Hello dear readers! Many of you visiting this post may have found it after reading Montessori On the GoĀ which is a guide for Montessori inspired travel activities specially designed for 2-6-year-olds. This post includes the information about the Freebies mentioned in the book.
If you haven’t read the book, you’re still welcome to the Freebies, although I do encourage you to head over to Amazon and pick up your copy š The information in the book will help give you a fuller understanding of the activities included in the Freebie.
What’s in the Freebie? There are 6Ā travel-friendly/related activities included in the Freebie document. Activities cover a range of topics including reading and language, counting, nature, and geography. See a preview of a few of the activities below:
Parenting and discipline go together hand in hand. As parents, we must guide our children towards respectful behaviors and interactions with others. But boy is it tough! Creating a balance so that our children feel close to us, but also follow rules and respect boundaries is tricky. The Montessori philosophy offers a wonderful way to approach discipline in a loving way that meets both the children’s and parent’s needs.
This post is going to offer a basic explanation of Montessori discipline and examples of how you might use it. But, before we get to that, I want to take a moment to affirm ourselves as parents. Just about every parent that I know whether they are familiar with Montessori or not (myself included), struggles at times. Perhaps we have a philosophy and ideas for how we’d like to interact with our children and deal with discipline, but, man does life ever get in the way! Emotions, stress, overstimulation, extended family and more can make it seem impossible to stay on track. That doesn’t mean you’re failing! It doesn’t mean you can’t always try to improve either. What I’m getting at is that you should have confidence in yourself as a parent. Since the day you welcomed your child into your family, you became an expert in your child and your own parenting style.
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That being said, let’s take a look at how you might make use of a Montessori discipline approach in the home:
Prevention
The child who concentrates is immensely happy. – Dr. Maria Montessori
The first step of Montessori discipline is avoiding the issues in the first place. Montessori noticed that children were happy when they were concentrating and had an opportunity to contribute to the classroom (or in this case, your home). That means that children need important work to do in the home that they’re interested in and excited about. Whether it’s practical life projects, an art center to enjoy, the ability to engage in a dance party or work in the garden, being busy is the antidote to poor behavior. Permitting independence is another essential part of the method.
Peanut has become very interested in math and numbers, so I decided to begin addition. To get started, I decided to make my own DIY Montessori Addition Strip Board.
First, let’s start with why? How did I arrive at the conclusion that this would be a good material for Peanut? There are many ways to do addition with Montessori math materials. Up to this point, Peanut hasn’t shown a whole lot of interest in the bead stair or beads in general. “Mama that’s boring,” he says. So…much to my dismay, no beads. But it’s not about me! It’s about him.
“I’m bored” “I don’t know what to do.” “What can I do, Mama?” The sounds of summer for some, the sounds of just about every day all year round for others. Kids get bored.
Does it stress you out?
This may not be a popular opinion, but you don’t have to create a boredom plan for every moment of your child’s life. Or maybe this opinion would be more popular if it were more acceptable to follow this advice. Relax, don’t let a bored child get to you. It’s not the end of the world. In fact, it may be the beginning of something good!
Do you ever feel like you need to entertain your children every moment of the day, all day? Perhaps it’s due to an overdose on Pinterest scrolling or the fact that a lot of people you know have enrolled their children in more activities than you can count on one hand. Whatever it is, there is definitely pressure to keep your kids busy with the right activities to help them in their development. Maybe you’re scared that if you DON’T keep your kids busy, you’re not providing them with what they need to succeed.
Rest assured that this is certainly not the case. You can actually help your child by allowing a bit of boredom in their life. Why? There’s a long list of benefits to letting your child figure out how to use their time on their own. What are some of them?
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Benefits of Boredom
If your child is allowed to be bored at times, it’s likely they’ll develop the following skills:
Independence – Your child will independently find a solution, meaning that they feel more in charge of themselves. Rather than being dependent (the opposite of independent) on an adult to direct them, children find something to do.
Creativity – When your child is bored, they are more likely to work hard to come up with something interesting to entertain themself. If you’re riding in the car or in a waiting room, your child might begin imagining a story in their head, searching for certain kinds of cars out the window or similar. However, if your child watches a video or plays a game on your phone instead, this opportunity is lost.
