Simple Food Preparation and Recipe Ideas for Kids

It's the 12 Months of Montessori and today I'm excited to share simple recipes that your kids (with your assistance) can try at home.  These are so easy to prepare and will help our little ones develop and improve fine motor and practical life skills.

Weather Activity Trays for Kindergarten and First Graders

In this 12 Months of Montessori, I want to feature our Weather Activity Trays for Autumn/Fall. Change of season is always exciting and it is just right that we do some weather studies before the new season arrives.


Kids are always fascinated with the weather as this is something that they have experienced. Just by going outside and observing the sky, you can talk to your child about the weather, is it sunny? rainy? cloudy? windy? Sometimes they also get to watch this on TV or on the weather forecast news. Thus they become familiar with some words. To expand your child's curiosity about the weather and advance his/her knowledge, here are some activities that you might want to try.

Family Travels with Montessori Friendly Tips

I'm participating in this month's 12 Months of Montessori and I'm featuring tried and tested family travel tips for a stress free and enjoyable holiday that you might be embarking this summer.

Introducing Life Cycles to Younger Kids

In our home, springtime brings a renewed focus on the topic of life cycles. As a parent, I am often asked how to introduce the concept of metamorphosis, larva, pupa and more to young children who may not be able to visualize these processes. It is a fascinating subject that is easy to understand. I begin by telling engaging stories that help children understand that just like humans, baby animals come from their mothers and fathers. Some animals start their life as eggs and then undergo a gradual transformation that ultimately leads to adulthood. 

To help explain these concepts more effectively, we use a variety of learning materials that bring these life cycles to life for children. As we follow the "Montessori" philosophy in our homeschool, we prefer to use hands-on learning experiences that allow children to explore and learn in a natural way. Whether it's using specialized learning materials or observing real-life examples in nature, we strive to make learning about life cycles as engaging and interactive as possible.

Montessori Addition, Subtraction, and Multiplication Booklets

I finally completed organizing my materials and I am so happy to share some of our favorite materials in math, the addition, subtraction, and multiplication booklets!  These goodies are some of the most downloaded free materials in our shop and I am so glad that it’s helping a lot of school teachers and homeschoolers.  These Montessori booklets are used with Montessori math materials but can also be used as worksheets alone.  These booklets are perfect for practice and repetition works.

Montessori Inspired Apple Activities

I'm sharing our apple activities for the past weeks.  Autumn is definitely apple season and it’s the perfect time to explore this amazing and nutritious fruit!  Below are our top 5 Montessori-inspired activities that you and your kids will love in learning about apples.

Human Body Montessori-Friendly Learning Materials

In today’s post, I want to share a few Montessori-friendly materials that we use in learning about the human body.  I’ve been often asked about this topic so I prepared a dedicated post to specifically tackle this.

Go Find It: A Montessori Friendly Summer Game

If you are looking for ways to entertain your kids during the summer days (longer days), here’s one of the games that we love to play after dinner.  Yes after dinner!  My kids are finding it hard to sleep nowadays  because our sunset is literally around 9-9:30PM.  So for this 12 Months of Montessori Series, I am sharing Go Find It, a FUNtastic outdoor game for kids of all ages!

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.

How to Study The Story of the Universe and The Origin of Life

It’s time for another 12 Months of Montessori Series and today I am sharing Mavi’s favourite book series.  We have been using these books for years now.  The books are all about the cosmic history to the evolution of man.  The stories are accompanied by stunning images and time-line to follow.  Everything in these books are just too magical and enlightening for him!  In this post you will also see the activities that the kids did in order to make the Study of the Universe and the Origin of Life a lot more interesting.

Learning the Timeline of European History

I am thrilled to share with you our approach to learning the timeline of European history. As I mentioned earlier, my son is fascinated by world history, particularly the events in Europe and Asia (his home continent!). So, while he was exploring his interest, I took the opportunity to delve into the rich history of Europe. To accomplish this, I created these beautiful timeline cards that feature bold pictures (because kids are drawn to pictures) and include a brief description of each historical event. I conducted thorough research and handpicked the major events that were included in the cards. We were already reading the books of the Story of the World series, but most of the events in the cards were not mentioned in the book.

The Study of the Circulatory System for Kids

It’s another 12 Months of Montessori Series and today I’m going to share with you some simple and easy to prepare lessons and activities for learning the circulatory system of the human body.  I mentioned earlier how Mavi was asking me a lot of things about the human heart and the diseases of the heart that causes death in some famous people.  Bombarding me with so many questions and that eagerness to learn, we worked on this unit study to:

• Learn about the human heart and how it functions
• What causes heart diseases
• A better understanding of blood vessels: vein and artery
• How to prevent heart diseases
• What’s the role of the blood in the human body

In this unit study, we focused on the three major elements that comprises the circulatory system:

• the human heart
• blood vessels
• human blood

As a bonus, I also added a few pointers on how to have a healthy heart!

