Easy No-Bake "Cinnamon Rolls" {Cooking with Kids}

Here's a snack that kids can make themselves.  It's a great exercise in Montessori Practical Life skills.  All you need is sliced bread, softened butter or margarine, cinnamon, and sugar.  Here's how the kids make it...

Cooking with Kids: Crepes {France Learning Unit}

In our study of France in Homeschool Kindergarten, the kids and I made crepes.  It was a great Montessori-style practical life activity with plenty of fine motor skills work.  Here's what we did...

Montessori-inspired DIY Weight Cylinders

If you love Montessori manipulatives, but can't afford the price-tag, try this easy DIY version of the Montessori Weight Cylinders using empty Play-Doh containers and dry beans.  Here's what we did for this little sensory / math activity...

Making Soap With Kids

I bought a soap-making kit back in December, hoping to make holiday presents for everyone with the kids.  We ended up going to visit my in-laws a week earlier than planned, so the soap making never happened.  Instead, we made soaps as a little Valentine's Day activity.  The girls (3.5 years old) and I had so much fun.  It's such a great sensory and fine motor exercise for kids with even a little science thrown in...

Montessori Monday - Counting Corners with Pushpins

My kids love pushpin activities - they provide great fine motor practice for the pincer grip used in writing.  Today I switched things up a little by including some shapes cut out from construction paper and inviting L and E (3.5 years old) to use the pushpins to count the corners..

Montessori Monday: Child-Led Learning

I've noticed recently that L and E (3.5 years old) are starting to take the lead in making up educational activities for themselves.  I love watching them as they make observations and invent new experiments and activities.  I'm getting much better at sitting back and following their lead rather than getting too enthusiastic and trying to dictate the process.  Here are three examples of child-led learning that I remembered to take photos of...

Montessori Monday - Felt Board Fun {and learning}

I made a felt-board (also called a flannel board) for the twins when they were about 18 months old.  It was really easy to hot glue some flannel fabric to a large picture frame and then cut out various shapes from craft felt for them to play with (the pieces stick on without glue and are reusable).  I recently brought the felt board back out, and all three kids have been enjoyed it.  Other than just being generally creative with it, I also made some Montessori-inspired sensory activities out of felt for them to work on...

Montessori Monday - Painting and Washing Plastic Animals

One of my kids' favorite Montessori-inspired activities involves painting their plastic animals and subsequently giving them baths.  They've been doing this activity every once in a while since before they were 2 years old.  This morning I made the mistake of asking the kids what they wanted to do (I usually pick what we do for Preschool in the morning).  L said she wanted to paint, and E said she wanted to play with animals, so I was reminded of this animal painting/bathing activity, and both kids were happy...

8 Montessori-Inspired Learning Activities with a Battleship Game

Games that are meant for older kids can be used for fantastic early learning activities for the younger set.  I recently found a travel-sized Battleship game for $5, and my 3-year-olds have been having a great time using it for all sorts of neat Montessori-inspired educational activities.

Montessori Monday: Pin Poking on Foil

My kids (3 years old) have never tried Montessori pin poking, which involves tracing a design onto paper and then cutting it out by making small pin holes close together along the outline of the image.  It's great practice for using the pincer-grip and a good exercise in concentration and precision.  I wasn't sure my kids were ready for it yet, so I thought we'd start out with a variation by poking pin holes into tin foil to make pretty patterns.  Here's how we did it...

Montessori Monday - Visual Discrimination with Cans

One of the activities I set up for my girls (3 years old) last week was to sort various cylinder-shaped containers and cans from our pantry.  The challenge in this exercise lies in the fact that the containers vary in two different dimensions - height and base diameter, so they can actually be sorted in two different ways.  The kids had to focus on a single dimension to make their comparisons.

What's in the Castle? - Sound Identification Game

"What's in the Castle?" is a Montessori-inspired sound-matching game which my 3-year-olds absolutely LOVE!  It challenges them to isolate their sense of hearing to identify sounds of various animals, objects, and musical instruments...

Montessori Practical Life Snack: Banana Skewers

This Montessori-inspired snack takes no prep-time, and kids get great practice with fine-motor skills making it themselves.  Here are the steps..

Sniffing Spices

Whenever I open the pantry, L and E (3) rush to the spices and say "I want to smell something!".  Usually this involves removing all the spice container lids and making a big mess.  Yesterday, I told them that if they sat at the table nicely, I'd take the spices out for them.  We explored our sense of smell with a spontaneous spice-sniffing sensory game..

Playing with Pushpins

Recently, I purchased some inexpensive corkboards and pushpins for the girls to play with.  Since pushpins (or thumbtacks) are sharp and a major choking hazard, I introduced this as a very special activity for "big kids only", supervised the whole time, and made sure we stayed in one place and put every pin back in the box when we were done.  It was a fun, inexpensive activity in creativity and fine-motor skills...

Even More Preschool Learning Activities

We started our 2012/2013 Homeschool Preschool year on Monday.  Every morning since we started, L and E (37 months old) have been requesting to "play Preschool".  I have a separate post planned that details our daily routine, but here's a sneak peak of some of the activities we've been doing...

Cooking with Kids: Face and Hair Masks

Instead of our usual Cooking Day last week, I enlisted the help of the girls (3 years old) to make an Oatmeal Yogurt Face Mask and an Avocado Hair Mask.  What's more fun than 'cooking up' mushy stuff to slather all over your face and hair?  Here's what we did...

Cooking with Kids: Process not Perfection

The girls and I made banana bread the other night as an early Fathers Day present for their dad.  Now that I've left my job, I feel a lot less stressed in general, and I had a really good time just observing how much the kids enjoy the process of creating something new..

Cooking With Kids: Mini Pizzas

For our weekly Cooking Day, the girls and I made mini-pizzas.  Not only was this a fairly easy kid-friendly cooking activity, but the results turned into a great lunch that my husband and I enjoyed as well.  Here's how we did it..

Baking Day - Pies and Cinnamon Rolls

The girls and I had so much fun baking yesterday.  It ended up being an all-day affair with related books, crafts, and other activities in between the actual baking.  We read the book, How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman..