Montessori-Inspired Penguin Activities Using Free Printables

By Deb Chitwood from Living Montessori Now 

I love studying both Arctic and Antarctic animals in the winter. Last month, I focused on Arctic animals. This month, I'm focusing on penguins from Antarctica and other parts of the Southern Hemisphere. 

I have a post at Living Montessori Now with free penguin printables for preschoolers through first graders. You'll find many activities for preschoolers through first graders throughout the year along with presentation ideas in my previous posts at PreK + K Sharing. You'll also find ideas for using free printables to create activity trays here: How to Use Printables to Create Montessori-Inspired Activities. 

At Living Montessori Now, I have a post with resource links of Free Printables for Montessori Homeschools and Preschools. 

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links at no cost to you. 

Shelves with Penguin-Themed Activities

 

My shelves with penguin-themed activities include a free printable penguin culture card (available with or without description) designed by The Montessori Company for Living Montessori Now. 

You'll also find Montessori-inspired penguin numbers and letters (part of my subscriber freebie pack, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password … or check the bottom of your latest newsletter if you’re already a subscriber) 

You could mix your penguin themed activities among your shelves according to curriculum area. Or you could have a special penguin area something like the one pictured. This one is more for 2½-4 year old preschoolers. I didn't add my more advanced activities to the shelves, although you could have activities for mixed ages in a classroom or homeschool. If you're a homeschooler, just choose the activities that work for your child's interests and ability levels. If you don't have room for all the activities you'd like to do, just rotate them.

 

I was lucky to have The Montessori Company create a lovely hand-painted penguin culture card for you to use on your shelves to introduce the penguin theme. I'm hosting the free printable as an instant download at Living Montessori Now. You can always access the free penguin culture card here. You can use the version of the card with the title only, although I like the description: "These flightless birds live in colonies and huddle together for warmth during the winter months." 

I like to buy at least one book specifically for a theme. I really like this National Geographic Kids Penguins reader. 

Penguin Shape Matching Free Printable: Penguin Shape Matching Game from Life Over C’s 

For this activity, I used a multicraft tray, Montessori insets from Alison's Montessori, a Montessori Services basket, and small tabletop easels to hold the penguin shape cards. These cards are such a fun extension for work with geometric shapes!



For most preschoolers, you could have two sets of the shapes that match metal inset shapes. 

I use a Montessori Services rug on the floor for the layout. 

   
For children who can read, there are word cards included! 

Five Penguin Puppets and Counting Activities 




Free Printable: Five Little Penguins: Counting Songs from Let’s Play Music 

Free Printable: Five Funny Penguins Book and Game by Sheila’s Leaps in Learning at Teachers Pay Teachers 

For this activity, I used a multicraft tray, with the penguin printables attached to craft sticks to make puppets. You could sing the songs in the post at Let's Play Music. I like the printable Five Funny Penguins book to go with the penguins as well. I printed out 4 pages per letter-size page, so it's smaller than it would be normally. 

Penguin Cards and Counters
Free Printable: Penguin Numbers (part of my subscriber freebie pack, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password … or check the bottom of your latest newsletter if you’re already a subscriber) 

I used a Montessori Services medium-size tray and 55 silver fish in a glass bowl. I LOVE these little fish beads! They're reasonably priced yet feel like a high-quality material. They come in sets of 50, so I ordered two sets. I like that they're all the same color and small enough to be used with many different activities. 

I like to lay out my numbers and counters in the traditional Montessori way of rows of two counters with a left-over counter centered below the bottom row. This gives a visual impression of odd and even. For more about creating DIY numbers and counters and a link on how to present the lesson, check out my DIY Cards and Counters post. 

 

I use a Montessori Services rug on the floor for the layout. Penguin Adding to 100 with Hundreds Chart Free Printable: Penguin Adding to 100 with Hundreds Chart from Life Over C’s 

For this activity, I used a multicraft tray, large Bambu condiment cup, and brad and paper clip for the spinner. 

The game is designed for addition, although younger children could spin and then put that many fish on the hundreds chart until it's full. 

Penguin Word Family Sort Free Printable: Penguin Word Family Sort by Squirmy Scholars at Teachers Pay Teachers. I printed out the fish words in sets of 4 to make them small enough to fit in the penguins' stomachs. I used 4 nouns for each penguin, but you could use as many or few of the penguins and words as you wish. 

Again I used a I used a multicraft tray, large Bambu condiment cup, and the printables.  

