remember spending most of my time during summer vacation in construction sites managed by my grandfather.  This is the reason why at a young age, I know how to use most carpentry materials despite my mom’s warnings.  Sadly those skills weren’t passed to the new generations.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t expose our kids to this simple carpentry work like hammering, using nuts and bolts, drilling and the like.  And of course, with the advent of IKEA, we need to somehow teach them all about DIYs and these basic tools. 

In this post, I’m sharing our learning toys and materials in exposing my 3 years old to some of these construction tools to acquire those basic skills .

Homemade Face Puzzle for Toddlers

Vito is 29 months old.

So I was brainstorming the other way of what else could we do for our Body Unit and Mavi suggested that I should give Vito do a puzzle work.  But he worked with our favourite body puzzle already and Mavi said, what about creating Vito’s face? And it hit me! Why not print a picture of Vito and turn it into a puzzle!  This way he’ll be familiar of the order of his face from top to bottom, right?

Internal Organs Sensorial Tub and Matching Activity

Vito is 29 months old.

This is one of the highlights of our Body Unit! I was more than excited to give this to Vito!  Just look at his face on how much he’s enjoying this activity!

Human Body Letter Match Activity

Vito is 29 months old.

I mentioned in my previous post that this is the kind of letter activity Vito enjoys.  He is showing signs of liking letters, identifying letters in books, boxes, and in just about anything! He is now loving the ABC song too! LOL  So for the body unit, I made this material to match uppercase and lower case letter B.

Fun Sifting Activity for Kids

Vito is 28 months old.

We were reading the Under the Ground book and chancing upon the page of mining, I decided that we should play pretend to look for jewels in a tub of sand!  As you can see, this activity was intended for sifting the gravels and later on discover the jewels but I realized that sand is quite big so our sifter wouldn’t work.  Thus, I added the scooper from Learning Resources, it has bigger holes in it so it can sift the sand effectively.

Earth and Land Unit: Magnetic Earth Worms!

Vito is 29 months old. This activity was inspired by Simply Learning.

You can find lots of Earth worms under the ground! The main idea here is to search and collect all the Earth worms under the ground (oatmeal) using a magnetic wand. Fun activity for kids that both siblings can enjoy!

Earth & Land Theme List of Materials

Here are all the materials and resources that we will be using in our Earth/Land Unit for the month of April.  I prepared this list for those who wanted to follow our activities and those who are inquiring about the materials we are using. 

Crazy Over Do-a-Dot Markers and {Learn & Play Link Up}

I know you’ve heard about these already and have seen these markers in other homeschooler Moms.  My little Vito had a renewal of interest and can’t stop using them! These dot markers are great tools in practicing hand/eye coordination and concentration.  Aside from that, we also use it to learn shapes, colours and letters! Next year, we’ll start using them for counting.

Though there are plenty of FREE dot worksheets online, I prefer handwriting our own sheets to save ink.  Here are some random photos of Vito using the dot markers.

For learning letters.

Marking shapes.

He keeps asking for more!

Working on letter ‘t’ again. 

To save time, energy and INK, I cut out sheets of paper from the IKEA paper roll and just hand drawn everything.  Then I place the sheets on one of the work trays so Vito can easily access them.  He would usually work on them in the morning. Note that the markers can stain, but they can be wash off with soap AND water (with a little scrubbing).   I have these markers since 2011 and they’re still good as new.  Here’s the link if you are interested.

 

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Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

Here are the featured  activities for this week!

 

 

13 Clocks Preschool Trays from from SmarE PartE

Montessori Sensorial Extensions from Spielgaben from Living Montessori Now

Watercolor Christmas Trees from 3 Dinosaurs

Salt Dough Holiday Ornaments from Tiny Tots Adventure

10 Christmas Montessori Inspired Tot Trays from Mama’s Happy Hive

 

Now it’s time for this week’s link party! This is a BRAND new link up for all blog posts that include learn and play activities and hands-on education for kids. We are excited to read your blog posts and to see what you have to share! Please link up below and grab our button to display on your blog.

