Hands-on Learning of Geometric Shapes

Vito is currently in the mood for learning geometric shapes.  I guess he was inspired by his older brother who is currently studying basic geometry at home. Vito has passed the stage of basic shapes, the ones you see in children’s puzzles and the like.  He’s been playing with those since he was a toddler, so I decided to introduce him to geometric shapes in the Montessori classroom.  It would have been nice if we own the Geometric Cabinet, but because we can’t afford one and we don’t have space for it, these insets which are basically materials for writing is a good alternative (best to none).  Note that these are not the traditional metal insets, we are using the plastic version.

Snake Game: Search for the Perfect 10

The Snake Game is one of the most popular math games in a Montessori classroom.  I introduced this to Mavi when he was 5 years ago, contrary to Vito who is just 46 months now.  Vito’s sensitive  years for counting arrived early while for Mavi it was alphabets and reading.  How fascinating, isn’t it?

FREE Letter L Dot and Tracing Activity Sheets

The leaves are beginning to fall! We’re seeing a lot in our area so yesterday, we collected a few and brought it home. Vito immediately took our letter L dot sheets to go along with his new discoveries: fallen leaves!

Preschool Learning Letter A Activities

We’ve started letter activities again because of the renewed interest of Vito with our language materials.  Let me just share with you some of these activities in case you needed ideas on how to start a letter of unit activity with your kids.

Montessori Inspired Autumn Themed Learning Activities

I finally organized our shelf and added autumn-themed activity trays to go along with the change in season.  Vito has been learning a lot from the outdoors, discovering new things (nature finds) and has been observing the changes in his surroundings.  Now to extend this learning, I prepared these activity trays.  How it works?  These are prepared and placed in the shelf (except for the paints).  At times, Vito would randomly select an activity and there are times I would place the activity tray on the table and invite him to play (or work) with me.  If he’s not interested on the said activity, I let him return it back to the shelf and make him select a new one.  This is how I check what’s miss and hit of the learning trays. 

Note that this is a MONTH LONG of activities!

FREE Letter A Dot and Tracing Activity Sheets

Last spring Vito and I started to work on letters and letter sounds again (Beginning Letter Phonics Cards and Beginning Reading: Language Objects and Activities).  Because he enjoyed working on these Letter B activity sheets, he always asked for “more” sheets to work on and always repeating “buh for bird” and other b objects.  This led me to create more sheets! And because it’s apple season, I gave him “Aa” and it was perfect!  He worked on all three sheets!  More of this letter A activities but for now, I’m sharing our FREE letter A sheets.

Anatomy of a Frog 3D Model

We love our shark anatomy model (read about it here, Montessori Inspired Shark Study for Kids) so I couldn’t resist getting the frog dissection 3D model for another exploration.  I introduced this educational material when were doing our Frog Unit a few weeks ago.  This anatomy model was intended for my oldest son, but Vito enjoyed learning about it too!

Fall Counting Activities Using Nature’s Objects (FREE Printable)

It’s our favourite time of the year and we are spending more time outdoors observing the change in season and gathering objects from mother nature!   In my Instagram, I’ve been posting pictures of the boys gathering chestnuts, conkers, pine cones and acorn outdoors and bringing them home.  If you’ve been following my blog, we call them “nature finds” and at home, the boys would play with them, mostly exploring the objects (texture, smell and color) and of course, counting how many items they collected.

B4FIAR: Jesse Bear What Will You Wear

We are continuing our Five in a Row because Vito is loving some of the stories in the book list.  In this post, I’m sharing activities to go along with the Jesse Bear What Will You Wear by Nancy White Carlstrom.  Note, I only make or prepare activities in line with the books that he loves.  So when I read Jesse Bear to him, he immediately love it because he can relate to the story.  He has routines too similar to Jesse Bear (playing, eating and waiting for Daddy) and staying with his Mom all day. 


Anyway here are the activities we worked on to explore the subject areas of Jesse Bear What Will You Wear.  Note, this was a 2-week long of rowing.  The activities here were mostly done in the morning and we only worked on one activity a day, and the rest we spend it outdoors or Vito would do something else (like work on his traditional Montessori materials).

Learning Addition Using Montessori Stamp Game

The Montessori Stamp Game is one of our favourite math materials at home.  This learning material can be used in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  And for us, this is how Mavi learned how to understand the concept of regrouping (dynamic addition).  He enjoyed this material more than any other methods of learning addition and subtraction.

