Archive

On Behaviour...

This is one example of how we managed kindergarten self-regulation:

To maintain good sleep and comfort with transitioning in routines, a cozy and accommodating personal environment was really crucial, this became challenging overall when both children veered off into two separate directions of what comfort truly would be and what accommodations worked best.

So one day, my son came up to me, fits clenched, shoulders hunched, jaw locked, brows furrowed, voice growling, and body tremoring. He did this over and over again, repeatedly as I tried to understand this behaviour, since its nothing like his usual reactions to things.

I found some dietary and daily living issues that were coinciding with this kind of attitude, as we worked out lessening those problems with the doctor, we also dealt with spikes and self-regulation more directly and with social narratives featuring a special little character. A young Hulk.

Over time with diet changes and deep breathing exercises, he learned to curb the mimicry of a young Hulk, and found a voice. This voice started demanding change, demanding consistency, and letting out warnings of impending doom. He found copying phrases from others and movies helped find new things to say, and we found the phrases could be broken down to build more vocabulary. We watched a lot of shows about using good social skills, and discussed how to tie it into our world. Empathy is a challenge because it was difficult for him to separate his experience from that of others. If someone were to eat a food he found gross, he'd try to prevent them from doing so.

Professional support for special needs is highly treasured in our home, the right advice makes a significant difference overall, unqualified advice can bring hardship and make an overall challenging impact. Eventually when coming off the waitlist for individualized support, we had a variable sensory diet in place made up of sensory bins, fabric boxes, outdoor games and ABA strategies, mostly. Check out HOW DOES YOUR ENGINE RUN here.

the kitten has helped with appropriate handling of animals, quiet time, and for being read to.

Here is another example of how we managed kindy self-regulation:

first we had to deal with an explosion of sensory and busy boyhood games! In order to balance it out we got suggestions and advice from a range of specialists. The favourites in our home happened to be social songs and trampoline games. 

 We moved onto a work-out routine that included some movement activity (usually playground equipment and trampoline inside or outside the home!), then a language game, to help keep up receptive skills, anything that would keep a busy child engaged! sometimes it was only a snack break, where I learned the art of sportcasting, natural environment training, as well as Verbal Behaviour.  Eventually this evolved into presenting montessori-inspired practical life skills accommodations in the environment and a shelf with empty containers for making requests using actual objects.
When ready the last part was a fine motor activity, usually building dexterity and reinforcing rules for care of environment (think sensory bins gone right/wrong).

On a chart labeled TODAY I CAN HAVE movable cards like these are used to help us make suggestions to my son about what appropriate sensory play is already available for him to do that day. This helps not only the obvious hurdle of attention and social skills but puts him in a position of authority on what his favourite activities may be, and what kind of outlet he needs at that time of day. It offers more control for us adults, as we dictate what is available and can use this to redirect more easily without triggering transition anxiety. He gets frequent breaks and in the fall will have to make more requests, since what is offered will be fewer and farther between. In the meantime, they have been shortened, and any activity that may indirectly involve sensory play, we are reinforcing play with other kids.

This app was our first most effective visual schedule, it made sequencing steps of a routine, activity, or itinerary much easier both verbally and overall. 

find it here

 Once they became school-aged and we needed a low-tech alternative, this set (its add-ons as well as teacher sets) has become a household staple, practically indestructible magnets and extra blank ones.

find it here

Our summer before both children embark on full elementary routines looks something like this. Its flexible, and makes accommodations for days where we have scheduled social activities, respite support, tutoring, therapy, appointments, or errands. This is even versatile enough to be converted to holiday scheduling, by offering critical thinking activities, themed activities, or group hands-on arts and crafts projects in place of academics.

Life skills are for everyone, especially people who struggle with social skills, physical challenges, and more. Montessori has been applied with patients of dementia care, and children as young toddlers. Very early on its easy to see how difficult it is to balance safety, reason, and authenticity.

