My Favourite Penguin Learning Materials

I’m gathering a few learning materials on penguins for our Penguin Unit and I came across some interesting materials. We own some of these already and I already added the rest on my wishlist.   So I’m sharing this here just in case you are looking for ideas as well.

Learning about the Weather for Preschoolers

Drastic changes in weather can be experience around January when you are in Ireland.  Thus, I decided to introduce the concept of weather to Vito around this time.  I will do this in the simplest form I can think of and that’s by using a weather chart. 

DIY Montessori Smelling Bottles

I kept so many spices in our kitchen that I decided to make smelling bottles for the boys.  I can’t believe that it is so easy to make!  Read through the blog and learn where you can purchase the Montessori smelling bottles and materials for the DIY.

Montessori January Activities for Preschoolers

Happy New Year to all!

Vito is 38 months.

Starting 2017 by sharing what’s on our shelves for the month of January!  For this month, we will be working on penguins (preschool style), along with other Montessori traditional work.  I’ve been wanting to introduce penguins since December but we were so busy with all the holiday preparations that I decided to postpone it a little bit and introduce it at the time when “all is calm and all is bright” (more sun in January!).  Feel free to skim through Vito’s activities and you can leave comments if you have queries.


I post photos in my Instagram everyday for the activities. You can check them or follow me to see how these materials are put into action!

Telling Time Activities

Mavi wanted to practice more of reading the time, especially when it comes to reading and writing “quarter to” and “half past”.  He seems to be confused with the positioning of the small hand.  So with this, I made a few activities for him to work afterschool.  I am sharing these activities as well as the printables were are using (yes it’s free!).

 

Montessori Inspired Continent Activities for Preschoolers

Can’t believe that in a few days, it’ll be Christmas time!  Our days are now filled with random activities which I’d like to share after the holidays.  School break for Mavi will start this Friday and we’ll be able to finally start our holidays!

Anyway, in today’s post I’m sharing how I introduced the continents to Vito.

We Love BrainBox World!

We are loving this educational board game!  I chanced upon this in a local bookstore, and hesitated to get one though I know Mavi will love it as he enjoys geography activities.  Then one day, while I was looking for Christmas presents in Amazon, some BrainBox sets were on 50% off including this World edition.  I purchased it right away and anticipated for days so Mavi and I can play the game as I was sick and couldn’t do any physical activities.

Learn to Write Letters for Preschoolers Using Sandpaper Letters

Vito is 36 months old.

Our sandpaper letter set has finally arrived (yehey before Christmas!) and it’s been a favorite ever since!  If you follow me on Instagram, I recently showed a picture of Vito working with Schleich animals and sandpaper letters.  But that’s just one activity we can do with the letters.  The main use of this material is for Vito to use it as a tool in learning how to write alphabet letters.

Advent Books for Christmas Countdown

Now that the boys are older, I’m starting a new Christmas tradition (other than having  a Christmas tree) that will have a meaningful effect in our little family.  Aside from the festivity and receiving presents, I want the boys to feel the love of the family, drawing us closer to each other, to other people and to God.  I want them to remember that Christmas is all about giving, not receiving things for themselves.

We’ll open and read one advent book each day (but for sure we’ll be reading them all throughout the month!).  It’s similar to the Advent calendar but instead of having toys, we’ll read a really good book about Christmas.  I wrapped the books already, and randomly select a few to display under the tree for Vito open.  (Mavi said Vito can open all of these everyday)

 

FREE Vegetable Hunt Activity Sheet

A simple hands-on activity for my 8 years old.  I made this scavenger hunt inspired sheet for Mavi to explore and discover vegetables in the market. I am not familiar to some of these as we have a different set of vegetables in Asia.  So this is a learning experience for both Mavi and I.  We are using this sheet to familiarize ourselves of the vegetables that grows here in the northern hemisphere and the names that they are called (we call it eggplant, but here they call it aubergine).

8 Christmas Tray Activities for Kids

We are currently sick (Vito and I), but the good news is Vito is on his way to recovery (antibiotics) while I’m still suffering from cough and flu.  Though I don’t have any fever but I don’t feel like doing anything at all, just wanted to lie down, sleep or just relaxing my mind from anything. For me to be able to rest and recover, I decided to come up with Christmas tray activities for Vito to work independently with minimal supervision. 

Montessori Inspired Vegetable Activities for Kids (Part 1)

We are all currently sick (since the weekend), we are battling cough and flu.  We spend our days resting, basically just sitting around doing random things like reading books, playing with toys or watch the kids’ favourite TV shows.  Because I was able to do some groceries last weekend, I decided to whip a vegetable activities for the boys yesterday using the ones I bought from the store.  My aim for these activities is to introduce healthy foods to the kids for fast recovery (from our sickness) and healthy diet.   The cards are from my shop and both of my kids love it!

