To begin our 3K year we blasted into space! I decided to start us with a planets, solar system, space unit. My son didn’t know much about space and I wasn’t sure how much of a hit it would be. It turned out to be a massive hit and now my son wants to read, learn, do everything to do with space. In this blog post I am going to share the space activities we did in our Montessori-inspired homeschool PreK.

We recently completed a space unit and, wow, it was incredible. My son absolutely loved learning about space and even though we have moved on to apples, we will definitely be returning to space for some more learning as well. For us the spine of any unit is books. Books were actually part of what inspired me to choose space as our topic.

Compiling this blog post shocked me. We did a lot more shelf work between 2.5 and 3 than I thought we had! Shelf work has never been the center of our Montessori home (that would be cooking!) but it has always been one of the learning tools that we use in our home. This blog post shares some of our favorite Montessori shelf-work activities for 2.5 to 3-year-olds. Of course, every child varies in interest and abilities.

If you have a 3-year-old at home rest assured, you do not need a curriculum. A few months ago I would have been rolling my eyes hearing I was sharing curriculum picks for my 3-year-old. Heck, I have a blog post draft on here (that I’m glad I never posted!) talking about our plan not to use a formal curriculum. I don’t really even think of 3 as Pre-K considering there is in fact a whole other year PRE-Kindergarten. But it turns out that around 3, my son became very interested in a bit more formal academics. Go figure. We’re not talking sit down and do worksheets academics (though, not going to lie, as much as I don’t, he does enjoy worksheets sometimes) but we are talking about some academics that give us some structure to our day and teach some of those foundational concepts.

Around when my son turned 3 I decided I wanted to dive into some chapter books with him. He has a very long attention span for books and it seemed like a great next step for us. We have read some truly wonderful literature in the last five or so months. I feel that this has helped him expand some of his listening comprehension and focus for longer stories. Along the way we have read some books we’ve treasured together and found some that were misses. This post will share some of our favorites along with notes on the ones that were misses for us.

If you’ve been around here for a while you likely know my passion for involving children in everyday life, particularly cooking in the kitchen. So naturally I am always thinking of all the ways to incorporate learning there. A big one is math. For reference, my son is 3-years-old.

I started All About Reading Level 1 with my son a few months ago. We flew through level 1 and we are now a decent number of lessons into level 3 (I had to edit that sentence multiple times as I started this blog post a full level ago….). I wanted to share my review and some thoughts on the program. We are definitely unconventional All About Reading (AAR) users so I thought our experience might be helpful to some.

Do you have a beginner reader? Have you heard of Bob books but wondering if there is something just a bit more engaging? I am here to tell you (with a resounding yes) that there is! This blog post shares some of our favorite decodable books for beginner readers!

When people find out my son (who is around 3 and a quarter) is reading I naturally get a lot of questions about how I taught him to read so young. But I also think there's a more important first question. Why teach a 3-year-old to read? I do not think 3-year-olds need to be reading and this is why I do not talk about my son’s reading very frequently. This blog post covers the why and how of teaching my son to read at 3.

The first step to reading for all children is developing pre-reading skills. This blog post covers all activities we did before he showed any interest in actual reading and these are activities I would consider developmentally appropriate for many children starting around 2 or 2.5. A child does not need to have any interest in the alphabet to build some of the foundational skills that will be useful when they start to show interest in reading. When I am asked how to introduce the alphabet to a young toddler I generally steer people to instead start here.

My daughter just turned 18 months and has entered into the stage of one of my absolute favorite Montessori activities: matching. I give her small animals for her to match with a photo of the animal. My son loved object to picture matching like this from about 18 months to 2.5. At 3 we still use them to teach new language as part of unit studies.

This spring as we prepared a garden I decided to do a bit of a gardening book rotation as well. I went on a search for books about gardening that captured the magic of seeds becoming plants and the patience required. This reinforced our hands-on learning as we planted the seeds. These books became some of my favorites I have added to our library. My three-year-old loved these and I highly recommend adding them to your bookshelf.

If you’ve been around parenting Instagram you may have seen a Pikler triangle in a playroom. It is a large, usually foldable, ladder-type climbing device. Sometimes it is referred to as a “Montessori climbing triangle” BUT it actually isn’t Montessori. Check out this blog post for all the information about the Pikler triangle, why we love it, and which ones we recommend!

Have you heard of a morning basket? It is a term that comes up so often in the homeschooling world that sometimes I forget it is not a common term in general! Morning basket basically refers to a morning meeting or time of connection to kick off our day. It is somewhat similar to circle time in a school. It is referred to as morning basket because often families keep everything for it in a basket. We do this, sort of!

Over the last several months I feel like our home finally settled into a good rhythm. My son dropped his nap nearly half a year ago so that took some adjustments. While that has made my days a bit more exhausting, we’ve found a rhythm recently that works really well for our family.

Recently, our family has gotten really into family board games! My son just turned 3 and one of the things I really went all out on for his birthday was board games. I got him several games and we have been playing them all the time since. Board games are a great way to connect with your child, work on math and reasoning skills, practice following rules and taking turns, and learn about sportsmanship.

I love real picture books. In general, babies tend to connect to them better than illustrated books. However, there are not a ton of real picture books available. Lovevery makes a gorgeous set but they are only available with a subscription. This blog post features our favorite real picture books that are not Lovevery. I have found more companies are producing real picture books recently, including some with more storylines. This is absolutely wonderful to see! These books I share below are, for the most part, not just books with real pictures and labels. They mostly have some sort of story, at least a very short poem throughout.

We recently started doing a letter of the week in our home with my nearly 3-year-old. I have gotten so many requests for what we do and how we structure it so I wanted to share some activities along with how we are doing letter activities in general.

I recently shared a tour of my son’s Montessori toddler bedroom and now it is time to share my daughter’s room tour. She just turned 1 and this is how her room has mostly looked for a few months now. It has many of the same qualities of my son’s Montessori toddler bedroom, but a few changes since she is younger.

Books about love are a favorite theme for me. It is always wonderful reading to our children about just how much we adore them. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of books for babies and toddlers about love! These books include some classic favorites as well as some beautiful modern books. Many share a similar style of poetically convincing our children just how much we love them.