 

3-D Penguin Paper Toy Craft Free Printable: 3D Penguin Paper Toy from Easy Peasy and Fun For this craft, I used a multicraft tray, Fiskar scissors, and glue. This cute activity would be best for kindergarteners and first graders who have good cutting and gluing skills.

More Free Penguin Printables

Go to my post at Living Montessori Now for links to free penguin printables from around the blogosphere: Free Penguin Printables and Montessori-Inspired Penguin Activities. 

And be sure to subscribe to my email list if you'd like to get an exclusive free printable each month (plus two more awesome freebies right away): Free Printables.

More Penguin Activities

Montessori-Inspired Arctic and Antarctic Unit 
Montessori-Inspired Continent Activities – Penguins of Antarctica
Montessori-Inspired Multi-Level Penguin Activities 
Kids’ Winter Activities Pinterest Board 
Antarctica Educational Resources Pinterest Board

If you'd like to focus on manners with children, please check out my eBook Montessori at Home or School: How to Teach Grace and Courtesy! It's written for anyone who'd like to feel comfortable teaching manners to children ages 2-12. I'm also one of the coauthors of the book Learn with Play – 150+ Activities for Year-round Fun & Learning!

Have a wonderful rest of the winter!

Deb Chitwood is a certified Montessori teacher with a master’s degree in Early Childhood Studies from Sheffield Hallam University in Sheffield, England. Deb taught in Montessori schools in Iowa and Arizona before becoming owner/director/teacher of her own Montessori school in South Dakota. Later, she homeschooled her two children through high school. Deb is now a Montessori writer who lives in San Diego with her husband of 41 years (and lives in the city where her kids, kids-in-law, and toddler granddaughter live). She blogs at Living Montessori Now.

Montessori-Inspired Car Activities Using Free Printables

By Deb Chitwood from Living Montessori Now 

My son was obsessed with vehicles, so I know first-hand how powerful vehicle learning activities can be. 

So today, I'm focusing on hands-on learning activities with cars. You'll find LOTS of free car printables in my Free Car Printables and Montessori-Inspired Car Activities. Here, I'm sharing some Montessori-inspired car activities using free printables for preschoolers through first graders.

You'll find many activities for preschoolers through first graders throughout the year along with presentation ideas in my previous posts at PreK + K Sharing. You'll also find ideas for using free printables to create activity trays here: How to Use Printables to Create Montessori-Inspired Activities. 

At Living Montessori Now, I have a post with resource links of Free Printables for Montessori Homeschools and Preschools. 

 Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links at no cost to you.  

Car Color Matching Activity   Free Printable: Car Color Match from Childcareland

There are 12 colors in the printable, but I use the 11 colors that match Montessori color box 2. You could just use the 3 primary colors or whatever colors you want your child to work with. 

Free Printable: Montessori Color Matching Cards from Montessori Print Shop 

For this activity, I used a Multicraft tray, Montessori Services basket, and a small bamboo condiment cup to hold the pieces. 

 

For the layout, I'd just lay out one column of color tablets and then have the child match the second column (unless color tablets haven't been presented before. If not, I'd give the introductory color tablet presentation). Then the child can match the colored cars to the color matching cards (color tablets) and finally add the colored circles to the cars. (Note: For our floor layouts, I always use a Montessori Services hemmed work rug.) 

 Highway Shapes Free Printable: Highway Shape Cards (or highway letter or number cards) from Making Learning Fun If you'd prefer highway letters, check out the ones at Making Learning Fun or the ones linked to in my post at Living Montessori Now. 

This is awesome! You could just use basic shapes such as circle, triangle, and square. Or reinforce shapes like ellipse (called "oval" in the printable), trapezoid, and pentagon. There aren't all 10 Montessori metal inset shapes, but there are quite a few. 

I used different colors of Micro Machines. We still had the Micro Machines from when my now 31-year-old son was little. He loved them too much to give them up! If you can find them, they're perfect for this activity.   

 
  
You could make a green dot with 1/4" color control label dots to show where to start driving (tracing the shape).  

Spelling with Car Movable Alphabet 

  Free Printable: Car Movable Alphabet (part of my subscriber freebie pack, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password ... or check the bottom of your latest newsletter if you're already a subscriber) 

I just used some Montessori Services language objects, which can be purchased individually or in the starter set. My basket is a Montessori Services basket. 


