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!

Beginning Letter Phonics Cards

Hello everyone! I wanted to share with you Vito’s current favourite printable, our Beginning Letter Phonics Cards.  You might have seen these in some of my letter-themed post.  These are card strips which contain letters and their corresponding objects (real images matching the  beginning letter sound).  The product comes in two sets: control cards and the activity cards.  Below is a glimpse of how we use the materials, which Vito would work on every day (sensitive period for letters)!

Introducing the Solar System to Preschoolers

In line with our Days of Creation activities, the boys and I talked about how the universe came to be.  Mavi used his Usborne Fact Cards once again to review some solar system concepts and this made Vito get into the mood of exploring the planets as well.  

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.

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.

Montessori Inspired Layers of the Ocean for Preschoolers

Vito is 40 months old.

Moving on to learning about the ocean for Earth Day, I’ve set up this activity tray to demonstrate to the boys that the ocean has many layers and that it is mostly represented by the darkness and lightness of the color blue. In the set-up, the layers are represented by the bottles, from the layer where there is sunlight to the part where there’s none at all.  We are using the book About the Ocean by Cathryn Sill to help us explore the different animals in the ocean.  Since this activity is intended for Vito (but Mavi was also participating), I didn’t focus much on the names of each layer since he can’t read yet, our activity was more on introducing the concept and for familiarity.

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.

Montessori Sensorial Activities: Stereognostic Mystery Bag

I finally introduced the Montessori Stereognostic Bag to Vito.  The Montessori Stereognostic Bag is often composed of 10 matching pairs of wooden shapes that is drawn in a bag to feel and match.  This activity develops the stereognostic sense of the child, using touch to create a mental image of the object.  Stereognostic sense is defined as the ability to perceive and recognize the form of objects in the absence of visual and auditory information.  Other version of this is called  “the mystery bag”, wherein most homeschool moms customized the content of their bags by putting nature objects or just about anything from around the house. 

Montessori Sensorial The Brown Stairs

So I gave in to my desire and bought Vito the brown stairs, and boy oh boy, I didn’t regret it!  Similar to the way he responded to the pink tower, Vito loves and enjoy using our Montessori brown stairs!  I realized that there’s so much more we can do when he used both of the materials, the extension activities are limitless and pattern making is even more challenging!

Old Tracks New Tricks for Train Enthusiasts

Oh the boys and I love to play trains! And in fact, I love creating train tracks with them too.  The only problem these days is that, our train sets were long forgotten due to Bruder trucks which they recently received last Christmas. But boy, oh boy, that changed when Old Tracks New Tricks arrived in the mail one day, and my 3 years old upon seeing the book immediately requested to play with his Thomas Train!

 

Montessori Inspired April Activities for Preschoolers

I am so excited to share our April activities!    We will be revisiting some activities we did in the past, and there are new ones too!  I only prepared a few activities for April because (1) we still have to work on Earth Science activity trays (2) it’s Mavi’s Easter vacation so Vito would probably prefer to play with his brother than “home” school with Mommy and lastly (3) weather permits, we’ll be spending most of our days outdoors or do some field trips here or there.  Anyway, just to be sure that I have something for Vito to work on in case we needed to stay home, here are some preschool activities for him!

B4FIAR: Caps for Sale! (with FREE Counting Cards)

Have you read the book Caps for Sale?  It’s one of our all time favourite classic books in the house!  I first heard of it when we were in Singapore, borrowed it from the library and Mavi immediately loved it.  Because I love the idea of Five in a Row, I decided to purchase the book so that we can do extension activities over and over again with the book.  Now that it’s Vito’s turn, I decided to prepare simple activities to go along with book that are centered around the three objects found in the book:  caps, money and monkeys.

Montessori Inspired Activities for Earth Science

I am so excited to share our activity trays for Earth Day! This is in line with our 12 Months More of Montessori Series wherein we are focusing on Earth Science.  In this post, I gathered a few topics related to Earth Science, assembled them into tray activities that’s suitable for preschoolers from ages 3 years and older.  Hope you enjoy our activities for the coming weeks!

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

B4FIAR: Harold and the Purple Crayon

I love book extension activities.  This is one of the reasons why I enjoy doing Before Five In a Row with the boys.  So when I introduced the book Harold and the Purple Crayon, I knew that its a story that we can explore beyond than just reading.  The book itself is enjoyable to read, engaging and the boys found it funny.  Vito was glued to it for a long time.  At times, he would even “pretend” to read it by himself, mimicking how I read it to him at night. 

If you love this book, or if you plan to get one (highly recommended!) I listed below the areas of learning we touched by just  doing this simple easy to set-up activities:

Montessori Inspired Land, Air and Water Transportation Cards

Vito is 39 months old.

My kids are obsessed with vehicles, but I think most boys are!  They love their Bruder trucks and figures from Safari Toobs which they use a lot in pretend play and play-based learning.  When Mavi borrowed this amazing book from the library (DK Visual Encyclopedia of Vehicles) Vito can’t stop identifying the vehicles in the book.  It’s either he would ask us around (what’s this?), or identify the toys he own and match it to the pictures.  It’s pretty amazing how much interest he has shown!  To widen his vocabulary and knowledge of vehicles, I created cards for him so we can start with the Montessori three lesson period and later on, do some sorting.

Montessori Inspired March Activities for Preschoolers

With Vito’s current obsession with letters, I’m focusing on letter recognition, phonics and writing from hereon.  Our homeschool activities in March are mostly revisiting past activities and doing a lot of extensions. Check the details below to know more about it:

Animals Around the World Activity

Vito is 39 months old.

There is nothing more precious in this world than seeing your kids work together peacefully LOL.  During the midterm break, I prepared some activities which both of them can participate in.  It’s not just about the academics, but my main purpose is for them to learn how to work together as a team and bond as brothers.  So aside from learning about flowers, the boys also explored the animals of the world using our Montessori Inspired Animal Continents Activity Sheets.  Mavi was so ecstatic to do this with Vito as he loves animals (he said he’s an expert) and geography.

Montessori Inspired Trays for St. Patrick’s Day

Are you observing St. Patrick’s Day? We do! It’s usually one of the most colorful time in Ireland, where everyone is just so happy and festive.  Anyway, with all the green and rainbow decors around, I’m preparing Montessori working trays for Vito as we approach the celebration of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.  Mavi will be doing a lot of work for St. Patrick’s in his school so I spared him from this.  My aim here is to introduce Vito to the symbols of the celebration and he’ll be exploring these in our activities.