FREE Letter B for Bear Mazes

Vito is currently in a sensitive period with mazes.  The first time I noticed this was when we were eating in a restaurant and he was all of a sudden glued on the kids’ activity page given to him which contains lots of mazes.  And much to my surprise, he successfully solved most of it!  This went for weeks, whenever we are in restaurants.  So what to do when your child acts like this?  Of course, print lots and lots of mazes at home, give them pens and markers, and have them work the mazes out!  You can see a series of this post in my Instagram, accounting his fascination with mazes.  (Vito likes mazes while Mavi is into crossword puzzles LOL)

Safari Ltd Mammal Skulls Discovery Play

The boys love these mammal skulls which Safari Ltd has sent us!  They specifically love to bury these in the kinetic sand and play scavenger hunt or play-pretend to be scientists.  This is one of the afterschool activities the boys enjoy playing together and working independently.

Learning the Life Cycle of a Frog for Kids

We've been learning about frogs for the past weeks, and finally, we get to use our Life Cycle Frog layered puzzle from Beleduc.  This beautiful piece of layered puzzle shows all the development stages of a frog's life in tiers. If you are trying to incorporate hands-on materials in teaching the life cycle of these types of animals, read on to learn more about our activity.

Montessori Inspired Frog Activity Trays for Preschoolers

In my Instagram, I shared that we've been observing frogs (tadpoles) in the park for weeks. This has fascinated the boys, most especially Vito. To extend this learning experience, I prepared activity trays (again, a favorite!) tailored for him to explore this new discovery.

Learning Multiplication Using Montessori Colored Bead Bars

My previous post on Multiplication using the Montessori Multiplication Bead Board has been very popular, and I’m so happy that many people find it useful. In this post, I’m sharing that using Bead Board is just one of the many ways of teaching Multiplication in a Montessori classroom. Another favorite of ours is the use of colored bead bars. This is usually introduced after the Multiplication Bead Board or the Charts (though I will share about the Multiplication Charts soon!). We’ve worked with several multiplication activities using the bead bars, but I will highlight the basic presentation in this post.   Again please note that this is based on a home setup.

How I Organize Our Montessori Inspired Learning Space at Home

We are back from our vacation, and after settling, the boys and I decided to clean up and organize our shelves for homeschooling 2017-2018. Now, we have a tiny space, just one for our homeschool, and nothing fancy. I ensure that our learning space is clean, well-ventilated, well-lighted, and conducive to learning. To those who want to know more about how I organize our materials in this small space, allow me to give you a walkthrough!

First Great Lesson (4): Study of Elements and the Periodic Table

The kids and I worked on the periodic table a few weeks before our vacation. We did this years ago, and Mavi was excited to work on this activity again. This is a continuation of our Great Lessons, and if you are new to this post, you can revisit the first and second parts of the activities here:  (1) Experiments on the Laws of the Universe and (2) The Volcano.

What You Need to Know About the Early Childhood Montessori Math Materials

I adore Montessori math materials and how it enables the child to experience the true meaning of quantity and numbers.  Montessori math is not just about memorization, counting and abstraction, its main goal is to build a relationship between the child and the materials, learning with ease and enjoying the work through engaging activities.  I own most of the Montessori math early childhood, and starting to collect the elementary for my oldest child.  They’re quite pricey, but worth it. On how to use these materials, I have albums from The Montessori Parent, Cultivating Dharma and Garden of Francis, and I also administer other extension activities that I could think of (I love doing this!).

Hands-on Learning of Equivalent Fractions

I enjoyed presenting this activity to Mavi, and he wanted this work even more. We used our Fraction Magnetic Pies and a DIY frame instead of the Montessori fraction insets in this activity. The album that was used here was from The Montessori Parent.

Montessori Weather 3 Part Cards

A few weeks ago, I introduced my son Vito to different weather conditions as we had experienced extreme weather in a single day. I shared on my Instagram post that we even had hail during the early weeks of summer! To teach him about weather, I prepared some materials for him, including Weather Cards from my shop, a Weather book from National Geographic, and The Weather from My First Discovery book. The booklet you see in the photo is from our Weather Cards set. These books are excellent, and we usually read them at night, but sometimes Vito would take them out of the basket and look at the pictures or pretend to read them just like me.

The activity was straightforward the first time we talked about the weather, but Vito learned a lot from it. We are still using the weather chart we created from that activity up to now!

