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.

Hands-on Learning of Geometric Shapes

Vito is currently in the mood for learning geometric shapes.  I guess he was inspired by his older brother who is currently studying basic geometry at home. Vito has passed the stage of basic shapes, the ones you see in children’s puzzles and the like.  He’s been playing with those since he was a toddler, so I decided to introduce him to geometric shapes in the Montessori classroom.  It would have been nice if we own the Geometric Cabinet, but because we can’t afford one and we don’t have space for it, these insets which are basically materials for writing is a good alternative (best to none).  Note that these are not the traditional metal insets, we are using the plastic version.

Snake Game: Search for the Perfect 10

The Snake Game is one of the most popular math games in a Montessori classroom.  I introduced this to Mavi when he was 5 years ago, contrary to Vito who is just 46 months now.  Vito’s sensitive  years for counting arrived early while for Mavi it was alphabets and reading.  How fascinating, isn’t it?

FREE Letter L Dot and Tracing Activity Sheets

The leaves are beginning to fall! We’re seeing a lot in our area so yesterday, we collected a few and brought it home. Vito immediately took our letter L dot sheets to go along with his new discoveries: fallen leaves!

Preschool Learning Letter A Activities

We’ve started letter activities again because of the renewed interest of Vito with our language materials.  Let me just share with you some of these activities in case you needed ideas on how to start a letter of unit activity with your kids.

Montessori Inspired Autumn Themed Learning Activities

I finally organized our shelf and added autumn-themed activity trays to go along with the change in season.  Vito has been learning a lot from the outdoors, discovering new things (nature finds) and has been observing the changes in his surroundings.  Now to extend this learning, I prepared these activity trays.  How it works?  These are prepared and placed in the shelf (except for the paints).  At times, Vito would randomly select an activity and there are times I would place the activity tray on the table and invite him to play (or work) with me.  If he’s not interested on the said activity, I let him return it back to the shelf and make him select a new one.  This is how I check what’s miss and hit of the learning trays. 

Note that this is a MONTH LONG of activities!

FREE Letter A Dot and Tracing Activity Sheets

Last spring Vito and I started to work on letters and letter sounds again (Beginning Letter Phonics Cards and Beginning Reading: Language Objects and Activities).  Because he enjoyed working on these Letter B activity sheets, he always asked for “more” sheets to work on and always repeating “buh for bird” and other b objects.  This led me to create more sheets! And because it’s apple season, I gave him “Aa” and it was perfect!  He worked on all three sheets!  More of this letter A activities but for now, I’m sharing our FREE letter A sheets.

Anatomy of a Frog 3D Model

We love our shark anatomy model (read about it here, Montessori Inspired Shark Study for Kids) so I couldn’t resist getting the frog dissection 3D model for another exploration.  I introduced this educational material when were doing our Frog Unit a few weeks ago.  This anatomy model was intended for my oldest son, but Vito enjoyed learning about it too!

Fall Counting Activities Using Nature’s Objects (FREE Printable)

It’s our favourite time of the year and we are spending more time outdoors observing the change in season and gathering objects from mother nature!   In my Instagram, I’ve been posting pictures of the boys gathering chestnuts, conkers, pine cones and acorn outdoors and bringing them home.  If you’ve been following my blog, we call them “nature finds” and at home, the boys would play with them, mostly exploring the objects (texture, smell and color) and of course, counting how many items they collected.

B4FIAR: Jesse Bear What Will You Wear

We are continuing our Five in a Row because Vito is loving some of the stories in the book list.  In this post, I’m sharing activities to go along with the Jesse Bear What Will You Wear by Nancy White Carlstrom.  Note, I only make or prepare activities in line with the books that he loves.  So when I read Jesse Bear to him, he immediately love it because he can relate to the story.  He has routines too similar to Jesse Bear (playing, eating and waiting for Daddy) and staying with his Mom all day. 


Anyway here are the activities we worked on to explore the subject areas of Jesse Bear What Will You Wear.  Note, this was a 2-week long of rowing.  The activities here were mostly done in the morning and we only worked on one activity a day, and the rest we spend it outdoors or Vito would do something else (like work on his traditional Montessori materials).

Learning Addition Using Montessori Stamp Game

The Montessori Stamp Game is one of our favourite math materials at home.  This learning material can be used in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  And for us, this is how Mavi learned how to understand the concept of regrouping (dynamic addition).  He enjoyed this material more than any other methods of learning addition and subtraction.

FREE Letter B for Bear Mazes

Vito is currently in a sensitive period with mazes.  The first time I noticed this was when we were eating in a restaurant and he was all of a sudden glued on the kids’ activity page given to him which contains lots of mazes.  And much to my surprise, he successfully solved most of it!  This went for weeks, whenever we are in restaurants.  So what to do when your child acts like this?  Of course, print lots and lots of mazes at home, give them pens and markers, and have them work the mazes out!  You can see a series of this post in my Instagram, accounting his fascination with mazes.  (Vito likes mazes while Mavi is into crossword puzzles LOL)