Making pattern using nails

Little kids are working mainly on numbers these days but we are trying to include some other material into their curriculum to refresh their skills. One of them is pattern. This week is the letter N on our schedule so we called these pegs "nails" and created a pattern using the different colors and the wooden board. This is a Montessori style activity.

Painting with ice cubes

What a fun activity for a hot day! We used it as an art project for "The Letter I" but this is still something the kids like to come back to and I have to reload my ice cube trays with more paint very often.

You will need:

ice cube tray

washable paint

water

card stock paper

You have to prepare the trays night before. Pick colors and dilute them with water. Pour them into the tray and place into a freezer for overnight.

 

Take them out immediately before kids are ready to use them because they melt fairly quickly in this weather.  Squeeze the paint out of the tray and have kids paint away.

 

Because it is hot right now, kids appreciate the cold ice in their hands and don't complain!

 

Mix colors, smudge them, share them - have fun!

 

 These are the results! Unplanned effect? The table surface pattern showed up on our pictures! It looked really cool!

Letter B hunt

This week we are learning letter B with the little preschoolers. Among some of the activities we tried the letter hunt.
It was a success!

Print out a sheet of bunch of letters
and include the letter B in each row.
(download a free copy here)
I repeated it a few times in some of the rows.
Give kids small pebbles, bingo chips, or jelly beans 

to cover all the letter B's. 

You can repeat this activity with any letter you are learning!

Jelly Bean Math

With the Easter Holidays just around the corner, I wanted to put a little sweet twist to our usual number grid exercise! We like to visit the dollar store for some inexpensive teaching props. And that is where we got these cute little spring paper baskets. I filled them up with some jelly beans and made a new looking math grid. 

I wrote numbers 1-10 on top of the paper (1-5 for the little ones) and drew some circles under it (10 circle under each number).

The kids then had to fill the empty circles with the right number of jelly beans!

They had lots of fun completing this exercise and what a motivation when they knew they can have a treat after they finish!!!

Montessori practical life activity

I have been lately looking into doing more practical life activities with my preschoolers. The reason why practical life activities are important is that they help children develop better focus, coordination, independence, and order. It helps them in the future to better concentrate on their school work and it creates calmer work environment. 

Here I had B pour small rocks from one container to another. I had these rocks in my house forever, waiting to be put to a good use! She loves playing with them. She transferred them really quickly but she asked to do it over and over again!

What you will need:

rocks (rice will work too)

spoon (we used ladle from the kids' kitchen)

2 containers (I like to use something the kids will find attractive)

B at work!

Math number grids - free download

Math grids are another fun way to learn number recognition as well as number order while having fun! 

I created two different math grids

First one shows numbers from 1 to 10.  
Click here for a free download of the worksheet 
This one is meant for the older preschoolers. 

The older kids used a "dot a dot" paint to fill in the empty spaces.

The second one is numbers 1 to 5.
Click here for a free download of the worksheet
This one is for the younger preschoolers 

(we have 2 year old and 3 year old working on those), 

whose attention spam doesn't last too long.

Since this was completed during our St. Patrick's Day party, 

we had the little kids use shamrock stamp to fill on the empty spaces. Feel free to use any stamps, or just simply have the kids color them in.