Teeth Brushing Activity with Free Printable
A fun and engaging activity for kids of all ages! And a great opportunity to bond with your child!
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How to make fake snow for pretend play!
A fun and engaging activity for kids of all ages! And a great opportunity to bond with your child!
How to make fake snow for pretend play! Read More »
DIY Christmas Tree Ornaments – The Easy Way to Make Your Own Custom Ornaments
The Easy Way to Make Your Own Custom Ornaments!
DIY Christmas Tree Ornaments – The Easy Way to Make Your Own Custom Ornaments Read More »
Space Explorers Learning Pack
PLUS FREE PRINTABLES! When I first started to create this unit, I said to myself” I really need to start studying all over again and take some good books so I can have my information fresh to make a great product.” Not just simple a Space Unit, but one with clear, brief, intense and easy to understand by little children unit. Last but not least, to be attractive and choose the best images I could. I started to make a research and purchased beautiful images to add it to my unit. So exciting! I would like to bring you through my unit and I hope you like it as much as I loved to put it together. Let’s start an adventure through the Solar System and beyond and discover what Space is all about! Every page of this pack is packed with amazing information, beautifully made posters, games, life cycles, moon phase, Solar System info cards, space projects, language activities, fun math games, sensory activity stickers, art and science activities, an astronaut photo keepsake craft, a process art project and so much more! I’d like to show some of the highlights of this unit, the ones I love more, and give some activity ideas on how to use the printables. A very interesting, Montessori inspired activity to do with children is the Cosmic Address. It will give children an idea about where they are in the Universe. I loved to use real pictures to give them a real sens of the world around them. You can use the empty cards to add your own pictures or to ask your child to draw them. I created an example to make it easier to understand how to use the cards. The Unit is now available as part of the THE WORLD AROUND ME MEGA BUNDLE – CHECK THE DEAL HERE You can check the unit only here I have a FREE printable to offer with this unit, the Watercolor Painting Space Book. My children loved to do this activity as a calming activity. Every evening we were painting 2-3 space objects and hang them out on our art space. Download the FREEBIE here The second favorite in this unit is the huge Solar System Poster (84 x 59 cm) and the Solar System planets and Sun! This is our home decor right now and we made it to celebrate the International Space Week (4 – 10th of October). The great thing about the poster is that comes in 3 types: the poster with the planets, the poster without the planets and without the planets but the names only on a separate sheet with the planets only to cutout and stick to the main poster with velcro dots. This is what I used here in this picture. If you don’t want to print it so big, I have the same layout with planet stickers in A4 format. Another favorite is the Solar System Model. You simply need to print, laminate, cut and stick them together with a pin. It is such a favorite with my kids and such a fun and easy way to learn the planets and you have 2 facts on the handle: “distance from the Sun” and Length of the Day! What can be more fun? A favorite art project included in the unit is Marbled Planets Art. You can find all the steps and the tools you need to do this inside the unit or in my blog post. READ IT HERE In the picture here below you can see some of the STEAM activities included in the Space Unit: – Simple projects that require objects you have around your home – Gluing activities “create your own space craft” – Marbled Planets Artwork – Astronaut keepsake – Solar System Model – Coloring Pages – Watercolor Painting Space Book – you can have this for FREE CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR FREEBIE In the unit there are included 3-part cards of the Space, Phonics and Alphabet Cards and Info Cards. Everything you need to teach your child from naming and recognizing the planets to reading and matching activities and learning fun and interesting facts about our space and beyond. To make it more fun, I added some black beans to a tray and add language cards and safari ltd Space toobs and planets to match the cards. My 3 years old was very excited and interested in matching and naming every object she found on the tray. Plus I added some rocks covered in aluminium foil so she can discover the mystery. I explained her these are asteroids orbiting the Sun, creating a belt. You can do the same sensory activity and use the opportunity to read to your elder children as he/she holds a planet or any other object in their hands. Take one card and read the information. It would be a fun way to learn. We love to use our materials on our shelf. Here are some ideas that may inspire you for your next Space theme learning. Upper shelf🚀 Solar System Poster🌔 moon lunar cycle🧑🚀 be an astronaut craft💫 Solar System cards with matching Montessori color tablets🌎 Counting and color sorting planets🪨 Asteroids building blocks🪐 Solar System 3-part cards and Solar System planets to match🌠 Solar System Planet Riddles (these are so fun)Middle shelf✨️ Space rhyming Cards🛰 Space Decoding Game🛸 Space Phonics Cards matching @safariltd Space Toobs☀️ Middle Soynd Sorting Game with Astronauts🌐 My Cosmic Address Montessori Cards🌌 Verb, Noun, Adjective Sorting Moons and AstronautsLower shelf🌎 Solar system Magnets from @learningresources with Space Info Cards – my printables🌌 My Solar System Project – my printables🌔 Moon Phases🪐 Space Puzzle @tooky_toy WATCH HERE THE VIDEO ON MY INSTAGRAM PAGE Some of my 6yo daughter’s favorite activities are the “planet riddles”, the “cvc words decoding game”, painting and gluing, the “cosmic address” and the “solar system model’ we have created together. Below you can check some of these activities and some more pictures I took from the whole unit. If you enjoyed