Montessori Botany Learning Materials

Last month, both of my sons fell ill and were bedridden for almost a week. During that time, I had plenty of free time during the day, but was busy taking care of Vito at night. To make the most of my available free time, I decided to enhance the Montessori botany cards and booklets that Vito will be utilizing this spring. I personally handcrafted some of these materials, and I'm proud of the results. If you're interested, feel free to come take a look!

Learning About Fruits and Vegetables for Preschoolers

Vito is 36 months old.

These fruits and vegetables cards were taken out of the storage box and has been used ever since.  It’s been used for naming and identifying fruits and vegetables and also served as matching cards.

FREE Fruits and Vegetables Ten Frames

We’re going to have Fruits and Vegetables Unit in the coming days and I made these beautiful ten frame cards/sheets that I’d like to share to all my beloved readers!  I used images of fruits and vegetables that Vito can identify so he’ll be more inspired to count.

November Activities for Preschoolers

Last week, Vito refused to do any of our language activities, so we worked mostly on practical life, counting, sorting and storytelling. He also started walking to Mavi’s school (no buggy!) despite that it’s a 30 to 45 minutes walk round trip.  This lessens our time for “preschool” in the morning since we have to leave early.

Wooden Counting Pyramid Puzzle from Beleduc

I guess by now you know that I am a HUGE fan of Beleduc, a toy company in Germany that produces beautiful educational materials for kids.  The boys love our Beleduc puzzles and we always use them.  You’ve seen us using our Body Puzzle and Pumpkin Life Cycle in the blog lately. And look what I discovered recently… it’s a wooden puzzle pyramid used for counting!

FREE Beginning Sound BINGO Sheets

Available now for download!  You can enjoy these sheets as much as we do.

Language Lessons for Preschoolers: RAMFBITG

Vito is 36 months old.

Vito is currently working hard learning his letters, sounds, and expanding his vocabulary. Due to weather constraint we are mostly stuck at home, therefore the lack of outdoor nature studies. So our mornings are mostly spent for his “homeschool”.  We are busy reading books, learning letters, doing writing, and practical life activities.

In this post, I would like to share Vito’s language lessons which you can try in your homes as well.  Remember my post on booklets?  I mentioned in the post that at home we’re learning letters and their sounds in groups (color coded).  First group is RAMF-BITG, second is CUSN-POLH and lastly DEXQY-WXZKVJ.  This idea came from My Montessori Journey, one of my favourite blogs dated back in 2010.  Read more about this grouping here.

Introducing the North American History

Based on my experience, the best way to teach kids about history is through famous landmarks.  I remember growing up with my father’s stories of Greece, Spain, Egypt and South America.  He has photos taken at the Great Pyramids of Giza, Sphinx, in Acropolis, Christ the Redeemer in Rio and more.  He’s telling me a bit about history through the landmarks in his photos, which fascinated me.  Since then, I’ve been very interested in travelling and learning about world history. I wanted to inspire Mavi in the same way.  I always start my history lessons with the famous landmarks using our travel photos and the Safari Toobs (Around the World, World Landmarks).  Recently, I purchased the Safari Supertoob USA (on sale) because Mavi wanted to know more about the US (inspired by our trip there last May).

So in this post, I’m sharing how we worked on understanding the history of North America through famous landmarks, figures and playsets that depict the life of the early people of North America.

Early Literacy with Beginning Letter Sound BINGO Game

Vito is 36 months old.

Hello everyone! It’s been awhile!  We’re having minor fixes at home thus, the lack of updates and posts.  But I am so happy to say, that Vito is FINALLY interested with letters! He’s currently showing eagerness in learning how to write and read letters.  You can check our updates and photos in my Instagram account.  So expect A LOT of letter/phonics/reading activities in the coming days… and months from us!

To start with, we played a BINGO game early this week and I was so happy that Vito loved and enjoyed it!

Highly Recommended Montessori Materials

Another feature for 12 Months of Montessori series! For November, I’m sharing our favorite Montessori materials that my kids love and have been using for years.  So to those who are asking me on what Montessori materials to invest in, here are my recommendations:

Teaching the Phases of the Moon to Gradeschoolers

Probably by now, you must have read my post on the Phases of the Moon for preschoolers.  If not, I highly recommend that you do for it will give you ideas on how to introduce the moon’s phases to kids from ages 2.5 years and older.

We’ve been discussing this topic almost every year, and for this year, I wanted to give Mavi something different. So here are the materials I prepared for him:  wall chart of the moon’s phases, a booklet for definition and nomenclature cards. 

Our Leaf Shapes Study

It’s Mavi’s midterm break this week, and I decided to have activities that both boys can do together.  First in mind is a leaf study since we are surrounded by beautiful and colorful leaves.  They are just too gorgeous when they change colors, and I don’t want to miss that opportunity!  We also used our Montessori Inspired Leaf Shapes printable for this activity, which you can buy from my shop.

