Rain Mini Montessori Topic

Now I am back working some days I find it quite difficult

to organise Montessori based trays but I did this with

things I had in the house already and kept it very simple.

This started with Big Seed's current interest in "What are clouds?"

Here is what is on our shelves for our rain week.

Activities for a 4 year old and a 2 year old.

Playscape: Blue silk, felted pond, ducks, blue bricks, wool, blue and clear glass beads as rain drops, frogs, felt lilypads, eco blocks, a little bell and a huge shell.

One of Little Seeds watercolours cut into a cloud with drops drawn on.

He has to cover the drops with glass beads.

More of Little Seeds watercolour paintings.

I have drawn raindrops and clouds for them to cut out and to hang/make a mobile.

Using pipette to drop water on to soap pad.

Also used this with paper towels covered in felt-tip dots.

This was popular.

Tonging clouds ( cotton wool balls)

2 tongs for 2 abilities.

Drawing box. 

Paper cut into clouds and raindrop shapes.

Different blue mediums.

Spooning raindrops.

Small mini crystals/ clear beads from Ebay.

Opening 6 cocktail umbrellas onto a sponge.

( Too hard for Little Seed on his own.. He did enjoy trying though.

He likes this the best because he needs to master it....

Thankfully you can buy them in a bulk pack from Ebay!)

Making puddles expand.

Dropping water with a pipette onto kitchen towel.

Good with felt-tip dots on them too.

Explaining how clouds work. Dropping water with a pipette

then squeezing them when they feel heavy.

Using blue do-a-dot pen to put raindrops on raincloud shaped paper.

I put marks for him to aim for.

3 part cards - clouds

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Pipe Building With Playdough

Inspired by this kit:

It's a crazy straw kit with plastic connectors.

We went onto this:

Simple straws cut up into different lengths and playdough.

Shapes....

and animals.

Although what a great idea for star constellations!!

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Tens and Units with Diggers and Toddlers

Numbers can be stimulating if they are tactile,

and hook onto their interests

Colourful, solid, smooth, round, long, spherical

flat, square, numbers, tiles, smooth, mixed up, jumbled

" What is this? 

I like this.

What is a hook?

What is this for?

What does it do?" 

 Toddler play along side Montessori style tens and units lesson

with homemade tens bead bars and digger number cards from here

See the other activities in our Construction Unit on the left bar

and our September giveaway

What's On Our Shelves For Our Construction Theme

We are using this Unit and also these trays:

A transferring activity- using these coloured plastic ice cubes ( not frozen)

transferring them onto a truck with a teabag strainer/tong

Transferring black beads (rubble) to the truck with lemon slice tongs

All ready to deliver, off we go.

 Sorting nuts and bolts by size and shape. Matching them up and making pairs.

Sticklebricks from Charity Shop

Ordering diggers set 1-20 downloadable from Sparklebox here

Pin pushing pictures of diggers/tools self drawn.

We are also using toy pigs to tell the 3 Little Pigs Story
inspired from Structured Play here. She has some nice construction ideas.

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Have you seen our gorgeous giveaway here?

Linking to:

India Topic Activities

I have created Montessori themed activities for a new geography

theme on India. I see that in many Montessori circles it gets studied under the theme of Asia

but we are going to focus solely on India.

Their Grandfather comes from India so we are lucky to have some treats.

Here is what is on our shelves:

They brought back some natural finds; leaves, dried flowers, cotton buds, giant seed pods,

and peacock feathers, and a wooden Ganesh figure.

( You can buy real feathers on Ebay and also buy Ganesh figures online).

I place a large magnifying glass next to the Discovery Tray.

We also have a little basket full of Indian jewellery I had in my drawers for years
which I didn't photograph but is a small Discovery Basket .

This is a traditional spice tray.

I filled it with rainbow rice.

Transferring raw lentils from child beakers for Little Seed.

Transferring raw lentils from 2 stainless steel cups for Big Seed.

(These have invisible bells inside..how cute.)

Any stainless steel cups will do, they are very common in most homes.

Transferring yellow beads pretending to be chick peas.

The ones I had were too big but these beads fit perfectly.

Using lemon slice tongs and soap holder with suction pads.

Animal dominoes that have monkeys and tigers somewhere in the set.

Lovely books from Amazon and Ebay all secondhand.

"Celebration" and "Children Just Like Me" by Dorling Kindersley can be used for all geography topics.

"Playtime (Around The World) by Kate Petty and Oxfam

"Prita Goes To India" by Prodeepta Das

"I Is For India" by Prodeepta Das

"Come And Eat With Us (Discovery Flaps)" by Annie Kubler and Caroline Formby

Puzzles; one for each of the boys

3D Peacock Puzzle from here

Construct a peacock feather game.
The felt cut-outs I made are in a pot.
He has to layer the pieces and make them all the same.

Play basket:
My green felt playmat, bits of tree bark blocks,
wooden mushrooms for forest, green playsilk,
toy elephants, a wooden carved elephant from India,
bit of green octagon construction pieces, cardboard trees we had made,
and...

a family of tigers.

Putting things together makes play more inviting sometimes.

Felt aeroplanes and and ice cube tray.
1 to 1 correspondence for Little Seed

A selection of wooden toys brought back from India.
You can get little metal bells anywhere and I have seen some of these on "Ethnic style" stalls in markets locally.

A wooden Indian kitchen playset for making chappatis.
You can improvise and use yellow playdoh too.

To take this recent activity further:
Big Seed has to thread as many aeroplane buttons on the pipecleaners as he can using
the sand timer.
He then writes down the number he managed to thread.

I made these elephant number cards to order numbers 1 - 20.
Download a copy here.

Our map of India that decorated the play area.

There are many links to elephant themed activities and worksheets that you can find on the internet.

In the next post I will be showing you what crafty activities we have done
linking to our India topic.

My Craft links:
Craft activity # 1 : Shopping bags
Craft activity # 2 : Making Indian Sweets
Craft activity # 3 : Glamorous Indian Trucks
Craft activity # 4 : Hot Watercolours
Craft activity # 5 : Guess the Indian Ice Cream Game
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