We love simple recipes that our children can help with. Do you remember our two-ingredient cookies? This month we have another great recipe that has a few more ingredients, but doesn’t require any baking: Easy Energy Balls, adapted from Well Plated.  3-ingredient Easy Energy Balls Ingredients 1 ¼ cup rolled or quick-cook oats  ½ cup nut butter  ⅓ cup honey or maple syrup  Optional Add-ins: 2 tablespoons: Chia seeds or flax seeds  ½ cup: raisins, chopped nuts, few chocolate chips, coconut flakes, or anything else you feel like trying!  How to:  Add all the ingredients to one bowl and stir to combine  If it seems too wet, add a few more oats. If it is too dry, add a bit more nut butter (it should hold together when squeezed) Refrigerate the bowl for 30 minutes  After refrigerating, scoop the mixture into heaping tablespoons and roll into bite-size balls   Enjoy!  Montessori tips: Your child is the chef today and you are there to help guide your child through the steps. Begin with a prepared environment and make sure the materials are all ready:  ingredients, bowl, large spoon. Let your child do the scooping, stirring, and rolling into balls.  Focus on just one step at a time, and if your child does not know how, begin by doing the action slowly and quietly and letting them observe, and then give them the opportunity to do it on their own. Enjoy the finished product together! And remember, they can help clean the bowls when you are all finished! Photo credit: Well Plated

We like to involve children in the kitchen, but before any food preparation can begin we have to head to the supermarket! Teaching children about shopping is a great practical life skill that they are sure to show a lot of enthusiasm about. 4 Beautiful Locations Islandwide At House on the Hill, we strive to embody the true Montessori method and philosophy in every lesson and activity. Book A Tour Every good project begins with a list. It is easiest if you have a specific recipe in mind that they can reference for the creation of their grocery list. Help them check the kitchen to see which ingredients you already have on hand, and which you’ll need to purchase. Help them with spelling if needed, or encourage them to draw pictures of the ingredients next to your writing (you can look up photos online for their reference if they don’t know what it looks like). Once you have the list talk to them about the types of food you have listed and where they might be found in the store. For example, milk and yogurt will be in the dairy section. Flour and sugar will be together with other baking supplies. Rice and pasta will be with dried goods. Help them to organize their list according to grocery store sections. With the list in hand (and a pen or pencil) head to the store! If they’re familiar with the layout of the store let them guide you around and search for everything on their list. If they need some help, guide them to one section at a time and check the list for ingredients in that section. As you find each item check it off the list and add it to the basket. As they gain practice in finding the ingredients you can begin to introduce price to your child. Younger children can practice reading the numbers and learning vocabulary like, “this costs” or “the price is ___ dollars”. For older children the supermarket is a great place to practice estimation instead of exact addition. Can they estimate how much the groceries will cost? They can also help to count the money during check out. Happy shopping!

We often talk about involving children in the kitchen, but that doesn’t mean they’re professionals right away! Just like anyone, they need time and space to practice, and not every meal lends itself to their experiential help. That’s why we’re big fans of playdough! Making and playing with playdough is fantastic practice for many kitchen skills: measuring, mixing, rolling, cutting, and even chopping. Plus, it’s an easy, at-home activity that can keep children entertained for hours. Making the Dough  There are many, many recipes for homemade playdough. No matter which one you choose, involve your children in the process of making it. They can help measure the ingredients and mix it all together (with their hands or a spoon!). Let them help clean up, too. Help them prepare a tub or sink of soapy water to wash the bowls, a towel to dry, and a rag to clean their work surface.  Playing with the Dough  You can buy plastic, playdough-specific tools but we think it is just as good (or even better!) to use what you have in the kitchen so children can learn to carefully use real materials under parental supervision. Pull out cutlery, rolling pins, cookie cutters, and spatulas for them to use. If anything has a sharp edge make sure to demonstrate to your child how to hold and use the tool properly. Bonus: as they roll, pinch, squish, and shape their dough they’ll be practising fine motor skills!  Keeping the Dough  When they are finished for the day provide them with plastic bags or airtight plastic or glass containers to keep it in and remind them to wash the tools they used. If possible we recommend keeping the dough and a few tools on a tray on a low shelf or another accessible area. This mimics the Montessori classroom where children can choose their own activities, and it helps them to take responsibility for keeping their materials when they are done.

