Reader’s Choice Top 10 Posts of 2017

Happy New Year everyone! I Can’t believe that we’re celebrating New Year once again.  It’s not so long ago when I was just starting to present some of our January activities, and here I am again, packing up remnants of our Christmas holiday decors and turning our sitting room into a homeschool room again.

First of all, I wanted to thank you all for reading and spending time in our blog.  Thank you all for the kind words, for leaving messages that you have been inspired and that you enjoy our activities, I truly appreciate that.  I wish for this coming year to come up with more great ideas so you and your kids can learn together, connect through fun activities and most of all help them in their learning needs.  Speaking of which, I also plan to do more of elementary posts.  I still do “afterschool” activities with Mavi about arts and crafts or extension lessons on subjects that he wanted to explore more.

Anyway, to start the year, I want to share the TOP 10 reader’s favourites of 2017 (not in order).  Enjoy!

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!

Learning The Square of a Number Using Montessori Short Bead Chain with Square

We find ourselves working on the Short Bead Chain once again as Mavi reviews his multiplication table.  If you skim through my posts, you will find that we’ve been doing this since Mavi was 5 years old.  Now that he’s older (and wiser!) he finds a deeper meaning in learning the square of a number.

Yes folks, in mathematical terms, the short bead chain materials (and the squares) are used to present the precise squares of a number (2 squared, 4 squared).  Using manipulatives, children can easily grasp the concept and eventually memorize the squares.

The Nativity and Story Cards

It brings me joy to recount the story of the nativity to our children. We have made it a yearly tradition to read various books of different versions, and sometimes we even watch nativity movies to fully grasp the meaning of Christmas. Now that Vito is old enough to comprehend, I incorporated story cards and activity sheets to accompany our book reading this year.

FREE 12 Days of Christmas Counting Cards

We love the 12 Days of Christmas song!  The kids love it so much that we kept on singing it over and over again and always speeding up as we approach the 12th day.  So as part of the kids’ interest, I decided to create these counting cards to go along with the song.  Vito enjoys setting up the counting cards as we sing each of the day.  To share our love for the song, we are sharing the counting cards to you so you can do this activity at home with your kids too! Enjoy!

Hands-on Activity on Comparing Numbers

We are moving on with our math by introducing new math concepts, one of which is the more or less activity and using the greater than or less than symbol.  To do this, I made use of the holiday season’s symbols so Vito can easily relate and used manipulatives like some Christmas erasers and Montessori beads.

Christmas Themed Tray Activities for Preschoolers

Happy first day of December!!!  I’ve been away for awhile, busy with life and other extra curricular things… because you know, “it’s that time of the year”.  Anyway, despite of  all the happenings, I was able to assemble these simple Christmas-themed activities for my 4 years old.  My aim here is to simply introduce the meaning of Christmas, the symbols, learning Christmas songs and a little bit of  arts and crafts.  Hope you like these activities!

Montessori Friendly Gift Ideas for 3 Years and Older (2017)

I would like to make this post brief and to the point.  We don’t have a lot of toys at home, so I only have a short list.  I called this list “Montessori friendly” because these are toys that my kids would actually play on a regular basis.  To get the best of toys for your kids, it is better that you are aware of what they really really like and what makes them happy.

So to give you ideas on what my kids love to play at home scroll down below to check them out.

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.

Montessori Friendly Gift Ideas for Tweens and Teens (2017)

This post contains affiliate links.

These gift ideas are intended for families with older children, ages 9 to 16 years old.  I made this list based on my son’s and niece’s current interests and hobbies.  These are suitable for kids who are hobbyists, artists, musically inclined, readers and explorers.  Mavi owns some of these already (some are hand-me-down), and others are still on the “wishlist”.

Thanksgiving Preschool Literacy Learning Pack

Hello everyone!  I recently launched our Thanksgiving Preschool Literacy Pack in our shop as a tool to aid my kids learn about this celebration in the United States.  Though we may not be celebrating Thanksgiving, but this is our way of learning different cultures and understanding the meaning of the celebration.   (Note: pictures of my kids using these materials are in my Instagram account!)

Beginning Letter Sound Activity Sheets

Vito’s favourite work in the morning are our pink series cards (we try to work on one vowel sound a week) and these beginning sound activity sheets. I made these cards years ago (just revamped them) and used them with Mavi, it’s one of his favourite language works.  Because Mavi can write letters at 3 years old, we didn’t get to use our moveable alphabet and instead he would just write the missing letters.

