Jing, House on the Hill Founder and Mum of Kai and Hans, made some Christmas Truffles with the boys as a Montessori at Home activity! Let’s see how they got on! First, they discussed how to make it, made a shopping list together, then they picked the items from the supermarket together with Daddy and Mummy. Sticking to Montessori principles at home, Jing laid all the ingredients out for them. Kai chopped the chocolate buttons up Hans helped to transfer all the chopped chocolate into a prepared bowl Kai measured out the cream He stirred it on the stove Hans helped to stir the mixture together Kai put his apron on and poured the chocolate sprinkles out He coated the truffles with sprinkles carefully Here’s the final product! Doesn’t it look good? They popped them into the fridge to set. The next day, it was time to taste their Christmas truffles! A resounding thumbs up of approval! Here’s the recipe and some Montessori at Home tips for you to try this for yourselves at home! Chocolate Truffles Who doesn’t love chocolate? This simple recipe (adapted from BBC Good Food) is crowd-pleasing and easy to make! Be prepared for a delicious mess, and lots of lip smacking, finger licking fun! Ingredients: 150g dark chocolate, chopped 150g milk chocolate, chopped 150ml double cream 50g unsalted butter cocoa powder, sprinkles, lustre powder, icing sugar, chopped nuts, for coating flavourless oil (such as sunflower), for shaping How to:  STEP 1 Put the dark and milk chocolate in a bowl, then put the cream and butter in a pan and bring to a simmer. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir until it melts. Leave to cool, then chill in the fridge for 7 hrs. STEP 2 Put the coatings into separate bowls. To shape the truffles, lightly rub your hands with flavourless oil and roll teaspoons of the truffle mix between your palms – this can get messy! STEP 3 Gently roll the truffles in the bowl until evenly coated, then put in a box and chill. Store in the fridge in an airtight container for three days, or freeze for up to a month. Defrost in the fridge overnight. Montessori tips: Your child is the chocolatier 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! Pop these homemade Christmas truffles in a pretty box if you want to give them as a gift. Children will love giving them to family and friends, plus preparing the gift is an additional Montessori at Home activity. Want More Montessori At Home Activities? Download Our Free Montessori at Home Booklets! Montessori shouldn’t end when school ends. We have created a collection fun and engaging Montessori at Home activities for infants, toddlers and children in nursery and kindergarten! Learn More

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 grocery store! 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 organise 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 grocery 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 grocery store is a great place to practice estimation instead of exact addition. Can they estimate how much the groceries will cost? They can also help count the money during checkout.  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!