Introducing the Human Skeleton to Preschoolers

Vito is 34 months old.

It’s that time of the year when my kids get to see a lot of human skeletons hanging everywhere!  No wonder October is the best time to introduce the human skeleton to your kids.  Vito is in the “what’s that” stage and he’s been asking me a lot of questions lately about these “funny” costumes and the hanging bones.  So I gathered a few old and new learning materials for him so I can introduce these amazing body system.

Preschool Animal Habitats using Sensorial Materials

We were reading a lot of animal books lately that I decided to introduce Vito to animal habitats.  I have no idea how to do it first, but then I realised that I have kinetic sand, some synthetic grass and unused ice in the fridge… enough materials to present three animal habitats of the world.  Take note that there was no serious “lesson” in here.  Everything was spontaneous, like a storytelling of animal homes.  The concept was introduced as Vito and I played along.  Much of the time was spent playing pretend, feeling and touching the grass, sand and ice!

October Preschool Math Activities

I am so excited to share with you the fun preschool math activities I prepared for Vito! He saw me printing these materials and he kept on asking if we can play. Of course we did! We started using a few of these materials and will share his progress in the days to come.  For now, allow me to present to you our adorable and cute learning materials for the month of October.

Preschool Letter M

Vito is 34 months old.

Our letter M last week.  I should have posted this earlier but I’m having migraines so I wasn’t able to create a post.  Unlike with letter A, Vito was in the mood to work with our letter activities.  Take a look at the highlights of our letter of the week.

Color Mixing Activity for Preschoolers: Green, Orange and Purple

Vito is 34 months old.
After exploring colour shades and tints, we moved on to learning secondary colours.  We have a few books on colours but this book Colours My First Discovery Book got Vito hooked.  It’s the only book he ever cared about when were discussing colours.  I highly recommend this book for kids ages 1.5 years and older.  My first attempt of showing him the blue and yellow makes green was using tempera paints, but it was short lived.  His attention span was about 5 minutes and after that he wasn’t interested anymore.  So I went back to the one activity that he loves: colour mixing using water.

Animal Color Sorting with Montessori Color Tablet

Vito is 34 months old.

We started off our color exploration activity by sorting out some of Safari Toob animals using our Montessori Color Tablets (set 2).  Actually, it was Vito who gave me the idea.  He keeps on identifying the colors of the animal figures and he would match it to the color of his shirt.  With this in mind, I realized that that we have a bunch of Safari Toob figures and it would be nice to sort them out as Vito loves the figures tremendously. 

Preschool Letter A

This was the week that Vito wasn’t in the mood to work on any letter activity. Yes, it happens.  You can see the result of it in his work, which you will see when you scroll down.  But anyway, I just wanted to share these activities and the materials we used so you will know where to get some alphabet sheets resources.

Easy to Prepare Apple Activities for Preschoolers

Vito is 34 months old.
Apple is Vito’s favourite fruit.  He had an amazing time exploring his favourite fruit last week, as we explored how the apples came to me, its parts and an instant apple counting (because he loves to count too!).

Autumn Nature Finds and How We Use Them

We’ve been blessed with a beautiful weather last week. It’s actually pretty warm and sunny for September in Ireland which is quite unusual.  So I grabbed the opportunity to walk the boys everyday and collect nature objects.  We placed them in a basket and displayed it on the shelf for exploration and learning.

Toddler Activity Trays (34 Months)

We are doing seasonal activities this week (autumn) so our activity trays, which are mostly for enhancement of fine motor skills are focused on shapes.  Below are the 6 shape activities for Vito.  Most of these are homemade and easy to setup.

Pre-reading Using Montessori Language Objects

I’ve been showing you glimpses of our Montessori Language Objects for the past few months but haven’t published our entire collection. So for this 12 Months of Montessori Series, I’d like to showcase our Language Objects (beginning letters) from A to Z!  I’m giving you ideas on what to collect and where to get them (affiliate links). But before anything else, I wanted to give credits to Mavi for assembling most of these objects for me.  As young as 1.5years old, Mavi has this unusual interest with letters and reading.  He showed signs early on and by 36 months, he’s able to read CVC books.  Anyway, this “Montessori Language Objects” is the same method I used with Mavi 5 years ago and it totally worked for us. 

To those of you who are unfamiliar of this method, it’s simply a collection of 3-dimensional miniature objects with names that matches the beginning sound or beginning letter for each letter of the alphabet.  This is one of the most popular methods in a Montessori environment for early reading.  Vito is doing very well with his letter sounds using these objects!

Without much further ado, here’s my collection of objects which I started collecting 5 years ago. 

Cork Stamping Art: Trees in Autumn

Vito is 34 months old.

My youngest is not really the artistic type. But even though he’s not into painting crafty things, I make sure that these art materials are always available just in case they feel like doing some artistic pursuits. So imagine my delight when he decided to join me with this autumn trees painting activity.

Life Cycle of an Apple Preschool Unit

Vito is 34 months old.