• Read more about practical life skills (using the Montessori approach) 
• This information could broaden your perspective on what the method can mean for anybody
• 10 essential abilities for children with ASD
• This is a very good place to start for any person.
• Take it from there with these great incremental suggestions, using Montessori scope/sequence
• and as they get older.. this is based on children 6-12
• read this for more information on how montessori teaches life skills at home 
• this is about guiding adolescents

On Home Life Skills ....

So here we have my choices of programs to inject new life, language, and structure into two basic areas of practical life skills: cleaning, and cooking.

First, Zone Cleaning (see caption for link).
this features a check list for each area of the house, with pictures identified with individual tasks, a DVD and labels for 4 bins or baskets your child will need.  

Zone Cleaning!

Next, How to Cook by Norma Macmillan (see caption for link).
This is a very cost-effective book, great for someone just starting out and gets butterflies at the simplest of tasks. Instead of being filled with recipes, its full of skills and knowledge, with some recipes along the way.

How to Cook by Norma Macmillan

On environment...

When we moved more towards group learning activities, I took what I was working with each 1:1 on and put it together, so they could relate more in terms of homeschooling. This helped blend the two rhythms so that more can be done together, the goal was to eventually have them work together on new concept material and understand more real world applications for the activities.

2013

2014

It didn't take long for them to be motivated to participate together when work came out, the same themes and similar concepts were easy to acknowledge and we did see more joining in overall.

We also had access to this set, inspired by work with loose bits. A lot of fine motor exercises, exploration, and tactile work spawned from this idea. In these baskets we had

• sponge capital letters
• straws cut to multiple lengths, and left whole
• pipe cleaners cut to multiple lengths, and left whole
• pom-poms
• paper clips
• coloured wooden cubes
• plain wooden cubes
• pattern blocks
• chopsticks
• small bead strands
• clay stones
• cotton balls
• playdough (not pictured)

2015

2016

On Adult-directed Science...

on the solar system

• watched episodes of the magic school bus, and bill nye the science guy
• read and did copywork from these nonfiction readers
• worked on these matching and sequencing puzzles
• presented the puzzle with the books (comparing drawings to satellite images)
• group effort: made models of the planets and displayed on a shelf
• played with a sensory bin of kinetic sand, space exploration toys, and stones to make craters
• small loose styrofoam balls made for fun 'meteors' 
• incorporated speech and language exercises with play with space exploration toys 

on plant life stages 

• watched episodes of the magic school bus, and bill nye the science guy
• worked on printable pack from 3 dinosaurs for life cycle of a plant
• incorporated literacy and language building exercises with prompting questions
• incorporated visual discrimination exercises by commenting on each bean's progression
• set foundation for long-term studies in elementary

on seasons 

• we collected fallen or broken nature's litter in the summer and fall. 
• during spring and winter we observed and talked about blooms and decay
• we listed to songs on youtube such as this one, for fall. 
• these books by author Wendy Pfeffer (listed here) talk about cultures around the world and what their lives look like at each time of year, with science activities at the end for measuring daylight and more.
• we get a lot of use out of this months of the year printable pack.  
• check out this great review of The Shortest Day

3 part cards and stamp game

Montessori Inspirations

Here are a couple of my favourite Montessori Hacks for language and math work.

Make your own 3 part cards.

• buy or find 2 sets of identical flash cards, where you can clearly cut a line between picture and word below on all of them. 
• take one set, and cut the word off at the bottom, you can leave it as a straight line or use different styles and make them even more unique
• keep them organized, I used snack size baggies for the words, and sandwich bags for the cards. 
• present one set side by side and put together. 
• have the child do the rest.

* benefits, if you have an under-motivated child try using cards that have a favourite cartoon character, any flash cards that have word/picture will do.

Make your own real world stamp game.

•  pick up a set of educational/school money.. try to get at least 20 pieces of each value.
•  make your own mat however you like (future post)
•  sort the amounts and use containers that match the place value 
• present by suggesting/writing a dollar amount and have the child count it out and keeping it organized using the mat.
• when ready, present word problems verbal/written of real life scenarios, such as shopping. 
• teach counting money sequentially by values.
• use as you would the traditional stamp game.

