Preschool & Kindergarten Homeschool Room

"The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences."

- Maria Montessori

Today we're sharing our preschool and kindergarten homeschool room or Montessori primary homeschool studies.

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When Should You Plan for Preschool & Kindergarten Homeschool?

I took the Child of the Redwoods Montessori homeschool course for the Primary years (3 - 6) in the beginning of 2018, knowing Kaia would begin in the fall of that year.  While taking the homeschool course is when I began gathering the primary curriculum resources for her and any younger siblings to follow. 

Using my scope and sequence for the primary years, we came up with a plan for what we wanted and then basically executed it within our budget.  If you want to know how we did it, take a look at this math lesson.

We knew that we wanted to meet our children where they were at.  Also, I wanted to shoot for the highest-fidelity Montessori environment and experiences we could achieve, knowing that statistically, it supports the outcomes we were looking for.  Finally, we knew that we didn't want any unnecessary expenses to weigh us down in the process.

What is a Good Homeschooling Strategy?

Here are 5 tips we found helpful when considering a homeschooling strategy:

1) Taking a homeschooling course and having the guidance of a mentor - Probably the most important for avoiding buyer's remorse or a confusing roadmap

2) No emotional purchases or impulse buys - We enjoy a minimalist lifestyle and didn't want to stray from that

3) Only Montessori materials or Montessori-compatible purchases - We don't have a cabinet or toy chest or room filled with fantasy-based toys or those electronic toys with the flashing lights for our first plane kids

4) Choosing what we thought was of the most value to our kids' education either by way of encouraging interest or offering versatility

5) Identifying which materials we thought would get the most long-term use

This strategy supported an affordable and pleasant experience for us while growing our family and our $avings.  

Learn more about creating a safe homeschool environment and safe environments for homeschooling and recreation at Porch.

Free Pre-K & Kindergarten Homeschool Course

Would you like to learn more about how to homeschool your preschooler or kindergartener the Montessori way?

This 8-week course will provide parents and caregivers with a no-nonsense approach to homeschooling. You will learn how to homeschool using hands-on, child-centered, and diverse learning experiences.

This course covers ALL the relevant subjects. You'll receive information and insight that will help you identify what is best for your child. You'll also be introduced to plenty of free resources along the way.

Most importantly, you will walk away with the tools and resources you need to confidently begin your own homeschooling journey.

More on the primary homeschool course.

Preschool & Kindergarten Homeschool Room

Montessori Sensorial Materials

The first 2 shelving units along the wall on the left hold a selection of Montessori sensorial materials:

• Pink Tower
• Brown Stairs
• Knobless Cylinders
• Knobbed Cylinders
• Geometric Solids and Sorting/Nomenclature printables
• Constructive Triangles
• Geometric Cabinet & Form Cards

along with calendar materials and seasonal stackers/blocks.  I rotate a couple of these items occasionally but not as often as some other shelves. I find that these materials are enticing for all ages and our kids don't tend to lose interest in them.

The Pikler Triangle and ramps hang out in the middle of the room but we also move them around the house based on what our kids are up to. The ramps our kids like are the wave wall, ladder, and stairs. They also connect it to the Learning Tower when they're using it in that area of the house.

This free guide to the Montessori pink tower and geometric solids will provide you with some background as well as lessons associated with two of the best Montessori sensorial materials to include in your homeschool.

Watch the video to see Noah demonstrate how to use the Montessori geometric solids sorting extension.

Montessori Geography Shelves

• Landform Cards
• Waseca Biomes Continent Globe (or Land & Water Globe)
• Continent Puzzle
• Treasures From Jennifer Montessori Continent Boxes
• Treasures From Jennifer Pangea Supercontinent Box
• Schleich Animals

We use the continent boxes to hold the schleich animals for each continent as well as other geography and cultural resources. The custom Pangea box holds prehistoric animals, including a collection of dinosaurs.

The Waseca Biomes Land, Air, Water Mat and Landform Mat hang above those shelves so we can take them down whenever our kids want to work with them.  

Get a $15 coupon towards your first Waseca Biomes purchase.

Free Dinosaur or Not a Dinosaur Prehistoric Animal Sorting

Grab your free prehistoric animal sorting activity above. Kids can sort the cards into rows or columns using the heading cards: dinosaur and not a dinosaur. The colors of the cards provide a control of error so that kids can self-correct when completing this work independently.

Is it really a dinosaur? Or is it something else? Grab a free printable to go with your prehistoric animals and find out what you're working with.

