Category: Ages 2-6

Easter Montessori Math 3

Easter Themed Montessori Math (preK, K)

‘Bead’ Rabbits and Skip Counting by 10 Montessori math has kids working a lot with beads. But for this work, I made some Easter-themed manipulatives for ED to work with.   I made a set of Easter eggs for skip-counting by 10s. She also used some 100-square rabbits. I printed out a number of copies and cut them into strips of 10 and into single bunnies as well.  It’s just...

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Whale Unit (and the Arctic) – Migration, Echolocation, Baleen vs. Toothed Whales

One of the days we read books, I stopped frequently to explain things and do activities with the kids. Whale Migration: For example, we talked in quite some depth about whale migration from the Arctic down the west coast of North America and back again.  I pulled out an Arctic Pin map I made and the kids placed the various countries that make up the Arctic region. You can download...

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Whale Unit (and the Arctic) – Buoyancy

Have you ever started a unit and then something else unfolds?  Well this is a unit I started to put together on the Arctic.  You might even recall that we covered Antarctica for a couple of days to lead up to this unit. The more we got into it, the more this turned into a full blown study of whales!  We spent more than a week reading, doing experiments and...

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Preschool Geography

NAME THAT CONTINENT: One morning in collection (our group time) I brought out a beach ball globe. We took turns tossing the ball around the circle. Each time someone caught the ball they had to look at where their thumb had landed and had to name that continent. The kids quickly became silly, but we did manage to get a few rounds in for each of them. Another preschool geography...

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Peanut Butter Bird Feeder

We do this activity about once a year, but it’s always a hit with the kids!  Back as a child I always did this with pine cones, but since we didn’t have pine cones readily accessible we improvised using a bit of bark. The kids spread peanut butter all over the bark and then poured bird seed on it.       Our windows are all quite high off the...

Interesting Statistics about Preschoolers and Literacy 0

Interesting Statistics about Preschoolers and Literacy

There are some really interesting statistics out there about educating preschoolers in America.  Did you know that enrollment for preschoolers has increased 679% between 1985 and 2008?  In 1985 0.2 million preschoolers were enrolled in school in the USA while in 2008 this had increased to 1.2 million! But in reality, still only a little over half of all 3-4 year olds are in school (52% in 2009) (Digest of Education Statistics,...

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Brush Your Teeth! (another experiment)

A couple of weeks ago I saw some cute preschool activities about dental health at 2 Teaching Mommies, I was inspired!  We didn’t get to Amber’s ideas, but we did fit in the science activities from 1st grade with Miss Snowden. After talking about the germs in our house (see this post), it seemed fitting to talk about the germs in our mouths. I hard-boiled six white eggs and we...

Preschool Math 0

Preschool Math

We incorporate a lot of Montessori math into our preschooling days.  There are lots of great websites, but Living Montessori Now is a wonderful place to start as Deb has compiled ideas from all around the web. I also play lots of board games that require counting, we jump and play and sing about numbers. Here are some of the math activities we did a couple of weeks ago. I had this...

Where do Germs Grow? 24

Germ Experiment — Where Do Germs Grow in Your House??!

Germ Experiment: When I saw this germ experiment, I knew we had to add this into our unit on First Aid. After all keeping ourselves healthy is as important as patching up the injuries, right?! The experiment called for gelatin, sugar and petri dishes. We didn’t have petri dishes so used paper cups and covered them immediately with glad wrap in lieu of a cover. Boil 1/2 cup of water...

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Geography: The Seven Continents and World Landmarks

I brought out the materials to help ED (my 4 year old) learn about the seven continents again (though of course everyone joined in). Below is about a week’s worth of geography activities we did together. We went over the fact that a map is really a flat version of a globe. Then we went on to sing the continent song together. I was surprised that ED knew the entire...

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Preschool Board Games

Today I want to share a couple of amazing preschool board games that ED really loves! ED turned four a couple of weeks ago. I always ask the kids what kind of cake they want.  ED wanted a Beyblade cake (the spinning top that you see down to the right of the cake).  Funny, huh?! I’m no major cake maker but the kids love helping to make their own birthday...

Valentine's Subtraction Cards 1

Valentine’s Day Math Games: Division and Subtraction Cards and other games

Valentine’s Day Division Cards I made a Valentine’s Day set of division cards to use with LD over the next week or so. We use these cards to play a game called Fast Track — an idea we got from Peggy Kaye’s Games for Math. To make the board you need a large piece of butcher paper or poster board. There are three win spaces, three start spaces and various...

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Preschool: Free Valentine’s Day Word Matching Game

ED has been working a lot on letter sounds and simple -at and -an words. I made this Valentine’s themed word matching activity for her to work on over the next couple of weeks. She has to attach the clothes peg to the matching word on the wheel. It took some cutting pasting to put it together, but if you’d like to make your own you can download the pages...

Preschool Activities 0

Preschool Activities

While the other kids are working on their things, ED has lots of preschool activities in her workboxes. Here are a few things she’s done this past week or so: We played memory using -at words. We are going through “My -at book.” ED says the initial sound and then I help her smash the sounds together. This is definitely an activity we do together as she is not reading...