If you are a blogger, share your family friendly posts here. We are looking for things which include:

• Montessori Education
• Homeschool
• Sensory Play
• Tot and Preschool Trays
• Fine and Gross Motor Activities
• Kids in the Kitchen
• Healthy Recipes for Kids
• Arts and Crafts
• Natural Living
• Free Educational Printables
• Family-Oriented Activities
• Healthy Living

Your post will be featured on each of our blogs where we will pick our favourite posts every other week. That means there is more of a chance that you will be featured!

Everyone, please meet our link party hosts:

Christian Montessori Blog ~ Please visit our CMN FB group ~ Pinterest

Vanessa from Mama’s Happy Hive~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jennifer from Study at Home Mama~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Marie from Child Led Life~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jae from Pinay Homeschooler~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Heather from Golden Reflections Blog~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Renae from Every Star is Different~FB~Pinterest

GUIDELINES FOR LINKING

• Please link up 1-3 posts
• Follow each of the hosts on social media
• When you link up, please add our button and place it at the bottom of your shared posts or link back with text link.
• By entering a link, you’re giving us permission to feature an image on our blogs. Proper credit & links will ALWAYS be given.
• Please visit a couple of shared posts and leave a comment for them
• Remember that you must link back in order to be featured

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Letter N: Going Nuts!

I love nuts! We’ve got plenty around the house, thus I decided to come up with activities for Vito since he’s been seeing them around the house and loves to play with my walnuts.

Letter N Object Basket.  Reinforce literacy, letter ‘n’ symbol and phonics,  vocabulary, and verbal skills.  In the basket we have: nine, upper and lowercase N/n, necktie, DIY sandpaper ‘n’, nuts.

Hammering Peanuts.  This is a practical life activity that develops hand and eye coordination, and develop those hand and arm muscles.  I first set it up in a tray, but the peanuts were slipping so I had to put cling film to hold them. Vito loves physical activities so he enjoyed this. The only drawback is that the hammer that we used were so tiny  

Letter N Craft.  I always make sure to include crafts in our weekly activities.  My main goal here is for Vito to practice his manual dexterity like squeezing the glue, picking up small objects or pencils.  Now that he’s familiar with glue, I gave him a glue with small opening for him to squeeze it. 

Here he is applying peanut shells on the letter N. Improves pincer grasp through picking up small objects.  Note to parents: always supervise your children when dealing with small objects. 

Color Green. I’m introducing letter green this week.  I gathered a few objects from his toys and place them all in a basket. 

And we painted green in an A3 paper.  Working with one color a week works for him.

When they dried up, we place them on the wall for everyday viewing.

Nut Matching. For visual discrimination (difference in objects), widen vocabulary and concentration.

Counting Walnuts.  Builds early number and counting skills.

Forming Shapes using Nuts.  Teaches shapes, fine motor skills and hand/eye coordination. This is Vito’s idea!  I made a circle using the walnuts then he took the circle puzzle and place it in the middle, matching them together. Brilliant!  We practice some more by drawing shapes on a piece of paper and he would trace the line using the peanut shells to form the shape. He enjoyed it!

And that’s about it! And what I happened to the nuts? I’m still consuming them LOL. 

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Exploring Fruits for Toddlers

Vito is 23 months old. 

** Contains affiliate links **

After, the zoo, farm animals and parts of the body, I decided to do a fruit unit for this little boy as he loves to name fruits whenever we are in the supermarket.  I like to come up with themed activities as it helps the child to expand their knowledge of certain objects and occasions, practice communication skills and improve their vocabulary.

 

Beginning Sounds. We’re using Hape Lowercase Puzzle.

Apple Prints. Color recognition and sensorial activity.

Bagging Fruits. A practical life activity that develops hand/eye coordination, concentration plus helping Mommy tidy up!  We’re using Learning Resources Fruit Counters.

