My three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Annie has been so excited about the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Lately, she wants me to read it to her each day, and when I hand her the book, she reads it back to me in her own words.
I thought it would be a fun idea to pull together the classic Montessori pre-reading activity, Classified Objects, with an insect theme. The collection of insect objects includes a caterpillar and a butterfly, which are her favorites!
Does your child love books? Does your child like to flip through the pages and “read” the book back to you? What is your child’s favorite book about right now and what “theme” of objects (or pictures) could you come up with to go with the book?
In this post, I’ll talk about the Classified Objects lesson I learned from my Montessori training. I’ll share playful variations of the lesson I did in the classroom, and how the lesson went with Annie at home!
Love doing things like this with my toddler! The importance of vocabulary development and pattern recognition that comes with classifying objects is huge for kids at young ages!
Another great way to encourage children’s learning development.
This makes so much sense and is a fun learning activity too!
This looks like such a fun and educational way for the kiddos to learn! I just pinned, and also sent the article link to my friend with little ones.
My 3 year old toddler is having vocabulary explosion. I think this activity will work for him. We can start with his toys that he plays all the time. He loves cars, dinosaurs and construction trucks. We can move on to other categories later.
This looks like such a fun activity! I know my daughter would love it!
I really enjoyed learning about this pre-reading activity. My son is just 17 months, but is starting to develop favorites when it comes to his books so I will be keeping an eye out on how to start incorporating this!
That’s wonderful, Katie! 17 months old is a great age to try the pre-reading activity, Classified objects! Observing what books your son gravitates towards is a wonderful way to choose what topics to try!
An amazing idea to prepare our kids for their reading activity. As we all know that kids are hard to get focus on things we want them to do. This is definitely a great help, thanks for sharing this with us.
I love this idea and I’ve been doing this with my little boy. So far, he’s been loving it as well.
I love the concept of pre-reading activities. And definitely love the suggested activities in your post. Makes learning so very complete and enjoyable
I love this so much! I’m not Montessori trained, but I was a kindergarten teacher for 5 years and it’s so great to make connections before reading a book! Your ideas are hands-on and fun learning activities and I love them!
This sounds like such a fun and beneficial activity! My son also loves The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so your insect cards will be great for us to start with. Thanks for sharing!
The cards are super cute! I am not a huge fan of bugs, but I guess the kids have to learn about them LOL. Just kidding. Bugs are super important to know about and these activities are great for doing just that.
Awesome ideas! and they are budget friendly too!
Cute! I think my son is getting ready to start reading so this is a perfect way to introduce it. Thanks for sharing!
I love this we have done this with our older kids and will continue to with our younger two as well the steps before reading are just as important as reading it’s self! Thank you for sharing!
Sounds like a great learning activity for kids, and fun as well. It is nice to have different approaches to learning.