Preschool Totschool Wrap Up: Montessori Fruit Themed Trays

We've been continuing to be hermits this winter.  In fact, due to cold, snow and illness, at least one of my children hasn't left the house in two weeks!  The rest of us haven't gone out much more then that, either.  It has made it a little easier to stay with our routine and get school work done, though, so there are some pros!

One of the lessons we had for the big kids this week was parts of fruit, so I thought it would be a great time to pull out some fruit themed trays.  

Tot Trays:

I set out trays geared to Explorer (2y 5m), and some for Mini Cooper (4y 6m).  They are free to try each other's trays, but a lot of times there is no interest since they are not at their level.  

Explorer is really into colors right now.  She absolutely loves any activity that will allow her to talk about them.

Printable is FREE from Boy Mama Teacher Mama.

Fruit matching from 1+1+1=1.  I used this as a chance to have her try and say the names of the different fruit.

Explorer also loves matching puzzles.  This was a hit.

This printable is (free) from Kidsparkz.

Preschool Trays:

Sorting and counting fruit.  She doesn't love these types of trays, but when she tries them I know she needs them.

I printed 2 copies of the file folder game pieces from Christian Preschool Printables, and then cut out different quantities of the fruit.  

Types of fruit 3-part cards free from Montessori for Learning.

We also read the parts of fruit cards together with the big kids and she tried making a little booklet.  These are available (free) from The Helpful Garden.

Montessori Materials

Mini Cooper had her third presentation of the teens board.  She could quickly set it up and put the correct amount of beads on each number.  However, I suspected that she wasn't truly understanding the concept.  

Turns out I was right.  I gave her little slips of paper with just one number at a time.  She just started randomly taking beads.  It took a few numbers, but in the end she was finally understanding the concept.  I plan to do a review of individual numbers this week and move to the tens board.

I encouraged Explorer to try the pink tower again.  I am not exactly sure if she understands it or not (I guess that's a trend).  She wouldn't build it the way it was supposed to be built, but she did keep teasing like she knew she was doing it wrong.  She preferred to build Wall-E on the right.   She may just be bored, so we will try adding in the brown stair this coming week.

She also requested a presentation of the bead stair.  Mostly, this was because Mini Cooper had just been working with the teens board and Explorer wanted to work with the pretty beads, too.

Food Preparation:

Since our theme for the week was fruit, I thought it would be an excellent time to try some fruit prep.

Cutting a banana went pretty well.  

I think this was the first time we had ever given Explorer a knife (she started trying to use it before I got to show her how-note to self, don't put ALL materials out right away).  She did a pretty good job.

Of course the eating part was lots of fun :).

Apple prep was harder, but she stuck with it and was successful!!  I didn't have Explorer try this one.  

Peeling an orange was, by far, the hardest of our activities.  She gave it a very solid try, but in the end I finished slicing the peel so she could peel it herself.  She broke the slices in half so she would have more.  

 Probably the favorite activity of the week was getting to play with all the kitchen items-the REAL ones.  We also used the classification cards from the 1+1+1=1 E pack and matched the objects with the pictures.  But, mostly, they just played...for a couple of days!

Certainly, this week was a lot of fun!  We are looking forward to this coming week of F is for Frog :).  I hope you had a great week, too!

Thanks for stopping by!

God Bless,
Lisa