The Human Heart
Last month, we learned about the human heart, the different parts and how it functions. You can learn more about it in this post, How to Teach the Anatomy of the Human Heart to Kids.


Blood Vessels
First we plotted the network of  blood vessels in our body using our Cardiovascular Information Diagrams sheet as a guide and a printed outline of the human body.  We used PlayDoh (red and blue) to represent the vein and artery.

This activity will introduce the child to the basic concept of how blood is distributed in our body.  By plotting the veins and arteries, they will understand how the organs in the body receives oxygen and nutrients.


Working diligently to replicate our guide


And he realized that even the head have blood vessels!


We went a little farther by inspecting the network of blood vessels, learning the difference between the veins and arteries and capillaries.   Below is a demonstration of the direction of the blood flow in the body through the blood vessels, of how oxygen rich blood enters the artery (except pulmonary arteries) to the capillaries (where oxygen is distributed to the organs) and passes through the vein to enter the human heart.


Here Mavi’s creating an artery, vein and capillary.



He even made his network and labelled the parts.


The Human Blood
This is to demonstrate the composition of blood.  45% red blood cells (red coloured water), 54% plasma (cooking oil) and 1% platelets (bubbles in between).  


Care of our Heart
These cards are included in our heart model.  It identifies 10 foods that are essential for a healthy heart.  Mavi was seriously reading all through the 10 cards and checking if he’s consuming them.  Well of course, he eats almost everything in the list except for the broccoli and wine


And that ends our circulatory system unit.  For more biology related posts see the following:

• Dental Unit for Kids
• Tooth Cross Section
• Skeletal System
• Study of Internal Organs

For more details on the Circulatory System learning materials you can check this post, Circulatory System Learning Materials.

Don’t forget to PIN this for later! I assure you that you will be needing this in the future

This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

 

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now ~ Planting Peas

The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama’s Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Child Led Life

The Pinay Homeschooler ~ Every Star Is Different ~ Grace and Green Pastures

Montessori Decimal System (Base 10) with Golden Beads

It's the time of our 12 Month of Montessori Series, and today I'm sharing with you how Mavi learned the concept of the decimal system and base 10 using the Montessori golden beads materials.  We worked on this when he was about 4yrs old and at times he still wanted to do the complete layout (see the bottom of the post for this).   The aim of studying the decimal system is for the child to understand, organize and  classify the numerical quantities into different hierarchies of units, tens, hundreds and thousands.

One of the best thing about these golden beads material is that it provides a sensorial approach in learning mathematics.  In using the golden beads, a child can easily differentiate a unit from tens, from hundreds and thousands through its depth, weight and quantity.  In effect, there is retention to the concepts because the child can easily visualize the quantity of numbers. 

So without further ado, here’s Mavi’s presentation of how we use the golden beads in learning the decimal system.
Units, Tens, Hundreds, Thousands

Here’s a short presentation which  Mavi and I created on how to use the materials in introducing units, tens, hundreds and thousands.

The Layout

Now for the overall view of the decimal system, combining the number symbols and the quantity, here’s Mavi working on the decimal system layout.  Sorry if he only worked till 4000, as we do not have enough thousand cubes   Enjoy!

This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

Amazing blogs involved in the 12 Months of Montessori Learning

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now ~ Planting Peas

The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama’s Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Child Led Life

The Pinay Homeschooler ~ Every Star Is Different ~ Grace and Green Pastures

Learning Music for Kids (with FREE Printable)

Welcome to another series of 12 Months of Montessori.  For this month, I am going to feature our Montessori-inspired activities in learning music.


Different Types of Music

Mavi loves learning about music. We often hear different genre in stores like classical, rap, hip hop and ballads. He would often ask me “why are some people making sad music Mom?”.  Therefore, I decided to introduce Mavi to the different types of music.  How music is used to express one’s feelings, how it is used to pray, to entertain and how it symbolizes one’s origins.

Complete Guide to Insect Study for Grade-Schoolers

We just concluded our study of insects and oh boy, both Mavi and Vito had a wonderful time learning all about these creatures!  We’re having zoology (animal study) for this month (12 Months of Montessori Series) and I’m going to give you a complete guide on how to study insects with your kids.

What is an insect?

