Montessori Botany Learning Materials

Last month, both of my sons fell ill and were bedridden for almost a week. During that time, I had plenty of free time during the day, but was busy taking care of Vito at night. To make the most of my available free time, I decided to enhance the Montessori botany cards and booklets that Vito will be utilizing this spring. I personally handcrafted some of these materials, and I'm proud of the results. If you're interested, feel free to come take a look!

Learning About Fruits and Vegetables for Preschoolers

Vito is 36 months old.

These fruits and vegetables cards were taken out of the storage box and has been used ever since.  It’s been used for naming and identifying fruits and vegetables and also served as matching cards.

November Activities for Preschoolers

Last week, Vito refused to do any of our language activities, so we worked mostly on practical life, counting, sorting and storytelling. He also started walking to Mavi’s school (no buggy!) despite that it’s a 30 to 45 minutes walk round trip.  This lessens our time for “preschool” in the morning since we have to leave early.

Wooden Counting Pyramid Puzzle from Beleduc

I guess by now you know that I am a HUGE fan of Beleduc, a toy company in Germany that produces beautiful educational materials for kids.  The boys love our Beleduc puzzles and we always use them.  You’ve seen us using our Body Puzzle and Pumpkin Life Cycle in the blog lately. And look what I discovered recently… it’s a wooden puzzle pyramid used for counting!

Highly Recommended Montessori Materials

Another feature for 12 Months of Montessori series! For November, I’m sharing our favorite Montessori materials that my kids love and have been using for years.  So to those who are asking me on what Montessori materials to invest in, here are my recommendations:

Teaching the Phases of the Moon to Gradeschoolers

Probably by now, you must have read my post on the Phases of the Moon for preschoolers.  If not, I highly recommend that you do for it will give you ideas on how to introduce the moon’s phases to kids from ages 2.5 years and older.

We’ve been discussing this topic almost every year, and for this year, I wanted to give Mavi something different. So here are the materials I prepared for him:  wall chart of the moon’s phases, a booklet for definition and nomenclature cards. 

Our Leaf Shapes Study

It’s Mavi’s midterm break this week, and I decided to have activities that both boys can do together.  First in mind is a leaf study since we are surrounded by beautiful and colorful leaves.  They are just too gorgeous when they change colors, and I don’t want to miss that opportunity!  We also used our Montessori Inspired Leaf Shapes printable for this activity, which you can buy from my shop.

Montessori Coloured Beads: How We Use It At Home

It’s starting to get chilly in our side of the world and though we prefer walking in the fields and in the forest during this beautiful season, the weather doesn’t seem to be in line with my plans.  So last week, I introduced Vito to the Montessori colored beads which I have for 3 years now.  But the thing about siblings, they just wanted to do what the other is doing.  Mavi insisted that I should give him some work with the beads as well, not just Vito.  In this post, I’m sharing how I made the boys work independently, but still supervising them as they work.

Life Cycle of a Pumpkin (Preschool Edition)

We are seeing a lot of pumpkins and though we may not be able to visit a pumpkin patch, we brought home a couple of pumpkins for exploration. I would like to share this very beautiful layered puzzle that I purchased in Amazon.  It’s the Life Cycle of a Pumpkin, beautifully crafted and illustrated.  There’s a guide for each layer on the left side so the child will know what comes next.

Halloween Preschool Unit

I’d like to share Vito’s top picks of activities for October.  These are the trays that he would select more often for “play”.    Links to the materials are provided, and feel free to ask questions as well.

October Preschool Math Activities

I am so excited to share with you the fun preschool math activities I prepared for Vito! He saw me printing these materials and he kept on asking if we can play. Of course we did! We started using a few of these materials and will share his progress in the days to come.  For now, allow me to present to you our adorable and cute learning materials for the month of October.

Autumn Themed Early Literacy Learning Pack

I’ve been getting a lot of queries on the learning cards that we are currently using.  Our Autumn Themed Early Literacy Learning Pack is available in our PDF Shop and contains 10 preschool printables that I am sure you and your kids will truly enjoy using.

Toddler Activity Trays (34 Months)

We are doing seasonal activities this week (autumn) so our activity trays, which are mostly for enhancement of fine motor skills are focused on shapes.  Below are the 6 shape activities for Vito.  Most of these are homemade and easy to setup.

Autumn Themed Graphing Game

We are loving DIY math games! The boys enjoyed our Race Game a few weeks ago, so I didn’t hesitate to give them our Graphing Game.  Not only can my preschooler practise his counting skills and taking turns, this is also a great opportunity to introduce date recording (and analysis) for older children. 

 

Life Cycle of an Apple Preschool Unit

Vito is 34 months old.

I am so excited to share this with you! Last week, I set up an apple life cycle to Vito (and Mavi on the background) for a little science exploration.  Apple is his favourite fruit and he was so delighted to see these materials in our shelf!  Now if you take a look at our activity and materials, they’re pretty simple and easy to follow by a young preschooler. I assembled it in such a way that it’s not too overwhelming for him, yet enjoying and engaging. 

Preschool Letter R

We started our preschool unit with letter R and I divided the activities into two:  (1) phonological awareness and (2) pre-writing.  The pre-reading activities is scheduled on Mondays and pre-writing on Tuesdays.  Vito does no more than 20 minutes of “school” per day.  The rest of the activities, Vito considers it as “game” or “play”.  During “school” time, I would quit the activities once I see that he’s bored or not interested.  My experience has taught me that it’s not about the quantity of activities that I give to my kids that matter.  In fact, they get tired so easily and bored when I do that.  Especially with Vito, I learned that I should do things slowly with him, and that I should respect and follow his own timeline of learning.  Mavi was different, he absorbs anything… he’s always interested, Vito is very choosy.

Going back, this week we’re starting with the letter R. Vito can name the letters of the alphabet if he’s in the mood so I decided that I should be giving him pre-reading activities so he won’t get bored.  Below are some of the activities this week for pre-reading and pre-writing.

 

A Math Racing Game for Preschoolers

Vito always wanted to join us whenever we play board games but we don’t allow him because it’s too much for him.  Too many cards (and paper money) to scatter, dice which he couldn’t figure out how to use and what to do with it and so much more.  So when I was making Autumn-Themed Math Activities, I made sure that I include a game that’s suitable for his age. 

Autumn Themed Preschool Math Activities

Vito is starting “preschool” math this school year and we are not using any curriculum.  I guess it’s not necessary in our case.  I will be using my experience with Mavi and with the thousand ideas online on setting up “play-based” and Montessori-inspired activities for Vito this school year.  So in order for me to be able to organize and prepare materials ahead of time, I decided to come up with seasonal-themes for the upcoming months.

FREE Printables for Alphabet Learning Sheets

Hi everyone! I’m often asked in my Instagram account on where I get our printed learning materials for learning letters (letter recognition and pre-writing) so I’m going to share with you the links of my sources here as it’s difficult to do that in IG.

Montessori Shelves Organization for Small Spaces

For this month of 12 Months of Montessori Series, I’m sharing our simple shelves organization at home. I’m sharing our set-up at home and what works for us.