Montessori

Below you will find an experience for each of the five Montessori learning areas: Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, Mathematics and Culture. These experiences are suitable for children aged 2-3.

Practical Life

Baking tray transfer

This transferring experience will help to develop your child's one to one correspondence by asking them to match one ball to one individual cake tin.

Safety First

Ensure this experience is supervised. If using tongs, role model to your child how to use these safely.

Presentation

To carry out this experience you will need a muffin tray, a container and some tin foil or other similar items such as ping pong balls. Count the number of compartments in the tray and then screw up the tin foil into balls, one for each compartment and then place them in a container.

Encourage your child to join you at the table or on the floor with the bowl of tin foil balls and the baking tray. Pick up one of the tin foil balls and hand it to your child for them to feel.

Ask them to tell you how it feels in their hand then point to a compartment of the baking tray and ask them to place it in there. Repeat this until each tin foil ball has been placed into each of the compartments.

Draw your child's attention to the fact that each tin foil ball has been placed in each of the individual cake compartments and now there are none left in the container.

Remove all the tin foil balls from the baking tray and place them back into their container and then ask your child if they would like to do the activity again.

Sensorial

Mystery bag

This will help your child develop the ability to recognise an object by its shape and can be used to encourage your child to use descriptive language.

Safety First

Ensure the items placed into the bag are suitable for your child to explore.

Presentation

Prior to carrying out this activity find six to eight objects that your child is familiar with. These could include an eggcup, spoon, brush or a small familiar toy. Place all the chosen items in a bag.

You are now going to support you child in identifying objects using only their sense of touch.

Encourage your child to sit down with you in a comfortable area and invite them to close their eyes and see if they can put their hand in the bag to feel one of the objects and tell you what it is.

Once they have made their guess ask them to remove the object so that you can both see if they have guessed correctly.

You can repeat this until they have felt and removed all the objects from the bag.

You can do this activity on many occasions by continuously varying the objects you place in the bag.

Language

Action words

This is a game that can be played at various stages in the child's development of language becoming more challenging and exciting as the child's language and reading skills develop. Hearing words in context will support your child in understanding their meaning.

Safety First

Ensure there is a clear space for your child to move around.

Presentation

Explain to your child that you are going to play an action game with them. You are going to say some words and they are going to act out the actions.

Ask your child to carry out an action for example, to 'hop slowly', or 'speak quietly'. Allow time for your child to carry out the action.

The game can be made more complex for older children by writing down key words such as 'hop' or 'jump' and encouraging them to try sounding out the action they need to complete.

Mathematics

Ladybird lottery

Children benefit from learning concepts through concrete experiences and this is especially true of mathematical concepts. Through this activity you are helping your child to develop their number recognition and counting skills.

Safety First

If your child is helping to prepare the activity and using scissors make sure they are closely supervised.

Presentation

Prior to the activity draw a template of a lady bird and instead of placing black spots on the wings draw circles each with a number, 1 – 5, written in, ensure you have five circles on your lady bird.

Draw five circles on another piece of paper and write the same numbers in them before cutting them out.

Show your child the ladybird template with the numbers marked in its spots and also the circles you have cut out with the same numbers on.

Explain to them that they are now going to play a game of matching the number in the circles to the numbers in the spots on the ladybird’s wings. They must do this by placing the number circles on the correct spots on the wings.

Lay out all the number circles you have cut out, in front of your child and invite them to start matching the numbers. When they have finished point to each of the numbers in turn and see if they can tell you what it is. If they can’t, name it for them. You may also like to invite you child to join you in counting from 1 - 5 whilst you point to each of the numbers in turn.

Culture

Paper plate land forms

This activity encourages your child to be imaginative and learn about the natural world through a hands-on creative experience.

Safety First

When using the plasticine, carefully supervise your child to ensure they do not put any of this into their mouth.

Presentation

You will need a paper plate, brown plasticine, glue, blue paint, a brush and small jar of water.

Explain to your child that an island is a piece of land with water all around it. Take the paper plate and invite them to paint the whole plate blue. You can explain this will be their water.

While the paint is drying ask them to decide what shape they want their island to be and give your child the plasticine to roll and shape into their island.

Once they have made their island ask them where they want to place it on the plate they have painted blue to represent the water. Ask them to put some glue on the plate and then place their island on it so that it is secured in place. Show your child that their island has water all around it.

Why not look on a map or globe to see what land forms they can see?