Montessori Geometric Solids as a Sensorial Material

I would like to introduce one of our favourite Montessori material at home: the geometric solids.  This has been on my bucket list for the longest time and I finally get to own one!  This is totally worth-it!  This material will introduce the child to the 3D objects and shapes, that will later on be helpful in the learning of geometry.  I listed below the progression of activities of the geometric solid intended to guide parents on how to use this material in case you own one or are planning to have one in the future.

Indoor Garden Play for Counting Bugs

Vito is 42 months old.

So we are seeing a lot of bugs lately.  Vito is enjoying it!  We do nature walks in the morning to see the honeybees, flies and unidentified flying objects in the field. And we even caught the wasp that went inside the house last week for exploration.  Lately, we would walk our way to Mavi’s school to pick him up.  During these walks, we would count the number of bugs we see in the bushes and trees.  Vito enjoyed it and I thought that we could also do it at home as an extension.  So I made this “garden” setup for him, wherein we will pretend to catch bugs with our tweezers and place the right number in our number cards. 

Montessori Inspired Study of Snails for Preschoolers

We’ve been getting a lot of morning showers which resulted in a bunch of snails popping up everywhere.  Vito is loving it, now that he’s older, he’s enjoying the sight of these little fellows.  One time, we caught one sticking out my husband’s car.  Vito was excited!  I made Vito watch as I removed the snail from the car, placed it in our disposable plastic container and brought it inside for him to observe (and explore). 

Learning About Farm Families

I shared in my Instagram last week that Vito is obsessed with the concept of “mommy, baby, and daddy” thing.  He would always pair our animal figures into families and do play pretend.  This made me decided to introduce Vito to the farm animal families which I introduced to Mavi a long time ago (Farm Families - FREE Sorting Cards).  There’s a deeper explanation why we teach kids about animal families.  We teach kids to distinguish and describe objects to form them into bigger groups.   Commonly, we group inanimate objects according to their size, shape and color which is an easy task for the child.  But when it comes to real organisms with no definite shape, size and color, it is more difficult to recognize similar characteristics. 

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Montessori Inspired Farm Activities for Preschoolers

It’s going to be an exciting month for Vito as we are learning about the farm and farm animals!  Kids are so fascinated with the farm, probably because of the domestic animals that can easily be identified and the fact that the farm is where we mostly get our food.  Early in life, the kids are educated that the milk comes from the cow, eggs from chicken, wool from sheep and etc.  At first, we visited a few farm animals in the zoo weeks ago.  We pet some goats, chicken, and seen some donkeys and cattle for Vito to experience.  We’ll be visiting a real farm this month too, and hopefully we’ll get to see some real farming work!

Now, for extension work, here are some activities I prepared for Vito at home to learn more about the farm.  We’re starting some of these already and you can see the photos in my Instagram account.  Please follow me there for real time activities!

Montessori Work

Montessori-inspired activities we did lately...

Language

Blue Series

Pink Series

Math

Reading numbers in different ways... numerical symbol, beads, hand symbol.

Number dots...

Then there’s numerical words..

Using counters.

The end product.

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Before FIAR: Goodnight Moon

We’ve been doing this unit for sometime now because this book, Goodnight Moon, is one of my son’s favorite  and he loves the activities that we do to go along with it.  Since we spent most of our afternoon outdoors, I seldom have the time to write about our updates.  To cut my rant short, this has been a week-long overdue and I just have to post it so I can brush it off my mind.  Here are the activities we did for Goodnight Moon (B4FIAR):

Identifying the things that we see inside the little bunny’s room.  I got this printables from Homeschool Share.

As we read along the book, he would take a picture from the left and matched it to the object in the book.

And here, he went inside his room to identify the things that we can see there, just like in the book.

We worked on the printables that I got from Homeschool Creations.  This is the Read, Write and Spell... and instead of forming the words using magnetic letters like we used to, this time I had him write it on paper to practice his writing skills.

Identifying beginning letter using clip cards and shadow matching.

Again, practice of writing skills.

We also read the book, Hey Diddle Diddle, which I got from the library.  And made these stick puppets as we recite the rhyme.  Read about the whole activity here. 

