Directed Drawing Activity Pack - Seasons

Heard of directed drawings?  These are instructional materials that provide step-by-step instruction (through illustrations) on how to draw an object.  I started making these last year in my shop because Vito enjoys this activity.  He was frustrated that he doesn't know how to draw, so I made him a few of these, and he loved it! He gained confidence in drawing, and with practice, he can now draw some objects on his own.    Anyway, I'd like to introduce our Seasons Themed Directed Drawing Pack.  Below you will find previews and ideas on how we use these at home (and, of course, can be used in schools too!).

St. Patrick's Day Preschool Mini Unit

I'm so excited to share our St. Patrick's Day Mini Unit!!!  I am so happy that you are loving ALL our MINI UNIT series and the FULL PRESCHOOL CENTERS!!!  We've been working on these activities for years, way back when my eldest was in preschool but I didn't publish the printables in the shop back then.  Now, I'm so happy to share them with you so you can enjoy the benefits of these as well.

Without further ado, I would like to showcase our St. Patrick's Day Mini Unit, full of fun and engaging activities for preschoolers, pre-k and kindergarten kids.  Included in this pack are activities that will let your child practice fine motor skills, alphabet tracing, hands-on math, and a lot more!  For more St. Patrick's Day themed materials you can click here.

Preschool Learning Zoo Unit Pack

I am so happy to share with you our Zoo Preschool Literacy and Preschool Math Learning Materials. Similar to our popular Ocean Unit Preschool Learning Materials, our Zoo Unit also contains 30 fantastic and engaging learning activities that your little ones will definitely love!  To give you an idea on what learning activities can be done with these amazing materials below are some of the activities that Vito worked on early this month.

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.

Life Cycle Activities for Kids

Life cycles have fascinated my kids throughout the years. We often worked on them during springtime, but I would sometimes add them in our animal or plant studies too.  I’m often asked how do I introduce this subject area to my kids and I would always say that it really depends on their age and interest. For the young ones, it’s all about play-based learning and storytelling.  While for older kids, they are drawn towards the details and the science behind them.

To give you an idea, here’s our progressive way of learning the life cycles.

Montessori Multiplication: Extension Work

My son wants to master his multiplication tables, especially for bigger numbers.  We are using both the Chinese/Singapore math (abstraction) method and Montessori when it comes to mastering his mathematical skills. For Montessori, though we have the Multiplication board, Mavi prefers using the colored beads as these keep him engaged and he thinks that they are more “fun”.  With this, I am so excited to share the learning materials we use to aid his mastery of multiplication using extension activities that goes perfectly with the Montessori colored beads.

These learning materials were very helpful, and my son enjoyed working on the extension activities.  The best thing about these learning materials is that they grow with your child and you can print them again and again so your child can practice each multiplication table through the years.

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!

Animal Kingdom 3 Part Cards and Charts

I am so excited to share these beautiful learning materials I created for my boys.  Mavi, my 9 year old is currently the one using this for school, but Vito ended up using some of the activities as he loves to work on his older brother’s materials too.  So this is our Animal Kingdom Cards and Charts set.  The main objective of this material is to introduce the different classifications/groups of animals to your child.  We have an older version of this, and you can check it out here (Kingdoms of Life: Animal Kingdom) if you are interested.  Anyway, allow me to discuss some of the highlights of this learning material below, so you can have a better idea of what you will be getting when you purchase this for your child or your school.

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).

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!

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.

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.