 * benefits, gains the interest of an unschooled child, or child interested in money and money management, which is helpful when motivation can be a struggle. Works as supplemental remediation for an older child. Practical Life Skills cross-over

number rods for math

 Counting rods can be found in neutral colours, with units for counting or without, in inches or centimeters. The set we have are measured in inches, and have one side with counters, the other with a number value. You can find cuisenaire junior rods here. Adaptations made ourselves were:

• 1-20 addition / subtraction strip board
• number line using a meter stick (both sides)
• work trays
• skip counting strips
• square of pythagoras
• number cards and numerals

Lining them up flat on the table is just as good, and we have done both horizontal and vertical presentations between both children. This is how we use them to work on ordering, counting, and making 10. We've also used them to make values 2-9.

• addition strip board: we used a picture frame and drew the grid by hand
• subtraction strip board: using the same board, the numbers are written in blue / red and goes up to 20

Presenting counting strips extension from the counting rods. One side is blank, for easy colour recognition, and the opposite side has units marked for counting by hand. I made approximately 20-25 strips per colour. This way we have something to start with when ready to look at squaring and cubing.

short chain (numbers squared): we used flash cards from the teach my preschooler 1-100 kit
long chain (numbers cubed): check out the arrows in the printable section!

Montessori-inspired Square of Pythagoras: we stayed with the same size (1" units) as the strips, and added foam numerals.

measurement: we used the ruler for both measurement and to teach number lines

math quizzing for problems 1-20: we used hot dots self-correcting addition flash cards

snake game: we line up the ants and count them up, with the strips, making 10 and finding remainders.

 Paired with flash cards, discovering addition facts sets.

Ideas for Primary Level (up to 6):
use the rods counter-side up at all times for math problems, work on the skills that will bridge to exercises needed in elementary.
Ideas for Elementary (up to 10):
use the rods interchangeably both sides, consider mastery achieved if they can use either side when working with the rods to solve math problems. practice mental exercises, transition to upper elementary when they move away from the rods.
Ideas for Over 10:
diversify skills and exercises used through all levels by using in applied maths and calculations in geometry.

Booklets: We use these pull-tab books for math booklets until handwriting proficiency develops.

discovering math facts with strewing

base ten blocks for math

 Base ten blocks are versatile, durable, and have a uniform colour. We took them from teaching teens and tens, to dynamic addition and subtraction, even multiplication. Later we can base our decimal work on these as well. Our adaptations were:

• 3-part matching cards
• labeled storage
• place value flip chart (free printable number cards)
• blue dot numbers and counters
• introductory bead set look at Aubrey's from Montessori 101
• small bead frame look at Elaine's over at Planting Peas 
• boards for written work 
• place value counters and tiles
• math problems worksheets 

Here we kept them in the cube shelf with labels. The kids thought they were good for building unique structures. We later gave them their own storage box, when it wasn't as it interesting to play or build with in a constructive way. The 3-part cards had both numerals and written numbers, which extends to the number cards smoothly.

With the number cards, there had to be equal value in numerals and blocks, a shortage can spell disaster for a number of large lessons. (see an example of Montessori's bird's-eye view here) The flip chart is a mess-free way to build numbers.

We use a pocket chart for number card layout, and also adapted the small printed number cards flip chart for carrying over by keeping the action of flipping a card but instead have prompts for how to move forward past nine.

• dot game: we used a wooden frame from a puzzle for a base
• stamp game: we originally only used the round stacking counters, and switched to labeled cardstock tiles.
• place value mat: we used the place value pad that came with the blocks.

•  we have same coloured markers for writing out problems
• small place value mat from a workbook
• any tray for a pretend money set can work well
• we used other counters for the pieces needed to do multiplication and division.

