How To Introduce Clocks to 3 Years Old

Vito has been playing with Mavi’s learning clock and pretending that he’s able to tell the time (he always says 8' o’clock), so I decided that it’s about time that I should introduce this very important tool in telling time. I remember doing this activity with Mavi back in 2012. In this post, you will see how Mavi and I worked from creating a paper plate clock to matching analog clock with its digital label.

Montessori Inspired Shark Study for Kids

My 8 year old Mavi is into sharks nowadays and asked if we can do a study about them. The last time we had a shark study was years ago, when he was 4 years old and this time he wanted to use our Shark Anatomy Model which he recently bought. This is Vito’s very first shark activity and he had so much fun learning with his big brother.

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.

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.

Montessori Inspired Insect Activities for Preschoolers

Here’s a summary of our insect activities for the past week.  Most of these materials are old and reused and many of our activities were not planned but are based on Vito's interest because bugs and other tiny creatures appeared earlier than expected.  Hope this post will give you some ideas on learning activities about these creatures!

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!

  

Beginning Reading: Language Objects and Activities

Language activities are a favourite in the house now as Vito’s interest in reading has peaked.  We are using language objects more often to practise letter sounds through games (aside from sandpaper letters).  These language objects that we have were collected through the years, starting from Mavi’s time and it has been very useful now in Vito’s journey on beginning reading.

What are Insects?

Here’s a simple way of telling whether an animal is an insect:  has 6 legs (with or without wings).  This is something new to Vito, the word “insect”.  He usually calls them with their real names like flies, bees, dragonflies, etc. but is not familiar with their category.  Now, this is the first time that I introduced this concept, so he struggled a little bit until we started counting the legs!

Montessori Inspired Life Cycle of Insects

Vito and I have been talking about insects in the past few days.  I mentioned in my previous post, the current interest on insects was brought about by their sudden appearance.  So far he has encountered quite a few already like garden ants, flies, wasps and bees, and bugs. It’s a shame we haven’t seen grasshoppers and dragonflies here, I used to catch and collect them as a child (back in Asia). Anyway, since our last activity on Farm Families, Vito still loves to learn about mommies, daddies, and babies, thus I introduced the life cycle of insects early on in our activities.  Unlike my past activities with Mavi, this one is very simple and straight forward.

Seen here are the life cycles figures of:  butterfly, bee, ant, and ladybird.

Montessori Inspired Butterfly Coloring Matching Activity

Saw this idea from one of my favourite Instagram account Momducator.  It’s a brilliant idea of using Montessori color tablets (set 3) to match with the butterfly colors of Safari Toobs (Insects, Butterflies, Bulk Bag).  This is a great practise for visual perception, picking the right color combination to match with the butterflies.

Plants versus Animals Sorting Activity

I am so thankful for The Helpful Garden for providing us this printable (saved me a lot of time!).  Of all the plant and animal activities that we have done in the past, I have forgotten this one basic activity for Montessori botany and zoology: identifying plant and animals. 

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. 

.

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!

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 .

FREE Number Symbols for Counting and Number Recognition

Vito is in a sensitive period of numbers and counting. With this, I made him these number symbol cards inspired by my previous activities with Mavi.  Obviously, I couldn’t find our old printables, so I made a new set and I decided to share it with you as FREE DOWNLOAD!

Montessori Math Counting Beyond Ten: The Teens

Vito loves counting.  He may not know yet how to count from 1 to 100 but he knows how to integrate math and numbers in daily life.  He mastered his 1:1 correspondence early on and now he’s learning how to count beyond ten.  I was surprised the first time I heard him counting from 11 and up.  I didn’t introduced that to him yet but he already knows.  It’s like self taught, but I was thinking that he might have learned it from his brother.  And because he might be in a sensitive period on number now, I decided to give him a few exercises to recognize and name numbers from 11 to 20, and understanding what those numbers represent in quantity.

Montessori Inspired Bird Unit Activities for Preschoolers

The inspiration behind this unit activity is because we’ve been seeing a lot of birds now and that Vito loves chicken. In my IG account, I shared how much he adored the chickens in the park and can’t stop talking about them.  So I've put up these activity trays for him to work on while he’s still interested in birds.  We started with some of these already and so far he’s having fun!

Beginning Letter Phonics Cards

Hello everyone! I wanted to share with you Vito’s current favourite printable, our Beginning Letter Phonics Cards.  You might have seen these in some of my letter-themed post.  These are card strips which contain letters and their corresponding objects (real images matching the  beginning letter sound).  The product comes in two sets: control cards and the activity cards.  Below is a glimpse of how we use the materials, which Vito would work on every day (sensitive period for letters)!

Introducing the Solar System to Preschoolers

In line with our Days of Creation activities, the boys and I talked about how the universe came to be.  Mavi used his Usborne Fact Cards once again to review some solar system concepts and this made Vito get into the mood of exploring the planets as well.