GAMES THAT ENCOURAGE MONTESSORI LEARNING

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The games and toys that you can do at home should help your child explore various dimensions (length, width and height – and probably volume should be added here) or attributes (shape and colour).

Here are a few guidelines for games that you can play at home with your preschool child.

Building block game can be played to help your child work on their language skills, especially the words relating to space and dimension.

Make a picture bingo set – easy to do with a home computer and a printer.

In a word processing programme, create a table with 4 rows and four columns. Put a clip art picture in each cell.

Shapes are good – you can vary the shape itself and the fill colour to get the variety needed.

As well as shapes, you can use smileys showing different emotions, different animals, items of clothing that vary in colour…

Use your imagination to think of other matching games. Or use letters of the alphabet to help your child’s pre-reading skills.

Play simple games like Snap, Old Maid or Fish with an ordinary set of playing cards (see our earlier post on this topic). Here, you have shapes and numbers to match up.

Play Tidy The House. You might not think of this as a game, but keeping tidy and ordered is an important concept at a Montessori early learning centre, and it works well at home.

Sing while you do the chores around the house – if you find cleaning chores a bit of a drag, it’s best to cover this up so your child doesn’t pick up this attitude from you.