Montessori Christmas Activities the Dollar Store Way

Montessori "jobs" for kids, or learning activities, can be adapted to any holiday or theme. Christmas time is filled with many possibilities. Currently, our family is on an extremely tight budget with this less than satisfactory economy. So, I have come up with a few educational ideas from simply visiting my local dollar store. I have many more ideas than listed here, but here are a few that Jaguar, and Bobcat for that matter, have tried.

I bought a package of small drum ornaments and a package of large ones. He used them as building/stacking blocks.


Jaguar also sorted the drums in categories, such as by color and by shape. Simple, but great for mind organization and the ability to discern differences and similarities.


We bought a package of Christmas erasers and utilized them for a simple matching game. Great math skill in the preschool years.



We grabbed a package of foam Christmas trees and some Christmas-theme foam stickers. Jaguar meticulously decorated his Christmas tree. This is a great spacial activity because it helps promote an awareness of placement and design.


We picked up a package of Disney Christmas stickers and stamps. Jaguar and Bobcat went to town with decorating their work. This stimulates creativity and imagination.


In the meantime, Bobcat found the tinsel and decided to begin decorating the tree. I thought it was a brilliant idea on his part and it is a great practical life activity to engage in decorating the Christmas Tree with family.


There are many more activities to come within the realm of Christmas, but right now we are working on Hannukah. So, we will get back to Christmas after the eighth day of Hannukah, and then Kwanzaa thereafter. What a festive month December is!!! Have fun creating jobs for your young ones.

Making Montessori Materials - Part I

There are so many ways to save money when homeschooling your child or just giving them gifts that are developmentally geared for their age. One way to save is to make your own materials. Though there are many things that would be easier to buy premade, there are also many other things that could be created with improvisation and the right materials. I have made a couple items so far, with many more in mind...hopefully to be made before Christmas.

This is a set of counting beads that I made for Jaguar as a Christmas gift. These are great for all sorts of mathematics. I simply utilized beads, wire, and a cheap craft box. These are just flashcards I made, mainly for Jaguar. I used old magazines, other publications, and computer images. I simply glued them on index cards and organized them in a recipe box from the Dollar Tree. There are about 7 of each letter. There are so many ways to discover language and reading with these cards, and they are fun to make!

Likewise, I decided last night that Jaguar can easily begin learning to read the clock. So, I made 24 cards, each with a clock on them. Half of them have the time on every hour and the other half has the times on every half hour.

There will naturally be more items. I have already made one zipper frame. I have yet to make make at least 4 more. I plan on making puppets for Bobcat, as well, and a fabric box and matching ricebags in various textured fabric....My husband plans on making a pink tower, brown stairs, maybe even a dollhouse..... We will see in later posts as these couple of months progress.

Halloween and Autumn Creations With the Kids

This last holiday weekend brought lots of fun and business for the kids. Halloween and Autumn are always a fun focus to initiate the colder season to come.

Lynx particularly enjoyed the sewing projects he did, which is wonderful because it helps to center him. He designed and sewed a felt monster and sewed the face on a felt skeleton. This was his first experience with sewing ever. Lynx also is in the middle of putting together another monster with precut pieces.

Jaguar was busy making pipe cleaner finger puppets, matching ghosts and their different facial expressions, counting pumpkin seeds, sorting colored spiders, free painting with fall colors, making leaf pattern decorations, and more.

The boys also painted fall tree silhouettes on a sunset background with watered down paint and straws for the trees. I did one, too, because it looked fun.

Lynx helped me make homemade pumpkin pie…it is the best! Once you have pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin, you never want to go back to the can (although that can be pretty good too). We also made cranberry sauce and apple cinnamon peanut butter "sushi". They were simple, but very tasty.

Bobcat played with his treasure tray full of autumn themed sensory stuff and walked through a pile of fall leaves.

Before we went trick-or-treating, I sewed some bags for all the boys to decorate with fabric paint and potato stamps cut in the shapes of pumpkins.

Of course, I had the boys carve a pumpkin. We had one pumpkin and I went back to the store Halloween morning only to find all the rest of the pumpkins were completely wiped out. So, Jaguar carved one side, and Lynx designed and carved the other side.