Safari Ltd Mammal Skulls Discovery Play

The boys love these mammal skulls which Safari Ltd has sent us!  They specifically love to bury these in the kinetic sand and play scavenger hunt or play-pretend to be scientists.  This is one of the afterschool activities the boys enjoy playing together and working independently.

Learning the Life Cycle of a Frog for Kids

We've been learning about frogs for the past weeks, and finally, we get to use our Life Cycle Frog layered puzzle from Beleduc.  This beautiful piece of layered puzzle shows all the development stages of a frog's life in tiers. If you are trying to incorporate hands-on materials in teaching the life cycle of these types of animals, read on to learn more about our activity.

Montessori Inspired Frog Activity Trays for Preschoolers

In my Instagram, I shared that we've been observing frogs (tadpoles) in the park for weeks. This has fascinated the boys, most especially Vito. To extend this learning experience, I prepared activity trays (again, a favorite!) tailored for him to explore this new discovery.

Learning Multiplication Using Montessori Colored Bead Bars

My previous post on Multiplication using the Montessori Multiplication Bead Board has been very popular, and I’m so happy that many people find it useful. In this post, I’m sharing that using Bead Board is just one of the many ways of teaching Multiplication in a Montessori classroom. Another favorite of ours is the use of colored bead bars. This is usually introduced after the Multiplication Bead Board or the Charts (though I will share about the Multiplication Charts soon!). We’ve worked with several multiplication activities using the bead bars, but I will highlight the basic presentation in this post.   Again please note that this is based on a home setup.

How I Organize Our Montessori Inspired Learning Space at Home

We are back from our vacation, and after settling, the boys and I decided to clean up and organize our shelves for homeschooling 2017-2018. Now, we have a tiny space, just one for our homeschool, and nothing fancy. I ensure that our learning space is clean, well-ventilated, well-lighted, and conducive to learning. To those who want to know more about how I organize our materials in this small space, allow me to give you a walkthrough!

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.

What You Need to Know About the Early Childhood Montessori Math Materials

I adore Montessori math materials and how it enables the child to experience the true meaning of quantity and numbers.  Montessori math is not just about memorization, counting and abstraction, its main goal is to build a relationship between the child and the materials, learning with ease and enjoying the work through engaging activities.  I own most of the Montessori math early childhood, and starting to collect the elementary for my oldest child.  They’re quite pricey, but worth it. On how to use these materials, I have albums from The Montessori Parent, Cultivating Dharma and Garden of Francis, and I also administer other extension activities that I could think of (I love doing this!).

Hands-on Learning of Equivalent Fractions

I enjoyed presenting this activity to Mavi, and he wanted this work even more. We used our Fraction Magnetic Pies and a DIY frame instead of the Montessori fraction insets in this activity. The album that was used here was from The Montessori Parent.

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!