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.

FREE 12 Days of Christmas Counting Cards

We love the 12 Days of Christmas song!  The kids love it so much that we kept on singing it over and over again and always speeding up as we approach the 12th day.  So as part of the kids’ interest, I decided to create these counting cards to go along with the song.  Vito enjoys setting up the counting cards as we sing each of the day.  To share our love for the song, we are sharing the counting cards to you so you can do this activity at home with your kids too! Enjoy!

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.

Christmas Themed Tray Activities for Preschoolers

Happy first day of December!!!  I’ve been away for awhile, busy with life and other extra curricular things… because you know, “it’s that time of the year”.  Anyway, despite of  all the happenings, I was able to assemble these simple Christmas-themed activities for my 4 years old.  My aim here is to simply introduce the meaning of Christmas, the symbols, learning Christmas songs and a little bit of  arts and crafts.  Hope you like these activities!

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!

Learning The Human Skeleton for Preschoolers

We’ve been singing a lot of Halloween songs at home lately and Vito was fascinated with the Skeleton Dance song.  I decided to give him some activities on skeletons just like what Mavi and I did years ago (The Skeletal System).

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.  

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.

Snake Game: Search for the Perfect 10

The Snake Game is one of the most popular math games in a Montessori classroom.  I introduced this to Mavi when he was 5 years ago, contrary to Vito who is just 46 months now.  Vito’s sensitive  years for counting arrived early while for Mavi it was alphabets and reading.  How fascinating, isn’t it?

FREE Letter L Dot and Tracing Activity Sheets

The leaves are beginning to fall! We’re seeing a lot in our area so yesterday, we collected a few and brought it home. Vito immediately took our letter L dot sheets to go along with his new discoveries: fallen leaves!