For math, we learned about the clock faces and time :) Here’s my post for this.

We also had number cards and counters.

For science, we studied the phases of the moon.  You can read more about the activity here.

And that’s all what we had for Goodnight Moon Before FIAR.  I hope you can get some ideas here to help you with your Before FIAR as well.  Happy weekend!

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The Clock

We’ve had this before, and I decided to revisit it again to go along with our Before FIAR: Goodnight Moon.

We talked about the face of the clock again, the long and short hands and the numbers around it.  We created our own version of a clock using paper plate, number chips that I cut around ahead of time, and the two hands.

He also worked through the 3-part cards which I made for him to learn the time.  We had a couple of activities related to this before, but in my son’s case, nomenclature cards are really his favorite.  He just loves to match!  On a personal note, I love nomenclature cards because they’re such an effective way for a child to learn. We only did the hour... for I am not sure yet if he’s ready to understand the half-hour. My son finished the work in a breeze, so I guess I might introduce the half-hour and quarter in the next few weeks.

Here’s another activity which we did after he finished the nomenclature cards, I would say the time and he’ll steer the hands on the proper position.  He enjoyed it to bits!

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Hey Diddle Diddle Stick Puppets

Sharing with you our activities to go along with Hey Diddle Diddle nursery rhyme.  Actually, this is just part of our Before FIAR Goodnight Moon unit study.  We completed this today and my son loved it to bits!  So I might as well share it...

After reading the book for days (until my son can read them independently LOL), I started by collecting images from Google and printed it on a cardstock.  The characters I printed were:  the fiddler cat, dog, moon, jumping cow and the dish with the spoon.  Once ready I had Mavi color them.  I made him choose whatever color he wants.  He was so delighted to color the characters in the nursery!

The dish with the spoon is his favorite.  He tells me that the dish looks like Daddy and the spoon is Mommy. I love it that he associates me and his Dad to two objects holding hands :)

I cut each of the characters. 

Then I made him help me attach each on a popsicle stick using a sticky tape. 

And we started reciting the rhyme using these puppets! Oh aren’t they the cutest?

 

And then here’s another version wherein I made them stand using egg carton box so we can do some theatrics with out puppets. 

For reading comprehension and inference, I have my son answer these questions as we go along with the rhyme:

1. Who jumped over the moon?
2. Why do you think the cow jumped over the moon?
3. What instrument did the cat play
4. What kind of music do you think he was playing?  or What do you think his favorite song was?
5. Who laughed in the rhyme?
6. Why do you think the dog was laughing?
7. Who did the spoon run away with?
8. Why do you think they ran away together?

Some of these questions were really tough especially for a 3 year old, but it was funny to hear his answers.  And would you believe, I end up being asked as well. 

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Our Looong Weekend

Hello everyone! How was your weekend? As I mentioned earlier, our little family went to the city center to “supposedly” watch the parade in celebration of the St. Patrick’s Day.  But look! We can see nothing but sea of green leprechaun hats! LOL.  The parade has already started by the time we arrived and we couldn’t get a decent spot to at least view the parade float.

So we ended walking around, and view the people celebrating LOL. 

 

At home, we did a few crafts.. we made a rainbow using our fingers.  It was a total hit!

And we also made a flag... Ireland’s flag.  I attached this to a stick and we place it on our veranda.

 

On Mother’s Day (UK and Ireland), we went to the park to play football.  You see, we do a lot of outdoor activities but I don’t usually bring a camera when we play outside... but I realize that I should bring at least our P&S so I can capture precious moments such as these:

 

Then today is a holiday, so we started our Blue Series for reading.  I forgot to mention that my son has started reading (not pretend) a few weeks ago.  He can read... mostly CVC words.  And I’m happy to say that since he knows “how to do it” already, it’s easier for him this time to blend the letters in the blue series. 

For reading, I borrowed books from the library and am happy to say that they have an amazing collection of reading books for preschoolers.  Currently we’re using this books.  We’re using the Reading Corner Phonics set for grade 1 and at times would include those from grade 2 now that we’re beginning the blue series.

New week.. fresh start! We’re doing Before FIAR this week:  Goodnight Moon.

Happy Monday!

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