At Home Montessori Activities

Here are 50 fun & easy at home Montessori activities to help your child learn new skills, build independence, and become more self-reliant. These activities are a wonderful way for parents to get started with Montessori learning, and a great tool for helping your child master foundational skills regardless of whether they’re attending a Montessori preschool.

Dr. Maria Montessori’s vision for learning was holistic in nature, taking into account the absorbent mind and sensitive periods of child develop during which they can absorb new knowledge & master skills more easily. During this period of child development, the mind is like a sponge, and children actively seek out new information and learning challenges – and children at this age are eager to model the behavior of adults, making this a wonderful time for parents to take an active role in their child’s learning process.

During this stage of development, children are eager to model the behaviors of adults, making this a wonderful time for parents to help enrich the child’s mind in the home environment with common household tasks & simple activities that encourage the kind of learning that Dr. Montessori promoted. By adding these tasks to your child’s life on a daily basis, it provides the necessary repetition of tasks to help gain skills mastery and build concentration, and also gives your child a focal point for their energies at home, which keep them occupied with positive, productive tasks around the house.

At Home Montessori Activities

The Montessori vision for learning is assisted by the prepared environment in the classroom, but not limited to it. You can create a Montessori learning environment at home and help your child become more responsible and master new skills quite easily. The list below is an introduction to 50 different at home Montessori learning activities, which are broken down by category into the four traditional Montessori learning avenues and modern cultural avenue:

Practical life activities

The practical life avenue involves a variety of activities in the areas of caring for the self, caring for the environment, grace & courtesy and the movement of objects. The focus is on real, practical tasks from daily living, which makes it perfect for at home Montessori learning and helps children develop their motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and problem solving skills. Practical life activities is also a great way to teach children how to complete daily tasks that they will do throughout their lives, as well as helping build their confidence & self-esteem at being able to “do it themselves”.

1. Spreading crackers – Make sure that you begin this activity by having small, child-sized materials that will make it easier for your child peanut butter, jam, or cheese than using adult tableware.
2. Squeezing orange juice – Cut oranges in half and let your child squeeze orange juice by pressing them down into a manual plastic juicer with a pitcher base.
3. Slicing & coring applies – Using an inexpensive apple slicer & corer, your child can press the corer down over an apple on a tray to slice it apart.
4. Peeling a hard-boiled egg: This is a great activity for developing motor skills. Cook the hard-boiled egg, and once it has cooled, crack the shells gently and peel a piece or two to start off the process then allow your child a turn. Once your child has finished peeling the egg, they can also use an egg slicer to make slices – and you can have them count the number of slices to practice mathematics as well.
5. Dish washing – Have your child put on an apron and collect two pitchers of water: one of warm water for scrubbing, and another of cool water for rinsing. Use a bit of dish soap mixed with the warm water. Wash, rinse, and then leave the dishes to air dry in the dish rack.
6. Pouring water – Pouring can come in a variety of forms, but typically, the exercise children begin with includes two medium size containers or pitchers arranged on a tray. They should not pour too fast, or the water will spill. Tip the pouring container just enough to start the flow of water.
7. Hand washing – This Montessori activity allows your child to participate in caring for themselves. Teach them how to wash their hands, and facilitate this activity at home with a step-stool to allow your child to reach the sink easily and pump containers to easily apply soap.
8. Sweeping – Helping care for the home doesn’t have to be a chore, it can be a fun activity! You can help your child sweep by buying them a child-sized broom and smaller dustpan suitable for little hands, and working with them to always sweep up messy activities before moving on to the next task, just like in the classroom.
9. Watering the plants – Inspire your child’s love of gardening by getting them a small watering can that they can easily hold & carry, and it might be useful to leave a cloth nearby the plants to help them clean up any accidental spills.
10. Putting on coat & shoes – Provide just as much help as necessary and provide clothing that is easy for the child to learn to master.

Sensorial activities

The sensorial area in a Montessori classroom focuses on lessons that help children develop the five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Sensory learning is a fundamental part of early brain development, and providing at home Montessori sensorial lessons will help provide your child with hands-on experience that fosters independent, self-directed learning.