We used a wooden abacus toy (that has 100 beads), labeled the side, then replaced the rods and beads to line up, I left the lower rods in place but empty to show the values are there, but we aren't working with that size yet. The 10th bead in every row is a plain colour. The pen-drawn small bead frame paper is mounted to the back of a wooden puzzle frame, and covered in packing tape to make it reusable.

Our version of the easy introductory bead material, was to glue some ten chains and hundred chains to popsicle sticks to mimic the base ten blocks. we mounted a single bead to cardboard, and made a box for the thousand chain that had similar dimensions to the thousand cube. we used red, green, and blue pipe cleaners to keep them together.

Teens and Tens boards: using number cards (later updated with place value colour system), working through numbers 11-19 and 10-90.

Cards and Counters: Using sandpaper numerals, working through tens, and teens with base ten blocks.

Here are large quantities presented with simple number cards.

Addition and subtraction problems, with a montessori twist.

Ideas for Primary Level (up to 6):
The difference between plastic and wooden/bead material is the sensory input, when using plastic, start with many creative activities (like building bridges and towers) to reinforce a kinesthetic sense of value for each block. only use blocks without numbers.
Ideas for Elementary (up to 10):
like with rods, consider mastery when numbers or blocks can be used interchangeably and transition to upper elementary when the blocks are no longer needed. focus on arrangements and recognition of values quickly for an easy reference using visual memory.
Ideas for Over 10:
blocks can be used for working with and introducing values from 0.1 to 0.001. move to the large bead frame model, if you are using an abacus.

introduction to decimal numbers with stamp game

Fine Motor & Addition

with only printable resources for addition, this is what we came up with to work on remembering math facts, in addition to pull-tab math facts books, and videos.

 

blank addition chart, with number tiles, complete addition chart. this activity was matching but we rotated through all kinds of different ways to memorize, the sticks were used to help ease frustration when losing place.

this is how the first presentation looked, being quick and visual processing was the reason we were able to keep coming back to this one. these are montessori math fact equation cards.

we continued to expand and diversify the equation cards, until he mastered the manipulative work

every introduction of  list of problems, by the week, came with different counters and background

eventually incorporated playing cards and as an introduction to solving for mystery numbers, this theme gave a natural extension to subtraction.

Occupational Therapy and Fine Motor

Handwriting - Fine Motor

Here is a list of great resources for free printables that we used throughout the kindergarten years to support our fine motor goals, and promote longer periods of doing activities (of a homeschool nature) while at a table.

• 3 dinosaurs 
• royal baloo 
• gift of curiosity 
• teachers pay teachers 

 We eventually moved towards regular attention to printing with some of the fun printable packs found at the sites mentioned above, and with the support of an occupational therapist leaned more towards using Handwriting Without Tears resources. She guided us in working on his fine motor skills, strength, and penmanship. The sequential introduction of pencil grips and exercise was geared to him.

7 year old writing with Block Paper

These are all from the Handwriting Without Tears website, we moved from block paper to the more common regular double line paper to work on lowercase printing.

I found framed wooden puzzles, work great as trays to hold paper steady, the shallow lip doesn't get in the way, and helps control out-of-control colouring or drawing.

sand tray and icing bag tracing

 Handwriting and Fine motor

Handwriting - Pre-Writing

Review of pencil grasp, and uppercase letter forms, number forms, with visual references for free from Handwriting without Tears free resource page. Stencil work with inspiration from Montessori. We anticipate a DIY of metal insets in the near future! they are helpful with consistent flow of writing, and provides feedback where most tracing and stenciling would not.

We have a small collection of scissors with varying levels of resistance. By using free pre-writing packages I put together this quick remedial exercise of tracing and cutting! first trace with finger, pencil, crayon, marker, then cut! MightMind puzzles comes with a tray to store all the pieces, a great self-correcting fine motor game. These (laminated) printables came directly from the OT but you can read more about pre-writing here. Visual puzzles like the jar of beads offers an isolated activity on improving pencil grasp.