Preschool & Kindergarten Homeschool Math Shelves

All the materials in this area are amazing!  The Spielgaben on the left is useful for ages 0-12 at a minimum and it's great for cultivating a mathematical mind.

At age 3.5, Noah enjoyed working with the Spielgaben, the Number Rods, and the bottom two shelves which contain the:

• Colored bead hangers (beads kept on top shelf), Sandpaper Numbers 11 - 20, Chameleon Number Puzzle, Dollar Board, Montessori Teaching Clock, Stamp Game
• Teen Boards and Ten Boards, Hundred Board, and a Montessorikiwi Hundred Board Extension we rotate.

Get 16% off your purchase from Montessorikiwi.

• March Madness Math Printable Pack with the Decanomial Beads

• Same March Madness Math Printable Pack with the Waseca Biomes Animals of the World Measuring Tape

This shelf arrangement worked well at this time with the bottom two shelves for a 3.5 y.o. and the upper shelves mostly for a 5 y.o. 

Spielgaben is excellent for all ages. As a matter of fact, the balls in drawer 1 are suitable for exploration with infants. There are different playsets in each drawer and a large variety of manipulatives.

Top 2 shelves:

• The Exchange Game (Golden Bead Units and Golden Bead Bars of 10), Operations using the Golden Beads and printable equations, Addition Strip Board, Addition Snake Game, Stamp Game with paper (pictured)
• Mirus Toys Montessori Learning Clock, Fraction Skittles and Montessorikiwi Fractions Sorting Game, Short Bead Chains & Squares, Multiplication Bead Board, Multiplication Snake Game

Get 16% off your purchase from Montessorikiwi.

This is a photo with the beautiful bead chains on display and hanging beside the math shelf. There's a Jessica Renee Montessori skip counting booklet and bead squares sitting above the short bead chains. There's also a thousand bead chain mat on the shelf with the thousand bead chain.

The basket next to the shelf contains SumBlox.

There are additional math works we rotate since we're using one shelf for all. For more about math, visit our Montessori math and Concrete to Abstraction.

Preschool & Kindergarten Reading, Writing, & Science Shelves

These are the Language Shelves for the preschool and kindergarten homeschool room, which we also use for Science or Seasonal works.  The Waseca Reading Program is on top and next to that is the Parts of the Biome Readers.  

Get a $15 coupon towards your first Waseca Biomes purchase.

The second shelf on the left is the Moveable Alphabet and below that is a lowercase and uppercase Sandpaper letter matching work and some beginning word work for a 3.5-year-old.  The bottom left shelf contains some books for him and a 2-year-old to enjoy.  

The 2nd and 3rd shelves on the right all contain Amphibian work:

• Animalium Tropical Forest postcard
• Amphibian nomenclature cards
• Frog Life Cycle figures with Nature Anatomy book
• Frog puzzle
• Waseca Biomes Parts of an Amphibian Nomenclature

Get a $15 coupon towards your first Waseca Biomes purchase.

On the bottom right shelf are the lowercase letter tracing board and some lowercase blends that are just kind of hanging out in limbo.  We use them in conjunction with the applicable reading program drawers. It's usually a matching activity of a blend to an animal or other item that contains the blend.

Again, we tend to keep the younger activities towards the bottom of the shelf (except the out-of-commission blends) and the more advanced works toward the top.

The basket next to that shelf contains work mats.

This phonetic alphabet exercise is a must-have Montessori material for anyone learning to read. It is used alongside the sandpaper letters to reinforce knowledge of the phonetic sounds of letters.

My favorite thing about this phonetic alphabet is that the letters are positioned between two ruled lines. I don't see this as often and it's an excellent way to extend the learning as kids begin to form their letters on lined chalkboard or paper.

Kids can check their answers using the handy control booklet included in the activity.

Additional literacy activities that align with Montessori and the Science of Reading include the Tap it - Map it - Zap it board (Orthographic Mapping) and the Phoneme Awareness Board (Fluency Board).

Here's another example of an alphabet tracing board, the Cursive Letter Tracing Board.

As kids make their way through the Waseca Reading Program, there are additional opportunities to work with the materials.

This shelf work is self-correcting practice with consonant digraphs using the Waseca Reading Program picture cards and Polliwog Learning Materials sandpaper letter blends.

Waseca Sentence Building materials use movement & cognition to nurture reading skills. Kids place the word cards in the correct order to form the sentence that describes the Illustration Card. The red through blue folders include the control card seen above.

