Montessori Inspired Life Cycle of Insects

Vito and I have been talking about insects in the past few days.  I mentioned in my previous post, the current interest on insects was brought about by their sudden appearance.  So far he has encountered quite a few already like garden ants, flies, wasps and bees, and bugs. It’s a shame we haven’t seen grasshoppers and dragonflies here, I used to catch and collect them as a child (back in Asia). Anyway, since our last activity on Farm Families, Vito still loves to learn about mommies, daddies, and babies, thus I introduced the life cycle of insects early on in our activities.  Unlike my past activities with Mavi, this one is very simple and straight forward.

Seen here are the life cycles figures of:  butterfly, bee, ant, and ladybird.

Montessori Inspired Study of Snails for Preschoolers

We’ve been getting a lot of morning showers which resulted in a bunch of snails popping up everywhere.  Vito is loving it, now that he’s older, he’s enjoying the sight of these little fellows.  One time, we caught one sticking out my husband’s car.  Vito was excited!  I made Vito watch as I removed the snail from the car, placed it in our disposable plastic container and brought it inside for him to observe (and explore). 

Montessori Inspired Bird Unit Activities for Preschoolers

The inspiration behind this unit activity is because we’ve been seeing a lot of birds now and that Vito loves chicken. In my IG account, I shared how much he adored the chickens in the park and can’t stop talking about them.  So I've put up these activity trays for him to work on while he’s still interested in birds.  We started with some of these already and so far he’s having fun!

Days of the Creation for Preschoolers

In our home, we would read Bible stories and relived some beautiful stories during the Lenten season.  We are approaching it in a spiritual manner (for faith formation) rather than doing lots of egg activities.  Mavi and I have been talking about the Exodus the other day, while Vito and I did the Days of Creation.  This post shares our little project in learning about the great story of God’s creation of the world.   I’m also sharing our kid-friendly Bible which we are using at home.

Guide to Math Homeschool Materials for Preschoolers

I’m often asked about the math homeschool materials we used at home (for preschoolers), so I made this list and hope it will serve as your guide in finding the right educational materials for your homeschool or classroom adventure.  I believe that we need to expose our kids to math early on by giving them the appropriate learning materials to explore and discover.  These materials will introduce your child to nine major math concepts:  numbers and quantity, shapes and patterns, picture graphs, length, time, money, fractions, mass and volume.

Animal Habitats Sorting and Activity Sheets

Vito is 40 months old.

If you read my post on the 12 Months More of Montessori for Earth Science, Vito and I will be working on animal habitats.  We tried this before, in its simplest form when Vito was still a toddler and I decided to move forward into a more abstract approach (with some sensorial activity) now that Vito is older.  In this post, I’m going to share the learning materials which the boys are using and the books to go along with our activities.

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 he needs to review his African and middle eastern countries.

The Montessori Number Rods

I love Montessori math materials.  They are so engaging and well thought of that  the child can easily absorb concepts and retain what is learned.  Take for example this Number Rods which I recently  introduced to Vito.  We are mostly using counters in our math activities, it’s more abstract and quantitative.  With Number Rods, counting here is more linear and sequential. My goal was for Vito to learn:

• how to sequence  ‘one’ to ‘ten’ (they form a staircase)
• to understand the value of each number

Educational Puzzles for Preschoolers

Because I’m often asked of the puzzles we use at home, I’m sharing what we have here to give you an idea on what my preschooler loves.   Some of these puzzles are way too advanced for Vito, so we usually start working the puzzles together.  But as he gets used to the material, he would at times insist on working it on his own and occasionally would ask for assistance. 

*We own all of the puzzles in the pictures below. 

Montessori Inspired Animal Continents Activity Sheets

I am so happy to share our Animal Continents Activity Sheets.  Mavi helped me assemble this learning material for identifying the different animals that thrive in each continent.  We’ve used the Antarctica and Asia sheets already and I can’t wait to try the rest with Vito.

Montessori Inspired ASIA Continent for Preschoolers

Vito is 39 months old.

This month, I’m helping Vito explore the Asia continent .  We’ve started continent study last year, which was followed by an exploration of the penguins in Antarctica.  We occasionally look at Maps and work on the continent puzzle, and based on my observation, Vito is ready to learn about Asia.

Animal Skin Covers Sensorial Matching Activity for Preschoolers

Spontaneous activity that Vito decided to work on this morning.  You’re seeing my Animals Skin Covers Matching Cards being used with Schleich and Safari Toob animal figures.  Vito enjoyed this activity so much that he kept on doing this over and over again!  And you know what else happened?

STEM Toy Learning Optics with Laser Maze Logic Game

 

The boys are crazy over this Laser Maze Logic Game.  I came across this logic STEM toy while I was scouting for learning materials for Mavi’s “optics” activity.   Mavi loves solving the problems in the task cards and Vito on the other hand is fascinated by the effect of the laser light on the target. 

Multicultural Traditional Costume Cards

Our beautiful multicultural cards from last year are now available in the shop! Click the image for the link.

Montessori-Inspired Antarctica Shelf for Preschoolers

For me January is the best time to introduce kids to the animals of the arctic or of Antarctica.  They can pretty much relate to these animals due to the extreme weather we are experiencing during the months of winter, which makes its peak in January.  And since our 12 Months MORE of Montessori Series for January is to feature Winter Themed activities, I’m featuring simple ways you can do to introduce the continent of Antarctica to your preschoolers.   Now, I’ve done this almost every year with Mavi since he was 4 years old, and I’ve realized that somehow I might have gone overboard with the topic (used a lot of unnecessary materials).  So for Vito’s first exposure to Antarctica, I wanted it to be simple, quality over quantity. 

 

World Map Jigsaw Puzzle Recommendations

We love our Montessori continent map puzzle and world map jigsaw puzzle at home.  Mavi is loving the Europe and Asia map puzzles while Vito is using the continent map puzzle. Though quite big, I love that they are inexpensive and well made.   You can get all of these Montessori puzzles in any Montessori shop, mine was from Absorbent Minds UK and Tower High Learning.  Now, I know some of you don’t have any access to Montessori shops.  And because I’ve been asked a lot on where and what to get as alternative, I decided to come up with a list of world puzzles that I like and I feel suitable for our homeschool in the absence of Montessori puzzles. 

My Favourite Penguin Learning Materials

I’m gathering a few learning materials on penguins for our Penguin Unit and I came across some interesting materials. We own some of these already and I already added the rest on my wishlist.   So I’m sharing this here just in case you are looking for ideas as well.

DIY Montessori Smelling Bottles

I kept so many spices in our kitchen that I decided to make smelling bottles for the boys.  I can’t believe that it is so easy to make!  Read through the blog and learn where you can purchase the Montessori smelling bottles and materials for the DIY.

Telling Time Activities

Mavi wanted to practice more of reading the time, especially when it comes to reading and writing “quarter to” and “half past”.  He seems to be confused with the positioning of the small hand.  So with this, I made a few activities for him to work afterschool.  I am sharing these activities as well as the printables were are using (yes it’s free!).

 

FREE Vegetable Hunt Activity Sheet

A simple hands-on activity for my 8 years old.  I made this scavenger hunt inspired sheet for Mavi to explore and discover vegetables in the market. I am not familiar to some of these as we have a different set of vegetables in Asia.  So this is a learning experience for both Mavi and I.  We are using this sheet to familiarize ourselves of the vegetables that grows here in the northern hemisphere and the names that they are called (we call it eggplant, but here they call it aubergine).