 

You'll find activities using Montessori Services language objects with a similar layout. The car movable alphabet is especially helpful for a car theme or for vehicle lovers in general. Because children can write (spell) before they can read, many children will be able to hear the sounds needed in a word and add the movable alphabet letters even if they can't read yet. So this will often work with children who just know phonetic sounds for letters. It's great for readers, too! Just adapt the difficulty of objects for your child.  

Beginning Reading - Race Car Blending Free Printable: Race Car Blending (CVC, digraphs, blends) by Engage2Inspire at Teachers Pay Teachers 

I think this is totally cool ... such a great idea for reinforcing blending sounds to read words. Many children have difficulty with that part of learning to read. This is super easy to prepare. I just printed out and laminated the printable and added a Micro Machine race car (a larger race car might work if you set your printer at 125% in landscape). I love that there are a number of different levels for this activity, although it's most effective with children just learning to blend. 



To do this activity, I would have the child "warm up" the car slowly and say each letter sound as he or she drives the car over it. Then I'd have the child go faster and faster each time, saying the sounds faster and faster until the word is clear. For a child who can't yet blend sounds, you could say the sounds yourself while your child moves the race car until the word is obvious. I'll have a post tomorrow at Living Montessori Now with more extensions for this printable!  

More Free Car Printables  

Go to my post at Living Montessori Now for links to free car printables from around the blogosphere: Free Car Printables and Montessori-Inspired Car Activities. And be sure to subscribe to my email list if you'd like to get an exclusive free printable each month (plus two more awesome freebies right away): Free Printables. 
 
You'll find lots of Montessori-inspired transportation activities and ideas in these Living Montessori Now resources:

• Montessori-Inspired Transportation Unit
• Montessori-Inspired Activities for Pre-Schoolers: Car Parking Game
• Free Transportation Printables and Montessori-Inspired Transportation Math Activities
• Montessori-Inspired Construction Unit
• Montessori-Inspired Train Activities with Spielgaben {Free Printables}
• Free Train Printables and Montessori-Inspired Train Activities
• Transportation Unit Study Pinterest Board

If you'd like to focus on manners with children, please check out my eBook Montessori at Home or School: How to Teach Grace and Courtesy! It's written for anyone who'd like to feel comfortable teaching manners to children ages 2-12. I'm also one of the coauthors of the book Learn with Play – 150+ Activities for Year-round Fun & Learning!

Happy end-of-the-school-year! :)
 

Deb Chitwood is a certified Montessori teacher with a master’s degree in Early Childhood Studies from Sheffield Hallam University in Sheffield, England. Deb taught in Montessori schools in Iowa and Arizona before becoming owner/director/teacher of her own Montessori school in South Dakota. Later, she homeschooled her two children through high school. Deb is now a Montessori writer who lives in San Diego with her husband of 41 years (and lives in the city where her kids, kids-in-law, and toddler granddaughter live). She blogs at Living Montessori Now.

Montessori-Inspired Owl Activities Using Free Printables

By Deb Chitwood from Living Montessori Now 

Owls are a very versatile theme. Online, I found owl activities for an owl classroom theme, fall owls, Owl Moon winter owl activities, valentine owls, Earth Day ("Give a Hoot! Don't Pollute!") owls, and owls used in the study of birds. 

  
I had lots of fun finding printables for my free owl printables post at Living Montessori Now. Here, I've created some owl activities using free printables for preschoolers through first graders. These activities all work especially well with a fall or classroom theme, although they should work with most owl themes. 

You'll find many activities for preschoolers through first graders throughout the year along with presentation ideas in my previous posts at PreK + K Sharing. You'll also find ideas for using free printables to create activity trays here: How to Use Printables to Create Montessori-Inspired Activities. 

At Living Montessori Now, I have a post with resource links of Free Printables for Montessori Homeschools and Preschools. 

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links at no cost to you. 

"5 Little Owls" Activities

   
I LOVE doing songs and fingerplays with preschoolers! I have a fun series at Living Montessori Now with free songs and rhymes for circle time. Right now, "Free Educational Songs for Circle Time," "Free Fall Songs and Rhymes for Circle Time," and "Free Halloween Songs and Rhymes for Circle Time" are especially popular. 

For the "5 Little Owls" activity tray, I used the free Owl Tot Pack (“5 Little Owls”) from Our Little Monkeys. During the winter, you could use the “5 Little Owls” tree and owls from Homeschool Share. I also used the 5 Little Owls Printable Puzzle by Growing in PreK and K at Teachers Notebook. 

