Montessori Inspired Activities and Games For 3-year-olds.

Sensorial – the Knobless Cylinders. It is fascinating to see how accurate movements have to be to build a tower with knobless cylinders. We love coming up with different extensions, compare dimensions, measure and sort cylinders.

Sandpaper letters with initial sound cards. I created this set of cards. The cards help her to recognise initial sounds and are phonetically assorted. I enjoy teaching my daughter in a home setting which allows more time to learn letters, sounds, a number without rushing through them. Tracing letters repetition creates visual and hand motion memory in her brain in preparation for writing.

The metal inset activity with tracing shapes and drawing continues lines makes a solid preparation for cursive writing and encourages a child to apply strong pressure on the pencil.

The sandpaper numbers are still in good use here. I prefer not to move further until I am confident A recognises her numbers 1-9  by heart. When doing 3-period lesson she claps to practice one-to-one correspondence or counts the matching amount of popsicle sticks.

We use blocks to sort shapes.

Land and Water activity is a fun discovery for A. Using actual soil and water brought more solid meaning, and understanding and helped her to distinguish the difference when sorting cards better.

Learning to recognise emotions. Using this activity A is learning to recognise different emotions and learn their names. It is helpful when she has a rough time (or happy time) for her to be able to identify and express what she feels at the moment and communicate her emotions to us.

Creating hands-on, life experience is a huge part of what we do.

I hope you can grab some ideas for your classroom or home. If you are interested in downloading any of printables mentioned in the post, click on links provided in descriptions. Some of them are free; some are paid. Links will take you to the printable page where you will be able to read more about them.