I am so excited to share this with you! Last week, I set up an apple life cycle to Vito (and Mavi on the background) for a little science exploration.  Apple is his favourite fruit and he was so delighted to see these materials in our shelf!  Now if you take a look at our activity and materials, they’re pretty simple and easy to follow by a young preschooler. I assembled it in such a way that it’s not too overwhelming for him, yet enjoying and engaging. 

What is Montessori “Cards and Counters”?

Vito is 34 months.

“Cards and Counters” is a Montessori math activity that introduces the child to the units of quantity.  This is to reinforce the sequence in numbers (one to ten) and to give the child a visual experience of quantity.

Vito loves to count.  He counts pictures, objects and anything that interests him. So for his preschool math, I decided to give him a jumpstart on cards and counters. Take a look at the different ways we explore counting using Autumn-themed objects.

Magnetic Alphabet Sorting Activity and Sensorial Play

I couldn’t resist getting these magnetic letters from Early Learning Center because they were on sale and its the only magnetic set I found that’s using the Sassoon font (text standard in UK and Ireland).  With these on hand, I set-up a sorting activity of letters for Vito.

Preschool Letter R

We started our preschool unit with letter R and I divided the activities into two:  (1) phonological awareness and (2) pre-writing.  The pre-reading activities is scheduled on Mondays and pre-writing on Tuesdays.  Vito does no more than 20 minutes of “school” per day.  The rest of the activities, Vito considers it as “game” or “play”.  During “school” time, I would quit the activities once I see that he’s bored or not interested.  My experience has taught me that it’s not about the quantity of activities that I give to my kids that matter.  In fact, they get tired so easily and bored when I do that.  Especially with Vito, I learned that I should do things slowly with him, and that I should respect and follow his own timeline of learning.  Mavi was different, he absorbs anything… he’s always interested, Vito is very choosy.

Going back, this week we’re starting with the letter R. Vito can name the letters of the alphabet if he’s in the mood so I decided that I should be giving him pre-reading activities so he won’t get bored.  Below are some of the activities this week for pre-reading and pre-writing.

 

Autumn Themed Preschool Math Activities

Vito is starting “preschool” math this school year and we are not using any curriculum.  I guess it’s not necessary in our case.  I will be using my experience with Mavi and with the thousand ideas online on setting up “play-based” and Montessori-inspired activities for Vito this school year.  So in order for me to be able to organize and prepare materials ahead of time, I decided to come up with seasonal-themes for the upcoming months.

Beginning Letter Sort (R and A)

It’s been awhile since my last post!  Sorry for not updating. Vito is starting “preschool” at home and I’ve been busy planning for his curriculum and preparing materials.  Actually the curriculum is just a guide, everything will still depend on how he progress and what’s his current interest. 

Anyway, I gathered some of Mavi’s old language materials and assembled a letter sorting activity for Vito next week. You’ve seen this a lot, like the booklet, the matching of pictures. But this time we’ll be working two letters a time and sort out objects that matches the beginning letter sound.

An Arctic Theme

A few weeks ago, I prepared an Arctic Theme for our little homeschooling.  It was a hit! My son became obsessed with polar bears and caribous for while.  And even with the books which I borrowed from our library, it took him awhile to get over them.  

Here are the activities we had based on our theme:

Matching game.  The animals were from Safari Toobs and I just made classification cards.  He enjoys matching but once he get used to it, he easily gets bored.  So what I do is to add a little excitement with the matching game.  Sometimes as we match an animal to the card, I would show him a video of that animal via our iPad (helpful because it is portable).  I would ask him for the different parts of the animals and what does it do or how does the animal behave.  It’s even more exciting if I would ask him of what sounds does that certain animal make according to the video. This activities and tactics help instill those animals in his heart and mind :)

Penguin puzzle.  I made this by myself.  Searched  a random image from google, printed it twice... with the other one as an outline.  Using the outline I use foam sheets for the puzzle and the remaining printout is for his guide. He was so excited to do this puzzle! 

His Ninong John and Tita Meyms gave him this toy camera.  He loves it to death!  Since he got his very own camera, he loves to pretend taking pictures of his accomplishments hehe.

Then for math, although this is not related to “arctic”, I just make use of our existing snowman number cards which I printed out from a website (sorry I can’t remember the link) two years ago. On the left is counting cards and the on the left is arranging size from smallest to biggest.

And that’s it for our arctic theme! I was hoping to do more activities on the “arts and crafts” side but we went on a vacation. Maybe in the future as I’m planning to revisit this theme again.

Parts of a Plant

While we were on a vacation at my parent’s house I grabbed the opportunity to teach Mavi all about plants and its different parts.  It was the best place to explore different types of plants as we are free to “pick” all parts necessary for our lesson.

Thus, we ended up having this.  The nomenclature card was from Montessori Print Shop.  I didn’t use the picture and label cards as of the moment as I was just introducing this to him.  Later, when the right time comes I’ll be giving him the full set of nomenclature cards so we can go to details as matching the labels to pictures and etc.  For now, we just matched the actual parts to that on the control cards.