Easter Montessori Trays

This was our inaugural attempt at Montessori Trays, and I think they turned out really well.  I'm using a shelf we've had for ages, and some trays that I found at the dollar store.

Egg Transfer
Materials: Plastic eggs, egg tray, bunny tongs (used for egg dyeing), bucket to hold eggs.
How to: Have your child transfer eggs from the bucket to the tray using the tongs.

Egg Eraser Counting
Materials: egg erasers, magnet numbers
How to: Have your child pick a number and count out the amount of erasers that corresponds to each number.

Easter Sticker Cutting
Materials: paper w/ stickers, scissors
How to: Have your child cut in between each sticker

Egg Color Match Puzzles
Materials: egg template w/ each half colored, plastic eggs
How to: Have your child build an egg that matches the puzzle that they have chosen.

Sound Eggs
Materials: 12 plastic easter eggs (6 of each color), various fillings (I used rice, lentils, coins, 2 empty, pasta, and pony beads).
How to: Have your child choose an egg, shake it close to their ear, and try to match it to another egg by only listening.

JellyBean Spoon Transferring
Materials: jellybeans, ice cube tray w/ small holes, spoon
How to: Have your child transfer the jellybeans into the holes of the ice cube tray using the spoon.

Easter Egg Memory Game
Materials: Easter Eggs, various items that fit inside the eggs (2 of each)
How to: Have your child open one egg and try to find it's match.  This is just like a card memory game, but uses eggs instead.

Shamrock File Folder Game

I saw a few cute craft ideas for making shamrocks out of hearts, so I came up with the idea for this file folder game.  It was fun to put together and a good, simple matching practice for M.  I tried to use a few papers that were fairly similar to see if I could stump her, but it didn't work.

Shamrock File Folder Game

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials: File, heart punch/or cartridge for Cricut (I used George & Basic Shapes), various shades and patterns of green scrap paper

How to: I pulled out my handy dandy Cricut earlier this week and cut 4 hearts out of several different shades and patterns of scrap paper.  You could easily do the same with a heart punch or even just cutting hearts freehand.  Then shape 3 of the hearts into a clover on the inside of the file, leaving room for a 4th leaf.  Glue down and place the 4th leaf of each shamrock into a baggie or envelope pocket that has been glued to the file.  Your child will simply match the leaves to the correct shamrocks!

Cardboard Tube Letter Matching

This was sort of a review activity for M, but when it came to being snowed in for 3 days, my brain turned to mush and I needed a quick activity that I didn't need alot of thought to put together.  We also reviewed beginner letter sounds as she put the stickers on. 

Cardboard Tube Letter Matching

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials: Cardboard tube, letter stickers

How to: Place stickers all over the cardboard tube and have your child match up the remaining stickers to the correct letter.

Source:  The Activity Mom

Advent Preschool Pack

It's a little late in the week to be posting this, but Advent lasts 3 more weeks so we'll be using these periodically whenever M starts begging for school (and trust me, she does!).  I absolutely adore 1+1+1=1's Nativity Pack, but alas, since I have no color printer, I had to make my own. Hers is far superior, but in case you are in the same colorless boat that I am, feel free to use mine.

Advent Preschool Skills Pack

Thanksgiving Preschool Skills Pack

We are finally back from our break!  We've got a lot of fun activities going on this week so stay tuned for more!  Enjoy!

Included in this pack are:
Turkey Number Sequencing
Thanksgiving Patterns
Turkey Clothespin Matching
Turkey Roll and Stamp
Cornucopia Uppercase/Lowercase Letter Match
Thanksgiving Counting
Cornucopia Size Order
Turkey Board Game
Thanksgiving Word Cards
Thanksgiving Cutting Practice
Turkey Writing Practice
Thanksgiving Preschool Skills Pack

Roll a Fall Tree Painting

I loved this activity, but my printer doesn't print color, so I decided to adapt it!

