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 Plant and Tree Activity Trays for Preschoolers

A long overdue post on our plant and tree studies early this month.  Last month, I bought Vito an indoor plant to care for.  Through that plant, he learned that it needs water, sunlight and air to survive.  But because it’s been really hot and we were away most the time, it wilted.  We took it out so we can reuse the pot and Vito saw webbed roots and was immediately fascinated by it!  He didn’t know what to call it yet, thus I decided to give him an introduction to the parts of the plant so he’ll know the right word to describe the parts.

Montessori Inspired Parts of a Plant

It always excites me to introduce new things to Vito.  Our recent activity is learning about plants, specifically in this post, the parts of a plant.  I love doing plant study with the boys.  I’ve been doing this with Mavi since he was 2 years old, and I love doing it all over again with Vito!  Printed materials used in the activities were all homemade, and some were used during Mavi’s preschool days.   This is Vito’s second year of plant study, and you can read related studies here:

• Introducing plants to toddlers
• Collection of botany lessons for preschoolers
• Bean seed study
• How plants grow

Plants versus Animals Sorting Activity

I am so thankful for The Helpful Garden for providing us this printable (saved me a lot of time!).  Of all the plant and animal activities that we have done in the past, I have forgotten this one basic activity for Montessori botany and zoology: identifying plant and animals. 

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!

Educational Puzzles for Preschoolers

Because I’m often asked of the puzzles we use at home, I’m sharing what we have here to give you an idea on what my preschooler loves.   Some of these puzzles are way too advanced for Vito, so we usually start working the puzzles together.  But as he gets used to the material, he would at times insist on working it on his own and occasionally would ask for assistance. 

*We own all of the puzzles in the pictures below. 

Montessori Botany Learning Materials

Last month, both of my sons fell ill and were bedridden for almost a week. During that time, I had plenty of free time during the day, but was busy taking care of Vito at night. To make the most of my available free time, I decided to enhance the Montessori botany cards and booklets that Vito will be utilizing this spring. I personally handcrafted some of these materials, and I'm proud of the results. If you're interested, feel free to come take a look!

Highly Recommended Montessori Materials

Another feature for 12 Months of Montessori series! For November, I’m sharing our favorite Montessori materials that my kids love and have been using for years.  So to those who are asking me on what Montessori materials to invest in, here are my recommendations:

Study of Plants and Nature and {Learn & Play Link Up}

We're having plant and tree activities next month so I'm featuring these amazing posts for inspiration!

Our Favourite Toys for 2 to 7 Years Old

**Contains affiliate links**

“As parents and grandparents, we think that we are showing children we love them by giving them things.  In fact such practice, in and out of itself, may send them the wrong message.  Children may conclude that if people give you things, they love you.  If receiving things tells you that you are loved, the next logical step is to measure self-worth by what you have, not by what you are.  The reality is that very young children can only truly love one doll, one stuffed animal, and a few toys at a time. This experience provides a basis for adult life where one must learn to cherish one spouse, one family, one life, instead of fantasizing that it is possible to ‘have it all’.”  - MONTESSORI FROM THE START

We don’t have a lot of toys at home.  Mavi just like two kinds of toys: LEGO and dinosaur/animal figures, that’s just it.  All through the years, I don’t splurge nor buy toys as we don’t have the budget for it. I consider them as luxury so I just gave toys to Mavi as presents on his birthday and Christmas.  But because we “home” school, I purchase learning materials that my kids see as “toys” but in reality they are NOT really toys.    And because I am frugal, I buy toys that they can grow with, MULTIPURPOSE and something that they can play together.   So let me share with you the kids’ favourite things in the house.  These are the toys that we have in the house, except for the ones in my “wishlist and basket”.  These toys are being played day in and day out by the boys.

NOTE:  ALWAYS SUPERVISE YOUNGER CHILDREN WHEN USING ANY OF THESE TOYS.  Do not leave them unattended.

FAVOURITE TOYS

LEGO, DUPLO and PLAYMOBIL.  Need I say more? These are the favourite in the house. We have plenty of LEGOs as this is Santa’s favourite present EVERY Christmas for 4 years!  And Vito’s Duplo and Playmobil were brought from the local store when they were on 50% off. I would never get them for a whole price! Vito is now snapping bricks together and loves the Playmobil people.  Both of my boys spend hours and hours playing with these toys.  They never get tired of them.  Perfect toy for creativity, concentration and developing fine motor skills!

