Our Montessori-Inspired Shelf for Winter

I’m back after a few weeks of hiatus!  I’ve been focusing more in our homeschool that I didn’t have time to write a post about our activities for the past 2 weeks.  Anyway, here’s the shelf that I've setup weeks ago and the main theme for this setup is “winter”.  This year, we’ll be doing small study units for science and culture but we will work our way thoroughly (taking our time) in reading, writing, and math.


Below are the details of what’s in our shelf and I also shared the links to our materials and resources for your reference.

Winter Themed Language Activity – CVC Clipcards

Vito is reading now, the CVC and sight word level of reading.  And he also showed an interest in writing.  He writes all the words he sees, copy words from the TV or books, then writes them on paper or notebook.  So I decided to replace our Montessori moveable alphabet (Building Words with the Moveable Alphabet and Objects) so we can write letters instead of forming words with the moveable alphabets.  I’ll talk about more on the reading and writing soon (based on our Pink Series packs: Beginning Letter Sound Activity Sheets and Introducing the Montessori Pink Series for Beginning Reading), but here’s an extension work that I gave Vito last week using our winter themed CVC word clipcards (from our Winter Preschool Unit Learning Material).  He enjoyed this tremendously and I’m totally surprised that he was able to finish all these cards in one sitting!


You can get these cards and other winter themed resources from our Winter Preschool Math & Literacy Pack  or click the image below.

Winter Themed Math Activities

Vito loves addition work so we used our Winter Addition Clipcards with the Montessori Addition Charts.


We also practiced how to read “bigger” numbers by working on the 100 Board with a mystery picture (polar bear).  The number tiles are all stored in the bag and then Vito would pick one from the bag and call or name the number and then shade the number in the 100 Board chart based on the color code that we have (colored chart).  All number tiles that he had named are placed on the box so they won’t mix with the unidentified tiles.

Winter Themed Science and Culture Activities

For the past weeks, we’ve been learning about polar bears and these books have been really helpful in helping us learn about these beautiful marine mammals that live in the arctic.


I prepared this life cycle or sequencing cards of polar bears so Vito and I can do some extension work.  Using the books, we also talked about the anatomy of the polar bears, how their body parts are designed so they can easily capture their prey or food and how they protect themselves from predators, weather, etc.


And of course, we are revisiting some animals that live in Antarctica and the Arctic!  We don’t often encounter these animals on a daily basis so Vito tends to forget their names (he is only familiar with a few).  The picture cards (3 part cards and fact cards) are available here.


For Mavi, I added this 3 part cards of the different kinds of snowflakes.  He’s been asking about it since last year, so I am introducing this to him (and Vito).  There are tons, but we are only familiarizing ourselves with a few (easy to name) kinds of snowflakes.  The Story of Snow book is one of our reference.

FINE MOTOR SKILLS AND PUZZLES

This George Luck layered puzzle is a favorite in the house by both boys!  You can see this in our blog every winter time.


As I already mentioned, we are mastering our writing skills and these tracing strips are very handy! The CVC tracing words is part of an upcoming product which I will publish next week.  Vito enjoyed tracing CVC while decoding the letter sound to form a word.


My son loves to cut so I just have to add this in our shelf.  I actually printed tons of these strips and cutting lines and he spends a long period of time cutting these.


And that’s about it!  I hope that you'll be able to pick some ideas and inspirations for your own winter themed learning activities.  Our shelf is good till Friday so a new set of lessons and activities are coming next week!

Pin this for later!