Easter Bonanza!!!

Holidays have started!! I have TONS of things to do during these next 2 weeks but first thing first. I want to share with you what we have done together last week.

I was looking for a new craft project to do with my children. I can't remember where my inspiration came from but I googled polka dot fabrics and printed a few of them. I then glued a oval shape in the centre of my patterned sheet and laminated the whole lot. I showed the children how to place glue inside the oval shape and then apply buttons of all sorts on it (making sure to stay inside the shape). Choosing the buttons one by one was the real thrill for the children and they really focused on the exercise.

This is what it looked like once it is dry (I have to say that it actually looks much better in real. The photo is not really good!).

I punched 2 holes at the top of the laminated card and laced a white rubbon through .. and voila!! 

What else? Well, Easter wouldn't be Easter without our traditional Easter tree:

And we went for our Easter egg hunt too. But before we could look for eggs in the garden, I explained the children that I needed them to turn into little bunnies to do the job properly. "But we are children.. we can't turn into rabbits!" exclaimed one little boy, despair in his voice! So I showed them what I had prepared the night before with a bit of card paper (blue, pink and white), double sided tape, scissors and....  patience:



Bunny ears!! Blue for the boys and pink for the girls!! I just had to staple the headband together after measuring their little heads. Look at some of my little bunnies:

Can you find our eggs?

And of course, we made our little easter baskets:



ENJOY YOUR HOLIDAYS LITTLE CHICKS!

More Easter activities....

Here are a few more of the Easter activities we have on our shelves:

This Math activity helps the children to reinforce their knowledge of numbers 1-10. I made these cute little egg jigsaws last year.  I printed some backgrounds and cut them out in the shape of an egg. Each egg is cut into halves. I placed white stickers on one half. I wrote the corresponding number on the other half (from 1-10). Finally, I laminated all the pieces . The children have to count how many stickers there are on one half and match it to the right number. What is the control of error? once they have matched 2 pieces, they turned them over and check if the printed patterns are identical.

When the child is emptying the basket, he/she must place all the halves with the stickers and the numbers facing up.

Then the child proceeds to count the stickers...

.... and matches the half with the stickers with the corresponding half. He/she turns the full egg with the pattern facing up. This is what it looks like when the exercise is completed:

Here is a cutting activity I used last year too. I created some strips with Easter patterns. The children must cut along the lines and then use the glue stick. This is actually quite a popular exercise at the moment.

Of course, I have also added the activities we had on our shelves last year. You can see them here and  here. Still more to come. So keep in touch...

Getting ready for Easter

Another 2 weeks and we will be starting our Easter break!!! I can't believe how fast it's going!! The children have been waiting for me to put up our few Easter decorations up and when they came today, they were delighted to see our Nature table decorated with a few rabbits, a miniature Easter egg tree, chicks, egs etc.. And did I think of taking a photo? Nope..... I will do it tomorrow. Promise! However, I took a few pictures of the new activities on our Practical Life shelves.

This 1st activity is soooo cute! I found the 2 egg holders and the fork/spoon on sale in a thrift shop a few month ago and I had to get them.. Straight away, the children were attracted to this material and they never stoped commenting on how real the egg holders looked!! This is just another spooning exercise but it is so popular!! It can be a bit tricky as the spoon the children are using is flater than normal spoons, which means they have to have a very steady hand in order to avoid spilling any of the Easter decorations I placed in the egg holders.

Here, we have a transfering exercise using tongs (the children transfer little wooden Easter decorations: rabbit, chicks..)

I added a lot of exercises with tongs to develop their fine motor skills. Here is another one:

And another one. I am using a rubber duck that comes straight from  America ( my dear friend Karen from Little Acorns.. Check out her blog: it is absolutely ind utterly brilliant.. and inspiring!)

And finally, I have added an activity using glue. The children use the strips of colured paper provided, add glue and stick Easter decorations onto their strip. Eventually, I will show them how to make patterns too.

I have a few more things I want to share with you... keep in touch!!

Crafts for Easter

To celebrate Easter, the children made little Easter baskets today.

I used a hard white card sheet to make squares. The children dabbed their fingerprints into yellow, pink and green paint and then onto the white sheet. I then cut the sheet as seen below:

We then got some colourful nylon laces and plaited it to create the handle of the basket.  Add a bit of green crepe paper cut up in stripes, a few chocolate eggs as a treat and a cute little chick! Et Voilà!!

And we also made some very special rabbit ears.. just for fun! And a bit of face painting too to celebrate Easter.

Enjoy your Easter holidays everyone!

Easter tree

Here is our Easter tree. We made it together yesterday. Kids were so excited:

Easter Patterns

Today, the kids were working on making patterns. All the photos below are quite self explanatory:

Another Easter activity

Here is another Easter activity I forgot to mention in my last post on easter. i downloaded it from Kidssoup and the children love the chicks. They manipulate and count without even realising it. Great little exercise.

A few Easter activities

I have put out new activities for Easter.

1. The following one is a practical exercise.  I saw it on My Montessori Journey. The children pick up the eggs, open them and see if a little chick pops out. This help with their hand-eye coordination and improve their fine motor skills, as they have to find the way to open the eggs up and put them back together.

2. This activity is meant to reinforce the children's numeral reading and help them develop their counting skills. It goes from 1-10 but I am in the process of making another set for 11-20.

I printed some backgrounds and cut them out in the shape of an egg. Each egg is cut into halves.  I placed white stickers on one half. I wrote the corresponding number on the other half (from 1-10). I laminated all the pieces and I presented this little jigsaw to my son at first, who thought that was a brilliant game. Basically,  the children have to count how many stickers there are on one half and match it to the right number. I am going to make another set with numbers from 11-20.

Maria Montessori observed children would rather correct themselves than depend on an adult to do it for them. She believed that making mistakes was a natural part of learning and that developing self-correction skills helped develop confidence and decision-making skills. Therefore, the Montessori materials and presentations must contain a control of error which makes the child use his/her reasoning abilities. Here, once the child has matched 2 halves, he/she can control if he/she is right by turning the pieces over and see if the background is identical.

Preparing for Easter!

In a bit more than 3 weeks, it will be Easter break... ALREADY! I can't believe how quick the weeks are passing by!  At the moment, I am preparing new activities in line with Easter. I have also rooted around for my decorations and also purchased new ones (I am always on the look out!). So, today, after class, I updated our interest table. The children will love it!

How cute is it?

And this is for my peace corner.. I am actually still working on it at the moment, so as soon as I am finished, I will talk about it at greater length.