For Playmobils, we have castles and pirates. They’re Mavi’s favourite toy and can play with them for hours!

My son loves the LEGO CLASSIC Bricks.  He doesn’t really like those with premade designs as he always wanted to design his own thing. So I highly recommend that you buy the basic LEGO BRICKS especially if you are getting your first Lego.  Having a plate is also good. 

 

 

miniLUK and BambiniLUK.  Mavi and I looooves this! We can’t get enough of answering all the booklets, especially those tricky ones!  I bought the Starter Pack and bought the advanced booklets separately.  There’s a version for younger kids, the BambiniLUK and some friend in Instagram said that they like it. Mavi is like “Mom, its making my brain tired LOL”

 

Montessori Botany  and Zoology/Insect Puzzles, Montessori Puzzle Maps.  I invested on these this year and it was worth it! I have puzzle loving kids, and Vito is currently addicted to them.  Aside from educational, these puzzles are also perfect for pincer grasp practice.  Mavi on the other hand is obsessed with my Asia and Europe puzzles.  He loves geography, loves to learn about countries and their locations.  Tower High Learning is my favourite Montessori shop as of the moment and this is where I purchase my materials.

 

Schliech Animal Figures and Safari Toobs are also an all time favourite in the house. The uses of these figures include imaginative play, learning about animals, habitat play, exploring landmarks and just about anything!  You see these mostly in my post!  When Vito was younger, I made him use Schleich animal figures because they are bigger but now that he has overcome his mouthing, he uses both Schleich and Safari Toob. Mavi is obsessed with dinosaurs, and he uses them now as characters for his homemade videos LOL.   Now he uses both types for play and learning.

 

 

Hape Uppercase, Lowercase and Number Puzzles.  With Mavi, I used the Melissa and Doug Magnetic letters (I still have them) and they were really really loved.  Now the problem is Vito mouths things and I made Vito use it, the sticker of the letters were removed.  So I looked for an alternative alphabet toys for us to use and I discovered these amazing puzzles from Hape. They are WORTH-IT! We love using them in anything, from learning letters, puzzles to stacking! Yes, Vito loves to stack these together! We also use it to sort out colors!  Multi-purpose indeed!  But if you have older kids, Melissa and Doug Magnetic Letters are as good as well. 

   

Because I love to cook (Asian and Italian), the boys also love to pretend cooking with me using these Melissa and Doug cooking toys.  They can play for hours with these!

M-cro Maxi Scooter.  And I just have to include this!! Because they play with this scooter in and out of the house! Mavi uses this to school and Vito uses this indoor for scooting practice. I love that it is sturdy and kids can easily balance!

And of course, nothing beats classic toys like balls, cars and PlayDoh!  My boys wouldn’t complain if they receive any of these this Christmas.

WISHLIST

Magnatiles. Rave reviews everywhere but I just couldn’t bring myself to purchase these tiles or can’t even justify it   Maybe when they’re 50% off I would probably get one for the boys!

Unit Block.  I know that the boys will love this as well.  They can build and create so many things with this but the price is just too much for me.  I still have to think about this a million times.

Beleduc Puzzles.  My puzzle loving kids will love these puzzle series, especially the Your Body Layer puzzles!

MEGA Collection of BOTANY Unit Studies

Finally, I compiled all our botany lessons in one post. It’s easier to make it as a reference in the future and to you dear readers as well! These are the activities we have done for the past years, when Mavi was still in preschool.  I hope you find all of these helpful in your own homeschool journey.  Just click any of the links below, to direct you to the specific post.

