The December Idea Book provides a collection of Montessori-aligned activities to help you bring the season into your classroom. It’s like a photo album of ideas, offering practical and engaging ways to introduce sorting, phonological awareness, early math, and more. This resource includes ideas for practical life, language, and cultural lessons that are easy to […]
Seasonal: Winter
Winter Words
As the winter season approaches, incorporating seasonal vocabulary into your classroom can make learning engaging and fun. Below is a list of winter words organized into thematic categories, perfect for sparking discussions, inspiring creative writing, or adding a touch of the season to your lessons! Weather and Elements Clothing and Accessories Activities and Sports Nature […]
Montessori and Preschool Activities for Winter
Preschoolers really enjoy winter activities! The winter season is a great opportunity to introduce children to new experiences, concepts and skills. Below you’ll find some great resources from around the web to help you create a winter theme for your classroom and provide fun and engaging preschool activities for winter. Montessori Preschool Activities for Winter: […]
Free Printable: Get Ready for January
The January Seasonal Idea Book is ready! This resource includes ideas for practical life, language, and science lessons that are easy to implement and designed to complement your existing Montessori materials. Whether you’re looking to add variety to your routine or bring in some seasonal inspiration, the activities in this book offer simple yet meaningful options. […]
December Activities for Preschool
Here are a few more December activities to round off the month! Sensorial Smelling and matching Christmas scented candles. Use a blindfold for a fun challenge! Language We LOVE this “I Have Who Has” vocabulary development game from Kindergarten Squared Matching Christmas erasers with their outlines. I don’t remember where I got these but they […]
A Celebration of Light – The Winter Solstice
By Lisa Anderson Spending this time of the year with children reminds me of the beauty the holidays have to offer. Our students come from a variety of backgrounds and we try to acknowledge each family’s cultural traditions and share the joys of the season. This year we are celebrating the winter solstice and preparing […]
Holiday Gifts Your Child Can Sew
Please welcome Aimee Fagan! Aimee’s work on the Montessori Works Blog has been an inspiration to me for a long time. Aimee is a trained Montessori teacher and she has some wonderful resources for the practical life area of the classroom. She also writes about her experiences raising her children in a Montessori home. Today she […]
Winter Olympics
Are you excited about the Winter Olympics coming up this year? We’ve got a few activities planned to keep up with all the fun! Stamping the Olympic rings with paper tubes and paint Cut (or pin-punch) a torch and glue some colored tissue to make a flame String beads to make the Olympic rings. Figuring […]
Animals in Winter Unit
Here are some of the materials I put together for our Animals in Winter unit. This is a non-fiction book we will be using to introduce the unit. I might keep the cards apart and put them up on display one at a time as we talk about what it says. (Source: Animals in […]
The Mitten
“The Mitten” by Jan Brett is such a great book to read with the children in winter. I made up some phonological awareness games for our pre-literacy shelf to go with the book. Skill: Isolating Words You will need a basket of blocks to play this game. The teacher reads a sentence card and […]
Montessori and Preschool Printables for Winter
There are so many simple ways to bring a winter theme into the classroom. Last week we shared pictures of some of the new materials we have out in January. Here are a few more! Winter Clothing color sort. I decided to print out the black-line set on colored construction paper this time to […]
January Printables
It’s a new year and a new month and time to put out some new materials! Here are some of the Wintery works we have on the shelves for January. On the Pre-Literacy Shelf We love the Question Game for vocabulary development and improving inferencing skills. These questions are little more advanced than the […]
Christmas Around the World
This month in our class we have been celebrating holidays around the world. We began in America with Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, comparing the similarities and differences between the two. We then departed for a ‘holiday globe trot’, some of which was inspired by A Year of Many Firsts, while also weaving in the heritage of our own […]
On the Art Shelves in December
Here are some of the simple activities we have on our art shelves this month. Making little candy canes with left over pipe cleaner bits Lots of pinpunching variations out this month! Perfect for making Holiday cards. I love how sweet the santa hat and stocking look with the cotton glued on. This is a […]
December Fine Motor Shelf
Here are some pictures of our fine motor shelves all decked out in red and green to celebrate the season 🙂 December Fine Motor Fun! Pouring from a festive votive candle holder Tonging little ornaments into a candle holder we found at a thrift store. This little peg board is from the dollar store. I […]
December Printables
Here are some of the materials on our shelves in December Play Dough Mats Add these to your play dough work and see what the children do with them. I’ve really developed a liking for play dough mats over the last few years! From the December Preschool Pack Cutting Cutting strips. Children can practice […]
December Phonological Awareness
I find that most Montessori Language Albums (manuals) don’t provide enough information about the pre-literacy skills children need to develop before being introduced to the Sandpaper Letters. In my opinion, a lot of time should to be spent on oral language development and ear training before symbols are introduced. Phonological awareness is an umbrella term […]
February in Action
Here are the videos of our classes in action during the month of February! Parents, please check your emails for our February newsletter. [vimeo]https://vimeo.com/60799636[/vimeo] [vimeo]https://vimeo.com/60799635[/vimeo]
January in Action
Here are the latest videos from our class! If you’ve been following our blog for the past month, check out these videos to see all of our winter activities in use! Parents, check your emails for our January Newsletter. See our earlier videos on Vimeo and YouTube Linked to these great early education blogs […]
Animals in Winter
This is our Unit Studies shelf with activities to help children explore what animals do in winter. Here’s our setup for making animal tracks in playdoh. A little glitter in the white playdoh can make the work even more attractive. I used the animals from our North America box for this activity. […]
Free Preschool Printables for Winter
Here are some highlights from our early literacy shelf (pictured above) in January: What’s Missing on the Snowman? from A Child’s Place. Scroll down to the “printouts” section near the bottom of the page for this free printable PDF. Snowman Sequencing from Teach It With Class. I Have, Who Has… Winter Words from […]
January- What’s New on the Art Shelves this Winter?
Pinpunching snowflakes and mittens. The mittens can be decorated with little dots or paper-punched snowflakes Pinpunching a snowman and decorating with various items Cutting coffee-filter snowflakes. I like to pre-fold and pre-draw the lines, then paperclip together to help the younger ones manage this work. Older children can be shown how to prepare the […]
Fine Motor Activities For January
Pouring sparkly pom poms Pouring blue rice Pouring blue water using a funnel Spooning gel beads in a snowman dish Spooning sparkly balls into dimpled foam packaging Straight pins into a shaker. I put the shaker in a little winter-y bowl Tweezing and sorting fuze beads Using an eye dropper to add one drop […]