Montessori Inspired Animal Classification Activities

There’s nothing more interesting for my three years old than learning about animals.  Aside from learning about the continents they live in, my boys also love to identify animals according to their names and classifications.  Initially, Vito can only tell the difference between birds and fish, the rest he calls them “animals”.  So I decided to expand this knowledge further by introducing the other three classifications: mammals, reptiles and amphibians.

Learning How to Use the Montessori Teen Boards

Okay, so your little ones can count up to ten, so what’s next?  In this post, I’m going to show you how the Montessori math method, teaches a child the quantity and number symbols of eleven to nineteen.  There’s a BIG difference being able to “count” from one to twenty or a hundred compared to grasping the concept of what these numbers stand for.  This is where the beauty of Montessori math would stand out, it allows the child to experience the use of materials and its purpose, and once confidence is gained the child can work with the material independently. 

To demonstrate this, here’s our journey of learning the “teens”.

Hands-on Learning on Herbs and Spices

I needed to discard some herbs, but before doing so I decided to whip a sensorial activity with the boys to make use of these scented plants.  I already have Herbs and Spices learning materials from years ago, so the preparation was quite easy.  I also added more spices like turmeric, cumin, black peppercorn, garlic, ginger, and cloves.

Learning How to Use the Montessori Binomial Cube

Vito has perfected the Montessori Binomial Cube and I will be introducing him to the Trinomial cube in a few weeks.  Now, I still have a lot of readers and followers who aren’t aware of this beautiful material and has been asking me to give them further information about this material.  So I prepared this post to all who are interested in learning about this beautiful Montessori sensorial material.

My Favorite Montessori Books

I'm sharing the Montessori books I read and has been using at home.  These books will give you a better understanding of the Montessori philosophies and will give you ideas on the activities that you can do with your child at home.

Montessori Inspired Plant and Tree Activity Trays for Preschoolers

A long overdue post on our plant and tree studies early this month.  Last month, I bought Vito an indoor plant to care for.  Through that plant, he learned that it needs water, sunlight and air to survive.  But because it’s been really hot and we were away most the time, it wilted.  We took it out so we can reuse the pot and Vito saw webbed roots and was immediately fascinated by it!  He didn’t know what to call it yet, thus I decided to give him an introduction to the parts of the plant so he’ll know the right word to describe the parts.

The Space and The Solar System Learning Materials

Happy to share our Space and Solar System Learning Pack which is now available in my shop.  These are so beautiful!  I made the cards years ago and Mavi has been frequently using them, especially in finding inspirations in his drawings.

How the Stem Works by Dyeing Flowers

I am so happy to share that we finally get to dye our flowers successfully! Meaning, ALL of the colors were visible unlike before wherein only a few of the colors took effect (red and yellow).    I’ve been wondering on how we can successfully color our flowers, with 100% coverage and we finally did it this time!  By the way, we worked on this activity because I was demonstrating to Vito the function of the stem in a plant. 

FREE TREE Matching Cards Activity

This is a matching and memory game I made for Vito during our Plants and Trees Unit Study.  He absolutely loved this!  I regretted that I didn’t make more, because he kept on asking for more matching games.

Sparkly Planets for your Solar System

We’ve done this before (in 2013) and we made another one again! Creating our planets for our solar system using aluminium foil. Have done this before?  I mentioned the source of this activity in my previous post, read it here.

The Elements of Art: Learning about Lines

It is timely that I get to share how we nurture the artistic side of the kids using Montessori principles.  In this month’s 12 Months More of Montessori Learning, I’m sharing Vito’s current obsession:  drawing!  If you’ve been following me on Instagram, I shared how Vito enjoys making faces of us (Dad, Mom and Mavi).  He just uses lines and dots, a little bit of shading to convey the emotions and faces of his family.  So Mavi suggested if we could teach him how to make different kinds of lines, just like we did before.

FREE Insect Counting Mats

Due to a lot of requests from our readers, I’m sharing our FREE Insect Jars Counting Mats which we used in our Indoor Garden Play Bug Counting Activity.

Top 30 Learning Activities for 3 to 3.5 Years Old

I created a list of  Vito’s favourite activities starting from 36 months to 3.5 years of age.  I know we’ve had a lot more than 30 but these are his favourite and my top picks as well.  I chose these activities over the rest because he mostly asked for these activities to work on more frequently than others.  He’s more engaged, he learned a lot of vocabulary words and these were the activities where he spent a lot of his time exploring.  So I hope this list will inspire you and give you ideas for things to do with your child around this age.