1. Animal Walk Races  – Do a bear crawl, crab walk, or other animal walk race! It will be both great exercise and help develop your child’s motor skills.
2. Play Hopscotch – Use sidewalk chalk to draw out the hopscotch squares. Hopscotch helps develop motor control and balance. Drawing the squares with chalk makes it a fun art project and allows them to work on their pincer grasp.
3. Play the Silence Game –  Challenge your child to see how they can stay silent the longest. Set a timer that they can watch. Or set a challenge of staying silent for 90seconds. If they can’t stay quiet that long offer a chance to try again! Afterward, ask them what they heard during the silence. This helps develop auditory awareness and skills.
4. Have a Scavenger Hunt –  Make a list of items that could be found in the house or in the yard. Allow your child to walk around until they find all the items. This fun activity helps develop visual awareness and variation.
5. Play with Playdough – Allow your child to sit and play with playdough as they desire. This helps them develop their tactile sensory skills, as they knead, roll, or squeeze the playdough. Extend this activity into a science lesson by making your own homemade playdough with flour, cream of tartar, salt, warm water, and vegetable oil. You can even use food coloring to help develop their sense of sight!
6. Paint with Q-tips – Demonstrate for your child how they can paint using a Q-tip instead of a paintbrush. This will help develop their pincer grip, and the disposable nature of Q-tips makes cleanup easier than washing brushes.
7. Guess a Mystery Scent – Invite your child to sit down and be blindfolded. Bring them different objects from around the house (flowers, fresh laundry, hand soap, etc) and have them identify what they are smelling.
8. Start a Band – Either make or use instruments around your house and play them. Create new songs, or practice repeating a demonstrated rhythm. This will help to refine their auditory sense.
9. Take a Taste Test – Invite your child into the kitchen with you and ask you to make a meal that allows them to taste all the different components of the meal. Developing their gustatory sense!
10. Go Outside Barefoot – This allows children to develop their tactile senses in their feet. Feeling the difference between grass, bark, hardwood tiles, or carpet is a great opportunity for them to learn and differentiate between textures!

Language activities

The language avenue is focused on providing children with important lessons that introduce children to spoken and written language. It begins with the introduction of letters and sounds, and in the classroom setting includes teaching them to differentiate between consonants, vowels, and key sounds. Teaching your child begins in the home – and at home Montessori enrichment helps continue your child’s enrichment with reading, writing, and grammar skills.

1. Work on Basic language skills – Reading stories, singing songs, and having conversations throughout the day will all help your child develop these important basic skills like speaking and listening. Remember to keep learning concrete and hands-on. Preschool children learn best when they can see, hear, touch, and manipulate learning materials.
2. Focusing on letter sounds first – Before children can learn to read or write, they need to spend time learning about letter sounds. This skill is called phonemic awareness, and it’s a critical part of early language development. Sounds come first, and letters will follow.
3. Speak Clearly – Use a natural tone of voice and normal speaking inflections. Use the same words consistently to describe objects. Speak in complete sentences, and remember to enunciate.
4. Use descriptive words – Preschool children need a growing vocabulary in order to understand the thoughts of others. The best time for young children to learn words is the ages of three to six, which is what Dr. Montessori called the sensitive period for language. She described it as a window of opportunity, during which the child is drawn to a particular activity or experience and finds it especially easy.
5. Learn two languages – Children can learn a language by absorbing it like a sponge during the sensitive period, and this is also a great time to help them become bilingual. Teaching your child a second language works best if bilingual parents choose a language and use it consistently. Associating one language with one parent at first helps the child discriminate between languages and know which language is being spoken.
6. Sing Songs – This is a great way to introduce language and to communicate with your children. Whatever your singing ability, children love to hear you sing! Start with classics like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” You can use different words to fit these basic tunes or any song you know, or make up your own melodies and lyrics.
7. Read Books – Do you remember how much you loved story time when you were a child? Read poems and nursery rhymes, stories and counting books, newspapers and picture books. Exposure to a broad range of written styles provides children with more diversity of knowledge and thought to learn from.
8. Use big words – Children are very capable of using big words, and they love learning complicated words and phrases that name the things they see around them.
9. Name what children see – Name sights, sounds, tastes, smells & textures – all of the sensorial areas. As children experience new sounds, sights, tastes and so on, ask them what sensation they are feeling, and get them to describe it to you in detail.
10. Play The I Spy Game – “I spy with my little eye something blue.” Or shaped like a square. You probably played I Spy a million times as a child – relive those golden memories with your own child and help them identify different objects around them based on simple descriptions.

Mathematics activities

Dr. Maria Montessori believed that way that children are mathematical by nature, and they are driven by the desire to absorb, manipulate, classify, order, sequence, and abstract knowledge during the sensitive periods. In the classroom, the mathematics avenue teaches numeration, place value, fractions, and the basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. During at home Montessori learning, focus on practical, daily activities that promote mathematical skills in the manner they’re used throughout daily life.