4 Beautiful Locations Islandwide At House on the Hill, we strive to embody the true Montessori method and philosophy in every lesson and activity. Book A Tour Sometimes it is the simplest of materials that bring the most wonder, and that is definitely true about bubbles! These sudsy creations are fun for the whole family and are a simple at-home science experiment. Homemade bubble recipes abound, but we’re partial to this science-approved version. In a large bowl or container help your child measure and pour 6 cups of water and 1 cup of dish soap. Your child can gently mix it together until the soap is dissolved, but try not to let foam or bubbles form (yet!). Next add the secret scientific ingredient: 1 tablespoon of glycerin (or ¼ cup corn syrup). For best results let the bubble solution sit overnight. While you wait, prepare your bubble wands. You can try pipe cleaners, string, cookie cutters, coat hangers, or whatever else inspires you. With younger children, focus on the bubble blowing and ask questions. How many bubbles can you blow with one breath? What happens when you poke your finger with the bubble? Do different wands make different bubble shapes or sizes? For older children, you can introduce some of the science behind the bubbles. The outside of the bubble is actually three layers; two layers of soap sandwiching a layer of water. When the water evaporates the bubble pops! The glycerin helps thicken the soap and prevents the water from evaporating as quickly. You can even make a bubble solution without the glycerin and compare! Montessori Tips:  Prepare the space ahead of time for your child; choose a low table or somewhere they can easily reach and have all the supplies laid out (if they’ll be helping to measure the water you can have a large jug and the measuring cup there). When it comes time for blowing the bubbles place the solution outdoors on the ground where they can access it. Get their assistance in cleaning up and putting away the materials to complete the work cycle. Resource Links: Home Science Tools: https://www.homesciencetools.com/article/how-to-make-super-bubbles-science-project/ Photo by Zlatko Đurić on Unsplash

Estimation is a mathematics skill that we all use every day. We might estimate how many people are in a room, how much our dinner bill might cost, or how long it might take to get through a queue! Estimation skills begin with basic numeracy and practice, and an at home estimation jar is an engaging and instructive tool, plus it can be fun for the whole family!  An estimation jar is a clear jar with a certain number of one item inside (for instance, 5 golf balls or 100 beans). Everyone in the family should take turns guessing or estimating how many items there are. Each person can write down their estimations and at the end of the week (to build anticipation!) the items inside are counted to see who was closest.  To make your own estimation jar begin with a medium size clear jar with a lid and place it on a shelf or table where children can reach it. They will need to be able to pick it up, hold it, and look at it from all angles.  For children around 2 years old use just a few large objects. You can try 3 or 4 balls or blocks. Try to make each object the same size, but a different color. When a child is first learning about counting, and thus is very new to estimation, we want to make success achievable.  As children age and learn more about numeracy and estimation, you can make the jar more difficult. You can make the objects progressively smaller, and thus the number progressively larger. You can also introduce a “referent”, or a jar with a few of the same object where you tell your child how many there are (for example, “this jar has 20 marbles, how many do you think are in the full jar?”).  Remember to go slow and keep things at their level, if they don’t know the number 100 there shouldn’t be 100 objects inside. Estimation is tricky and a skill that is learned through a lot of practice! You might even stump yourself! And if you’re stumped on ideas for what to include in the jar, check out this list.   Video Resource: My Works Montessori have a wonderful video on this exercise.  

The Montessori sensorial curriculum engages a variety of your child’s senses. Many of them we can easily list: visual senses for sight differentiation, tactile senses to learn through touch, baric senses to feel pressure and weight, auditory sense to hear a range of pitch, olfactory and gustatory senses for smelling and tasting. One that we might not know by name, however, is the stereognostic sense, or the ability to recognize objects by touch alone.  It’s such an important sense that scientists are attempting to engineer sensors that mimic it for use in prosthetics. And compared to that task, practicing the stereognostic, or tactile differentiation sense at home is easy!  This activity is taken right from the Montessori classroom’s shelves, and it is called “The Mystery Bag.” You’ll need a medium sized opaque cloth bag and 2 to 7 different small objects (sea shells, buttons, coins, paper clips, keys, clothes pegs, rocks, or crayons would all work great).  Sit with your child on the floor. One by one take each object out of the bag and identify it together, lining them up in front of your child. Once they’ve all been named, have your child put them back in the bag.  Next, your child will reach into the bag, feel one object, identify it, take it out of the bag, and check their answer. Start with just 2 or 3 objects and let your child reach in and choose which one to identify first. As they develop this sense you can add more objects and the one they need to find next. You can also work with an identical set of the objects, letting your child see the object that they are feeling.   

