Animal Characteristics (Vertebrates) Learning Pack

Introducing our Animal Characteristics (Vertebrate) Pack with tons of activity sets that will suite your young students' needs.  This learning material is more than just sorting or matching activities.  What we have in this learning pack are realistic illustrations of each characteristics for better retention of concepts and tons of hands-on learning opportunities for young students to work on.  This Montessori Vertebrate Characteristics learning pack was basically designed for children ages 5 years and older.

With this learning material, your students will be able to learn the characteristics of amphibians, mammals, reptiles, fish, and birds through visual representation and hands-on activities.  There are 8 characteristics provided for each animal for you to explore.

Montessori Inspired Blue Series - Learning about Consonant Blends

With Vito reading CVC words and sight words, we are now moving to the Blue Series.  The Blue Series is a Montessori approach in learning consonant blends and digraphs.  I made an entire set of blue series materials for Vito to use in the course of his learning.  We will work on these materials  and move on to the next set as he progresses.  In this post, I will give you an overview of the materials and how we are going to use them.

It is important to note that the blue series (blends and digraphs) comes after the pink series.  Once the child is familiar with letter sounds and can basically read CVC words (pink series) then he/she can move on to the blue series.

Introducing Life Cycles to Younger Kids

In our home, springtime brings a renewed focus on the topic of life cycles. As a parent, I am often asked how to introduce the concept of metamorphosis, larva, pupa and more to young children who may not be able to visualize these processes. It is a fascinating subject that is easy to understand. I begin by telling engaging stories that help children understand that just like humans, baby animals come from their mothers and fathers. Some animals start their life as eggs and then undergo a gradual transformation that ultimately leads to adulthood. 

To help explain these concepts more effectively, we use a variety of learning materials that bring these life cycles to life for children. As we follow the "Montessori" philosophy in our homeschool, we prefer to use hands-on learning experiences that allow children to explore and learn in a natural way. Whether it's using specialized learning materials or observing real-life examples in nature, we strive to make learning about life cycles as engaging and interactive as possible.

St. Patrick's Day Preschool Mini Unit

I'm so excited to share our St. Patrick's Day Mini Unit!!!  I am delighted to hear that you are enjoying all of our Mini Unit series and Full Preschool Centers! We have been developing these activities for years, ever since my eldest child was in preschool. However, I did not share the printables in the shop back then. Now, I am thrilled to be able to share them with you so that you can enjoy the benefits of these resources too.

I am pleased to present our St. Patrick's Day Mini Unit, packed with enjoyable and stimulating activities for preschoolers, pre-k, and kindergarten children. This package includes various activities to help your child practice fine motor skills, alphabet tracing, hands-on math, and more! If you want more St. Patrick's Day-themed materials, please visit our website by clicking here.

Learning About Sharks for Kids

Vito has been really interested in sharks lately.  We had some Shark Unit Study (Montessori Inspired Shark Study for Kids) years ago together with my eldest, but Vito was so young then that all he could ever do was do some simple matching activity with our Safari Toob Sharks.  Now that he's a bit older, I prepared some simple activities for him to learn more about sharks, what's their difference with whales, and how similar are they to humans.

Asia Continent Study for Kids

We love to travel and going to places, thus geography is very important in our homeschool and I make sure that we do continent and country studies yearly.  Now, this is not the first time I introduced Vito to Asia.  We've worked with a lot of continent activities before and because he is much older now and able to understand and grasp concepts, I reintroduced Asia once again.  Below are some of the works we had for the past 2 weeks we spent on learning about Asia.  It took us 2 weeks to finish because he got sick within the time frame so we paused in between.

Here are some of the activities that we included in this year's Asia Study:

Valentine's Day Letter and Number Cards

What I like about homeschooling is being able to make themed materials for my kids that will go along with certain seasons or holidays.  Because Valentine's Day is just around the corner, I made these beautiful and cute teddy and heart letter and number cards perfect for home and school settings.  We use these types of learning cards in so many ways, and I have listed a few of those activities below for your reference.  Enjoy!