** Note: Always supervise your child, especially if he/she is handling sharp tools and small objects.

The Safari Ltd Ancient Rome

A few weeks ago, Safari Ltd (Safari Toobs) sent us these amazing Ancient Rome Supertoob which is composed of 12 historical figures and a perfect learning tool to go along with our Ancient History Learning Cards. Mavi loves history and he was over the moon when he saw these beautiful figures arrive.  The figures are big, and sturdy.  I specifically love that they included the Aqueduct and Pantheon, landmarks that are not included in their previous landmark toobs.


Anyway, we’ve been busy using these figures for weeks now.  Here are some of the ways we’ve been using them.

First Great Lesson (2) : The Volcano

Continuing our Great Lessons this week with a lesson on Volcanoes.  The only thing that we prepared here was the paper mache volcano we made few weeks ago.  Check out this post, Science Project: How to Make an Erupting Volcano Model, to know more about our DIY erupting volcano model.  Now, to encourage the kids to explore the materials when I’m not around, I displayed our learning materials on top of our shelf.

Science Project: How to Make an Erupting Volcano Model

We made this volcano to go along with our First Great Lesson: The Volcano and this is our first paper mache project at home.  I tell you, I tried to avoid these kinds of activities and projects because they are messy, and requires a lot of work.  But since it’s summer, I decided to try it and much to my surprise I enjoyed making this model more than the boys did.  This project was inspired by a post I read from Red Ted Art.  So read along and learn how we made our model as simple as possible for less work.

Montessori Inspired Life Cycle of a Green Bean Plant

This is a follow-up activity on our Montessori Inspired Parts of a Plant.

After learning about the parts of a plant, Vito and I talked about how plants grow.  We walked around the estate and identified baby plants, some of them were just actually sprouting off the ground and this amazed Vito.  We also read the book How A Seed Grows to go along with our activity, this is a really good book!  The book illustrates the different stages of a plant’s (bean plant) life, from the preparations to planting up to the the part where the grown plant needs to be moved into a ground soil.  We have a few of these Read and Find Out books and Mavi loves to use them as reference.  Anyway, aside from the book, I also used the very beautiful Life Cycle of a Green Bean Plant from Safari Toob and a homemade life cycle cards (this are now available in my shop, Early Childhood Life Cycle Mats).

Montessori Inspired Parts of a Plant

It always excites me to introduce new things to Vito.  Our recent activity is learning about plants, specifically in this post, the parts of a plant.  I love doing plant study with the boys.  I’ve been doing this with Mavi since he was 2 years old, and I love doing it all over again with Vito!  Printed materials used in the activities were all homemade, and some were used during Mavi’s preschool days.   This is Vito’s second year of plant study, and you can read related studies here:

• Introducing plants to toddlers
• Collection of botany lessons for preschoolers
• Bean seed study
• How plants grow

Building Words with the Moveable Alphabet and Objects

Vito is 43 months old.

I am so excited to share that we’ve finally started building words using our moveable alphabet!  I had fun working this with Mavi long time ago and I can’t believe I’m doing this again with Vito.  This is the part of Montessori language arts that I love the most, teaching kids how to read! In my previous post, I talked about how we are using objects and miniatures in learning about letter sounds which is essential in reading. 

First Great Lesson: Experiments on the Laws of the Universe

It’s that time of the year in our home wherein we're doing "The Great Lessons". Maria Montessori’s plan for the framework of elementary education is cosmic education and cosmic education is attained via telling the five great stories and followed by key lessons. These stories are typically told in the beginning of the Montessori school year for lower elementary and repeated ever year. This is our second year of the great lessons and I decided to document it so you can replicate it in your homes as well.

Montessori For Everyone has a beautiful summary of what The "Five Great Lessons" are all about. This post is all about the First Great Lesson: The Beginning, and we'll showcase the experiments to demonstrate the basic laws governing our universe.

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.

MontessoriLove June Bargains

I am so happy to announce that I am joining a group of Montessori sellers on Teachers Pay Teachers in offering special discounts to our beloved readers and followers!  This occurs every 21st of the month (one day only) and every seller participating will have unique products on sale.

The flavor of the month of June are geography materials.  So this June, my Animals of the World Bundle, Flags of the World Booklet and Animal Habitats are discounted at 20% off!

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!