  Ideas for Primary Level (up to 6):
reinforce good fine motor skills without writing or drawing utensils. teach form with finger-drawing, dance and ribbons, play with stamps, or letter construction kits. provide developmentally suited tools and pencil grips, with direction.
Ideas for Elementary (up to 10):
transition to tracing and drawing with utensils. maintain any activities of interest. copywork and letter construction for cursive alphabet. upgrade tools and pencil grips. reinforce good paper, material positioning and arm/shoulder posture.
Ideas for Over 10:
reinforce good pen grasp. use tracing and introduce various forms of script using earlier exercises and mediums. (penmanship workbooks for adults are available online)

Handwriting - Tracing & Form Drawing

1. shape inset stencils, 
2. animal inset stencils
3. line tracing
4. shape tracing and duplication

 Our stencil work is loosely based off of Montessori's metal insets, which you can see how they are used here, I say loosely because these are not sturdy like they are, but some fun tracing activities that give the same sensorial feedback are:

• tracing dinner plates
• tracing wooden geometric solids
• tracing picture frames

For fun and also to better blend into future homeschooling, we have these more sensory based activities that are a bit more fun.

• alphabet stamps and play-dough
• play-dough loose pieces arts and crafts
• form drawing grade 1
• cursive copywork

Ideas for Primary Level (up to 6):
use the art scope/sequence for montessori (checklist available on printables page!). Develop fine motor coordination through heavy work activities, and practical life exercises.
Ideas for Elementary (up to 10):
Explore handiwork, crafts, challenge with incrementally difficult colouring books, dot-to-dot books, activities and tracing material. introduce geometry and math tools. introduce keyboarding.
Ideas for Over 10:
explore form drawing exercises. introduce design using various mediums. reinforce spatial awareness by drawing 3D objects.

Health - Nutrition

 Food sensitivities, sensory anxiety, and hypermobility all seem to lend a hand to making food selectivity a major issue, for my oldest son, there was also a history of digestive health troubles that solidified his perspectives on food. He likes poetry, so I picked up this book and it eventually led to discussions on foods and changing perception of what is good/bad to eat.

find it here

This next book is one of the best interactive books I have seen of human anatomy for kids, its durable (until submerged in water, don't ask) the images are good, and the variety of actions throughout the book keeps kids engaged to the end every time. For us, I focused on the oral health and digestive pages, there is something about manipulating a piece of food through the body right to the other end that really says "what goes in, must come out". My children liked it, and it helped kick off conversations about physical health, digestive care.

I sought out this book (Good Enough to Eat) when it was time to answer questions about what food does for you (after learning that food maybe isn't out to get you, and your body gets rid of waste if taken care of), and how they each do their own part. Its thorough. It has comic-style conversations to read on each page, as well as a lot of writing, with science and cooking activities in the back, that are interesting but for us, best for when the conversation demands it.

find it here

This book, although not really relevant in terms of teaching nutrition, it does help show what your body goes through, how it fights infections, and possibly make healthy eating seem more important to children. It's informative but not visual, I take it off the shelf to read with the kids whenever there is a bout of illness keeping us down.

find it here

You can find some printables about eating healthy here.
For Canadians, check this out.
For those south of the border this one is for you.

 Literacy

Reading - Pre-Reading

After 3 part cards, I tried a few different games, worksheets, and activities.. many of which garnered a lot of poor reviews from my kids, but these are what lasted the longest, and are dearest to me as very happy work on learning to read.

After simple work with matching the 3 parts, we moved to 2 parts and movable alphabet. the alphabet we used was Jolly Phonics (precursive) magnetic letters. The cards was a store-bought set of word families flash cards, and first words flash cards. This activity is easier when you don't have identical duplicate sets of cards.

This activity had two themes, discovering rhyming words and learning phonograms, but also simply matching phonograms, reading, and practice saying them. 

We didn't get through the full alphabet with this particular activity (we did use phonetic objects and spelling lists in the form of word tiles as a matching game) The small white cards have the words written on them, and the tray would be a variety of sensory bin ingredients and themed by letter, or as mentioned earlier, the full alphabet.. there was a lot of fun gently combing through these tactile trays to get the item that would match the card selected. I would later present the word lists in alphabetical order, a new concept at the time.

