Autumn Themed Preschool Math Activities

Vito is starting “preschool” math this school year and we are not using any curriculum.  I guess it’s not necessary in our case.  I will be using my experience with Mavi and with the thousand ideas online on setting up “play-based” and Montessori-inspired activities for Vito this school year.  So in order for me to be able to organize and prepare materials ahead of time, I decided to come up with seasonal-themes for the upcoming months.

Our Looong Weekend

Hello everyone! How was your weekend? As I mentioned earlier, our little family went to the city center to “supposedly” watch the parade in celebration of the St. Patrick’s Day.  But look! We can see nothing but sea of green leprechaun hats! LOL.  The parade has already started by the time we arrived and we couldn’t get a decent spot to at least view the parade float.

So we ended walking around, and view the people celebrating LOL. 

 

At home, we did a few crafts.. we made a rainbow using our fingers.  It was a total hit!

And we also made a flag... Ireland’s flag.  I attached this to a stick and we place it on our veranda.

 

On Mother’s Day (UK and Ireland), we went to the park to play football.  You see, we do a lot of outdoor activities but I don’t usually bring a camera when we play outside... but I realize that I should bring at least our P&S so I can capture precious moments such as these:

 

Then today is a holiday, so we started our Blue Series for reading.  I forgot to mention that my son has started reading (not pretend) a few weeks ago.  He can read... mostly CVC words.  And I’m happy to say that since he knows “how to do it” already, it’s easier for him this time to blend the letters in the blue series. 

For reading, I borrowed books from the library and am happy to say that they have an amazing collection of reading books for preschoolers.  Currently we’re using this books.  We’re using the Reading Corner Phonics set for grade 1 and at times would include those from grade 2 now that we’re beginning the blue series.

New week.. fresh start! We’re doing Before FIAR this week:  Goodnight Moon.

Happy Monday!

Linking to:

 

Montessori Inspired Farm Activities for Preschoolers

It’s going to be an exciting month for Vito as we are learning about the farm and farm animals!  Kids are so fascinated with the farm, probably because of the domestic animals that can easily be identified and the fact that the farm is where we mostly get our food.  Early in life, the kids are educated that the milk comes from the cow, eggs from chicken, wool from sheep and etc.  At first, we visited a few farm animals in the zoo weeks ago.  We pet some goats, chicken, and seen some donkeys and cattle for Vito to experience.  We’ll be visiting a real farm this month too, and hopefully we’ll get to see some real farming work!

Now, for extension work, here are some activities I prepared for Vito at home to learn more about the farm.  We’re starting some of these already and you can see the photos in my Instagram account.  Please follow me there for real time activities!

Montessori Inspired March Activities for Preschoolers

With Vito’s current obsession with letters, I’m focusing on letter recognition, phonics and writing from hereon.  Our homeschool activities in March are mostly revisiting past activities and doing a lot of extensions. Check the details below to know more about it:

B4FIAR: We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen

Mavi is 36 months old.

My son picked We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen as our next unit for B4FIAR.  And since I realized that the subject here is on bears, I find it wise to row Blueberries for Sal at the same time.  So we’ve been reading these books everyday, and singing Rosen’s bear hunt song at the same time.  But the focus of this week’s activities is on We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.

STORY SEQUENCING.

A wonderful activity that we truly enjoyed.  Read about it here.

Then we further explored the book by doing our very own bear hunt activity.  I posted it here.

 

MATH.  We did two versions of bear counting. The first was inspired by this post.  I love how they practiced counting and color sorting at the same time.

Then we also had our version of cards and counters (bears) but instead of using a number symbol, I used a hand symbol to indicate the number of bears to be counted.  Surprisingly, my son can recognize what number the hand signifies by just looking at it :)

 

I also made some pattern matching printables to go with our unit study.  Here, Mavi has to matched the patterns.

We studied animal tracks and played the matching game.  I got the file that I printed out from here.

I wanted to demonstrate what is animal track and how they differ from one another so I made use of our playdough and some of his animal figures for this.   Happily, each animal figures produced different tracks.

He enjoyed making tracks and this animal track activities.  He keeps asking for it for several days.

LANGUAGE.

Using the B4FIAR packs I downloaded from Homeschool Creations, we build, spell and read words

He easily build the word “mud”.

But with words with composed of more than 5 letters, he would at times miss the correct order of the letters.

Then there’s the clipcards for practicing beginning letter sounds.

 

SCIENCE.

The subject for this unit is bear, so I was happy to get hold of the brown bear book from our library.  It basically consist of everything that you need to know about this massive creature.  This book was very informative.  It first started describing the different parts of the bear, then goes to describe the bear habitat and youngs, how they search for their food, how they sleep and how they play. 

I looovee this book.  It has wonderful pictures that my son can clearly visualize what a real bear looks like.  I hope I own the whole series.

