DIY Letter Puzzle

Here’s how I made our alphabet puzzle when we’re still in Serbia.  Using Melissa and Doug Magnetic Letters, I traced the pieces into a cardstock using a Sharpie.

And there you have it! An instant, so easy to prepare letter puzzle! Mavi looooves it to pieces! He plays with it every single day.

I believe you can do this to any other magnetic letters.  So go ahead make your own!

Montessori Inspired Clock and Time Activities (with FREE Cards)

A few weeks ago, Mavi brought home some homework about clocks and time reading. I knew then that we should at least have a brief discussion about the clock and telling time as it has been years since we had a clock activity.

Reading and Writing Time

Using my latest clock nomenclature cards and workbooks, we reviewed how to read and write the time, compared the difference between analogue and digital clocks and the relevance of time in our lives.


Clock Nomenclature Cards with Borders are from here. You can get the learning clock from here.

We then moved on to our workbooks for more practice on writing time. Have I mentioned before that Mavi enjoys using workbooks? Oh yes he does!

Learning AM and PM

In addition, I asked him to make a record of his daily routine. Like, what time does he wakes up, eat breakfast, lunch and dinner… till he sleeps. He’s very excited about this! I can’t wait to see that routine record and share it with you.

Other Clock and Time Activities

Click this link for your FREE Simple Hour Clock cards.

FREE Insect Habitats Learning Material

Here are some of the learning materials that we used in our activity, Complete Guide to Insect Study for Grade-Schoolers.  You can now download a free copy of the file, I’m sharing it for everyone to enjoy.

Star Unit Activities and {Learn & Play Link UP}

Welcome to another series of Letter Sound of the Week!  Today, I’m going to share our ‘star’ themed activities for learning the letter s sound. Vito really really like seeing stars around the house, and it’s the first shape that he can identify.  So while he’s at it, we jumped from letter c to learning letter s!

Letter Sound Basket. None this week. All we ever did was look at stars!

Painting the letter S.  We are exploring different mediums in painting and currently, the boys love the roller paint brushes I got for them last month.  So here is Vito painting the letter with a roller brush which he loves to use.  As we do the stroke, I would emphasize the word “up” and “down”.   I would exaggerate the hand stroke a little bit to demonstrate what does up and down means. And yes, this is also an activity for colour recognition: yellow.

Playdough & Star Cookie Cutter.  Playdough is a great activity for fine motor skills.  Vito is enjoying playdough so far.  He likes squeezing and grasping the dough already.  We used our star cookie cutter for this.   
                                           

Counting & Gluing.  An activity that’s like hitting two birds with one stone.  Practise gluing and counting at the same time.  What I did here was punch the star shapes and made Vito apply glue on the paper.  Then we place the stars according to their number.  We then count the stars over and over.  These days, Vito loves to count than reciting the letters LOL. He’s like, 2, 2, ,2!

An activity that’s like hitting two birds with one stone.  Practise gluing and counting at the same time.  What I did here was punch the star shapes and made Vito apply glue on the paper.  Then we place the stars according to their number                  
                  

Colour Matching.  This is a DIY.  I printed stars in coloured cardstock papers, laminate then glue them on the popsicle sticks. The bead cubes were from Melissa & Doug Lacing Beads. We matched the stars to the cube by placing them into the hole.   I showed Vito how to do it first and then he mimicked my actions.  The matching of colours is still a hit or miss, so I’m guessing he couldn’t recognize them yet.
  

Big and Small.  A random activity while playing the cookie cutter.  I was showed Vito the big star and small star.  He wasn't interested at all with this.

Now, for this week's feature!  Here are my favourites this week, something that we would like to try this summer!
FREE Summer Songs and Rhymes for Circle Time by Living Montessori Now
Parts of a Fruit Lesson with Printables by The Natural Homeschool
Shark Unit Study by Gypsy Road
Accordion Critters by Little Fingers Big Art

Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

Now it’s time for this week’s link party! This is a BRAND new link up for all blog posts that include learn and play activities and hands-on education for kids. We are excited to read your blog posts and to see what you have to share! Please link up below and grab our button to display on your blog.

If you are a blogger, share your family friendly posts here. We are looking for things which include:

• Montessori Education
• Homeschool
• Sensory Play
• Tot and Preschool Trays
• Fine and Gross Motor Activities
• Kids in the Kitchen
• Healthy Recipes for Kids
• Arts and Crafts
• Natural Living
• Free Educational Printables
• Family-Oriented Activities
• Healthy Living

Your post will be featured on each of our blogs where we will pick our favourite posts every other week. That means there is more of a chance that you will be featured!

Everyone, please meet our link party hosts:

Christian Montessori Blog ~ Please visit our CMN FB group ~ Pinterest

Vanessa from Mama’s Happy Hive~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jennifer from Study at Home Mama~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Marie from Child Led Life~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jae from Pinay Homeschooler~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Heather from Golden Reflections Blog~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Renae from Every Star is Different~FB~Pinterest

GUIDELINES FOR LINKING

• Please link up 1-3 posts
• Follow each of the hosts on social media
• When you link up, please add our button and place it at the bottom of your shared posts or link back with text link.
• By entering a link, you’re giving us permission to feature an image on our blogs. Proper credit & links will ALWAYS be given.
• Please visit a couple of shared posts and leave a comment for them
• Remember that you must link back in order to be featured

Grab This Button:

<div align="center"><a href="http://christianmontessorinetwork.com/category/learn-and-play" title="Christian Montessori Network"><img src="http://www.christianmontessorinetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/learn-and-play-link-up-150-150.png" alt="Christian Montessori Network" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Please Follow
Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Pinay Homeschooler on Pinterest.

An InLinkz Link-up