Put simply, some germs aren’t great. They make us sick and feel poorly. As a community, it’s also important for us to learn collective responsibility and try our best not to spread bad germs to our friends. Handwashing is an easy, cheap, and effective way to prevent the spread of germs and keep children and adults healthy. 4 Beautiful Locations Islandwide At House on the Hill, we strive to embody the true Montessori method and philosophy in every lesson and activity. Book A Tour Forming good hygiene practices is a fundamental practical life skill and we’d like to think that Dr. Maria Montessori would agree! We always practice good hand hygiene in school and we’ve been using the current COVID-19 situation as a real-life example to demonstrate to the children why they should be mindful when they wash their hands! But sometimes, the lesson is easier to learn, and more effective, when it’s fun! Here are two activities to teach children about germs and why it’s so important to have good hand washing habits: 1. Flour Germs  This is a fun and easy way to visually demonstrate to small kids that rinsing our hands with water will not remove germs. We need to use soap too! Spread ¼ of a cup of flour on a plate and ask your children to place their hands firmly overtop of the flour while telling them to imagine the flour is actually germs. Next, provide them with a couple of easy-to-wash plastic or wooden toys for a few minutes, and then ask them to stop what they are doing and examine how much of the flour has transferred from their hands to the toys they are playing with. This is a great activity to visually demonstrate how easy it is for us to spread germs when we sneeze and cough into our hands and don’t wash them afterwards. 2. Black Pepper Soap  This ‘experiment’ is another great way to teach children about germs and the importance of using soap when washing our hands. Fill a large bowl ¾ of the way full with water and add a couple of sprinkles of black pepper. You want a sufficient amount of pepper to be visible along the top of the water, but not so much that you can’t see the water. Next, add a couple of drops of dish soap to the water using a dropper, and watch as the germs ‘run away’ from the soap and cling to the side of the bowl. Children will find this really cool, and the visual it provides will help them remember the importance of using soap to get rid of germs while washing their hands. Montessori tips:  Creating a “hand washing accessible” environment that allows children the freedom to wash their own hands is key to integrating this important habit into your home. Provide a suitable step stool to allow the child to have accessibility. Show them where they can wash their hands at home and teach them the five easy steps for handwashing—wet, lather, scrub, rinse and dry. Let them know when the key times to wash hands are, such as after using the bathroom or before eating. You can find ways to make it fun, like making up your own handwashing song or turning it into a game. Does this look familiar? This is the poster we use in school to remind the children to wash their hands well. Let’s keep reinforcing good habits in school and at home!

The Lunar New Year season is upon us and one of the highlights of the festival has got to be the food. Hot pot or Steamboat as it is known in Singapore, is one of the more popular traditional Chinese meals during the season. It is also very delicious! Luckily for us, hot pot is a great and easy teaching tool to learn with. Hot pot is essentially a pot of hot water or stock – this part is fiddly and adults will have to keep a close eye on the little ones –  that various foods are dipped into to cook, before being consumed.  We’ve found three activities that your children can help to prepare with you. Firstly, you will need a hot pot (either gas or electric, you can pick them up from bigger supermarket chains or home appliance shops). Once you have that set up, it’s time to get cooking! 1. Shopping  Hot pot ingredients are many and varied. Make a list at home with your child and then plan a trip to the market or supermarket to pick everything up.  2. Ingredients Some easy ones that we would suggest are:  Green leafy vegetables like bok choy are pretty and pretty delicious too  Carrots: cut into rounds  Mushrooms: get a selection of the different types and discover the difference between the long, skinny enoki mushrooms or the shorter, rounder shitake Meatballs: mix with soy sauce and roll minced chicken into balls  Eggs: check out what happens to raw egg when you drop it into hot water  There are lots of different ingredients that you can use for hot pot. Try them out and let us know what you cooked! 3. Sauces  Make your own dipping sauces –  let the children pick and create their own sauce.  You will need: Minced coriander (cilantro)  Minced garlic  Soy sauce Sesame oil Salt  Pepper  Lime juice (let the kids cut and squeeze the lime themselves)  Peanut butter Montessori tips:  Food and cooking are some of the best and most fun ways to include Montessori learning at home. Children love being involved in cooking for the family and being able to contribute in some way. They also are more receptive to eating (or trying something new) the food they have prepared.   Engage your child by giving them a part in picking the ingredients to purchase: write the shopping list together and ask them to help you find items at the shop. This is a great, fun way to have discussions about healthy food and how it nourishes them.  Once you get home, the little sous chefs can help out in the kitchen. Let them wash, prep the vegetables and lay them out on platters. Prepare a small knife to cut carrots into rounds (supervised) and have scissors on hand to cut herbs with. Make sure there are bowls and spoons ready to mix and roll the meatballs with. While you’re working on this together, have discussions about colours, smells, tastes and textures.  Once everything is ready, turn the pot on and help them to cook their own food – and yours. Enjoy! Don’t forget to clean up together afterwards!