Matching Real Objects with Pictures. Developing early discrimination skills (difference between objects), hand/eye coordination and concentration.  I made the fruit cards and you can get a copy from here or here.

Fruit Color Sorting using a Tong. Improving fine motor skills, pincer grasp, concentration and color recognition.

I love this tong from Ikea. 

As of the moment, our color sorting activity involves two colors, but I introduce one (new) color at a time.

He’s seriously concentrating.  Goodness!

Slicing a Banana. I was with him the whole time he’s doing this, reason why I don’t have an actual photo of the activity.  Another great practical life activity to introduce to kids.  This is an introductory activity of actual “slicing”, though we’ve done a lot of this using playdough.  He still has difficulty coordinating his hands.  We’ll get there though… need to practice more

And that’s about it! Thanks once again for taking time to read through the post.  Don’t forget to PIN this for your reference.

Check me out on Pinterest for more toddler and themed activities.

Letter L: Leaf Activities in Autumn

We are joining the bandwagon of autumn-themed activities and for Vito, we’re having leaf activities!

Leaf Color Matching

Got these beautiful craft leaves from a local store and used them for sorting colors.  I just dumped them in a container and would take one leaf at a time. I then mention the color and placed it to where it belongs.  Vito loves calling out their names!  I am not sure if he could recognize colors yet, it’s a hit or miss for him.  It’s a challenge to put up a color sorting activity for him so I put an extra effort on making it fun like making noises or funny sounds as I drop the leaf to the sorted group.

FREE Zoo Animals Matching Cards

Vito is 22 months

Vito is in to matching these days! Whenever he sees an object that has a match on books, he would immediately get it and put it together.  We started matching activities earlier with our Farm Animal Activities, and since we moved to zoo animals, I also created a set of matching cards for our figures (all Schleich images).  So far we’re only using the tiger, jaguar, alligator, hippopotamus, elephant and lion figures.

The basket is setup in our shelf, and he loves to work on it in the morning. He would help himself by setting up the rug and work on his matching activity.

If you’d like to own a copy, click on any of the images or here. Enjoy!

Letter E: Parts of the Body Unit Activities

Last week, I put up a body parts unit study for Vito with emphasis on the letter E.  I’d like to share some of the materials and activities I prepared for him, of which he truly enjoyed.

1.  Recognition of body parts.

Vito knows most of his body parts so I introduced our Body Parts Cards to him for abstract presentation.  The cards were used for identification, but in different ways. 

• I would show the card and ask “what’s this?” Vito would answer and at the same time point to that part of his body.
• I used the doll for identification (3rd person) like “where is the dolly’s hair?”
• I could see him at times looking at the cards and imitate the picture.  So cute!

We are using my The Parts of the Body cards which you can get from here.

2.  Letter E objects

I’ve got three objects for our letter e:  eye, elephant and egg.  I so love this method! To expand the child’s vocabulary, learn phonics and letters all at the same time!

Vito always goes to this tray and would give me the object and say its name.  As for letter e, I love that he can remember the sound of ‘e’ whenever he encounters this in books! How amazing!

3.  Writing using our Egg shaped crayons

We are using Crayola here.

4.  Tracing the body

Oh yes, this was fun! Mavi participated as well!      

                            

5.  Letter E for egg

So he worked on peeling the eggshells…

and devoured the egg!

                        

And we later on used the eggshell in our letter E craft.

 

6.  Making a face

I cut out some different shapes, used a yarn for the hair and paper plate for the head and we have this cute face!  Vito was happy enough to wipe out all the glue as well.

7.  Body Parts Puzzle

Yes, if there’s one time that a little toddler can do with body parts is to start using a simple dress-up bear puzzle, with head, body and legs portion and being emphasized.  He couldn’t fit perfectly the pieces yet but he knows exactly where to  put the head, limb and legs.  We’ll do more of this!

And that’s about our activities for learning the body parts.  Don’t forget to pin this for later!

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