Category: Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities
The kids place the hair barret ontoa rubber band and snap it closed.I first saw this idea atmymontessorijourney.typepad.com Pony bead counting activity A bag full of finger puppet animals Sewing with a large embroidery needleand huge buttons.
Matching: I made this using foam boards,matching foam animals/shapes and coveringit with contact paper. An inexpensive wooden teddy bear puzzle. Frog/Dragon Fly Color Matching Gamefrom filefolderfun.com Marbles, golf-t and suction cup the golf-tand marbles are for doing balancing “relay”races trying to walk keeping the marblebalanced.
I needed to do something a bit different for my two and four-year olds, so I’ve decided to set up a theme collection each morning. It’ll help me rotate in some of the preschool games and toys we have and to bring a new selection of books out. And, while the workboxes work well, by having a display out on the craft table, ED (age 2) is much more drawn...
It’s amazing how many books and things you findin various nooks and crannies around the house.We had quite a large selection of dinosaur books,puzzles, animals (mostly from my childhood!).I added in a puppet, board game and made amath worksheet for DD. (You can download itat the right if you’re interested.) The wonderful thing about this was that ED andDD spent a LOT of time here today doing thingsindependently (though I...
I set out a couple of activities today with ED in mind, butall the kids participated. Above the kids are makingnecklaces. Below is our seasonal tree. You can always make your own tree out of pipe cleanersif you don’t have a little tree as we did at Christmas timeor find a branch and place it in a vase. http://mymontessorijourney.typepad.com/ has wonderfulseasonal activities like these. If you haven’t already, besure to...
Be sure to grab our free Living – Nonliving Cards and Packet here: If you’ve read about our activities for a while, you’ll see that we tend to repeat things quite a bit. This week, I stuck the living, non-living sorting into the workbox once again. DD really enjoyed it (LD only did the cards below and that was only because DD asked him to!) I can’t remember where I...
I made this bear lapbook with/for DD a while back. Since we’re talking about forest animals, it was time to bring it out in the workboxes again. The girls have both had fun with it (even LD has had a couple of goes). It contains a number of different little activities. As you can see from the lapbook cover, DD made her own little pom-pom bear. Then we used the...
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve brought out the felt board.ED and DD have enjoyed playing with the hearts I madefor them. The flowers and butterflies are just patches that Ihappened to have around in my sewing stuff. We made our own felt board out of two painting canvases;it folds in half for storage and is about 2 feet square.You can check out how I made it here and...
Grandpa also sent us some pattern blocks when he sentthe sandpaper (tactile) letters. ED and DD have reallybeen enjoying them a lot! We found lots of free patternblock printables at http://prekinders.com/pattern-blocks/I printed them in color on one side and black and whiteon the other (to make it more challenging for DD).
We studied the Milky Way Galaxy and planets a bit lastyear, but since this was covered in the Montessori “FirstGreat Lesson” that we presented (in our own version)over the weekend, I thought the kids might enjoy doing acouple pictures related to what we talked about. Links about the Montessori Great Lessons (geared forearly elementary aged kids): http://www.moteaco.com/albums.htmlhttp://missbarbara.net/greatlessons.htmlhttp://www.montessoricentre.com/GL/The%20Great%20Lesson%201%20-%20secular%20version.htm
We did two art projects to show the spiral shaped, MilkyWay Galaxy. One was simply sparkles and shiny starspasted onto black paper. For the white pictures, the kids drew the Milky WayGalaxy with a white oil pastel. Then they painted overtheir drawing with black paint. We found that white oilpastels worked MUCH better for the kids than regularcrayola crayons.
JULY’S POSTINGS ARE ALL PRESCHOOL AND TODDLER RELATED! I have a clear plastic file box (actually now I have two-goingon three!) filled with all kinds of preschool activities. I’ll sharepictures of some of the things I have on hand. These havebeen very well used for the past four months by my 3 yearold and (now) 19 month old. My 19 month old has beenstringing straws for months now! I’ve posted...
Matching foam itemsPracticing Buttoning (I sewed the green felt strips andbuttons onto the blue felt backing.) I don’t remember where I sawthis idea. If you’ve seen this on another blog let me know and I’llprovide the link for others. Straw pieces on plastic string (or pipe cleaners)
BeadsSorting Pompoms into little cups