Beginning Letter Sound Picture Mats

Here's a fun activity that Vito and I would do to practice identifying objects and their beginning letter sounds.  I usually integrate this in our letter of the week activities or just play it on its own.

Using the Four Seasons Addition Clipcards

Enjoy the fun in learning addition with this winter-themed addition clipcards.  Vito is currently obsessed with adding numbers so I made these seasons addition clipcards  for him to work with to help enrich his skills in addition.  These are so easy to prepare and use.  Below are the recommended manipulatives that you can use with the cards for a hands-on approach in learning addition.

Christmas Preschool and Kindergarten Learning Materials

Christmas is just around the corner, and I am so excited to share what’s within our preschool unit in this happiest and most colorful time of the year!  These activities are perfect for home and school settings.  They are designed for preschoolers and kindergartens specifically for kids ages 3 to 6 years old.

Fun Thermometer Reading in Space

Vito loved our penguin thermometer reading activity , and because of this, I have to include something similar in our Outerspace Preschool Mini Unit.  This is great for learning how to recognize “tens” and how to read a thermometer.

Seasonal Pattern Blocks Mats (with FREE Download)

I am so excited to share the latest craze in our house lately, the pattern block mats!  I made these printable materials because my boys are totally obsessed with making “pictures” and objects using our pattern blocks (bought from Amazon).  We own this and the magnetic version since Vito was a baby but the boys’ needs keep growing and I decided to provide them with picture mats so they can create not just plain pattern block objects but objects that integrate in beautiful backgrounds for a more imaginative play.  The best thing about this printable is that we can print and reuse them over and over again!

Halloween Themed Monster Letter and Number Cards

Happy first day of October!!! I can already smell Halloween in the air! The boys got their costumes yesterday and are so excited for Halloween! Speaking of which, I'm pleased to introduce our Monster Lab Letter and Number Cards. These will be perfect for your Halloween-themed activities for October. 

Halloween Themed Counting Activities

Are you getting into the Halloween spirit already?  I have fun counting activities for your kids this Halloween season if you are celebrating!

Fall Autumn Preschool and Kindergarten Learning Materials

I am so excited to present our beautiful Fall Autumn Preschool Unit Pack (also for kindergarten).  I carefully designed this one big bundle so my child and yours will have the best experience in learning about this colourful autumn season.  Like all of our MEGA PACKS, this unit contains 30 hands-on learning activities your kids will truly enjoy.  Below are some of the activities that we have started working on already.  Some of the materials included in this pack are old activities from last year, which I haven't shared and published, and Vito still loves doing them!

Preschool Unit Ocean Learning Pack

Summer is finally here, and look what I have for you! 30 OCEAN THEME ACTIVITIES for your PRESCHOOLERS are all about sea life and the ocean! This learning pack is a collection of activities we worked on for years at home with my two boys and has everything you need for weeks or month-long learning. These are engaging, educational, and, most importantly, fun! Most activities encourage the parent/teacher to use manipulatives, promoting hands-on and play-based learning. These activities are designed for 3-4 years old (preschoolers or kindergarten), and they aim to immerse the child in the concepts rather than force them to memorize them.

[FREE Printable] Feed the Snake Number Representation Activity

I finally had the time to put this up and share it with you.  It’s a number representation game we played weeks ago while working on our letter S and it’s about feeding the snake. Vito loves this activity and enjoyed the idea of feeding the snake with the matching count or number representation.

Go Find It: A Montessori Friendly Summer Game

If you are looking for ways to entertain your kids during the summer days (longer days), here’s one of the games that we love to play after dinner.  Yes after dinner!  My kids are finding it hard to sleep nowadays  because our sunset is literally around 9-9:30PM.  So for this 12 Months of Montessori Series, I am sharing Go Find It, a FUNtastic outdoor game for kids of all ages!

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.

FREE Beginning Letter Sound Posters and Cards (SAMPLER)

We are starting a new approach to our literacy activities.  To have some variety in our literacy activities I decided to pause our usual pink series (Beginning Letter Sound Activity Sheets) and move to Jolly Phonics.  Jolly Phonics is a curriculum used here in Ireland (and UK).  My eldest loved it, especially the action sounds that went along with the letters.