Problem-solving skills – The problem? Boredom. The solution? It could be anything really. That’s the beauty of being bored. Your child has the chance to work through this real-life problem and explore their possible responses and reactions. Sometimes your child might whine or get angry. Sometimes they might wander around the house or wherever you are to seek ideas for what to do. You can help your child cultivate healthy coping mechanisms for boredom. More on these later.
Boosts self-motivation –Ā Ever used an exciting opening to get your child to try a new activity? You might use an enthusiastic tone of voice, or explain what the benefits of the activity will be. When your child is bored and allowed to struggle through it until they pick an activity on their own, they have to be their own motivator. With no outside voice telling them how much fun it will be to build a Lego replica of the empire state building, they’ll have to discover the motivation to undertake such an activity on their own.
Montessori believed that children needed to build skills to become independent. That’s one of the reasons why she emphasized practical life so strongly, especially for the youngest students. In addition, in any Montessori classroom, children are in charge of picking meaningful activities to engage in. Although guidance is provided from teachers, children are largely responsible for picking their own work.
Ever wondered how to get your little one to be a bit more independent? Part of the answer is by teaching self-care. By intentionally teaching your child to eat on…
Peanut and I have been keeping a nature journal. He’s 4 now, so right around the preschool/kindergarten age. I think it’s been a wonderful experience for us. I keep it very low-key, but the benefits are many!
What you Need
I suggest you start with a blank notebook. Write “Nature Journal” on the front. And that’s it! You can have your child decorate it if you’d like. Here’s ours :
What you Do
We have a very laid back approach to our nature journalling. In preschool and kindergarten, experiences are important. All of the fine motor skills and the ability to read and write about things will come later. I focus on having Peanut observe nature and document it however we can, while keeping things enjoyable and interesting for him.
First, you have to know that we live surrounded by volcanoes. There are 3 of them easily visible from our house, here in Guatemala, a country home to over 30 volcanoes. So, they are part of the landscape. Peanut enjoys watching volcanic eruptions from our house, whether they are just puffs of smoke and ash or fiery night-time displays.
So, what can you do to study volcanoes?
Make Your Own Volcano
There are a few ways to do this, and it makes a great opener to your unit. You’ll inspire your little one for sure.
Preschool science experiments are a joy. I’ve never met a child who doesn’t enjoy experiments…there’s something about moving things around and often getting a bit messy that awakens curiosity, excitement, and wonder.
Well, it’s been a few months since we did this, but Peanut really enjoyed a common preschool science experiment called “Sink or Float.” It’s about as simple as it sounds!
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Here’s what we did:
I gathered some materials that sink and float such as: a coin, a plastic medicine cup, a twig, two rocks, and a lemon. There ended up being 3 items that floated and 3 items that sank. I suggest you look for items that are made out of different materials such as wood, plastic, food items, metal and nature items. We’re lucky to live near a volcano, so one of the rocks was pumice, and so it floated!
Montessori math for kindergarteners is an exciting world of impressive, well-developed manipulatives. This is a material intensive area of the curriculumĀ and one that is often a bit intimidating for those who aren’t familiar with the materials.
We started out with very few of these materials in math, and so far are doing just fine. But, if my Peanut made this subject area his favorite, then I’d have a lot of work to do making more materials!
What did we start with?
Spindle Boxes – A Variation
The traditional Montessori math spindle boxes lay flat and use rounded sticks. But, with a lack of resources, we went ahead and made our very own set featuring toilet paper rolls and popsicle sticks! Simple, yet effective.
Montessori language for kindergarteners is an addiction of mine. It’s one of my favorite things to have fun with, adding in new activities and shaking things up as much as possible. Lucky for me, Peanut loves it too! He’s been flowering, really showing interest in learning letter sounds and even starting to write them on his own.
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To be honest, we started working on this months ago. You can see how we started learning the ABCs in this post here.
So, when I started homeschooling more officially, I knew Peanut would be into it. Here’s what I included to get started:
