Rock Cycle Lesson Plan for Kids

We worked on our rocks unit study a few weeks ago and I recorded some of our learning activities in this post. This subject area is usually for upper elementary but I created a curriculum that suits best for younger kids. If you have students/kids who show interest in rocks and rock cycle, below is a lesson plan on how to conduct a child-friendly and hands-on rock unit study. 

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! 

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. 

My Body and I Preschool Mini Unit

Learning about you and your body has never been this fun! With 10 engaging printable activities, filled with beautiful illustrations, I'm presenting our newest mini-unit MY BODY AND I PRESCHOOL MINI UNIT.  Below is a sneak peek of what's included in the learning pack and how you can use it at home and in school.

Learning About the Philippines

Philippines is celebrating its Independence Day this week and in line with it, I'm publishing our Philippine Country Study Learning Pack.  We worked on this last year before we went home for a vacation but I didn't get to post this in the blog.  Just like in any of our country study packs, this set contains tons of reading and writing materials and extension activities for children eager to learn and explore the Philippines.  In this learning material, the child will learn about the geography, flag, symbols, and icons of the Philippines, famous foods, and its culture and traditions.

Jerry Pallotta's Alphabet Books

Ever since my eldest was a toddler, we love reading alphabet books of plants and animals and we used to borrow them at our local library. Mavi loves associating any objects to the alphabet sound so he truly enjoys reading these books with me. Unfortunately, most of them are out of print.

Learning about the History of Telephones for Kids

One of our favorite subjects is history! I suddenly had an urge to tackle the historical timeline of the common objects that we use in our daily lives like money, phones, computers, etc.  This came to my mind when my eldest and I were talking about the evolution of computers, from the gigantic machines to the tablets.  Though this is more of an elementary work, I designed this resource for preschoolers, kindergartens, and early childhood learners.

In this post, I will feature the history of telephones which we recently worked on (Vito asked to work on this set first).  All of the printable resources featured in this post are all available in our History of Telephones - Timeline and Ordering Activities.

Introducing Dental Health to Kids

My 6 year old is eager to learn more about his teeth and dental health after we visited our dentist yesterday for a routine checkup.  So I prepared some meaningful and age appropriate activities for him at home and had a an amazing time discussing dental health with him.

Below are some of the activities and ideas that you can try with your kids or students in case you wanted to do a Dental Themed Unit. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to leave a comment or send me an email.

FREE Valentine's Day-Themed Math Resources

Fun Valentine's Day-themed math activities for you and your kids to enjoy this month of February! You can get these printable materials for FREE if you SIGN UP for our newsletter.

Life Cycle Activities for Kids

Life cycles have fascinated my kids throughout the years. We often worked on them during springtime, but I would sometimes add them in our animal or plant studies too.  I’m often asked how do I introduce this subject area to my kids and I would always say that it really depends on their age and interest. For the young ones, it’s all about play-based learning and storytelling.  While for older kids, they are drawn towards the details and the science behind them.

To give you an idea, here’s our progressive way of learning the life cycles.

Montessori Multiplication: Extension Work

My son wants to master his multiplication tables, especially for bigger numbers.  We are using both the Chinese/Singapore math (abstraction) method and Montessori when it comes to mastering his mathematical skills. For Montessori, though we have the Multiplication board, Mavi prefers using the colored beads as these keep him engaged and he thinks that they are more “fun”.  With this, I am so excited to share the learning materials we use to aid his mastery of multiplication using extension activities that goes perfectly with the Montessori colored beads.

These learning materials were very helpful, and my son enjoyed working on the extension activities.  The best thing about these learning materials is that they grow with your child and you can print them again and again so your child can practice each multiplication table through the years.

Animal Kingdom 3 Part Cards and Charts

I am so excited to share these beautiful learning materials I created for my boys.  Mavi, my 9 year old is currently the one using this for school, but Vito ended up using some of the activities as he loves to work on his older brother’s materials too.  So this is our Animal Kingdom Cards and Charts set.  The main objective of this material is to introduce the different classifications/groups of animals to your child.  We have an older version of this, and you can check it out here (Kingdoms of Life: Animal Kingdom) if you are interested.  Anyway, allow me to discuss some of the highlights of this learning material below, so you can have a better idea of what you will be getting when you purchase this for your child or your school.

Montessori Addition and Subtraction of Fractions

Sharing some updates with regard to my elementary boy.  Though it may seem that I’m posting a lot about preschool activities, in the background my 9 years old is doing a lot of work too in math, geography/history, and science.  Now, one of the things he worked on last year was his fractions.  After working fractions and fraction equivalence, Mavi worked on addition and subtraction of fractions.  He did very well on this.  With one simple presentation, he grasped the concept right away, and after which he did a lot of practise using our fraction cut-outs.  Somehow, I find this straightforward, meaning if your child knows about their basic addition and subtraction they can breezily work on this and move on to multiplication of fractions or working with unlike fractions.

Learning The Square of a Number Using Montessori Short Bead Chain with Square

We find ourselves working on the Short Bead Chain once again as Mavi reviews his multiplication table.  If you skim through my posts, you will find that we’ve been doing this since Mavi was 5 years old.  Now that he’s older (and wiser!) he finds a deeper meaning in learning the square of a number.

Yes folks, in mathematical terms, the short bead chain materials (and the squares) are used to present the precise squares of a number (2 squared, 4 squared).  Using manipulatives, children can easily grasp the concept and eventually memorize the squares.

The Nativity and Story Cards

I love retelling the story of the nativity to our kids.  It’s been a yearly tradition that we read so many books of different versions and would even at times watch nativity movies to understand the meaning of Christmas.  This year, with Vito old enough to understand, I added some story cards and activity sheets to go along with our book reading.

Montessori Friendly Gift Ideas for Tweens and Teens (2017)

This post contains affiliate links.

These gift ideas are intended for families with older children, ages 9 to 16 years old.  I made this list based on my son’s and niece’s current interests and hobbies.  These are suitable for kids who are hobbyists, artists, musically inclined, readers and explorers.  Mavi owns some of these already (some are hand-me-down), and others are still on the “wishlist”.

The Montessori Geometric Sticks

We finally get to use our Montessori Geometric Sticks now that Mavi is learning about polygons, triangles and angles.  You can purchase this fantastic learning material at any Montessori shop or in Amazon.  My boys and I are fascinated with this material.  There’s so much we can do with it, from building plane geometric shapes, to letters, and artworks!

Learning Addition Using Montessori Stamp Game

The Montessori Stamp Game is one of our favourite math materials at home.  This learning material can be used in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  And for us, this is how Mavi learned how to understand the concept of regrouping (dynamic addition).  He enjoyed this material more than any other methods of learning addition and subtraction.

First Great Lesson (4): Study of Elements and the Periodic Table

A few weeks before our vacation, the kids and I worked on the periodic table.  We did this years ago, and Mavi was so excited to work on this activity again.  This is a continuation of our Great Lessons, and if you are new to this post, you can revisit the first and second part of the activities here:  (1) Experiments on the Laws of the Universe and (2) The Volcano

Hands-on Learning of Equivalent Fractions

I enjoyed presenting this activity to Mavi, and he enjoyed this work even more.  In this activity, we used our Fraction Magnetic Pies, and a DIY frame instead of the Montessori fraction insets.  The album that was used here was from The Montessori Parent.