Montessori At Home: Land, Air, Water

We started to do some Montessori activities this year and I'm hoping to add many more as the years go on.  The more I learn about it, the more I love it.  My goal is to make one Montessori DIY project a month.  There are many good websites to learn from.

Here's one I put together last month.  It's a Land, Air, Water mat.  I pieced it together out of the yards and yards of scrap felt I have in the attic.  It seems so simple...almost unnecessary. But as tot plays with it, I realize all the little things he's learning from it.

I only put some animals from the Down Under Safari LTD toob in and some puzzle pieces we have of vehicles.  He places them where they go. 

It's fun to talk about it as he does it....watching his thinking patterns and improving vocabulary.

I also printed out some Land, Air, Water cards from Montessori Print Shop.  For only 2.79 they're nice.  I laminated them for future use.  We took 3 jelly jars and went outside to fill one with land (dirt), one with water and the 'empty' with air.  He was very interested.  Then I lined them up and he placed the correct cards under the correct column.

Also a great time to talk about each item.

 

We've pulled it out a few times since.  It's neat to see the mistakes he made in the beginning and to watch his understanding now :)

Asia Continent Box and challenge!

Last year I tried to put together some continent boxes and study one continent per month.  Well, it only lasted about 3 continents!!!  Such is life.  So this year I'm hoping to accomplish it!  I saw Carissa's Continent Box Challenge and thought the kids would love it....and was I right!  So much more exciting to have a 'challenge'!  They can earn prizes for filling in X number of boxes.  I didn't want to spend money on prizes so they're easy like "2 hours computer time", "candy bag" (to eat as fast or slow as they want - put together by mom of course), and the highest is "2 nights up late"!  They LOVED it :)  Funny how exciting the little things are :)  I couldn't get Carissa's pdf's to be rewritable, so my husband made me blank templates to fill in.

I would love to collect items from various continents over the years, because we don't have any now...just books and activities...

Captain has to fill in all boxes to get the top prize, and Rex less.  The boxes range from super easy (find on globe, color a flag)  

to more time consuming (completing pin map).

I got most of my printables from Montessori Print Shop and some others elsewhere free online.

Tot always wants in on the action so here he is matching up the Asian animal 3 part cards.

That's all the pictures I got of our Asia study :)  I am using it alongside Erica's Expedition Earth for Captain.  We love it. They even get a passport with their picture on it and we stamp each country we 'visit'  Each week we focus on a different country and the continents last about 6 weeks so it's perfect! It helps involve the other two in learning about the continents.  Honestly, if I tried to get them to do "extra school" without the challenge, no one would want to! Of course :)  But the challenge makes it exciting to earn prizes :)  It's some work on my part, but I'll keep it from year to year so it's worth it! Fun, fun, fun...

Fall fun!

I thought I'd post two more fall activites we did :)  A fun, easy craft and our little sensory bin.  I have so many posts I'd like to do.  We have next week off, so I'm hoping to catch up for a few days!

I found this craft at www.1plus1plus1equals1.net and thought it looked easy (and cheap!).  It was! The kids loved it and it only cost $2! Yeah!  It's also my prettiest fall table decorations yet!

We started out with a little cardboard for the base, a paper towel tube sliced at the top of bottom, and brown paint.  I hot glue gunned the tree on the cardboard....the top slices are branches.  They painted the tree brown and let it dry for a few hours.

Then we glued on our leaves (two packs from Dollar Tree).

Captain got to use the hot glue gun for the first time.  He sure liked that.

Voila!  

Here's our sensory bin... very simple.

Separating chestnuts and acrons.  We've since put them out on the porch and fed the squirrels for the winter!

More to come soon...promise ;)