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.

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).

Preschool Activities for the Chinese New Year

Contains affiliate links

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!

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!

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!

The Alphabet Sound Books for Learning Letters

I am so excited to share our Alphabet Sound Books!  Vito is currently in a sensitive period for letters and I knew I just have to provide him with these booklets which I also made for Mavi years ago when he was learning his letters.

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).

FREE Letter S Dot and Tracing Activity Sheets

Halloween is just around the corner and we are having skeleton activities these coming weeks!  To go along with this, I am sharing this dot sheets for you to work with your child in learning beginning letters and tracing.  Hope you like this and enjoy!

FREE Letter A Dot and Tracing Activity Sheets

Last spring Vito and I started to work on letters and letter sounds again (Beginning Letter Phonics Cards and Beginning Reading: Language Objects and Activities).  Because he enjoyed working on these Letter B activity sheets, he always asked for “more” sheets to work on and always repeating “buh for bird” and other b objects.  This led me to create more sheets! And because it’s apple season, I gave him “Aa” and it was perfect!  He worked on all three sheets!  More of this letter A activities but for now, I’m sharing our FREE letter A sheets.

Montessori Weather 3 Part Cards

Few weeks ago, I introduced Vito to some weather types because we were experiencing extreme weather conditions in one day.  I mentioned in my Instagram post that we even experienced hail during the early weeks of summer! Talking about the weather cards, here are the materials I prepared for him:  Weather Cards from my shop, Weather book from National Geographic and The Weather from My First Discovery book.  The booklet you see in the photo is from our Weather Cards set.  The books here are really good and we would read it mostly at night but sometimes Vito would remove them from basket and would skim them to check out the pictures or pretend to read it (mimicking my reading).

The first time I talked about the weather with Vito was here, the activity was very simple, but he learned a lot from this.  We are still using this chart up to now!

The Space and The Solar System Learning Materials

Happy to share our Space and Solar System Learning Pack which is now available in my shop.  These are so beautiful!  I made the cards years ago and Mavi has been frequently using them, especially in finding inspirations in his drawings.

FREE TREE Matching Cards Activity

This is a matching and memory game I made for Vito during our Plants and Trees Unit Study.  He absolutely loved this!  I regretted that I didn’t make more, because he kept on asking for more matching games.

FREE Insect Counting Mats

A special request from readers! I’m sharing our Insect Jars Number Card which we used in our indoor bug counting activity.  

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.

FREE Number Symbols for Counting and Number Recognition

Vito is in a sensitive period of numbers and counting. With this, I made him these number symbol cards inspired by my previous activities with Mavi.  Obviously, I couldn’t find our old printables, so I made a new set and I decided to share it with you as FREE DOWNLOAD!