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.

Sparkly Planets for your Solar System

We’ve done this before (in 2013) and we made another one again! Creating our planets for our solar system using aluminium foil. Have done this before?  I mentioned the source of this activity in my previous post, read it here.

Science Project: How to Make an Erupting Volcano Model

We made this volcano to go along with our First Great Lesson: The Volcano and this is our first paper mache project at home.  I tell you, I tried to avoid these kinds of activities and projects because they are messy, and requires a lot of work.  But since it’s summer, I decided to try it and much to my surprise I enjoyed making this model more than the boys did.  This project was inspired by a post I read from Red Ted Art.  So read along and learn how we made our model as simple as possible for less work.

Montessori Inspired Butterfly Coloring Matching Activity

Saw this idea from one of my favourite Instagram account Momducator.  It’s a brilliant idea of using Montessori color tablets (set 3) to match with the butterfly colors of Safari Toobs (Insects, Butterflies, Bulk Bag).  This is a great practise for visual perception, picking the right color combination to match with the butterflies.

Ancient Egypt Learning Materials for Kids

This holy week, Mavi decided to revisit ancient Egypt after rereading the story of Ten Commandments.  We dug up our Egypt Picture Book materials so he can work on some readings and do some activities to go along with it.  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 coloring.

Flags of the World

Earlier this year I bought Mavi this Montessori Map and Flags because they’ve been having a lot of geography lessons in school, and he wanted to master his knowledge of flags.  As it turned out, this has been one of the most used Montessori material at home as of the moment.  There are 32 country flags with a stand.  Mavi can mostly identify those of European and American countries, but needs to review his African and middle eastern countries.

Montessori Inspired Parts of a Flower Activities

This midterm break (for Mavi), I’m trying to setup activities that both of the boys (3 and 8 years old) can participate in.  One of which is learning about flowers and what they are made of.  Now, even though Mavi has done this a lot of times already (when he was 4, when he was 6) , he’s still eager to do this activity with his little brother.  This is something new for me though, doing the activity with two boys, making sure that it is engaging to the little one, but at the same time able to relay information to my 8 years old.  Anyway, you can skim through the post to see how I made the boys work together in the activities I prepared for them.

We Love MiniLUK

I remember playing this when I was 10 years old at my friend’s house.  It was addictive! The more I finished an exercise, the more I wanted to go on and on with the booklets.

Book Review: Danny Dingle’s Fantastic Finds

I was quite surprised when Mavi finished this book in one day!  It arrived on the mail last week, and when I opened it in front of him, he excitedly asked if he could bring it to school so he can read it during the break. 

A Penguin Project for Mom and Kids

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.