Real Life 3D Activity Cards

As an extension work for our Montessori Solids and real life 2D Shapes activities, Vito and I had fun working on our 3D real life activity cards weeks ago.  We used our geometric solids so Vito can have a real understanding of what these objects look and feel like.  To know more about these solids, I talked about it here.  If these are not available, Amazon carries Learning Resources 3D materials which are perfect alternatives for these Montessori solids.

Color Mixing Experiment with Baking Soda

We’ve done a lot of color mixing activities in the past to learn about primary and secondary colors.  Last week we worked on color mixing with baking soda and vinegar.  It demonstrated not just the science of “what happens when you mix colors” but it was a great way to entertain kids!

Water Cycle Activities for Preschoolers

Rainy season can be a good time to introduce the water cycle to your child. Here are a few tips, resources, and activities on how to start.

Montessori Inspired Dinosaur Activity Trays for Preschoolers

This is a long overdue post because we’ve been doing a lot of outdoor activities lately.  Most kids are really fascinated with dinosaurs, especially my eldest who’s obsessed with these prehistoric animals.  So last Easter break, we revisited some of our dinosaur activities and introduced new ones to Vito.  Here’s a roundup of our dinosaur activities which both of the kids enjoyed during the break and I hope your kids will love this too.

Fruit Unit: Inside and Out Matching Activity

We had a fabulous time last weekend examining the insides of fruits.  We did a similar activity years ago, but I didn’t want to put paints on fruits this time so I made this gorgeous matching learning material for Vito to work around with instead of recreating the insides using paints.  More details on this fruit learning material here.  This is easy to prepare and fun to work with kids!

Landmarks Around the World

Vito had a sudden interest in naming landmarks. He was fascinated with the pyramids after watching a show about kids exploring ancient sites like the pyramids in Egypt and the great walls of China. I immediately showed some of our travel photos featuring these landmarks in the background. He was shocked that I had been to some of those places. With this, I introduced him to some other places around the world.

Identifying 2D Shapes in Real Life Objects

I want to share how much we love these activity cards on 2D shapes that I made last year so Vito and I can practice identifying the shapes of objects that he gets to see almost everyday.  As I mentioned in my Instagram post, before working on these cards, we first looked around the house for objects with shapes of square, triangle, oval, rectangle, and circle.  Then at times, we also play I spy games on shapes and objects, and other times it’s more of “give me something that has a shape of … “.  We had fun doing this!

Identifying Common Flowers for Preschoolers

Is it spring in your part of the world?  Well, it’s far from spring here but we are already starting to see spring flowers sprouting and blooming everywhere.  During our daily walks, Vito loves spotting these flowers and is identifying them.  It comes in handy that I have already prepared some learning materials to go along with this new discoveries.  Just like last year, we used these flower cards to name the spring flowers that we see in the park and in our estate.

A Walkthrough of Animal Study for Preschoolers

This coming spring, I will be introducing the zoology album of Montessori early childhood to Vito.  We did a couple of animal study last year but it was mainly for introduction and familiarization.  This year, our homeschool activities will be in line with the album I bought from Montessori Parent.  Of course, I will not follow the album word by word as I try not to replicate the Montessori classroom in our home and I don’t possess other classroom materials.  But it will still be spontaneous and hands-on.  In this post I will talk about the album, the materials I prepared, and my plans on how we are going to approach the “hands-on” aspect of the study.

Hands-on Learning on the Human Body for Preschoolers

Vito is getting more interested in how his body works, especially that a few months ago, he got sick and I have to discuss some important things to him about his health and body.  With this, I started reading to him some of our body books, explaining what happens to the food that he eats, to the water that he drinks, and why he has blood when he has a cut.

Montessori Inspired Space Themed Learning Activities

We are moving to new things this week as Vito’s interest is starting to be directed more about his body and senses.  For the past few weeks, we’ve been doing work about the moon, the planets, and space.  Here’s a roundup of our activities in learning about the solar system and space in general (in no particular order).

Hands-on Learning of Constellations for Preschoolers

Vito and I were exploring constellations earlier this week as we were reading about the Big Dipper.  He was fascinated that I extended our activity into pin poking to recreate the formation of the stars (constellations).

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.

Polar Activities for Preschoolers

Here are our 9 activity trays this winter season, where in some days, Vito can finish 3 activities in a day while in some, almost none.  These ideas are good for about 2-3 weeks of learning.  Vito would also work on some non-polar activities in between, mostly practising reading with pink series, playing with our Grimm’s blocks, Legos, and just about anything he wants to do.  There are also spontaneous activities that come in between, mostly a product of discussion and as book extensions.  I mostly share these in my Instagram account, but if it’s post-worthy, you’ll be able to read it in the blog as well.

Penguin Themed Matching Clocks to Time

One of the things I love to do is putting some twist on our activities to keep them more engaging and fun for Vito.  Last month, he began reading the time, with Mavi modelling the reading.  Every morning he would wake me up and say “Mom, it’s 8 o’clock” and when I checked it is indeed 8 in the morning!  He finally figured out how to read the clock with the small hand pointing to a number and the longer hand on the 12.  So I grabbed the opportunity to practise clock reading with this penguin clock and time matching printable.  I used this activity with Mavi 5 years ago and now Vito is loving it as well!

Animals of Antarctica Printable with Safari Toob Antarctica Set

Have you seen Safari Toob Antarctic toob yet?  To me, it’s one of the best toob they ever had!  I mean, aside from penguins, can you name other animals that live in Antarctica?  Quite difficult right?  That’s why we are so happy that Safari Ltd finally came up with these figures so we can introduce our kids to other animals thriving in Antarctica other than penguins!  So if you have kids or students who love animals and learning about places, Safari Antarctica Toob is one good learning toy you can invest in.

Winter Printables: Ten Frames Counting Activities

I am so happy to share Vito’s favourite counting activities and materials, our Ten Frames Winter printables!!!  This printable was created out of  pinetree counting sheets which I created last autumn.  It was so popular that I wanted to recreate it and at the same time, include ten frames seen in our dinosaur post which was Vito’s favourite too.  So combining these together, plus a tracing activity of numbers has led me to produce these products!