Roll a Fall Tree Painting

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials: Dice, Paper w/ brown tree either colored on or glued on using brown construction paper, paint, paintbrush (we used foam makeup applicators)

How to: Make a key somewhere on the paper, with a picture of each face of the die, and a number and color of leaf to correspond.  Have your child roll the die and then paint the correct number and color of leaves on the tree.  For example if M rolled a 1, she would have to paint 1 red leaf.

Source: Adapted from Play to Learn Printables via 2 Teaching Mommies

Leaves

We are learning all about leaves this week, but I decided not to create a Preschool Pack.  2 Teaching Mommies already has a great set of activities, so we'll be using those.  Check them out and enjoy!

Spider Web Counting

I thought this would be a fun activity for M, but I think it was a bit too advanced for her.  She still gets confused on numbers 11 and up, and then numbers were just too close together on the plate.  It was hard for her to distinguish what was a 1 next to a 5 and what was a 15.  I think if we were to do this again, we would use less numbers and space them out farther along the plate from each other.

Spider Web Counting

Theme: Preschool Skills
Materials: Black plate w/ numbers marked, white string
How to: Have your child wrap the string around the plate, going in order from number to number.

Halloween Preschool Skills Pack

Included in this pack are:
Ghost Writing Practice
Bat and Mummy Uppercase/Lowercase Match
Spider Grid Game
Halloween Lacing Cards
Ghost Size Order
Candy Counting Cards
Uppercase/Lowercase Sort
Halloween Patterns
Bat Number Sequencing

Halloween Preschool Skills Pack

Pattern Matching File Folder Game

We made this to match our pumpkin theme, but any shape cookie cutter would be work to match your own theme.  A great extension would be to talk about why the patterns are different.   (This one has dots, the stripes on this one go up and down, etc).

Pattern Matching File Folder Game

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials:  Cookie cutter, pieces of patterned paper, file folder, glue or tape, plastic baggie & paperclip to contain extra set of shapes when not in use

How to:  Trace a shape using a cookie cutter on various pieces of patterned and solid paper, making 2 per pattern.  Glue one set inside a file folder and have your child match using the other set.

Source: Little Family Fun

Pumpkin Preschool Skills Pack

I've never really done themes before, but decided to start them up now during the holidays.  I'll still be posting our Art/Music, Sensory/Messy Play, and Practical Life/Motor Skills activities, but now I'll also be posting a weekly "pack" of various preschool skills activities that match our theme that week.  First up?  Pumpkins! If you want to use them yourself, simply print, cut, and color (I don't have a color printer).  Included are:

• Jack O' Lantern File Folder Game
• Pumpkin & Jack O' Lantern Uppercase/Lowercase Letter Match
• Pumpkin Grid Game (text got messed up somehow, sorry!) - roll a dice and use some sort of manipulative to fill up grid
• Pumpkin Lacing Cards - cut out, poke holes, and attach string
• Pumpkin Size Order
• Pumpkin Counting Cards
• Uppercase/Lowercase P Sort
• Jack O' Lantern Pattern Cards

Let me know if you have any questions!

 

Pumpkin Preschool Skills Pack

Hide and Count Pasta

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials: bowl of rice, things to count, chart to count them on

How to: Hide your materials in the bowl of rice.  I used different types of mini pasta because I already had them in my pantry.  The blog I got the idea from used various colored counting bears, so anything would work!

Source: Hart 2 Hart

Count and Clip

This activity was pretty challenging for Michaela.  She understood the counting concept, but was having a hard time actually placing the clothespins.  I don't think she has that level of manual dexterity yet so I  ended up placing them where she pointed.  I think using glass pebbles or some other type of marker that she could place on top of the correct number would be better for other tots around this age.

Count and Clip

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials: dot painters, index cards, pen, clothespins or counting markers

How to:  Mark your index cards with dot painters and write 3 numbers on the side.  Have your child clip the correct number that corresponds to the dots, or use a marker to place on top of the correct number.

