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!

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.

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)

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.

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!).

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”.