(In no specific order)

• Learning about flowers. This is THE FIRST TIME we dissected a flower and Mavi had a fabulous time learning about the parts!
• The Tree. Our FIRST LESSON ON TREES and comes with a DIY tree felt puzzle
• Parts of a plant. Mavi was only 2 years old here when we study the different parts of a plant using nomenclature cards.  Was he bored? No!! He had fun looking for the different parts in grandma’s garden.
• Fruits and Vegetables Unit
• The Bean Seed. Identify the parts of a bean seed and observed how they sprout.
• The Plant. Mavi was attending Montessori preschool and brought home his plants.  We review the parts of a plant using a real  one at home. 
• Looking into Trees and Leaves.  We matched leaf shapes, create trees in different seasons and identify the parts of the leaf/tree.
• The Plant Life Cycle (Photosynthesis).  We did a little experiment on how water travels through the plants.
• Tree Shapes. Yes! Trees have different form and shapes.  We worked on this outdoors and identified the shapes of the trees in our yard. How fun!
• The Poinsettia.  Seasonal lesson, especially during Christmas.
• Leaf Shapes.  Montessori-inspired activities. We collected leaves in the park and matched our collection to the leaf shapes nomenclature card.
• Inside of a fruit.  Making fruit prints!
• Life Cycle of an Apple.  Lots of crafting!
• All about flowers [1] and [2].  We usually study flowers in springtime.  Here we looked into the different parts by dissecting a flower, collected flowers in the yard and used it as a paint brush.. and more outdoor flower observation.
• Flower DIY foam puzzle.
• Parts of an apple and tomato.  Yes, we dissected these!

 

You can also visit my Pinterest board for more ideas!

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Botany Unit on Pinterest.

[Tried and Tested] Tower High Learning

I came across Tower High Learning through random search in the internet for affordable Montessori puzzles.  I am so happy that I found another shop in the UK that sells Montessori materials.  As I skim through their online shop, I’m surprised that they offer a waay more affordable price than any shop I’ve encountered!  Excitedly, I contacted their costumer service for inquiries and they responded promptly to all my queries.  Marie, who runs the business is very friendly and easy to talk to!  So without hesitation I purchased a few puzzles for Vito and Mavi to work on this year. 

And guess what? They arrived after 2 days!! How cool is that??  To think that I just paid for regular shipping. Amazing isn’t it?

And yes, nothing beats the smell of new Montessori materials, waiting to be opened!

My botany puzzles!! I regret not getting the seed and roots!

  My Zoology puzzles:  bird, turtle and frog.  Must save for the the fish and butterfly.

I purchased this version of which there’s a skeleton presentation on the board of the puzzle.

 

And here’s my beautiful beautiful Asia Continent Map puzzle. Shining, shimmering… splendid!

And yes all those little tiny pieces all sits well on its board. Love it!  Wishlist: must get the control map next time!

Ahhh… oh how I love the puzzles! They’re on the lower price range but they were more than perfect! Flat, and all the pieces fitted well.

I have to start my “wishlist” for Christmas.  I can’t wait till  my next purchase when my funds are enough.

So don’t forget to checkout Tower High Learning if you are in Europe and looking for affordable Montessori materials.

 

**This is not a paid post or review.  Just wanted to share this amazing shop that sells affordable Montessori materials to Moms out there that have tight budget like me!

Springtime is Flower-time!

Hi everyone!  There are lots of daffodils growing in the yard and Mavi has been constantly picking them up for his "collection".  So to make use of the flowers I pulled out our flower nomenclature cards and told him that he will need to dissect the daffodils to learn about its part.

Since we did this activity a few years ago, he was so excited to do it again.  Kids love to do this!  I know how dreadful it is to learn about the parts of a flower (with all those weird names).  But if you get to this activity with your kids, with a tactile activity, they will definitely learn faster and the retention is much better.

             

As we dissect the daffodil, I would ask him questions like "how does the petals feel like?", "why do you think that some flowers are yellow some are red?".  As we go along, I also discuss the functions of each parts.  He mentioned that his favorite parts are the petals and the stamens because according to him, these makes the flower look beautiful.

           

If you are interested, you can this Parts of the Flower and Definition booklet by clicking the image below:

Afterwhich we read our book How Flowers Grow and look at the pictures of the different kinds of flowers around the world.

I was also inspired to make flowers in popsicle sticks.  I love how these flowers turned out!   You can place them in a vase and stick them using a playdough or clay :)

            

In our case, we found a purpose for these flowers in our math activity which I will talk about in my next post, so stay tuned!

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Botany Unit on Pinterest.

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