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Preschool Marbled Planets Art
The Marbled Planets among the stars is one of my daughters favorite art project and I’d love to share this with you and help you make your own with your kids. We loved to create the classic shaving cream marbles effect on the planets and then set them on a piece of A4 black cardboard painted with glitter glue to give a special space effect to our beautiful Marbled Planet Artwork! WATCH THE PROJECT IN ACTION AND DON’T FORGET TO GIVE US A FOLLOW Making the Marbled Planets Preschool Space Craft Supplies Needed: – Black and white cardstock paper A4 size – Acrylic paint in many colors o We had silver and purple for Jupiter, red, orange and gold for Venus and green and blue for Earth – Shaving Cream (the white fluffy one, not gel) – 3 foil containers, round would be ideal – Rubber spatula (the one for cooking) – Toothpicks – Squeegee – Gold or Purple glitter glue (ours is from Elmer’s) – Paint Brush – Glue stick INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE ART WORK: 1. Start by cutting 3 different sizes circles on your white cardstock paper. 2. Squirt shaving cream into the foil containers. Use your spatula to spread it uniformly. 3. Squirt various colors of the acrylic paint over the shaving cream. 4. Use the toothpicks to creates lines up and down, left and right. The design will be making, it will be transferred on your white circles (planets) 5. Press the white paper circles down the paint and rub slightly all over the circle to get the colors stick all over the circle. 6. Carefully remove the circle from the paint. Let them rest for a couple of minutes and then use the squeegee to remove the excess. You are now left with a beautifully marbled design. 7. Paint the black cardstock paper with glitter glue and add your marbled planets to the black cardstock to create the impression that these planets are in space. 8. Optional: sprinkle some gold glitter to make your project look like it has millions of stars. We skipped this step. What do you think about this pretty art project? Would you give it a try? Did you little astronaut like it? You can find this project among other beautiful SPACE projects, games and educational, hands-on activities for your little one to learn math, literacy, science, lots of fun facts and beautifully designed posters and informative sheets in my brand new 190-page SPACE EXPLORERS PACK. If you enjoyed our activity idea, give us a follow on our Instagram page: @montessoriindailylife If you would like to know more about the SPACE PACK or purchase it, check it here: Space Explorers Learning Pack – 13$ only for over 190 pages of space themed activities! FREE Watercolor Painting Space Book – GET IT HERE Thank you so much for being here and for your love and support! Have a blessed day! xoxo Raluca
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Montessori Inspired Bee Activities Shelf
Did you know on 20th of May is World Bee Day? Did you know 20th of May is World Bee Day? Bees and other pollinators, such as butterflies, bats and hummingbirds, are increasingly under threat from human activities. Pollination is, however, a fundamental process for the survival of our ecosystems. Nearly 90% of the world’s wild flowering plant species depend, entirely, or at least in part, on animal pollination, along with more than 75% of the world’s food crops and 35% of global agricultural land. Not only do pollinators contribute directly to food security, but they are key to conserving biodiversity. To raise awareness of the importance of pollinators, the threats they face and their contribution to sustainable development, the UN designated 20 May as World Bee Day. The goal is to strengthen measures aimed at protecting bees and other pollinators, which would significantly contribute to solving problems related to the global food supply and eliminate hunger in developing countries. Children are usually very scared of bees and any insect in general. I can understand that, I am scared too! 🙂 I am trying to teach my 4yo how to stay safe around bees by learning more about these amazing creatures and in the same time have fun learning lots of important skills. I am also learning a lot along the way ???? I loved to create our new Montessori Inspired bee unit study and just used it to create an activity rotation for our shelf, at home. It contains lots of beautiful Montessori inspired activities for preschool age, geared towards children 3 to 5 years old, referring to a mixture of skills level. If you cannot do all the activities together or some of them are not suitable for your child then you can rotate and use when the child is ready for that particular skill or have interest in it. Our shelf included the following activities that are part of the B is for Bee Learning Pack ????a honeybee information card ????letter b card for salt writing tray (I used corn for polenta) ????letter b for a letter b object basket to practice letter sound ????life cycle of a bee ???? letter b do-a-dot ????body parts of a bee (honeybee) ????b is for bee card that I used along the tray “read, create, write” ????letter Bb working sheet for letter tracing ????bee elements cutting strips ????beehives additions cards ????types of bees 3-part cards ????counting bees