Montessori Work at 19 Months

Montessorish work of Max at 19 months.  

He's rounding off all the items we have int he shelf EVERY MORNING thus he tends to master the activities in no time (this means frequent material rotation).  Anyway, feel free to bookmark this page if you find this inspiring and your reference.

World Continents Activity Using Playdough

We’ve done a lot of world continents activities for the past years but this has got to be one of the boys’ favorites!  We had so much fun forming the continents with our playdough.  This is such a lovely learning activity not just about continents but a fun way to keep those little fingers at work, promoting hand-eye coordination and concentration.

Color Mixing Experiment with Baking Soda

We’ve done a lot of color mixing activities in the past to learn about primary and secondary colors.  Last week we worked on color mixing with baking soda and vinegar.  It demonstrated not just the science of “what happens when you mix colors” but it was a great way to entertain kids!

Dinosaur Excavation Activity

I have a spare dinosaur excavation kit which I kept for years, waiting for Vito to be old enough to work on it.  Well, that time finally arrived and I gave it to him so he’ll experience what it’s like to be an archaeologist, even for a day.  Here’s a pretend play of how scientists are able to put up dinosaur bones in the museums!

Landmarks Around the World

Vito had a sudden interest in naming landmarks. He was fascinated with the pyramids after watching a show about kids exploring ancient sites like the pyramids in Egypt and the great walls of China. I immediately showed some of our travel photos featuring these landmarks in the background. He was shocked that I had been to some of those places. With this, I introduced him to some other places around the world.

Safari Ltd Mammal Skulls Discovery Play

The boys love these mammal skulls which Safari Ltd has sent us!  They specifically love to bury these in the kinetic sand and play scavenger hunt or play-pretend to be scientists.  This is one of the afterschool activities the boys enjoy playing together and working independently.

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.

Favorite Activities at 43 months

Here are Vito’s favourite things to do when he’s at home and not playing with Mavi outdoors. Most of these activities promotes independent play minimal supervision, improves fine motor skills, vocabulary, hand-eye coordination, creativity and discovery through play.

Hape Domino Set

Have you heard of the Domino Set by I Love Hape?  This toy is just awesome!  I got it early this year to teach Mavi how to strategically design a game, basically a maze made by dominoes.  Now that Vito is older, we decided to share this with Vito so he will learn how use it and enjoy the fun of creating dominos.  And oh boy, this has been Vito’s favourite for the past few days!

  

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. 

Gonge River Stones And Why We Love Them

Oh I can’t tell you how much we love these Gonge Riverstones!  I was really skeptic of these at first.  I mean, why purchase a plastic makeshift rocks when you have the entire backyard as a playground.  We don’t really need it.  Then as the boys were spending a lot of time in the yard these days, I realized that we don’t really have those flat rocks the boys can hop around with or use for play pretend.  I was thinking that if we can have those, the boys and I can play games involving gross motor and some relays.  So I decided to try the Gonge Riverstones.  They were on sale, and I picked them over the Gonge Hilltops because we already have three large rocks at the backyard which are way better than the plastic ones.  Anyway, I tell you, the moment these Gonge Riverstones arrived, it’s been non-stop play for the boys!  We liked them right away, and so does my husband!  This is my honest review of the river stones, and I bought this for our personal use and was not paid to do a review. 

Here are some reasons why we love it and totally recommend!

Magnatiles for Creativity

We love Magnatiles!  If you’re following my Instagram, we used this often times at home during free play.  I hesitated for the longest time before I purchased these amazing magnetic tiles because of the price, but oh boy, they are so worth-it!  Aside from the fact that it has some educational value, it is also an open ended toy which the boys love to use for building castles, houses, forts, cars and just about it anything!  The possibility is endless thus we love it!

Introducing Kids to Construction Tools

If you are like us, who has no means of doing some carpentry work, then this post is for you!  For one thing, my father and his entire family are carpenters.  They make furnitures, build houses and buildings in my home city and I remember spending most of my time during summer vacation in construction sites managed by my grandfather.  This is the reason why at a young age, I know how to use most carpentry materials despite my mom’s warnings.  Sadly those skills weren’t passed to the new generations.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t expose our kids to this simple carpentry work like hammering, using nuts and bolts, drilling and the like.  And of course, with the advent of IKEA, we need to somehow teach them all about DIYs and these basic tools. 

In this post, I’m sharing our learning toys and materials in exposing my 3 years old to some of these construction tools to acquire those basic skills .

Teaching Land and Water Forms to Preschoolers Through Play

Vito is 40 months old.

In line with our Earth Science activities, I decided to introduce Vito to land and water forms using the Montessori Sandpaper Land & Water Form Cards and the Safari Toob vehicles (Safari Ltd On the Road TOOB, Safari Ltd In The Sky TOOB, Safari Ltd In The Water TOOB).  I came up with this idea because a few weeks ago, Vito was really hooked with our land, water, and air transportation figures from Safari Toobs.

Fun with Bruder Cattle Truck

The boys received Bruder trucks last Christmas and they’ve been playing with them constantly!   There are so many reasons why I love these trucks, but for Mavi, the size and the sturdiness of the trucks make it a big winner. Anyway, let me share with you one of Vito’s favourites, the cattle truck.  The boys love playing farm and farm animals at home so the truck is a perfect addition to their “small world play” of farm animals.

Autumn Themed Graphing Game

We are loving DIY math games! The boys enjoyed our Race Game a few weeks ago, so I didn’t hesitate to give them our Graphing Game.  Not only can my preschooler practise his counting skills and taking turns, this is also a great opportunity to introduce date recording (and analysis) for older children. 

 

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.

Creativity with Shape Mags (Stick N Stack)

Vito is 30 months old.

I bought this amazing product when we went to the US last month.  We have Magnatiles and we love it, but the problem is we can’t really make something more out of those squares and triangles. When I came across Stick N Stack in Amazon and read good reviews, I just needed to buy those beautiful window tiles and carts!   And if you ask me, yes they work really well with Magnatiles!

And since we’re having Transportation Unit, I made Vito create his own cart.  Oh boy, he played with it for hours!!  I asked Mavi to assist his little brother for awhile but later on left when he realized that Vito doesn’t want him for a playmate.

Transportation Unit: Water Vehicles

Vito is 30 months old.

Both of my boys were looking forward to this Transportation Unit as they love cars, trains and airplanes.  We started off by introducing Vito the water vehicles using Safari Toob In the Water  figures, a little water sensory tub and matching activity.

Earth and Land Unit for Toddlers

Vito is 29 months old. 
Activities for Earth Day! Here are some of the activities we did this week in celebration of Earth Day.  These are simple, yet fun activities that I’m sure your kids will love!