Start your unit study by learning what is an insect. Put it simply, it is an animal that has 6 legs with segmented bodies. And yes please, spiders are definitely NOT insects.  Now for Mavi to have a wider understanding of this subject, I've set up a sorting activity of the 4 major groups of the Arthropods.  Since we've done this last year, Mavi has a prior knowledge of the difference between insects and spiders.  He got confused with the crab though, if its either arachnids or crustaceans LOL.  Initially he placed it in the Arachnids   These animal figures were from Safari Toob Insects and Insect Lore.

The Life Cycle of an Insect

Now after learning about the animals that belong to the insect family,  we looked into the life cycles of an insect.  Here we talked about the insects that undergo “complete metamorphosis” and those with “incomplete metamorphosis”.  Note complete metamorphosis means, it has the stages of: egg-larva-pupa-adult. 

Materials here are Insect Lore Life Cycle of Butterfly and Ladybug

Parts of an Insect 

We also learned about the different parts of an insect. I have a separate post on this one and you read it here or click the image below.

Insect Habitats and Bug Hunting

I created guides on hunting insects in different habitats.  We have insects found in woodlands (in the forest), those found in rivers and lakes, the ones found everywhere and in the meadows/fields.  We used these guides as we go “bug hunting”.

We were able to catch a few insects like ladybird (escaped from our net after a few hours), this unidentified insect in the outdoor stairs and ants.

Vito was fascinated with ants! He also had a separate insect study for toddlers. 

Vito’s Insect Study

Previous Post on Insects

• The World of Arthropods Part One
• The world of Arthropods Part Two
• FREE Arthropods Chart
• Insect Activities for Preschooler
• Life Cycle of a Butterfly for Preschoolers
• Grasshoppers
• Parts of a Ladybird
• Life Cycle of a Ladybug

Thank you so much for taking time to read this post. I hope that I was able to give you enough ideas so you can also jumpstart your own insect study with your kids.

If you need some learning materials about insects you can also buy the following from my printable shop:
The Arthropods Learning Pack
The Insect
The Ant
The Grasshopper
The Dragonfly

This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now ~ Planting Peas

The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama’s Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Child Led Life

Every Star Is Different ~ Grace and Green Pastures ~ The Pinay Homeschooler

Sensory Play and Activities

Welcome to another post on 12 Months of Montessori Series!  For May, we’re exploring Montessori sensorial activities and I am sharing with you fun activities that led to discoveries using their senses.

My initial plan for this was for a nature exploration outdoors since we all know that nature provides the BEST sensory experience.  But because mother nature wasn’t in the mood (rained throughout the week!), I decided to do most of our sensory activities at the backyard and indoors.

Montessori emphasized that children learns with their senses.  It is important that they use their senses to explore the world they live in.  Stimulating these senses will send signals to the child’s brain that will help to strengthen the neural pathways which are important for all types of learning. 

In a Montessori classroom, there are a lot of sensorial materials that are used to help the child develop discrimination, order and broaden and refine their senses.  But just because we don’t own any of these materials, that doesn’t mean we can’t do sensorial at home. In fact, I prefer giving my kids the REAL experience when it comes to sensory.

Without much further ado, here are Mavi and Vito…

Sense of touch.  We started off with ice and water play. This was the time when we got Mr Sun.   I immediately took out the materials and let the boys play together.  This activity introduced the concept of warm and cold to Vito.

 

Sense of hearing.  We explored the rhythm bells I got earlier this year. Oh boy, it was really something new to him and he loves shaking it to produce sound.  Here, I introduced Vito the loudness and softness sound.

Sense of touch and smell.  We went crazy over Crazy Soap!! Thanks to Stimulating with Rachel who suggested this brand to us. I wanted to use kid-friendly soap as I used shaving cream before which gives a strong scent.  The Crazy Soap has gentle smell that the kids love, and the foam is just amazing! You can shape it and it bounces!  This activity introduces Vito to vocabularies like “good smell”, “soft”, “bouncy” and “squishy”.

 

Sense of sight.  Activity we did in the backyard where we enjoyed the abundance of dandelions and blowing the seeds!  We also planted garden pinwheels around the yard so Vito and Mavi can enjoy watching it turn (it can be relaxing!).  My Vito was so amazed by the wheels!

Sense of touch, smell and taste. Save the best for last. We made pizza !!!

 

This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

Amazing blogs involved in the 12 Months of Montessori Learning

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now ~ Planting Peas

The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama’s Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Child Led Life

Every Star Is Different ~ Grace and Green Pastures ~ The Pinay Homeschooler