I simply printed out, cut apart, and laminated the pieces. If you're wondering, this is my favorite laminator. I put the puzzle pieces in a pencil box and placed everything on a Multicraft wooden tray. 

"My Owl Numbers Book" Tray

   
For this activity, I used My Owl Numbers Book by Amy from Wildflower Ramblings at Hip Homeschool Moms. Creating the owl numbers book is a fun way for children to work on cutting and stapling skills along with math skills. Some children will be able to use the booklet as reading practice, too. 

Owl Paper Cutting Tray 

   
This tray uses the Owl Give You Four Free Bookmarks printable by mzmary at Teachers Notebook. For simpler cutting activities, you could add the cutting page from the Owl Tot Pack from Our Little Monkeys. The Owl Tot Pack includes "finish the pattern" strips that could also be used as cutting strips where children cut between the owls. 

Owl Shapes 

 

I think this activity is TOO CUTE (and creative)! I love the Silly Shaped Owls from Teach With Me. I traced the shapes onto one color of craft foam. I only used one color because of the Montessori principle of isolation of quality. 

 

Here, the owls and shapes are a matching activity. I used a Montessori Services rug for my layout. In addition to matching shapes, children could trace the foam shapes. You could also have construction paper available for children to create their own shape owls. 

Owl Letter Tumble Tray 

This activity uses the Owl Letter Tumble printables from PreKinders. The child simply tumbles the letter owls onto the black felt (or other black cloth used as the night sky) and then matches the letter owls to the letters on the letter chart. Younger children can use this as a matching activity while older children can use this to review phonetic sounds or alphabetical order.

Owl Addition 

   
For this addition activity, I used Owl Number Matching Cards from KidSparkz and Maths Symbols Cards from Activity Village. The felt owls are Creatology felt stickers from Michaels craft store. 




 

I used only 10 felt owls and owl number cards 1-10. For each equation, the child could choose how many owls to use for each addend and them count them to find the sum. 

Finish Drawing the Owl Activity 

 

This is a more challenging activity using the Complete the Drawing Owl printable from Making Learning Fun. It's nice to have some special drawing materials such as the Faber-Castell graphite sketch set, which is what I have in the pencil box on the tray. 

More Free Owl Printables and Fall Activities 

Go to today's post at Living Montessori Now for links to lots of owl freebies from around the blogosphere: Free Owl Printables and Montessori-Inspired Owl Activities.

For October calendar observances and activities, see my October Themed Activities for Kids at Living Montessori Now. You'll also find many fall themes and activities in my "Montessori-Inspired Fall Activities" post. 

If you'd like to focus on manners with children, please check out my eBook Montessori at Home or School: How to Teach Grace and Courtesy! It's written for anyone who'd like to feel comfortable teaching manners to children ages 2-12.

Have a happy autumn!

 
Deb Chitwood is a certified Montessori teacher with a master’s degree in Early Childhood Studies from Sheffield Hallam University in Sheffield, England. Deb taught in Montessori schools in Iowa and Arizona before becoming owner/director/teacher of her own Montessori school in South Dakota. Later, she homeschooled her two children through high school. Deb is now a Montessori writer who lives in San Diego with her husband of 39 years (and lives in the city where her kids, kids-in-law, and baby granddaughter live). She blogs at Living Montessori Now.

Montessori-Inspired Spider Activities Using Free Printables

By Deb Chitwood from Living Montessori Now 

Since spider activities are especially fun before Halloween, I want to share some activities today using free spider printables. 

The hands-on activities in this post are for preschoolers through first graders. You'll find many more activities for preschoolers through first graders throughout the year along with presentation ideas in my previous posts at PreK + K Sharing. 

You'll also find ideas for using free printables to create activity trays here: How to Use Printables to Create Montessori-Inspired Activities.  

Disclosure: This post contains Montessori Services affiliate links at no cost to you. 

Glow-in-the-Dark Spider Practical Life Activity 

 

This activity was very simple to prepare. I just used the the spider web printable from Spider Web Number Cards by Boy Mama Teacher Mama. I used an inexpensive wooden tray and 5 glow-in-the-dark spiders from Michaels hobby store, a tweezers, and a small flashlight. The child could use the tweezers to transfer the spiders to the spider web. Then, if you have a dark area, the child could shine the light on the spiders for a bit, turn off the flashlight, and enjoy the glow-in-the dark effect.

Spider Shapes Activity 

This tray uses the Spider Shapes (laminated) from Spiders Tot Pack at 2 Teaching Mommies. I used a clear acrylic tray from Montessori Services and added a small container of playdough. The playdough could be used to make the appropriate shape around each spider.

