Montessori-Inspired Butterfly Letter Activities Using Free Printables

By Deb Chitwood from Living Montessori Now 

Even though I live in San Diego, I still get excited about spring and fun spring-themed activities! So my new exclusive subscriber freebie at Living Montessori Now is butterfly themed! 

I'll also be sharing other free butterfly printables today. You'll find LOTS of free butterfly printables in my Free Butterfly Printables and Montessori-Inspired Butterfly Letter Activities. Here, I'm sharing some Montessori-inspired butterfly activities using free printables for preschoolers and kindergarteners. 

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. 

Alphabet Butterfly Puzzles

Free Printable: Alphabet Butterfly Puzzles from Totschooling 

This was a simple activity to prepare! I just had to print out, laminate, and cut out the letter puzzles. I added them to a Montessori Services basket. You can decide which letters to use according to your child's or students' ability levels. You could use one of the recommended Montessori orders for introducing letters to decide which letters to use (unless your child or students are ready for the entire alphabet).  

I love that this is a visual discrimination activity (and even a symmetry activity) along with being a way to focus on letters. You could emphasize the capital versus lowercase letters, although I would just emphasize the letter sound. For example, for the assembled puzzle in the photo, I would simply say, "This is /b/." In my DIY beginning Montessori phonics post, you'll find lots of ideas for introducing phonics, including a video showing how to pronounce each letter sound. 

Butterfly Do-a-Dot Tray

Free Printable: Butterfly Do-a-Dot Printables (finding lowercase letter b and butterfly do-a-dot image) from Gift of Curiosity 

Free Printable: Blue Morpho Butterfly Letters for Salt or Sand Writing Tray, Tracing Letters, Object Basket, or Matching Different Letter B Fonts (part of my subscriber freebie pack, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password) 

For this activity, I printed out two of the pages from Gift of Curiosity's butterfly do-a-dot pack ... one with the blue butterfly image and one where the child places dots on each lowercase letter b. I used Do-a-Dot markers and an easel from the Montessori By Mom Art Appreciation Toolbox (which is awesome) to hold a letter b card. You could add an erasable crayon to the tray for tracing the letter b if you wish. The tray is a large plastic tray from Montessori Services.

Letter B Basket  

Free Printable: Blue Morpho Butterfly Letters for Salt or Sand Writing Tray, Tracing Letters, Object Basket, or Matching Different Letter B Fonts (part of my subscriber freebie pack, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password) 

You could use any of the blue morpho butterfly letter b's for this, but I chose to use the cursive b as a way to introduce cursive while still mainly using the print b. I used a variety of objects starting with b. You could just say the phonetic sound as you or your child removes an item from the basket: for example, "/b/ butterfly, /b/ banana..." 

Some of the objects are ones I had at home, although most are from Montessori Services (they have individual phonetic objects or a whole set available). The butterfly is from the Safari Ltd. Butterflies TOOB (which I highly recommend for a butterfly theme). 

Butterfly-Themed Letter B Salt Tray

 
Free Printable: Blue Morpho Butterfly Letters for Salt or Sand Writing Tray, Tracing Letters, Object Basket, or Matching Different Letter B Fonts (part of my subscriber freebie pack, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password) 

I love salt or sand trays for writing activities! To color the sand, I added some food coloring to salt in a bag, shook it up, and let it dry. Super easy! I used the wooden tray from the Melissa & Doug Lace and Trace Shapes. The Lace and Trace Shapes are now on my educational toy shelf in my living room. I tied the appropriate lace to each shape and placed the shapes on a bamboo paper plate holder. Very easy and a more accessible way for children to use the shapes than in the tray. And the wooden tray is perfect as a salt or sand tray! 

Again, I would introduce the letter sound rather than the letter name, simply saying "/b/" (the letter sound) as I slowly show how to write the letter using my index and middle finger. Of course, you could include a writing tool if you wish.

Letter and Writing Activities 



Free Printable: Letter B Book of Rhymes and Songs from The Measured Mom 

Free Printable: Letter B Picture Booklet from The Pinay Homeschooler 

Free Printable: Blue Morpho Butterfly Letters for Salt or Sand Writing Tray, Tracing Letters, Object Basket, or Matching Different Letter B Fonts (part of my subscriber freebie pack, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password) 

This photo shows my current letter and writing activities area in my living rom. The metal insets (mine are actually plastic insets from Alison's Montessori) aren't part of the butterfly letter theme, but they're wonderful for preparing the child's hand for writing letters (and numbers). 