clip cards (Montessori tip: the printable has small square numbers to cutout and glue on the clothespins to allow the number to be seen after the child is clipping the correct number) You can see this in the video on our IG page Previous image Next image Check the IG video here! ????roll it, build it, add it ????honeybee 4-piece puzzle ????uppercase and lowercase alphabet cards 2 piece puzzles ????1:1 correspondence counting cards In the pack there are many other fun activities such as coloring pages, arts and crafts and bee themed activity ideas, books recommendations, fun facts about bees, information and cards about the pollinators of the world, beehive components informative cards, tracing lines, count and trace and count and color sheets, many pattern and counting activities, 2 posters to hang on a A4 frame, small real images cards to create your own garland and other 2 fun phonetic games. Check this video here to see more! https://montessoriindailylife.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Movie0098.mp4 More pictures here Previous image Next image I hope you enjoyed this post and I hope it can be of inspiration for anyone of you celebrating with children the World Bee Day! We are running a 20% discount campaign on all our pintables in our shops during month of May. You can find them here https://www.etsy.com/shop/MontessorInDailyLife?ref=seller-platform-mcnav Or on our website: https://montessoriindailylife.com/shop/ Check out our freebies here! Thank you so much for your support and for being part of my community! Let me know if you have any questions at montessoriindailylife@gmail.com or you can send me a message here: Contact Us Gratefully, Raluca
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DIY Montessori Butterfly Mobile – with FREBIE
The Montessori Butterfly Mobile – DIY – visual mobile – age 10 weeks – FREE template! Don’t you just love already these bright and beautiful hanging butterflies? Babies are as delighted as we are when trying to track the movement in the air of those gorgeous butterflies. While babies are trying to follow the dancing movements, this helps developing their visual skills. I made this mobile while I was studying for my AMI Montessori certificate for infancy and I am so excited to share it with you, to offer the template for free for the one would love to build their own and to share my tutorial on how I made this. The butterfly mobile, as any other visual mobile should be created out of natural materials and realistic images so it can be in line with the Montessori principles of offering babies concrete, real-life experiences. This mobile is geared towards age 10 weeks and up. How I made it???? Everything you need for your DIY: ???? butterfly template showing 5 watercolor butterflies (check it here) It’s an A4 page. I bought the right to use the images ???? embroidery thread ????bamboo dowels or wooden dowels (1 of 30 cm and 2 smaller of 15 cm each) I printed and cut out the butterflies in double (you can also try to print on thicker paper, I used the normal one). I attach the 2 sides (up and down)I attached the embroidery thread to each with glue gun. I roll it and made a knot to each one on the dowel. I added a longer thread piece to hang it. When offer to the child, please hang it 30 cm above his chest, like in this picture. Please check here the tutorial You can check it on our Instagram page for a better visibility – CHECK IT HERE! https://montessoriindailylife.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Movie00174-1.mp4 Download here your Butterfly template for FREE! Click here Thank you so much for your interest in the Butterfly Mobile template. If you need any assistance or have any questions, you can contact us montessoriindailylife@gmail.com Terms of Use: Feel free to download the template, as many times as needed for personal use, but please do not resell or claim this product as your own. I also ask that you do not share these with others as I have sought to make this product available as a free benefit to individuals. By joining our email list you will receive access to many amazing freebies. I kindly ask that you respect these terms of use and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me via Instagram or email: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/montessoriindailylife Email: montessoriindailylife@gmail.com All graphics have been purchased by their respective creators and are used with permission. Gratefully, Raluca
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Fun Earth Day Activities for Kids to Help the Planet
Most of us, adults, know well the 3Rs meaning – reduce, reuse and recycle and is important to make sure kids understand their responsibility towards our planet too. Every year on 22nd of April we celebrate Earth Day and it’s a perfect moment to educate and teach our children about our amazing planet and what they can do to protect it. Here are some favourites activities we have made over the years with my daughter Aurora that is now 4 years old. I have put together for this occasion a fun Earth Day Activity Pack FREEBIE – GET IT HERE! Here is our list of activities you can enjoy at home or in the classroom. Let’s get started! Earth Day Activities list ???? 1. Go play in nature Go outside, have a walk in a park, or in a forest! Take a trip to the lake or in the mountains. The very best way to celebrate Earth is to connect and explore nature and be outside as much as possible. Kids are amazing natural explorers, they will find so many opportunities to birdwatch, listen to birds singing, observe insects and wildlife around them. 2. Organize an Earth Day Scavenger Hunt While children explore nature explain them what they just found, have opportunities of vocabulary enrichment and communication. You can use ready printed Nature Scavenger hunt templates. Scavenger hunt templates I created: 1. Earth Day Hunt – check it here 2. Nature collection frame – here 3. Spring Learning Pack 3. Create a pinecone bird seeder Let’s fed the birds by creating our own bird seeder from items we can have around the home such as pinecones or oranges. See in the pictures what you need: a pinecone, bird seeds, peanut butter and a string! 