What is Montessori Learning?
This way of teaching is totally child-centered in an effort to help young ones, help themselves. One of the main focuses is make learning natural and to cater to a child’s natural eagerness to learn. So with that said, this post is catered to those younger children aged 2-6. Whether your toddler is in Montessori school or not here are 3 Montessori at home activities for toddlers that will totally cater to their already pre-dispositioned eagerness to learn.
Montessori Activity Ideas for Toddlers
One of the first things they start doing on day one in a pre-primary classroom (ages 2-3) is start to learn name recognition. Name recognition is the first step to reading and literacy. Children are fascinated with their own names so what better way to start teaching them about letters than with their own name. It is said that it is best to start teaching children to spell their names in uppercase then before entering Kindergarten start to teach the significance of upper and lower case letters.
Name Recognition
A great way to practice is by purchasing a name puzzle! The great thing about them is all kids love puzzles so when they first start out using this customized name puzzle it won’t even feel remotely like learning to them. As they grow you can start verbalizing the letters and asking them to find a certain letter for a certain spot. Even with both girls I use this. I lay all the pieces of both name puzzles out on the floor and I ask my 2.5-year-old daughter to find all of the A’s (for both puzzles).
Name Recognition
Another great at-home activity you can do is shape recognition. We recently received a “Kindergarten Toolkit” with flashcards and fell in love with it immediately! At 2.5 years old my daughter immediately gravitated to the shape flashcards. She loves going through all of the shapes then drawing them on the whiteboard for even more practice and recognition. We use these same cards to go over colors too. The color recognition is something we can even include my 17 month old in on and she loves it just as much.
Shape Recognition
One staple of Montessori classrooms is the multi-age settings. So primary (or commonly known as pre-k) consists of students ages 3-6 years old. The significance of this is so that the younger children can learn from the older children and the older children can reinforce their knowledge by teaching it to the younger students. This has proven so true already while observing my 2.5 year old and 17 month old going through their colors with these flashcards! It is just amazing to see!
Shape Recognition
And lastly counting objects! In order to make this inviting and fun we use an adorable Busy Barn play mat from Handmade Happiness by Ruth. The animals are the objects and the play mat is the unintimidating way of getting this idea of counting across to your toddler. Here is the simple way you can teach your toddler to count objects by using this play mat: –
Counting Objects
– Lay the mat down in front of your child with nothing on it. Have ALL of the animals in a cup next to the mat. – Start with laying one animal on the mat (then go up from there) and ask: “How many animals do you see on the farm?” – Demonstrating with your index finger, count the animals on the farm. – After each time take ALL of the animals off of the mat and start over completely fresh each time.
Counting Objects
– Repeat these steps going up in the number of animals. Eventually you can mix it up and go from “1 animal” on the farm to “4 animals” on the farm to truly test out their new counting skills.
Counting Objects