Dinosaur Excavation Activity

I have a spare dinosaur excavation kit which I kept for years, waiting for Vito to be old enough to work on it.  Well, that time finally arrived and I gave it to him so he’ll experience what it’s like to be an archaeologist, even for a day.  Here’s a pretend play of how scientists are able to put up dinosaur bones in the museums!

Life Cycle Activities for Kids

Life cycles have fascinated my kids throughout the years. We often worked on them during springtime, but I would sometimes add them in our animal or plant studies too.  I’m often asked how do I introduce this subject area to my kids and I would always say that it really depends on their age and interest. For the young ones, it’s all about play-based learning and storytelling.  While for older kids, they are drawn towards the details and the science behind them.

To give you an idea, here’s our progressive way of learning the life cycles.

Montessori Multiplication: Extension Work

My son wants to master his multiplication tables, especially for bigger numbers.  We are using both the Chinese/Singapore math (abstraction) method and Montessori when it comes to mastering his mathematical skills. For Montessori, though we have the Multiplication board, Mavi prefers using the colored beads as these keep him engaged and he thinks that they are more “fun”.  With this, I am so excited to share the learning materials we use to aid his mastery of multiplication using extension activities that goes perfectly with the Montessori colored beads.

These learning materials were very helpful, and my son enjoyed working on the extension activities.  The best thing about these learning materials is that they grow with your child and you can print them again and again so your child can practice each multiplication table through the years.

Fruit Unit: Inside and Out Matching Activity

We had a fabulous time last weekend examining the insides of fruits.  We did a similar activity years ago, but I didn’t want to put paints on fruits this time so I made this gorgeous matching learning material for Vito to work around with instead of recreating the insides using paints.  More details on this fruit learning material here.  This is easy to prepare and fun to work with kids!

Landmarks Around the World

Vito had a sudden interest in naming landmarks. He was fascinated with the pyramids after watching a show about kids exploring ancient sites like the pyramids in Egypt and the great walls of China. I immediately showed some of our travel photos featuring these landmarks in the background. He was shocked that I had been to some of those places. With this, I introduced him to some other places around the world.

Animal Kingdom 3 Part Cards and Charts

I am so excited to share these beautiful learning materials I created for my boys.  Mavi, my 9 year old is currently the one using this for school, but Vito ended up using some of the activities as he loves to work on his older brother’s materials too.  So this is our Animal Kingdom Cards and Charts set.  The main objective of this material is to introduce the different classifications/groups of animals to your child.  We have an older version of this, and you can check it out here (Kingdoms of Life: Animal Kingdom) if you are interested.  Anyway, allow me to discuss some of the highlights of this learning material below, so you can have a better idea of what you will be getting when you purchase this for your child or your school.

Identifying 2D Shapes in Real Life Objects

I want to share how much we love these activity cards on 2D shapes that I made last year so Vito and I can practice identifying the shapes of objects that he gets to see almost everyday.  As I mentioned in my Instagram post, before working on these cards, we first looked around the house for objects with shapes of square, triangle, oval, rectangle, and circle.  Then at times, we also play I spy games on shapes and objects, and other times it’s more of “give me something that has a shape of … “.  We had fun doing this!

Identifying Common Flowers for Preschoolers

Is it spring in your part of the world?  Well, it’s far from spring here but we are already starting to see spring flowers sprouting and blooming everywhere.  During our daily walks, Vito loves spotting these flowers and is identifying them.  It comes in handy that I have already prepared some learning materials to go along with this new discoveries.  Just like last year, we used these flower cards to name the spring flowers that we see in the park and in our estate.

A Walkthrough of Animal Study for Preschoolers

This coming spring, I will be introducing the zoology album of Montessori early childhood to Vito.  We did a couple of animal study last year but it was mainly for introduction and familiarization.  This year, our homeschool activities will be in line with the album I bought from Montessori Parent.  Of course, I will not follow the album word by word as I try not to replicate the Montessori classroom in our home and I don’t possess other classroom materials.  But it will still be spontaneous and hands-on.  In this post I will talk about the album, the materials I prepared, and my plans on how we are going to approach the “hands-on” aspect of the study.

Hands-on Learning on the Human Body for Preschoolers

Vito is getting more interested in how his body works, especially that a few months ago, he got sick and I have to discuss some important things to him about his health and body.  With this, I started reading to him some of our body books, explaining what happens to the food that he eats, to the water that he drinks, and why he has blood when he has a cut.

Jigsaw Seasons Puzzle

We love this wooden seasons puzzle (Alphabet Jigsaw Wooden Seasons Puzzle) from the company Alphabet Jigsaw (Ireland).  The boys and I love this puzzle!  Thought it’s still quite challenging for Vito to assemble, we love working on it together.  Below are some of the features why we love this puzzle to bits!