4. Build an insect hotel Have fun and build a bugs hotel from upcycling items you have around the house like a box and cannelloni pasta, add some plastic bugs, stones, sticks, leaves and some sensory fillers such as rice and taste safe earth from coffee, black tea and flour and let the fun begin!???????? 5. Start a seed jar Create a lovely set up with some beans , little jars and cotton pads. Let the beans soak in lots of water inside the jars for a couple of weeks, they will spout like in the pictures below and grow little plants. Let the child observe and add water as he waits the plant to grow bigger. After 3 weeks set up a new activity and invite the child/children to transfer the plant in new containers. Use recycled yogurt jars or egg shells, add soil and invite the children to water their new plants. ???? It will be a beautiful experience to let the children watch their experiments grow before their eyes! 6. Make an Earth Day Handprint Keepsake We just made this interesting activity with both my girls and they were so excited about it. Everyone is excited when working with playdough, isn’t it? Watch here the tutorial and the blog post! 7. Learn how to recycle Create a set up at home for your child using little objects and some recycling bins that can be the ones in the picture (these are pen holders and you can find them with low price in amazon and the little objects are actually stickers I bought on dollar tree, 2 years ago) and learn about recycling in a fun way! 8. Make nature art Use sticks, stones, leaves that you gathered from your nature walk and paint them, create art, stick them on a paper frame or create an wooden sticks frame, add a sticky paper and ask your child to add nature treasures, like in this post ???? 9. Grow flowers, vegetables or fruits. Make your own little garden either you are living in a city or in countryside. There are plenty of opportunities to do it. 10. Go visit a farm Take your kids on a farm visit trip. The opportunities of learning is huge and it’s so fun to see and learn how plants grow, to experience food directly from the trees/plants, create their own snack by picking food themselves and taste it. Also an animal farm is an amazing opportunity so the children can see for example where the milk comes from. This spring we visited both a vegetable farm and an animal farm and there were both amazing experiences for the kids. I hope you enjoyed our post. There are a lot more ways to teach children the responsibility towards our planet in a fun way. These activities teach children to appreciate what the nature gives us and protect the environment and its resources. When we indirectly teach them through these fun activities, it will inspire and teach them to respect the environment around them and to make the world a better and safer place to live in! ????♻
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Earth Day Handprint & Photo Keepsake
I am excited to share this Earth Day activity we tried for the first time with my daughter, Aurora, 4 years old. We all love playdough in our home and love to create sensory play set ups, keepsakes or just leave the playdough in a tray available for my girls in our art area. I will attach some pictures and share a tutorial about how we made our Salt Dough Earth Day Handprint and Photo Keepsake! ???????? Here is out video tutorial on how we made this fun and lovely memory! Check the Earth Day Keepsake tutorial on our Instagram page! https://montessoriindailylife.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Movie0041.mp4 Here is what you need: blue and green salt dough, a small picture of your child/children heart shaped and laminated, a piece of string, a heart shaped cookie cutter and a round silicon cake mold. ATTENTION: for this project use a silicon mold not a normal baking tray because you risk that your keepsake will break once you will remove it from the tray. Playdough recipe: 1 1/2 cup of flour, 1 1/2 cup of salt and about 3 quarter cup of water. Add food coloring in the water before you start mixing. Mix slowly until you get the right consistency. We mixed together the blue playdough with the green one to create a marbled look just like our planet. Ask the child to press it down smoothly until it gets to 1cm of height, press handprint and make holes for the string. Use the cookie cutter to press out a heart in the middle of the hand palm. Use a toothpick to write any info you like. We wrote 2023 ???? Bake it for 3 hours at 100′ C Let it cool completely. We left it overnight. Next day I added the string and I glued the picture of my daughters Aurora and Francesca. I hanged it on a door. It looks so pretty, don’t you think? I hope you will make it! For any questions write me on my Instagram page messenger. Check out our Instagram page at Montessori In Daily Life for more kids activity ideas, Montessori parenting approach, Montessori spaces, DIY’s, freebies and amazing sales! If you have any questions please feel free to ask me here and don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to receive your PRACTICAL LIFE mini Guide for FREE!???? Earth Day Freebie alert! So excited to share with you this cute Earth Day mini pack FREEBIE! I hope you and your little ones will enjoy it! Get your FREEBIE!
