Phases of the Moon Learning Pack

The changing of the moon’s shape has fascinated Vito.  Early this year, we’ve been seeing the moon as early as 1 pm in the afternoon, so he gets to identify and describe its shape.  He would call the shapes “small moon”, “half moon”, and “circle moon”.  With the knowledge that the moon changes its appearance, I read a few books to Vito to explain why this is happening.

Now, this post contains some of the activities we did to learn about the moon phases.  These are hands-on activities, and we used most of our printed materials from my shop.  Continue reading the post to learn more about it.

Types of Clouds for Preschoolers

I mentioned in my Instagram account that Vito is very much interested about the weather lately, and to be specific, he loves learning about clouds.  It all started when we were reading National Geographic Kids Weather book every night.  From here, he started to identify the clouds whenever we are outdoors, whether its a rainy, fluffy, or clear clouds (his own vocabulary).  So while he is still enthusiastic about it, I decided to throw a simple and not so original cloud activity.  Again, I worked on this activity with Mavi when he was 3 years old, and I am happy to do it again with Vito.

Preschool Activities for the Chinese New Year

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In celebration of the Chinese New Year, we are having a few activities at home to learn about this big celebration of the Chinese community.  Having this cultural activities is an opportunity to explore with your child about foreign countries and different culture and traditions. And because we (Filipinos) are greatly influenced by the Chinese culture, from beliefs, to food, to traditional practices we are joining and celebrating the New Year with our Chinese friends!

I came up with simple activities, again mostly reused ideas from Mavi’s time (Study of Ancient China) and some of these were from Pinterest too.  The activities aim to introduce China to Vito as well as the celebrations and traditions of the Chinese community.  I also included links to my resources so you can easily replicate these!  Enjoy!

Arctic Diorama

Last week, the boys and I made an arctic diorama.  I asked the boys to help me assemble a small diorama that we can place on the table for exploration and subject of discussion in the course of our polar region studies.

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

It brings me joy to recount the story of the nativity to our children. We have made it a yearly tradition to read various books of different versions, and sometimes we even watch nativity movies to fully grasp the meaning of Christmas. Now that Vito is old enough to comprehend, I incorporated story cards and activity sheets to accompany our book reading this year.

Hands-on Activity on Comparing Numbers

We are moving on with our math by introducing new math concepts, one of which is the more or less activity and using the greater than or less than symbol.  To do this, I made use of the holiday season’s symbols so Vito can easily relate and used manipulatives like some Christmas erasers and Montessori beads.

Montessori Inspired Continent 3 Part Cards and Booklet

Vito is 4 years and Mavi is 9 years old.

One thing that I love with making our own learning materials is that I get to customize them according to the kids’ liking.  One of these materials is the continent learning printables I made last year which we often use.  At first, Vito would match it according to colors, now that he’s older, he’s trying to know the names of the continents, especially the ones where he’s been to.

Beginning Letter Sound Activity Sheets

Vito’s favourite work in the morning are our pink series cards (we try to work on one vowel sound a week) and these beginning sound activity sheets. I made these cards years ago (just revamped them) and used them with Mavi, it’s one of his favourite language works.  Because Mavi can write letters at 3 years old, we didn’t get to use our moveable alphabet and instead he would just write the missing letters.

Thanksgiving Themed Rhyme and Beginning Letter Sound BINGO Game

My 4 years old absolutely loves our Thanksgiving rhyme and beginning letter BINGO game!  He loves rhyming words, so I just have to come up with some activity to feed this interest.  Since we’ve been exploring beginning letter sounds, I also added this to our game.

Introducing the Montessori Pink Series for Beginning Reading

I've talked about Vito’s sensitive years for letters in my Instagram account.  Since September, he’s been into letter sounds, identifying beginning letter sounds, sorting objects according to sound, making rhymes, forming words, pretending to read and deciphering words etc. so I decided to give him a “structured” activity on alphabets.  Here’s what we have been doing so far:

1. Five in a Row activities that are tied to a letter
2. A letter of the week kind of activity to go along with a holiday or season (letter l and letter a)
3. Reading lots of books
4. After learning a letter, we would read and create his own phonics booklet

During the course of these activities, I observed that he would try to decipher a word, or pretend to create words using sticky tapes, in writing and using our moveable alphabet.  Plus, he knows 90% of the letter sounds (though he's still confused with c and k).  With the signs, I knew he would be ready for the Montessori Pink Series.  And oh boy, it was the best decision I made!

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!

FREE Letter P Dot and Tracing Activity Sheets

We are carving a pumpkin this week so we also worked on our letter P activities!

The Montessori Constructive Triangles

I am so excited to introduce to you the Montessori Constructive Triangles!  This is one of my favourite Montessori material because I find it useful  for my 3 years old and my elementary.  In this post, I’m showing you each of the content of the boxes and how it is being used in learning plane geometric shapes.

Preschool Learning Letter L Activities

Presenting our letter “l” activities!  We’ve started “letter of the week” kind of activities since September because of Vito’s interest in letter sounds and reading.  We’ve been reading FIAR books over the summer and this led him to further explore words and language activities.  

Favourite Activity Trays for Autumn

Have you seen our activities this autumn season?  I would usually round it up into tray activities for archiving and easier reference.  Below are the details of each activity trays that we’ve been enjoying for the past months.

Montessori Geography Folders

When I was preparing geography lessons for Mavi years ago, I learned about the importance of Geography Folders. Essentially, these are folders filled with pictures from your home country or continent as well as from other continents. The pictures should depict people engaging in daily life activities, landmarks, food, animals, children, homes, transportation, and villages, if any. Geography Folders are especially useful for studying your continent as they introduce your child to other races, cultures, places, and traditions.

FREE Letter S Dot and Tracing Activity Sheets

Halloween is just around the corner and we are having skeleton activities these coming weeks!  To go along with this, I am sharing this dot sheets for you to work with your child in learning beginning letters and tracing.  Hope you like this and enjoy!

Hands-on Learning on Animal Habitats for Preschool

Last week, Vito and I revisited world biomes and animal habitats as we were talking about the fact that not all places in the world have forest whose leaves turn into yellow or orange.  This discussion led to a series of presentation of the world’s biome like desert, rainforest, taiga etc. Our printable from the shop was very handy when I presented this Vito because of the pictures, and he was very interested on the animals living on each biome.

Hands-on Learning of Geometric Shapes

Vito is currently in the mood for learning geometric shapes.  I guess he was inspired by his older brother who is currently studying basic geometry at home. Vito has passed the stage of basic shapes, the ones you see in children’s puzzles and the like.  He’s been playing with those since he was a toddler, so I decided to introduce him to geometric shapes in the Montessori classroom.  It would have been nice if we own the Geometric Cabinet, but because we can’t afford one and we don’t have space for it, these insets which are basically materials for writing is a good alternative (best to none).  Note that these are not the traditional metal insets, we are using the plastic version.