1. Count Everything – Count the number of people you see who are wearing blue, wearing a hat, or walking a dog. Count the number of buttons on your shirt. Count tiles on the floor, spoons on the table, cars that you pass while driving. The more you count, the more ingrained numbers will become for your child.
2. Buy Groceries – Get your child to help you count out the things you need at the grocery store. For example, “We need six tomatoes, can you help me find six?” This helps them learn the names of food items as well as practice counting.
3. Follow a recipe – Counting ingredients while cooking is a great way to mix mathematics with sensorial, practical life, and even cultural learning avenues. Try writing out a simple recipe, and let your child help you count ingredients. Make sure not to correct your child if they make a mistake, and remember the Montessori rule of cleaning up their work area before moving on to another project.
4. Spending Money – As your preschool child becomes more familiar with money, let them help count out coins or dollars while paying at the store. Money is a good, concrete example of counting to 100, and the various coin denominations will help them to count one dollar by pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.
5. Play a game – Many children’s games include numbers, such as Simon Says or the counting in Hide and Seek. Many board games also include numbers, such as counting spaces or even counting play money.
6. How tall are you? – Children get excited to see themselves grow over time, so periodically measure your child’s height and show them the numbers on the tape measure. Let your child help measure the height of their own toys, and see if they can figure out how much they have grown since the first (or previous) measurement.
7. Create a road trip game – Ask your child to count how many stop signs, green lights, or red cars they see while you’re driving. Keep it simple and concrete, and if they make a mistake don’t correct them.
8. Read and sing about numbers – Read books with numbers, and sing children’s songs that involve counting. This is a great way to encourage holistic learning that involves the language and mathematics avenues.
9. Play with patterns – Pattern play is a great way to indirectly prepare children for math. You can use tangrams and take turns making patterns, or make patterns with stickers or by stringing beads.
10. I wonder how many – Inspire your child’s imagination by having them guess about how many objects could fit inside another. How many people fit in a car? How many people fit in an airplane? How many grains of sand on the beach? Their answers may not be accurate, but simply asking the question inspires their imagination!

Culture activities

The cultural curriculum is a modern Montessori learning avenue taught by many schools that includes history, biology, geography, physical science and art. You can help open your child’s mind to the richness and diversity of the world around them with at home Montessori learning that fosters their natural developmental curiosity about people, places, animals, and history.

1. Read books about other countries – and their special cultures. We really love the Lakeshore Children of the World Book Set. The books contain interesting facts, more about the spoken language, what the money looks like and wonderful discussion questions to ask students.
2. Print out a world map – Show your child where each country is located on a map or world globe. You can work with them to sound out the country names, discuss the culture in each country, and talk about how long it would take to fly to that country.
3. Find a traditional recipe – Pick a delicious recipe from another culture and have your child help you prepare the dish at home. If your family comes from another culture, this is a great way to begin sharing your child’s heritage with them as well!
4. Listen to multicultural music – Play popular songs from different countries and cultures, and ask children what they think of each style. Don’t forget to add in some sing-a-long music to help develop their language skills.
5. Spelling the country names – Mix together the cultural and language avenues by using sandpaper letters or the letter box to spell out country names.
6. Learn some greetings – Learn how to say hello, goodbye and thank you in each language.
7. Talk about animals – Discuss the animals that can be found in each country. Children always love learning about animals.
8. Learn about world holidays – Print out a list of major holidays around the world and discuss each holiday and the culture that it originates from as it comes.
9. Meet people from other cultures – Attend cultural festivals in your area and help your child learn about their language, traditional clothing, and cultural cuisine.
10. Visit a museum – Spend time at a local museum touring the exhibits, learning about native cultural inhabitants in your area, and exploring your area’s local history.

Conclusion

When you’re engaging your child in at home Montessori activities, the most important thing to remember is to keep it fun. You don’t want your child to feel pressured, but instead have them feel self-motivated to practice each task, which will result in skills mastery and help them develop a long-term love of learning.

You should also remember to focus on the learning process rather than the result. These skills require repetition to gain mastery, which is great for building concentration but may not always produce the result you’re looking for. Your child may not achieve perfection, but your child is learning to master these skills and you will have a life-long helper as these tasks become part of their daily routine.

These at home Montessori activities are fun, but also help your child feel a part of the family and able to contribute, as well as helping them learn to take responsibility for their home. Additionally, these activities are also good way to calm busy children and redirect their energy in productive ways.