I downloaded worksheets from Kidzone and First School for our bear study and writing practice.

PRACTICAL LIFE.

We did a bunch of cutting activities.  I made use of our old magazines instead of printing a cutting strip. 

First, I made a guide for him to cut that is by marking the borders of the picture in the magazine as shown above.  Then he has to cut the picture using that guide.  So far, he liked this idea of cutting magazines and with lines.

Then he asked to cut more.  And told me that he wants to make the guide this time.

Mavi tracing the brown the bear.  He didn’t color it though.

The worksheet from First School.

Working on the pre-writing sheets that comes with the pack.

          

PLAY PRETEND.

He wanted to experience being  a bear. So I made him claws which he really really love!  Then he looked at the picture of the brown bear from this book and told me he should also have a brown face, so I made him a brown mask as well.

Well I just thought that these pictures were so funny.  He tried to growl like the bear and keep roaming around the house scaring me and his Dad :) Precious.

And that’s what we did for our We’re Going on a Bear Hunt unit.  Hope it inspire and entertained you :)

Montessori Inspired Activities for Earth Science

I am so excited to share our activity trays for Earth Day! This is in line with our 12 Months More of Montessori Series wherein we are focusing on Earth Science.  In this post, I gathered a few topics related to Earth Science, assembled them into tray activities that’s suitable for preschoolers from ages 3 years and older.  Hope you enjoy our activities for the coming weeks!

St. Patrick’s Day Activities for Toddlers

I am not really a fan of seasonal themed activities. Why? For a busy Mom like me, it is difficult to prepare and assemble materials.  The fact that we live far away from the city, our resources are quite limited. It is hard to find materials that fits well in a specific theme.

But… we all have to agree that it is fun to do with your little kids.  It’s cute and fun! And the kids will have that festive feeling of the celebration.  That’s why, because this month we are celebrating St. Patrick’s Day here in Ireland, I am trying out these seasonal themed activities with Vito!  Yes, I’m testing the water and see if I can pull off a seasonal themed activity and let’s see where this will lead me.  We’re not doing a bunch right, we’re only trying those that are easy to prepare and feasible for us.

St. Patrick’s Day Activities for 28 Months Toddler

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Vito is 28 months old.

St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner and we are excited to watch the parade in the city this year!  To introduce Ireland’s big celebration to Vito, I prepared a bunch of work trays for him this month as he turns 28 months old.  I featured 9 activities here but in reality we’re doing so much more, so I’ll just update the blog of our other activities that are not included here.

Toddler Beginnings 07

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I can barely take photos of Vito doing activities these days as my hands are also too busy being involved with it.  So one technique that most blogger Moms do is to take photos ahead of their materials for presentation.  I’d like to borrow this technique, but I will try to do my best to take snap shots of Vito doing these activities in action since I still find it cute to post some photos of him LOL. 

UPPER PHOTOS

• Montessori Letter Work book and Bible Stories (for Lent)
• Yellow Colour Basket
• Hape Counting stackers (a favourite!)

MIDDLE PHOTOS

• Mini unit block toys (he is enjoying stacking this blocks!)
• Melissa and Doug Jumbo Zoo Puzzle

BOTTOM PHOTOS

• Easter egg 1:1 correspondence activity
• Melissa and Doug Latches
• Easter Egg matching colour tray

We’ve been using the Montessori Letter work for weeks now and Vito loves tracing the letters.  We’re also reading the Bible Stories (this was Mavi’s) for Lent.  The rest of our reading/language materials can be found here.

Because Easter is just around the corner, we’re doing a few Easter themed activities. This one is a colour matching activity. I got the pail from a local book store and the yellow mini baskets from Dunnes.  I am sure that there’s plenty of these at Amazon.

Another activity is the 1:1 correspondence. Vito loves transferring objects and I am sure he’s going to enjoy this one!

   

New activity this week is the building of blocks!  This is an old toy  and I got it out for Vito to use.  Vito is starting to enjoy stacking the blocks.  I torn between getting the pink tower and brown stairs or Melissa and Doug Unit Blocks.

                    

We love our Giotto Bebe finger paints! It has NO SMELL AT ALL and SO EASY TO WASH!  I came across this brand when we were staying in Belgrade and I fell in love with it instantly. Their finger paints are so creamy and Vito loves its vivid colours! And it is sooo easy to remove (and non toxic too!). 

                   

And I let him use our  Do-a-Dot markers!  This is colouring a cross for Lent.  We’re taking a break from crayons and pens so I’m letting him use this stamp markers for variation.  This he has to practice stamping, not writing as he used to.  I have to demonstrate first what to do with it. We’ll be using this a little bit more for practice.

 

It has been sunny for the past weeks and we’re always outdoors! 

 

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