S is for Spider Beginning Sounds Tray

I love glass gems and have collected them in most colors. For this Montessori-inspired activity tray, I used the S is for Spiders printable from Making Learning Fun with black glass gems from the hobby store. I put the exact number of glass gems in a round candle coaster along with a sugar tong from Montessori Services. This makes a nice language activity, but I especially like that the themed printable adds interest to a practical life tonging activity.

Of course, you don’t need to use glass gems for this activity. You could use playdough balls, pom poms with a strawberry huller, magnetized pom poms on a magnetic tray, or dot markers (if you don’t laminate the activity). 

In Montessori education, we emphasize phonetic sounds rather than letter names. I would demonstrate the activity by placing the printable on a rug and saying, "/s/ is for spider." Then I would show how to use the sugar tong to place a few of the glass gems before returning the tray to the shelf for the child(ren) to use. 

Spider Numbers and Counters 

I found the spiderweb numbers in the Spider Sums of 5 and 10 by My Fabulous Class at Teachers Pay Teachers. I love preparing seasonal cards and counters, and these were perfect for creating a DIY numbers and counters activity. I purchased 55 felt spiders from Michaels hobby store. The tray is a black Economy Tray from Montessori Services.I found the black bowl (cauldron) on sale after Halloween last year. The container is fun, but another type of container would work just as well.

When showing how to do the layout, I recommend placing the spiders in rows of two with a leftover spider centered below the last row. It's a standard Montessori layout for cards and counters and gives a visual representation of odd and even. If you have exactly 55 spiders for the numerals 1-10, that will serve as a control of error.

I put the layout on a large hemmed work rug from Montessori Services.

Spider Addition Activity 

For this activity, I used the Spider Addition Math Sheets from 123 Homeschool 4 Me and 10 spiders from Michaels hobby store.

This tray was very simple to prepare. Many of the 3 Dinosaurs printable packs have counting, addition, subtraction, greater than/less than, and/or word problem printables with numbers that are interchangeable. I just used the numerals from the "Montessori-Inspired Ocean Math Activities" I prepared last June.

For presentation ideas, check out the Montessori-Inspired One Fish, Two Fish Addition Tray in my February post here. You should be able to easily adapt the presentation for this activity.

For younger children, I would make a separate "Count the Spiders" tray, using the Preschool Spider Math Sheet from 123 Homeschool 4. Me For each tray, be sure to have the exact number of spiders needed for the highest sum or to go to the highest counted number you're using in the activity.

Spider Acrostic Poem Writing Activity 

This was another simple-to-prepare tray. It's for advanced kindergarteners or first graders. I used the Spider Acrostic Poem Printable from Activity Village. I added a pencil sharpener and Halloween pencil.

Pipe Cleaner Spider Craft 

I had a lot of fun with the Pipe Cleaner Spiders from Mama Miss. Melissa at Mama Miss has free printables and clear instructions for making the pipe cleaner spiders. 

I'd recommend the craft for ages 4 and up because of the fine-motor control that's required. Of course, if you prepare the spider except for the pony beads and googly eyes, a younger child could have fun adding those. Adding pony beads to pipe cleaners is always a great fine-motor activity.

More Free Printables and Halloween Activities

Go to my post at Living Montessori Now for links to LOTS of spider freebies from around the blogosphere: Free Spider Printables and Montessori-Inspired Spider Activities. 

You'll find lots of Montessori-inspired Halloween activities and ideas in these posts at Living Montessori Now: Montessori-Inspired Pumpkin Activities, Homeschool Halloween, Montessori-Inspired Pumpkin Unit, Montessori-Inspired Halloween Activities, Halloween Grace and Courtesy, Montessori-Inspired Friendly Ghost Activities, Montessori-Inspired Halloween Activities (2012), and Montessori-Inspired Skeleton Activities. I also have a Kids' Halloween Activities Pinterest Board with Halloween activities of all kinds.

Have a Happy Halloween!

Deb Chitwood is a certified Montessori teacher with a master’s degree in Early Childhood Studies from Sheffield Hallam University in Sheffield, England. Deb taught in Montessori schools in Iowa and Arizona before becoming owner/director/teacher of her own Montessori school in South Dakota. Later, she homeschooled her two children through high school. Deb is now a Montessori writer who lives in Colorado Springs with her husband of 38 years and their cat of 12 years. She blogs at Living Montessori Now. 

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