Montessori homeschool: letter tracing with paint.

It’s been over two months now since I decided to start our part-time home preschool. Although my daughter didn’t really realise that there’s something new going on, since we would always paint and craft on the days when she’s staying with me at home. The only difference now, is that we paint and craft including letters and numbers. So even though I call it homeschool, for her it’s playing, crafting and creating with mommy.

This is really the core of Montessori approach to learning: allowing a child discover and create, while using natural, every day objects. It definitely means less iPad games and apps, and more paint and crayons! ( But if you know me, then you know that I believe in balance, so my kids do get to use technology..just reasonably, like when mommy is exhausted and needs a break 😉 )

So while learning about letters, what’s important is recognizing the sound, connecting it to the shape, being able to recognize the shape and naming objects starting by that letter. My daughter would come to me and say that L is like her name, and M is like mommy, before she would be able to recognize the shape of these letters.

And so these activities let kids learn the shape, while connecting it to the sound. Also, it’s easier for little hands to trace instead of write right away. That way they learn the movement of the hand while tracing and are ready to learn to write the letter later.

What you’ll need:

Paper
Pencil (for you)
Paint and paintbrush

Draw letters with little circles. You can start with one big letter A : on the very first day I think this is exactly what we did. Here, I drew a couple of both capital and small letters a for her to trace with a paintbrush.

We repeated the sound, and we came up with words ( in polish) starting by the letter that she was tracing.

Tracing letters with pompoms :

This is basically the same activity, but since we’re using a different material, it gets a whole new dimension for a child. It’s like a mix if sensory play with letter learning, and my daughter really loved this one!

What you’ll need :

Paper
Pencil ( for you)
Paint
pompoms

Of course while we did that with Lili, my toddler Rose wanted to join in, and so she was painting with pompons, and I had a quiet 30 minutes for another coffee 😉

As you might have read before, I’m raising my kids bilingually, so all the activities we do at home are only in Polish, while her three-times-a-week daycare is in French. That’s why I don’t have any printables here for you, I’m simply sharing my experience. But I do have a very we’ll curated Pinterest homeschooling board with plenty great printables and resources!