Source: The Activity Mom

Domino Parking Lot

I've seen this all around the blogosphere lately but we haven't done it because M was still working on number recognition.  Now that she's starting to count, I thought this was the perfect time to introduce this game.  We've never used 0, 11, or 12, so she had some problems with those, but overall she did pretty well.

Domino Parking Lot

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials: Domino Parking Lot Printable, dominos

How to:  Have your child count the numbers on the dominos and "park" it in the correct spot.  I used the dominos with one side blank but you can use whichever as long as they add up to that number.

Source: Math Wire

Listening to Directions

I saw this great activity a couple of weeks ago, and recreated it by tracing a few puzzle pieces on a piece of paper.  After working on this with M, I realized that we need to work a little bit more on some of our descriptive words (above, below, inside, outside, etc.).  She really liked doing this and even started making up some of her own directions!

Listening to Directions

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials: Printable, manipulatives of some sort (blocks, toys, etc.)

How to: Place the manipulatives in front of you and then have your child follow a series of directions.  (Put the red block above the circle, put the green block inside of the rectangle, etc).

Source: A Mommy's Adventure's

Playdough Size Classification

I thought this would be a cute way to incorporate a lesson in our regular playdough play.  It was a little bit hard for M because many of the pieces were fairly similar.  I think if I were to do it again, I would start with only a couple of balls with a huge difference in size and then work our way up to more balls.

Playdough Size Classification

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials: Playdough

How to: Roll some balls of various sizes and have your child line them up according to size.  M also decided to stack them in size order.

Source: My Life on a Taffy Pull

Color by Number

 I've seen a few color by number or letter activities around the blogosphere, but I knew M wouldn't really go for them.  Her coloring skills or not fantastic, so I knew trying to get her to color small spaces with crayons would be impossible.  I decided that separate pictures would be much easier for her, and they were!  She really liked doing this!  It took her a couple of tries to get a hang of what we were trying to do, but by the end of it, she was enjoying herself and parroting me ("Lets see...what color is the 5?  Purple?  Do you see the 5 mama?  The circle!  Good finding!").  She cracks me up. :)

Color by Number

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials: Paper, pen, crayons

How to: Draw some shapes on a piece of paper and write either 1 number or 1 letter inside each shape.  Then draw a key with a different color to correspond to each number or letter.  Have your child color the shape the corresponding color.


Sticker Counting

This was the first counting activity that we did that M was actually successful at!  I think it helped that we built up slowly to 10, instead of trying all at once.  Usually she skips 4, 5, and 6 when counting, but when we got to ten with this activity, she got all the numbers!

Sticker Counting

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials: Paper, pen, stickers

How to: Divide the paper into 10 boxes (or whatever number you want to count to) and have your child put the number of stickers that corresponds with that number in each box.

Source: The Ramblings of a Crazy Woman

Clothespin Color Match

When M woke up from her nap today she begged for more "school" so I put this together real quick.  This is a fun little activity that is good for color review and fine motor skills.  I've been noticing for awhile that M uses her left hand more than her right.  This was true today when she couldn't open the clothespins at all with her right, but did well with her left.  She might be a leftie!

Clothespin Color Match

Theme: Preschool Skills
Materials: clothespins, pipe cleaners, markers
How to: Twist the pipe cleaners into little circles and color the ends of the clothespins with the same colors.  Have your child match them together.

Source: I don't remember!  If this is your activity, please let me know so I can give you the credit!

Container Counting

This is our first counting activity and as I expected, M did not do very well.  She kept wanting to put just one manipulative in each container, like we did yesterday with the spooning activity.  That's ok, practice will make perfect!

Container Counting

Theme: Preschool Skills
Materials: Small containers (I used plastic food containers), manipulatives (tea bags, marbles, etc), numbers on pieces of paper that fit into your containers.
How to:  Put a number at the bottom of each container and have your child count and place the correct number of manipulatives in each container
Source: No Time for Flashcards