We moved on to reading word lists by phonograms. I wrote them scattered about a blank page with red/blue letters to match the alphabet sets we were using, then armed with a bingo dabber in his hand, we'd go through one page at a time reading them aloud and go through them until he learned to identify them. (you can find lists at Logic of English)

Here we have an activity that involves alphabet tiles and safari ltd. Toobs, the words are jumbled, and he could look at the underbelly to find the name or I would line them up like so, and he'd sound it out while rearranging the letters. The benefit to using manipulatives is that it speeds up mental processing, spelling, and reduces bad spelling derived from habit.

Soon after we switched gears from being read to from level 1 readers, to reading with assistance, and then on his own out loud, he quickly moved into level 2 readers.

BONUS:

this is an example of a side activity to mix things up.

I used these old tea tins to replicate/expand the montessori Pink/Blue/Green series, in order to sort the word tiles (poetry magnets) I had, this became our spelling list, and allowed us to focus on speech, but also expand to writing.

boggle Jr cards, and letter tiles fit nicely together.

 

Grammar - Sentence Building

once my oldest was able to pick up on 3 part cards quite quickly we incorporated some identification lessons on parts of speech. So in the activity below, he'd match the word, and its corresponding grammar symbol (see living montessori now for some great resources to explain it all). This turned into simple sentences afterwards.

top left: contrasting verbs and prepositions. bottom left: adjectives, nouns, verbs that go together. top right: simple sentences on colour coded mat. bottom right: tray containing pieces for simple sentences, aiming for creative use.

nouns: truck, car bus
verbs: stop, go
adjectives: blue, green, red

  Once there was enough comfort with that activity, we mixed it up and used these sentence building flash cards with grammar symbols and punctuation (I simply cut shapes out of craft foam). Using a store-bought set of sentence building cards I think is only useful to connect the dots between activities that emphasize a small change, for instance, these took simple sentences a step further by using pronouns and prepositions.

 This small activity did only last a couple rotations but in reading, it came up that we needed to emphasize the need for punctuation (I later made my own 3 part cards on cardstock for all punctuation marks). This tray helped separate pieces of a larger idea, it helped with bringing self-awareness to rambling.(the words are poetry magnets)

we sometimes use these word tiles (below).

I'm looking into sentence-composing to apply parts of speech to language arts and fulfill a need for a more function-based application for understanding grammar, also because it helps with building syntax in speech. I will be exploring introducing French as a second language soon.

Reading - Pink / Blue / Green Series

word lists in a jar, for added fine motor challenge

• phonetic objects
• how to teach CVC/CVCC the Montessori way
• montessori word lists

  CVC objects and word building (with letter tracing)

Point and label each item, let the child take a turn at labeling, or sort from a container.

• short 'a' sound: man, ram, bag, ax, fan, hat, map
• short 'i' sound: pig, bin, dig, rip, pin
• short 'u' sound: cut, bug, cup bus
• short 'o' sound: dot, hot, log, box, dot
• short 'e' sound: pen, ten, red, peg, leg, jet

 

CVCC/CCVC objects and word matching (short vowel sounds)

Read each card and find the object that corresponds, or label each object and find the corresponding card.

 CVVC/CVCC and silent e: objects and word matching (long vowel sounds)

 Same process as above.

 

Ideas for Primary Level (up to 6):
use 3 part cards and matching charts, highlight initial SOUND not letter, isolate objects by sounds. Teach spelling with separate cards. Use consonant/vowel colour-coordination for sound word. Use black and highlighted letters for spelling work. objects can be same for both. introduce word lists verbally.
Ideas for Elementary (up to 10):
using 3 part cards include movable alphabet. mastery comes about when cards and movable alphabet can be used interchangeably with similar success. introduce a movable blends/digraph material, encourage copywork from cards, or writing with movable alphabet. reintroduce spelling (as isolated concept) with tricky words. introduce written word lists.
Ideas for Over 10:
transition from 3 part cards to dictionary. (there are many options of visual dictionaries at various academic levels). introduce syllables and rhythm of words in speech and literature. when ready, prepare for introducing and examining contrasts between spoken and written use of words across various media, cultures, and environments.

