On my blog and on my website, I share Montessori-inspired educational printables for early childhood learners and beyond. Each printable is designed to meet the specific needs of children based on their age and is guided by the early childhood curriculum and Montessori scope and sequence. Printables that are presented on the Montessori Nature website cater to children aged 1-8.
I offer printable activities to minimize the cost for parents and teachers as you don’t have to pay for shipping and can print from the comfort of your home or school.
In Montessori, we create an environment where children exercise their freedom to learn using materials presented to them in a way that’s appealing to young learners. Instead of textbooks, children gain knowledge using cards. Cards offer all sorts of different ways for students to exercise the skills necessary for life long learning experience: sorting, categorizing, classifying, matching, reading, building vocabulary, and exercising word recognition, and spelling.
When we prepare cards for the children, we aim to use realistic pictures, clipart that is true to life, and photographs that represent real-life scenarios and images. Here is why. Children absorb information through their senses. When they work with cards that represent their reality and see a picture they can relate to based on their daily experiences, they are most likely to engage with the material on a deeper level. Those materials speak to them even through images before they can start reading.
Young children naturally have short attention spent which they learn to extend with practice and exercises that require their full participation and involvement – aka hands-on activities.
The many benefits of learning with cards:
1) Children develop deeper concentration skills. If a child is interested in the topic, they are more likely to want to spend longer periods of time uninterrupted. For example, the child might not be interested in learning to read or write. But when he is presented with cards that contain information about dinosaurs, he would start learning to identify numbers, learn sounds, color, and draw effortlessly and authentically.
2) Cards help gain an understanding of various complex topics building connections in a child’s brain that transform information into knowledge.
3) Children are more likely to retain and use the obtained information in the future when it is presented in small doses. Hence in Montessori, we make information cards where the main idea is presented in a way children can grasp it effortlessly in a way that makes sense.
4) In the background while working with various sets of cards children simultaneously are developing categorizing and sorting skills along with learning principles of organization and one-to-one correspondence.
5) Cards are designed to enhance a child’s vocabulary and word recognition.
6) Printables are especially handy in small classrooms and in a homeschool environment that does not allow large storage space.
You can browse my shop with printables and sign up to get access to all my freebies here.