Montessori Inspired Space Themed Learning Activities

We are moving to new things this week as Vito’s interest is starting to be directed more about his body and senses.  For the past few weeks, we’ve been doing work about the moon, the planets, and space.  Here’s a roundup of our activities in learning about the solar system and space in general (in no particular order).

Hands-on Learning of Constellations for Preschoolers

Vito and I were exploring constellations earlier this week as we were reading about the Big Dipper.  He was fascinated that I extended our activity into pin poking to recreate the formation of the stars (constellations).

Phases of the Moon Learning Pack

The changing of the moon’s shape has fascinated Vito.  Early this year, we’ve been seeing the moon as early as 1 pm in the afternoon, so he gets to identify and describe its shape.  He would call the shapes “small moon”, “half moon”, and “circle moon”.  With the knowledge that the moon changes its appearance, I read a few books to Vito to explain why this is happening.

Now, this post contains some of the activities we did to learn about the moon phases.  These are hands-on activities, and we used most of our printed materials from my shop.  Continue reading the post to learn more about it.

Montessori Addition and Subtraction of Fractions

Sharing some updates with regard to my elementary boy.  Though it may seem that I’m posting a lot about preschool activities, in the background my 9 years old is doing a lot of work too in math, geography/history, and science.  Now, one of the things he worked on last year was his fractions.  After working fractions and fraction equivalence, Mavi worked on addition and subtraction of fractions.  He did very well on this.  With one simple presentation, he grasped the concept right away, and after which he did a lot of practise using our fraction cut-outs.  Somehow, I find this straightforward, meaning if your child knows about their basic addition and subtraction they can breezily work on this and move on to multiplication of fractions or working with unlike fractions.

Types of Clouds for Preschoolers

I mentioned in my Instagram account that Vito is very much interested about the weather lately, and to be specific, he loves learning about clouds.  It all started when we were reading National Geographic Kids Weather book every night.  From here, he started to identify the clouds whenever we are outdoors, whether its a rainy, fluffy, or clear clouds (his own vocabulary).  So while he is still enthusiastic about it, I decided to throw a simple and not so original cloud activity.  Again, I worked on this activity with Mavi when he was 3 years old, and I am happy to do it again with Vito.

Preschool Activities for the Chinese New Year

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In celebration of the Chinese New Year, we are having a few activities at home to learn about this big celebration of the Chinese community.  Having this cultural activities is an opportunity to explore with your child about foreign countries and different culture and traditions. And because we (Filipinos) are greatly influenced by the Chinese culture, from beliefs, to food, to traditional practices we are joining and celebrating the New Year with our Chinese friends!

I came up with simple activities, again mostly reused ideas from Mavi’s time (Study of Ancient China) and some of these were from Pinterest too.  The activities aim to introduce China to Vito as well as the celebrations and traditions of the Chinese community.  I also included links to my resources so you can easily replicate these!  Enjoy!

How Polar Animals Keep Warm Experiment

We’ve been learning about polar animals for the past week, and Mavi and Vito have the same question that kept popping up during the course of our learning:  why are these animals like the polar bears and penguin don’t get cold in the ice?  Well, to answer the question we did a simple experiment on what makes these animals warm in the polar regions.

Favourite Books about the Arctic and Antarctic Regions

I'm sharing our favourite books on winter animals, about the arctic and Antarctic regions.  Hope you find this list helpful.

Arctic Diorama

Last week, the boys and I made an arctic diorama.  I asked the boys to help me assemble a small diorama that we can place on the table for exploration and subject of discussion in the course of our polar region studies.

Polar Activities for Preschoolers

Here are our 9 activity trays this winter season, where in some days, Vito can finish 3 activities in a day while in some, almost none.  These ideas are good for about 2-3 weeks of learning.  Vito would also work on some non-polar activities in between, mostly practising reading with pink series, playing with our Grimm’s blocks, Legos, and just about anything he wants to do.  There are also spontaneous activities that come in between, mostly a product of discussion and as book extensions.  I mostly share these in my Instagram account, but if it’s post-worthy, you’ll be able to read it in the blog as well.

Penguin Themed Matching Clocks to Time

One of the things I love to do is putting some twist on our activities to keep them more engaging and fun for Vito.  Last month, he began reading the time, with Mavi modelling the reading.  Every morning he would wake me up and say “Mom, it’s 8 o’clock” and when I checked it is indeed 8 in the morning!  He finally figured out how to read the clock with the small hand pointing to a number and the longer hand on the 12.  So I grabbed the opportunity to practise clock reading with this penguin clock and time matching printable.  I used this activity with Mavi 5 years ago and now Vito is loving it as well!