Grammar - Parts of Speech

Visit these links for guidance on beginning Montessori grammar!

• grammar symbol boxes
• grammar playset
• function of words
• grammar symbols

Nouns: coral, helicopter, vegetable, wings, dog, cannon
Articles: the, a (with nouns: calendar, elephant, igloo, leaf, thread, coin, bear)
Adjectives: pink/green, large/small, little/big, full/empty, light/heavy (with nouns: chest, ball, block, dice)

Pronouns: I/me, you/your, their/theirs, them/they, he/him, she/her, hers, his, it/its, our/ours, us/we
Conjunctions: and, or (with noun: block; adjectives: red, yellow, orange, green)
Prepositions: on, under, over, below, near, between (with nouns: car, bridge, water, shark, train, track)

 

Verbs: climb, jump, play, throw, shake, hum, run, etc.
Adverbs: slowly, quickly, quietly, gladly, loudly
Interjections: stop/go, etc.

Ideas for Primary Level (up to 6):
introduce and work through symbols like a montessori-inspired sound game. sight words also develop this way, playing word games. use CVC words only so emphasis remains on the use of language.
Ideas for Elementary (up to 10):
combine symbols with objects and pictures. use known words only, so emphasis remains on the parts of speech, without challenging spelling skills. Using regular words and not irregular makes for smooth transition to upper elementary.
Ideas for Over 10:
broaden to include irregularly spelled or pronounced words. move to drawing the symbols and writing words, keep concepts simple and isolated.

Social Studies

Geography - Continents

Here's our introduction to political geography. For each of the 7 continents we have a box with contents that represent the cultural, economic, and natural environments that are found on or represent that continent. Here is a board book for teaching continents, and a puzzle for teaching animal symbols for where they are from or most commonly found. Notice that these are colour-coded the same as Montessori's materials.

new to geography? start with these!

To fill your continent boxes, try:

• clippings from national geographic magazines 
• clippings from newspapers
• miniatures such as Safari Toobs
• foreign coins and currency
• world music, particularly popular instrumentalists
• recipes written or printed on card, with pictures
• toys, dolls, or knick-knacks from souvenir shops

I also set up a 'pin' map, little sticks with labels for the continents and 2 printed maps, one has the labels, the other side has no labels. the pin labels have cursive and black ink on one side but the front has the colour-coded name of the continent. We used small balls of play dough and cotton swabs for the labels.

Printed and laminated continents from (here), which show rivers and small bodies of water. We used this as a memory exercise by both matching to name, and orientation.

Teaching Tips for Primary Level (up to 6):
focus on the contours of the pieces, sort pieces by shape and size, colour-coordinate wherever possible, use 3 part cards or booklets. look at habitats and customs. discover and explore prepared boxes or folders.
Teaching Tips for Elementary (up to 10):
change the focus to sorting pieces by coastline and borders, examine name origins, capitals, and cultural icons. look at folk history and necessities of man. Research objects and sort by folders and boxes.
Teaching Tips for Over 10:
look at economic boundaries, agricultural regions, infrastructure, and the shifting political geography. explore science behind fault lines and the movement of oceans, land, and air. Record research and make connections to social studies.

Additional Resources: 

• ABCMouse.com has a great video for learning about continents and oceans
• 3 Dinosaurs has a lovely printable pack
• A Canadian version of Me on the Map flip book, here!
• some great activities from the Crafting Chicks, here!
• a printable form-based map of Canada, with pin labels, here! 
• map printables here. 
• Thomas' YouTube World Tour.
• Google world map or the map on an ipad device.
• VISIT OUR PRINTABLES PAGE TO FIND MATERIAL FOR AGES 3-9.

recommend looking at walmart and dollarama for these!