Setting up you a Montessori Home Environment

Setting up a Montessori area in your home for can seem like a daunting task at first. There are so many wonderful Montessori materials, how do you choose the best ones for your 3-6 year old? Here is a list to help you set up a Montessori area with the essentials:

Setting up the room/area:
* Lots of shelves
* Child sized table and chairs
* Display art work at child's eye level (change frequently)
* A pet to care for
*Live plants
*Art easel with paint and smock all out and available for your child as he/she wishes

Language area:
*Age appropriate Books
*Sand Paper Letters
*Movable Alphabet

Math:
*Baskets with objects to sort and classify and count
*Sand Paper Numbers
*Spindle Boxes

Sensorial:
*Smell Jars
*Color tablets
*Pink Tower
*Feely bags (different textures in a bag)


Practical Life:
*Child sized duster, broom, sponge
*pouring work

Montessori Halloween activities

Here are some fun Montessori based Halloween activities to do with your preschooler!


Math:
Pumpkin Seed Counting: After carving a pumpkin, rinse and dry the seeds. Take 20 index cards and number each one (1-20). Have your preschooler count and place the correct number of pumpkin seeds to match the numbered index card. Example: If your child is working are on the index card with the # 3 on it, then the child should count out 3 pumpkin seeds and place them on the card.


Ghost Matching: Make 10-12 ghosts out of white felt or construction paper. Draw the same face on every two of the ghosts (ex: 2 happy ghosts, 2 mad ghost, 2 sad ghosts). Have your child match the ghosts by facial expressions.


Sensory:
Halloween Sensory Box:
Place small pumpkins, gourds, acorn squash, Indian corn and other Halloween items you can buy at your local pumpkin patch in a large box. Place a blind fold on your preschool and ask him/her to reach into the box and feel an object. Have your child describe the object and guess what it is they are holding.

Black Cat Touch cards: Cut out a cat shape out of cardboard. Buy black satin, fake fur, cotton and other textured fabrics from your local craft or fabric store. Glue the different fabric to your cardboard cats. Your child can "pet" the cats and feel the different textures.


Practical Life:
Cooking Pumpkin seeds: Let your child help prepare pumpkin seeds to be cooked. Your child can wash, dry and salt the seeds.


Art:
Painting: Provide Halloween paint colors at the easel.

Pumpkin Paper Plate: Have your preschooler paint a paper plate orange. Let the paint dry as your child cuts out eyes, nose and mouth out of black construction paper and a stem out of brown or green paper. Let child glue the face on when paint is completely dry.


Science:
Life Cycle of a Pumpkin: Montessori for Everyone offers a wonderful (and free) download of the life cycle of a pumpkin.

Reading:
Read several Halloween themed books: Avoid scary Halloween books. Read to your preschooler every day and place several Halloween/fall themed books in your childs reading corner basket so she can sit and look at the books as she pleases.

A Basic Montessori list of supplies for Preschoolers

If you are just starting out in Montessori you may be overwhelmed by the cost of supplies. Here is a list of the essentials to get you by while you build your Preschool Montessori supply closet (some you may already have):

Sand Paper Letters and Numbers
Pink Tower
Wooden puzzles
Lacing cards
Play dishes- perfect for practical life activities- pouring, setting tables etc..
Baskets of nature items (rocks, sea shells) for classifying
Sensory Touch boards (satin, wool, cotton, wood)

Start with these basics as you continue to add to your Montessori shelves.

Leaf projects

Fall is the perfect time of year to go on a nature walk with your children. While taking your walk give your child a bag to from nature such as leaves, acorns, pine cones, flowers, and rocks. Once you are home, here are a few activities to do with your preschool ages child for fun.

Leaf Rubbings Art:
1. Go on a nature walk and collect leaves.
2. Put leaves on table with, vein side up and cover with a sheet of paper
3. Peel wrapping of off crayon
4. Rub the long side of the crayon over the paper

This creates a pretty shape of the leaf on the paper.


Art Collage:
1. Take a piece of contact paper and tape it on a table sticky side up.
2. Have your preschooler pick out some of the flat nature items he/she picked on the walk (leaves in different colors, flowers)
3. Have child place nature items on the sticky contact paper.
4. Cut a another piece of contact paper and place it over the collage (sticky side down).

You will have a beautiful nature collage!

Leaf Classification:
1. Make Leaf flash cards by printing out pictures of different type of leaves from trees found in your area (oak, maple, willow, ect.) and glue them on note cards.
2. Help child identify what type of leaves she found from the walk using the pictures as a reference.

leaf pressing:
An easy was to press leaves
1. Put leaves between pieces of newspaper
2. Place several heavy books on top of the nespaper
3. Let dry for two- three weeks

Once your leaves are pressed there are several art projects you and your preschooler can do with them.
Some ides- 1. Make a scrap book together and use the leaves as decoration
2. Make fall cards to send to loved ones who live far away
3. Make a leaf book