Animals of Antarctica Printable with Safari Toob Antarctica Set

Have you seen Safari Toob Antarctic toob yet?  To me, it’s one of the best toob they ever had!  I mean, aside from penguins, can you name other animals that live in Antarctica?  Quite difficult right?  That’s why we are so happy that Safari Ltd finally came up with these figures so we can introduce our kids to other animals thriving in Antarctica other than penguins!  So if you have kids or students who love animals and learning about places, Safari Antarctica Toob is one good learning toy you can invest in.

Reader’s Choice Top 10 Posts of 2017

Happy New Year everyone! I Can’t believe that we’re celebrating New Year once again.  It’s not so long ago when I was just starting to present some of our January activities, and here I am again, packing up remnants of our Christmas holiday decors and turning our sitting room into a homeschool room again.

First of all, I wanted to thank you all for reading and spending time in our blog.  Thank you all for the kind words, for leaving messages that you have been inspired and that you enjoy our activities, I truly appreciate that.  I wish for this coming year to come up with more great ideas so you and your kids can learn together, connect through fun activities and most of all help them in their learning needs.  Speaking of which, I also plan to do more of elementary posts.  I still do “afterschool” activities with Mavi about arts and crafts or extension lessons on subjects that he wanted to explore more.

Anyway, to start the year, I want to share the TOP 10 reader’s favourites of 2017 (not in order).  Enjoy!

Winter Printables: Ten Frames Counting Activities

I am so happy to share Vito’s favourite counting activities and materials, our Ten Frames Winter printables!!!  This printable was created out of  pinetree counting sheets which I created last autumn.  It was so popular that I wanted to recreate it and at the same time, include ten frames seen in our dinosaur post which was Vito’s favourite too.  So combining these together, plus a tracing activity of numbers has led me to produce these products!

Learning The Square of a Number Using Montessori Short Bead Chain with Square

We find ourselves working on the Short Bead Chain once again as Mavi reviews his multiplication table.  If you skim through my posts, you will find that we’ve been doing this since Mavi was 5 years old.  Now that he’s older (and wiser!) he finds a deeper meaning in learning the square of a number.

Yes folks, in mathematical terms, the short bead chain materials (and the squares) are used to present the precise squares of a number (2 squared, 4 squared).  Using manipulatives, children can easily grasp the concept and eventually memorize the squares.

The Nativity and Story Cards

It brings me joy to recount the story of the nativity to our children. We have made it a yearly tradition to read various books of different versions, and sometimes we even watch nativity movies to fully grasp the meaning of Christmas. Now that Vito is old enough to comprehend, I incorporated story cards and activity sheets to accompany our book reading this year.

FREE 12 Days of Christmas Counting Cards

We love the 12 Days of Christmas song!  The kids love it so much that we kept on singing it over and over again and always speeding up as we approach the 12th day.  So as part of the kids’ interest, I decided to create these counting cards to go along with the song.  Vito enjoys setting up the counting cards as we sing each of the day.  To share our love for the song, we are sharing the counting cards to you so you can do this activity at home with your kids too! Enjoy!

Hands-on Activity on Comparing Numbers

We are moving on with our math by introducing new math concepts, one of which is the more or less activity and using the greater than or less than symbol.  To do this, I made use of the holiday season’s symbols so Vito can easily relate and used manipulatives like some Christmas erasers and Montessori beads.

Christmas Themed Tray Activities for Preschoolers

Happy first day of December!!!  I’ve been away for awhile, busy with life and other extra curricular things… because you know, “it’s that time of the year”.  Anyway, despite of  all the happenings, I was able to assemble these simple Christmas-themed activities for my 4 years old.  My aim here is to simply introduce the meaning of Christmas, the symbols, learning Christmas songs and a little bit of  arts and crafts.  Hope you like these activities!

Montessori Friendly Gift Ideas for 3 Years and Older (2017)

I would like to make this post brief and to the point.  We don’t have a lot of toys at home, so I only have a short list.  I called this list “Montessori friendly” because these are toys that my kids would actually play on a regular basis.  To get the best of toys for your kids, it is better that you are aware of what they really really like and what makes them happy.

So to give you ideas on what my kids love to play at home scroll down below to check them out.

Montessori Inspired Continent 3 Part Cards and Booklet

Vito is 4 years and Mavi is 9 years old.

One thing that I love with making our own learning materials is that I get to customize them according to the kids’ liking.  One of these materials is the continent learning printables I made last year which we often use.  At first, Vito would match it according to colors, now that he’s older, he’s trying to know the names of the continents, especially the ones where he’s been to.

Montessori Friendly Gift Ideas for Tweens and Teens (2017)

This post contains affiliate links.

These gift ideas are intended for families with older children, ages 9 to 16 years old.  I made this list based on my son’s and niece’s current interests and hobbies.  These are suitable for kids who are hobbyists, artists, musically inclined, readers and explorers.  Mavi owns some of these already (some are hand-me-down), and others are still on the “wishlist”.