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Montessori Practical Life
“Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed” Maria Montessori Practical Life is one of the five areas of curriculum in Montessori education. Practical Life work includes preliminary exercises such as: spooning, tweezing, pouring, sweeping, buttoning, dusting, carrying: care for self, care for the environment, grace and courtesy and control of movement. In the Practical Life exercises the children are given breakable, real materials to manipulate. When the children will be given these opportunities they will increase their self confidence. They will learn how to respect and care for their environment. What is Practical Life? Practical Life is purposeful activity, when a child is doing practical life he is working with intelligent purpose. Practical life give the child the sense of being and belonging to a family and to a community. Why Practical Life is Important? Practical life activities are not simply about learning how to broom, sweep or wash a table, but it’s much more that that. Practical life is about preparing that child for life.It’s about building self-esteem, basic trust, independence and autonomy, participating in doing life, ego development, self-sufficiency, problem solving, confidence consequences of his choices, completing a cycle of work, all qualities that will help him in life but also later on in academic work.These activities are purposeful, the child learns to do work with intelligent purpose and this will lead to concentration.“The child who concentrates, is immensely happy” – Maria Montessori.They are mindful and joyful, the children in a Montessori environment thrive, they are concentrated and do their chosen work with joy.Practical life nurtures the child independence and nurture his will for “let me do it myself” (hormè)Practical Life activities indirectly prepare the child for reading and writing. Through Practical Life Activities, the child hones hand-eye coordination and muscle control and executes the tasks left to right and top to bottom preparing him for writing and reading.Our responsibility as adults is to prepare the environment so this can meet the child’s needs and a place where the child can thrive and develop at their pace; we need to link the child to his environment and remove the obstacles. Purpose of Practical Life Practical life have so many purposes and benefits such as: ????teaches a practical skill ????adaptation (helps the child to adapt to his culture, community or group) ???? functional independence (helps teach the child how to do by himself, leads to intellectual independence) ????social awareness ???? concentration – trough repetition, the child can concentrate better (we must not interrupt a child that is working on a task, helps him in the order and teaches him sequencing) ???? language – through experience, they will have a sensorial knowledge about their environment (I know how a jug is looking like) It grounds the child in reality, in real purpose ????self confidence and self esteem refines movement and coordination, equilibrium, fine and gross motor skills ????teaches the child to care for himself, environment and others My daughter, Francesca, 12 to 16 months – old practical life activities https://montessoriindailylife.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/20230324_1741141.mp4 The major importance in Montessori is that Practical Life activities aren’t directly about teaching a child to clean and dress himself but more directly about completing a work cycle, learning sequencing, concentrating, and being responsible for their environment, themselves and others and preparing them for life. Practical Life materials Practical Life materials contain a “control of error” that, once a child has been introduced to a certain work, will help to guide that child to self-correct and self-learn. Therefore he has control over his education and his pace of development. The materials have to be real, breakable and good to manage for the children’s small hands so they can use them independently. A set of practical life items that we love are these, as example. Teaching a child the Practical Life activities and allowing him to participate in in every day life activities at home, gives him joy, builds self-worth and confidence. He will feel part of the community, he will feel useful and respected. Once a child builds his inner discipline, confidence and concentration as demonstrated through completing a full working cycle, the child is ready to move on other materials such as sensorial materials. Subsribe to our newsletter to get our FREE Practical Life Mini Guide Check us out on our Instagram Page at Montessori In Daily Life and subscribe to our newsletter to receive for FREE our Practical Life Mini Guide Check out our last video on Practical Life from an young age and the importance of it in a home environment. Francesca was 16 months in those videos. I hope you enjoyed our post and thank you for being here! Gratefully, Raluca
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