My granddaughter loves handmade books, so I put together the free printable books from The Measured Mom and The Pinay Homeschooler.  

Decorate the Bb's Butterfly Letter Craft (from last year's Montessori-Inspired Butterfly Activities Using Free Printables Post) 

 

Free Printable: Decorate the B’s from 3 Dinosaurs (Romping & Roaring B Pack, Part 1). 

This activity uses a large plastic tray from Montessori Services and a Martha Stewart Classic Butterfly Crafts Punch. The butterfly punch creates a great fine-motor activity as well as a craft. The child can punch butterflies out of colored cardstock or construction paper and then glue the butterflies on the letter Bb's (again, emphasizing the letter sound rather than the letter name). 

More Free Butterfly Printables  

Go to my post at Living Montessori Now for links to free butterfly printables from around the blogosphere: Free Butterfly Printables and Montessori-Inspired Butterfly Letter 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 butterfly activities and ideas in these Living Montessori Now posts:

Montessori-Inspired Caterpillar-Butterfly Unit

 
Free Counting Book Printable for Any Theme

Montessori-Inspired Life Cycle Activities 

Caterpillar-Butterfly 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 spring! :)

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 40 years (and lives in the city where her kids, kids-in-law, and toddler granddaughter live). She blogs at Living Montessori Now.

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Montessori Writing Workshop

Hi, this is Rachel from Discovery Kidzone Montessori Adventures!  Today I am going to talk about writing in preschool.  Writing in preschool, really??  What all does that entail?  Isn't that "developmentally inappropriate"?  This is a subject I have struggled with in my quest to create a well rounded preschool program.  This past year I took an online Kindergarten workshop taught by Crystal Radke from Kreative in Kinder.  In her workshop she explained how to introduce a writing workshop in an early childhood classroom. I highly recommend taking her online workshop!! I used the practices that she taught and adapted them to our Montessori program.  Not only did a writing workshop help my students become better writers but it made me a better teacher and writer.  I am going to tell you the systematic approach I use in my Modified Montessori program to introduce writing at a very young age.  

In a Montessori program we place a great deal of focus on the development of fine motor skills before we introduce writing.  I consider many of our practical life lessons an introduction to writing workshop.  

Here are a few examples:

Flower arranging, operating a dropper, push pinning, and easel painting are a few practical life activities that aid in hand eye coordination, proper pencil grip and tracking.  

As the children are mastering their fine motor skills, new materials are introduced.  Metal insets, wood letter blocks and sandpaper letters are the next step.  These materials will start the process of combining language with fine motor development.  I believe this is an important step in the writing process in order for the child to have proper developmental skills and a complete understanding of language in conjunction with one another.  

Metal insets are similar to stencils, however, they are two metal pieces.  The children practice proper pinscher grasp by grabbing the knob on the middle piece, they can trace the positive or negative piece.  This is a wonderful tool to teach writing skills.

Wooden letter pieces, playdough letters, sandpaper letters, wikki sticks, letter puzzles and bead letters are all activities we use for fine motor development, letter recognition and word work.  

Once a child is familiar with manipulating letters we begin to introduce words, in the same way as letters.  They begin by building the words before they write them.  To practice these skills we use the insta-learn board, the moveable alphabet, letter and word tiles.   

In the workshop Crystal talks about drawing pictures using 5 colors.  We use directed drawing methods to start out.  In our Handwriting without tears curriculum it teaches us to use our wooden letter pieces to build "mat man".  This teaches the children to build a picture using shapes.  

We do drawing workshops at least once a week and the progress they make in this area is amazing!!  These drawings were done in March.  

The next step in preschool writing workshop is adding labels.  We do a group writing lesson where we brainstorm and write the labels on a chart together.  During work time they draw a picture and add labels.  

Drawing and writing labels is a great step in preschool development. It teaches the children to love writing, and that writing has a purpose.  The final steps in the writing process for preschool is practice, practice, practice.  We write menus, recipes, phone numbers, food labels and any play based practice we can, to reinforce the love of writing!  I never knew how much joy a writing workshop would add to our program and I am so excited and grateful I incorporated it in this year!  I can't wait to start planning for the fall.  

Rachel Supalla 

Director and Lead Teacher 

Discovery Kidzone Montessori School

Author

Discovery Kidzone Montessori Adventures