Thanksgiving Preschool Literacy Learning Pack

Hello everyone!  I recently launched our Thanksgiving Preschool Literacy Pack in our shop as a tool to aid my kids learn about this celebration in the United States.  Though we may not be celebrating Thanksgiving, but this is our way of learning different cultures and understanding the meaning of the celebration.   (Note: pictures of my kids using these materials are in my Instagram account!)

Beginning Letter Sound Activity Sheets

Vito’s favourite work in the morning are our pink series cards (we try to work on one vowel sound a week) and these beginning sound activity sheets. I made these cards years ago (just revamped them) and used them with Mavi, it’s one of his favourite language works.  Because Mavi can write letters at 3 years old, we didn’t get to use our moveable alphabet and instead he would just write the missing letters.

Thanksgiving Themed Rhyme and Beginning Letter Sound BINGO Game

My 4 years old absolutely loves our Thanksgiving rhyme and beginning letter BINGO game!  He loves rhyming words, so I just have to come up with some activity to feed this interest.  Since we’ve been exploring beginning letter sounds, I also added this to our game.

Introducing the Montessori Pink Series for Beginning Reading

I've talked about Vito’s sensitive years for letters in my Instagram account.  Since September, he’s been into letter sounds, identifying beginning letter sounds, sorting objects according to sound, making rhymes, forming words, pretending to read and deciphering words etc. so I decided to give him a “structured” activity on alphabets.  Here’s what we have been doing so far:

1. Five in a Row activities that are tied to a letter
2. A letter of the week kind of activity to go along with a holiday or season (letter l and letter a)
3. Reading lots of books
4. After learning a letter, we would read and create his own phonics booklet

During the course of these activities, I observed that he would try to decipher a word, or pretend to create words using sticky tapes, in writing and using our moveable alphabet.  Plus, he knows 90% of the letter sounds (though he's still confused with c and k).  With the signs, I knew he would be ready for the Montessori Pink Series.  And oh boy, it was the best decision I made!

The Alphabet Sound Books for Learning Letters

I am so excited to share our Alphabet Sound Books!  Vito is currently in a sensitive period for letters and I knew I just have to provide him with these booklets which I also made for Mavi years ago when he was learning his letters.

The Montessori Geometric Sticks

We finally get to use our Montessori Geometric Sticks now that Mavi is learning about polygons, triangles and angles.  You can purchase this fantastic learning material at any Montessori shop or in Amazon.  My boys and I are fascinated with this material.  There’s so much we can do with it, from building plane geometric shapes, to letters, and artworks!

FREE Letter P Dot and Tracing Activity Sheets

We are carving a pumpkin this week so we also worked on our letter P activities!

Learning The Human Skeleton for Preschoolers

We’ve been singing a lot of Halloween songs at home lately and Vito was fascinated with the Skeleton Dance song.  I decided to give him some activities on skeletons just like what Mavi and I did years ago (The Skeletal System).

The Montessori Constructive Triangles

I am so excited to introduce to you the Montessori Constructive Triangles!  This is one of my favourite Montessori material because I find it useful  for my 3 years old and my elementary.  In this post, I’m showing you each of the content of the boxes and how it is being used in learning plane geometric shapes.

Preschool Learning Letter L Activities

Presenting our letter “l” activities!  We’ve started “letter of the week” kind of activities since September because of Vito’s interest in letter sounds and reading.  We’ve been reading FIAR books over the summer and this led him to further explore words and language activities.  

Favourite Activity Trays for Autumn

Have you seen our activities this autumn season?  I would usually round it up into tray activities for archiving and easier reference.  Below are the details of each activity trays that we’ve been enjoying for the past months.

Montessori Geography Folders

When I was preparing geography lessons for Mavi years ago, I learned about the importance of Geography Folders. Essentially, these are folders filled with pictures from your home country or continent as well as from other continents. The pictures should depict people engaging in daily life activities, landmarks, food, animals, children, homes, transportation, and villages, if any. Geography Folders are especially useful for studying your continent as they introduce your child to other races, cultures, places, and traditions.

FREE Letter S Dot and Tracing Activity Sheets

Halloween is just around the corner and we are having skeleton activities these coming weeks!  To go along with this, I am sharing this dot sheets for you to work with your child in learning beginning letters and tracing.  Hope you like this and enjoy!

Hands-on Learning on Animal Habitats for Preschool

Last week, Vito and I revisited world biomes and animal habitats as we were talking about the fact that not all places in the world have forest whose leaves turn into yellow or orange.  This discussion led to a series of presentation of the world’s biome like desert, rainforest, taiga etc. Our printable from the shop was very handy when I presented this Vito because of the pictures, and he was very interested on the animals living on each biome.