Montessori is so much more than pretty wooden materials and beautifully prepared shelves- it can be done without the need for fancy materials or tools! This week, we’re excited to share five engaging Montessori activities that you can do at home with your little ones, all without purchasing a single thing. These activities promote independence, creativity, and, most importantly, fun!
“Grace and Courtesy” is an often overlooked part of Montessori education where we show children how to act by modeling the behavior ourselves. In the Montessori classroom, Grace and Courtesy is a huge part of the curriculum and it’s something that can easily be done at home too!
Choose a skill you’d like your child to learn, such as saying “please” before asking for something, and role-play a scenario with your child. You go first, modeling how to say “please” when asking for the item, then invite your child to have a turn.
We tend to avoid imaginary stories in Montessori, especially before five, because children of this age are literal thinkers. Instead of telling a made-up story, trying telling a true one! Think of something that has happened to you in the past and share the story with your child- it can be exciting or completely ordinary- the important thing is to embellish your story with details from the five senses and your own thoughts. What did you see, hear, taste, feel, smell? What emotions did you feel? The more descriptive you can be, the better.
Command games are a favorite activity in my classroom, especially when my young three-year-olds get a bit wiggly. To play this game, simply ask your child to do something. For example, “Stand on one leg.” Keep it fun by using silly commands (“Bark like a dog”) and even stringing two or more commands together (“pat your head and jump”). This activity is deceptively simple- it helps your child understand the role of a verb (action word) in a sentence. You can also play this game with different parts of speech. For example:
Take you child on a tour around your house, yard, or neighborhood. Ask them “what is this?” for various objects and tell them the name if they don’t know it. Try to be as specific as possible. For example, say “this is a delphinium” instead of “this is a flower”- image searches can help if you don’t know the specific vocabulary.
My all time favorite, sound games are a great way to help your child identify different spoken sounds. Gather a few objects that have different beginning sounds- make sure your child can name them all! Then, play “i-spy”, but instead of saying the object’s name, say the first sound. For example, if I wanted my child to find the stuffed dog, I would say, “I spy something that starts with the sound ‘duh‘”.
Once your child has mastered beginning sounds, you can move onto ending sounds, all sounds in an object (for example, “c-a-t” for cat) or, one of the trickiest, middle sounds.
Looking for more vocabulary games? Our vocabulary matching cards are a great way to introduce vocabulary that you may not encounter in everyday life. Find them here.
Language and social interactions are such a huge parts of our children’s daily lives! These activities allow us to slow down and highlight these important topics with our children, while having fun at the same time.
Give these activities a try, and let us know how your little ones enjoyed them. Stay tuned for more creative ideas from Montessori Math Studio!