Save $15 on your first Waseca Biomes purchase.

Once kids have practiced their reading skills, they can explore Black history books, books written by Indigenous authors, and bilingual books.

Free NBA Basketball Players Three-Part Cards

Grab your FREE three-part cards to go with your favorite players. Learning to read has never been more fun than with materials your kids are interested in.

These 3-part cards are designed to be used with a collection of NBA action figures or with your favorite books.

Match the action figures to the picture cards for object-to-picture matching.

With 10 different players to explore, there's plenty of opportunities to learn more about the NBA and your favorite sports heroes. Players include Stephen Curry, LeBron James, Jayson Tatum, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Luka Dončić, Ja Morant, Trae Young, Tyrese Haliburton, and Bam Adebayo.

To use these NBA player cards as 3-part cards, print 2 copies and cut the labels off one of the copies. The youngest of kids can match the picture cards. As kids are mastering letter recognition and letter sounds, they can practice matching the label as well.

Any letter sounds that vary from your typical language lessons present great learning opportunities for kids.

Toddler Activities

This is the toddler shelf and it gets rotated with developmental readiness.  This particular shelf setup is for an almost 2 y.o. and a 5-month-old.

Up top is a farm puzzle that everyone still plays with and it's too wide for the cubes.  Inside the cubes we have:

• Apple Threader
• Shape Sorter with a couple of shapes
• Nuts and Bolts
• Basket of Soft Toys for the 5 m.o.
• Melissa & Doug Gears our daughter walked away with
• Magnetic Fishing Game {similar}

A mid-size giraffe is currently hanging out next to it.

• Mirus Toys Wooden Rainbow
• Montessori Spindle Boxes
• Magnetic Fishing Game {Similar}

Here is another shelf setup for an almost 3 y.o. who is beginning to work more purposefully with the sensorial shelves and a 1.5 y.o. who's mostly focused on gross-motor activities such as the Pikler Triangle.

Additional Art, Science, & Geography Materials

• Easel
• Paper Organizer
• DIY Solar System mat
• Waseca Biomes Celebration Sun

• Waseca Biomes Water Cycle work
• Waseca Biomes Air, Land, & Water materials
• Waseca Biomes Landform materials
• Animal Classification nomenclature
• Botany & Zoology puzzles

• Waseca Biomes Parts of a... Nomenclature

• Waseca Biomes Biome Stamps
• Waseca Biomes Continent Biome Puzzles
• Waseca Biomes Continent Readers

Get a $15 coupon towards your first Waseca Biomes purchase.

We also store some additional Art and Geography materials.  All of these items are useful past the primary years and throughout elementary school.  

The oldest two can access the items on the counter but it's out of reach of the younger two kids. The drawers and cabinets are empty except for exercise equipment and some train parts.

Sometimes I will pull these items out for displaying on a shelf if I'm curating a unit or our kids are learning about a related topic. Otherwise, they're available in this area and the kids will take them out as needed.

A lot of the items we've mentioned travel throughout the house.  However, we're okay with that.  Eventually, they make their way back to their place.

This scrambled eggs recipe is our favorite beginner recipe. Kids can gather the ingredients using the ingredient list, gather equipment using the equipment list, and work towards confidence and independence in the kitchen with each recipe.

Practical Life, Books, & More Pre-K & Kindergarten Homeschool:

• Bookshelves and Bins - We have several throughout our home and our kids are never too far from something constructive to read
• Writing/Art Cabinet
• Practical Life - we keep these items in the applicable rooms
• Additional printables, puzzles, toddler toys, baby items, Continent nomenclature, and math works are around the house and stored for rotation
• Terra Barn & Animal Hospital along with the Schleich farm animals are kept together and they move throughout our home

These items are just as important as the materials on display in our homeschool room. However, these items are spread out throughout our home to maximize learning opportunities and keep things accessible in the most helpful locations.

Conclusion for Preschool & Kindergarten Homeschool

We hope you enjoyed seeing a preschool and kindergarten homeschool room done the Montessori way.

We love the Montessori lifestyle and this Montessori homeschool space.  It's a prepared environment suitable for each unique child, they genuinely look forward to learning every day asking to "do school", and they enjoy teaching each other in a close-knit mixed-age environment. 

I have appreciated seeing how their environment grows and changes with them and the progress they've made.

More Preschool & Kindergarten Homeschool

• How to Use the Pink Tower
• How to Use the Geometric Solids
• How to Make a Hanging Heart Globe Pillow