The Owl and Other Nocturnal Creatures

With all these Halloween decorations, Vito became fascinated with owls. We’ve been reading The Owl and Owl Babies for days now, and he loves looking at the pictures matching his animal figure. He would also pretend to to have big eyes and pretend flying around the house and say “Im owl Mommy”.    So I whipped a few activities to help him explore this beautiful creature together with some night-time animals.

Learning About the Phases of the Moon for Preschoolers

The boys had a blast learning about the phases of the moon last week.  We worked on this during our Goodnight Moon Unit and even though this was mainly for Vito, I decided to include Mavi as well.  With this, I prepared two sets of learning materials:  one for a preschooler and the other is for older kids (elementary).  This post is on how you can introduce the moon and its phases to kids from 3years and older.

Before FIAR: Goodnight Moon Unit

My boys love Goodnight Moon (Amazon US) (Book Depository) and we have read it numerous times already. You can see our previous activity of the book from here, Goodnight Moon Storytelling Basket.  Now that Vito is a lot older, I assembled these activity trays for him to work on as a book extension.  I don’t have a guide for Before FIAR, so all of these activities are either sourced from the internet or invented by yours truly.

 

Note:   All of the printables here are homemade and you can find them in my shop:

• Goodnight Moon & Bedtime Themed Math Activities Learning Pack
• Goodnight Moon & Bedtime Themed Early Literacy Learning Pack
• Goodnight Moon & Bedtime Themed Bundled Learning Pack

Montessori Coloured Beads: How We Use It At Home

It’s starting to get chilly in our side of the world and though we prefer walking in the fields and in the forest during this beautiful season, the weather doesn’t seem to be in line with my plans.  So last week, I introduced Vito to the Montessori colored beads which I have for 3 years now.  But the thing about siblings, they just wanted to do what the other is doing.  Mavi insisted that I should give him some work with the beads as well, not just Vito.  In this post, I’m sharing how I made the boys work independently, but still supervising them as they work.

Writing Practise for Preschoolers

Vito had a sudden interest on tracing and writing letters last week.  I didn’t see it coming.  He knows all his letter sounds, but is not ecstatic over letter (phonics) activities like sorting objects according to beginning letters. So I’m shelving those activities at the moment.  Right now, he just wanted to trace and attempt (or pretend) to write letters.

Introducing Montessori Hundred Board for Preschoolers

I know that Montessori math should be introduced later on (language/reading should come first) but with Vito I just couldn’t resist introducing him to some traditional Montessori math materials as early as 35 months old!  You see, currently he just wanted to count.  Whenever we read books, he wanted to count the images first before allowing me to start reading.  If I ask him to make letter sounds, he would say “no, let’s count first” referring to counting the letters in a word rather than reading it.  We’ve done a lot of counting,  but he seems pretty bored lately.

So the other day, I was tidying up my storage shelf and Vito saw our Hundred Board.  He immediately took it out and excitedly said “Oh numbers! Let’s count!” and that’s what we basically did for the past few days. 

Preschool Letter B

A long overdue post of our letter B activities.  Vito is currently sick so I barely have  time to post.  We are not doing any “homeschool” activities except for reading books and play with his farm set.  Below are some ideas for learning letter B sound and prewriting activities. 

Life Cycle of a Pumpkin (Preschool Edition)

We are seeing a lot of pumpkins and though we may not be able to visit a pumpkin patch, we brought home a couple of pumpkins for exploration. I would like to share this very beautiful layered puzzle that I purchased in Amazon.  It’s the Life Cycle of a Pumpkin, beautifully crafted and illustrated.  There’s a guide for each layer on the left side so the child will know what comes next.

Activities for Toddlers (12-18 Months)

I’m often asked by my readers and fellow Moms for the activities suitable for certain ages.  So I decided to sum up Vito’s favourite activities since 12 months old.  First in the series, I’m sharing activities that Vito enjoyed when he was between 12-18 months old.   (Always supervise your child in each of these activities)

Basic Montessori Math Materials for Introducing Numbers

IT’s the 12 Month of Montessori Series for October and I would like to share the top 4 Montessori Math materials in teaching numbers to preschoolers.  I love sharing math activities because I love math, and Mavi is now appreciating mathematics because he can see its application to real life. 

I am absolutely a believer of the Montessori approach in mathematics, especially to younger kids as it provides a strong foundation in understanding numbers and quantity.  The use of tactile materials make it even more engaging to young children. And the best part of this, you can absolutely make a “poor man’s version” of the materials.

Without further ado, I’d like to introduce to you some of the Montessori materials that introduces the units of quantity from 0 to 10.

Halloween Preschool Unit

I’d like to share Vito’s top picks of activities for October.  These are the trays that he would select more often for “play”.    Links to the materials are provided, and feel free to ask questions as well.

Playdough Monster Faces

I managed to create a pitch black playdough and the boys had so much fun making “scary” monster faces with it!