Thanksgiving Themed Rhyme and Beginning Letter Sound BINGO Game

My 4 years old absolutely loves our Thanksgiving rhyme and beginning letter BINGO game!  He loves rhyming words, so I just have to come up with some activity to feed this interest.  Since we’ve been exploring beginning letter sounds, I also added this to our game.

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.

The Montessori Geometric Sticks

We finally get to use our Montessori Geometric Sticks now that Mavi is learning about polygons, triangles and angles.  You can purchase this fantastic learning material at any Montessori shop or in Amazon.  My boys and I are fascinated with this material.  There’s so much we can do with it, from building plane geometric shapes, to letters, and artworks!

FREE Letter P Dot and Tracing Activity Sheets

We are carving a pumpkin this week so we also worked on our letter P activities!

Learning The Human Skeleton for Preschoolers

We’ve been singing a lot of Halloween songs at home lately and Vito was fascinated with the Skeleton Dance song.  I decided to give him some activities on skeletons just like what Mavi and I did years ago (The Skeletal System).

The Montessori Constructive Triangles

I am so excited to introduce to you the Montessori Constructive Triangles!  This is one of my favourite Montessori material because I find it useful  for my 3 years old and my elementary.  In this post, I’m showing you each of the content of the boxes and how it is being used in learning plane geometric shapes.

Preschool Learning Letter L Activities

Presenting our letter “l” activities!  We’ve started “letter of the week” kind of activities since September because of Vito’s interest in letter sounds and reading.  We’ve been reading FIAR books over the summer and this led him to further explore words and language activities.  

Favourite Activity Trays for Autumn

Have you seen our activities this autumn season?  I would usually round it up into tray activities for archiving and easier reference.  Below are the details of each activity trays that we’ve been enjoying for the past months.

Montessori Geography Folders

When I was preparing geography lessons for Mavi years ago, I learned about the importance of Geography Folders. Essentially, these are folders filled with pictures from your home country or continent as well as from other continents. The pictures should depict people engaging in daily life activities, landmarks, food, animals, children, homes, transportation, and villages, if any. Geography Folders are especially useful for studying your continent as they introduce your child to other races, cultures, places, and traditions.

FREE Letter S Dot and Tracing Activity Sheets

Halloween is just around the corner and we are having skeleton activities these coming weeks!  To go along with this, I am sharing this dot sheets for you to work with your child in learning beginning letters and tracing.  Hope you like this and enjoy!

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)

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!

Montessori Inspired Animal Classification Activities

There’s nothing more interesting for my three years old than learning about animals.  Aside from learning about the continents they live in, my boys also love to identify animals according to their names and classifications.  Initially, Vito can only tell the difference between birds and fish, the rest he calls them “animals”.  So I decided to expand this knowledge further by introducing the other three classifications: mammals, reptiles and amphibians.

Learning How to Use the Montessori Teen Boards

Okay, so your little ones can count up to ten, so what’s next?  In this post, I’m going to show you how the Montessori math method, teaches a child the quantity and number symbols of eleven to nineteen.  There’s a BIG difference being able to “count” from one to twenty or a hundred compared to grasping the concept of what these numbers stand for.  This is where the beauty of Montessori math would stand out, it allows the child to experience the use of materials and its purpose, and once confidence is gained the child can work with the material independently. 

To demonstrate this, here’s our journey of learning the “teens”.

Hands-on Learning on Herbs and Spices

I needed to discard some herbs, but before doing so I decided to whip a sensorial activity with the boys to make use of these scented plants.  I already have Herbs and Spices learning materials from years ago, so the preparation was quite easy.  I also added more spices like turmeric, cumin, black peppercorn, garlic, ginger, and cloves.

Learning How to Use the Montessori Binomial Cube

Vito has perfected the Montessori Binomial Cube and I will be introducing him to the Trinomial cube in a few weeks.  Now, I still have a lot of readers and followers who aren’t aware of this beautiful material and has been asking me to give them further information about this material.  So I prepared this post to all who are interested in learning about this beautiful Montessori sensorial material.

My Favorite Montessori Books

I'm sharing the Montessori books I read and has been using at home.  These books will give you a better understanding of the Montessori philosophies and will give you ideas on the activities that you can do with your child at home.

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.