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.