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.

First Great Lesson (4): Study of Elements and the Periodic Table

The kids and I worked on the periodic table a few weeks before our vacation. We did this years ago, and Mavi was excited to work on this activity again. This is a continuation of our Great Lessons, and if you are new to this post, you can revisit the first and second parts of the activities here:  (1) Experiments on the Laws of the Universe and (2) The Volcano.

Montessori Weather 3 Part Cards

A few weeks ago, I introduced my son Vito to different weather conditions as we had experienced extreme weather in a single day. I shared on my Instagram post that we even had hail during the early weeks of summer! To teach him about weather, I prepared some materials for him, including Weather Cards from my shop, a 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. These books are excellent, and we usually read them at night, but sometimes Vito would take them out of the basket and look at the pictures or pretend to read them just like me.

The activity was straightforward the first time we talked about the weather, but Vito learned a lot from it. We are still using the weather chart we created from that activity up to now!

How the Stem Works by Dyeing Flowers

I am so happy to share that we finally get to dye our flowers successfully! Meaning, ALL of the colors were visible unlike before wherein only a few of the colors took effect (red and yellow).    I’ve been wondering on how we can successfully color our flowers, with 100% coverage and we finally did it this time!  By the way, we worked on this activity because I was demonstrating to Vito the function of the stem in a plant. 

Science Project: How to Make an Erupting Volcano Model

We made this volcano to go along with our First Great Lesson: The Volcano and this is our first paper mache project at home.  I tell you, I tried to avoid these kinds of activities and projects because they are messy, and requires a lot of work.  But since it’s summer, I decided to try it and much to my surprise I enjoyed making this model more than the boys did.  This project was inspired by a post I read from Red Ted Art.  So read along and learn how we made our model as simple as possible for less work.

First Great Lesson: Experiments on the Laws of the Universe

It’s that time of the year in our home wherein we're doing "The Great Lessons". Maria Montessori’s plan for the framework of elementary education is cosmic education and cosmic education is attained via telling the five great stories and followed by key lessons. These stories are typically told in the beginning of the Montessori school year for lower elementary and repeated ever year. This is our second year of the great lessons and I decided to document it so you can replicate it in your homes as well.

Montessori For Everyone has a beautiful summary of what The "Five Great Lessons" are all about. This post is all about the First Great Lesson: The Beginning, and we'll showcase the experiments to demonstrate the basic laws governing our universe.

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). 

Learning About Farm Families

I shared in my Instagram last week that Vito is obsessed with the concept of “mommy, baby, and daddy” thing.  He would always pair our animal figures into families and do play pretend.  This made me decided to introduce Vito to the farm animal families which I introduced to Mavi a long time ago (Farm Families - FREE Sorting Cards).  There’s a deeper explanation why we teach kids about animal families.  We teach kids to distinguish and describe objects to form them into bigger groups.   Commonly, we group inanimate objects according to their size, shape and color which is an easy task for the child.  But when it comes to real organisms with no definite shape, size and color, it is more difficult to recognize similar characteristics. 

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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.

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.

Montessori Inspired Parts of a Flower Activities

For Mavi's midterm break, I am planning activities that both my 3-year-old and 8-year-old boys can participate in. One of the activities is to learn about flowers and their composition. Despite having done this activity before at the ages of 4 and 6, Mavi is still excited to do it again with his younger brother. This is a new challenge for me as I need to ensure that the activity is engaging for my younger son, while also conveying information to my older son. In the post, you can find out how I made the boys work together in the activities that I prepared for them.

Learning about the Weather for Preschoolers

Drastic changes in weather can be experience around January when you are in Ireland.  Thus, I decided to introduce the concept of weather to Vito around this time.  I will do this in the simplest form I can think of and that’s by using a weather chart. 

Learning About the Phases of the Moon for Preschoolers

The boys had a blast learning about the phases of the moon last week.  We worked on this during our Goodnight Moon Unit and even though this was mainly for Vito, I decided to include Mavi as well.  With this, I prepared two sets of learning materials:  one for a preschooler and the other is for older kids (elementary).  This post is on how you can introduce the moon and its phases to kids from 3years and older.

Introducing the Human Skeleton to Preschoolers

Vito is 34 months old.

It’s that time of the year when my kids get to see a lot of human skeletons hanging everywhere!  No wonder October is the best time to introduce the human skeleton to your kids.  Vito is in the “what’s that” stage and he’s been asking me a lot of questions lately about these “funny” costumes and the hanging bones.  So I gathered a few old and new learning materials for him so I can introduce these amazing body system.

Preschool Animal Habitats using Sensorial Materials

We were reading a lot of animal books lately that I decided to introduce Vito to animal habitats.  I have no idea how to do it first, but then I realised that I have kinetic sand, some synthetic grass and unused ice in the fridge… enough materials to present three animal habitats of the world.  Take note that there was no serious “lesson” in here.  Everything was spontaneous, like a storytelling of animal homes.  The concept was introduced as Vito and I played along.  Much of the time was spent playing pretend, feeling and touching the grass, sand and ice!

Autumn Nature Finds and How We Use Them

We’ve been blessed with a beautiful weather last week. It’s actually pretty warm and sunny for September in Ireland which is quite unusual.  So I grabbed the opportunity to walk the boys everyday and collect nature objects.  We placed them in a basket and displayed it on the shelf for exploration and learning.

Life Cycle of an Apple Preschool Unit

Vito is 34 months old.

I am so excited to share this with you! Last week, I set up an apple life cycle to Vito (and Mavi on the background) for a little science exploration.  Apple is his favourite fruit and he was so delighted to see these materials in our shelf!  Now if you take a look at our activity and materials, they’re pretty simple and easy to follow by a young preschooler. I assembled it in such a way that it’s not too overwhelming for him, yet enjoying and engaging. 

Rocks and Minerals Learning Activities for Kids (with Free Cards)

The summer break gave us an opportunity to explore sciences that Mavi loved to learn but couldn’t because of school.  After our trip to the Wicklow Mountains last month, he’s been asking  if we could learn about rocks and minerals.  He plays Minecraft so he wanted to understand the building blocks he’s using.  I started making the materials last month and it was just a few weeks ago that I finished the entire set and we were able to use it together with our rock collections!

Activity Using Our Water Cycle Learning Pack

We finally concluded our Water Cycle Unit (for Mavi) and he had a blast!  It was timely because it rained for the past few days so we spent most of our days outdoors, observing the nature for the process of water cycle.  Now I’m sharing here the materials that we used and the extension activities that we did.

Understanding the Water Cycle

Last week I decided that Mavi and I should do a water cycle activity with Vito.  I prepared some materials and simple experiments to demonstrate this amazing science!