3 Activities To Do At Home To Boost Your Kids’ Skills

A few weeks ago, we were proud to share with you the story of Maria Montessori and we went over a few aspects of her praiseworthy educational methodology. The Montessori methodology has created a revolution not only in the most traditional classrooms but also in the way parents see the way in which their kids should reach their higher potential and in the different paths they should walk in order to give their children a successful human-centered education, focused on a personalized, but deep, growth.

At this opportunity, we want to share with you 3 great activities, based on Montessori education, that you can do at home in order to boost your kids’ creativity, self-confidence, auto-discipline, patience and discovery skills.

Are you ready to help your children be the best version of themselves? These Montessori activities could help! Take notes and let’s get down to work.

“Do at home” Montessori activities to help your children reach higher

We’ll share with you 3 Montessori activities to do with kids of different ages. One to do with your 8-year-old, another one for your 9-year-old, and another one for your 10-year-old child. No worries! If you want to do all of these activities with kids of other ages, you are more than welcome to do so!

Let’s go…

Recreate a fossil: A Montessori activity for kids around 8 years old

Kids love fossils. It is a way to understand our world’s history and in a way, it is some kind of historical footprint that can help us understand how things happened and what could happen in the future. In this activity, your kids will create their very own (and super modern) fossil with their own hands. Because there is nothing better than hands-on learning.

What skills they’ll strengthen: In this activity, your kids will work on their patience, coordination, time perception and will also discover parts of history and humanity.

The materials you’ll need: A big, nice seashell, some kind of fixer (either plaster, a mix between water and flour, or even liquid chocolate!), and a disposable carton container (the bottom of a milk box will work perfectly fine).

What to do, step by step:

  • Whatever square container you decide to use, the technique will be the same. Your kids will need to prepare the mix (remember they can prepare it with chocolate, yeast, or even flour and water) and pour it into the container.
  • Immediately after, your children will have to plunge the seashell into the mix, but keeping in mind that the top half of the sea-shell needs to remain seen and outside of the mix they prepared, making it easy to remove afterward.
  • Time to wait! Now, your kids will have to be patient enough for the mix to be dry and hard. In the meantime, you can explore the online coding courses Tekkie Uni offers. After the mix is dry, your kids can remove the seashell very carefully from the mix, obtaining a mold with the footprint of the seashell. All of this, following the same principle as a real fossil.

How to take it even further? Take your kids on a day trip to your nearest archeological or natural history museum to show them real fossils and help them understand the thousands of years that separates them from these fossils. It could be an amazing family experience!

Create an animated “cartoon” with stop-motion; a Montessori activity for kids around 9 years old

What an amazing opportunity for your kids to create their own videos and cartoons while learning the importance of processes and creativity. Take a look at this activity and make sure to focus on it the right way, so your little ones will indeed strengthen this useful set of skills.

What skills they’ll strengthen: In this activity, your children will strengthen their persistence, their ability to complete tasks, they’ll understand how to follow a sequence, and they’ll develop deeper self-esteem and openness to arts and crafts.

The materials you’ll need: Clay or Playdough and a camera.

What to do, step by step:

  • Explain to your kids the principal of animation image by image and the concept of retinal persistence that creates the illusion of ongoing movement. Then, make them create their very own character with the clay or playdough… it can be a person, an animal, or even a car or a rocket. Up to them! Let them explore their limitless creativity!
  • Indicate to them that once they take one picture, they need to slightly move their character before taking the next one.
  • Let your kids choose their own characters and scenarios!
  • Let your kid think about each scene and each picture. They might have to modify them a bit before they get the perfect shape and conditions.
  • They should put all the pictures together, in the right order and go through them really fast. This creates the illusion of animation… and your kids will be more than proud of their creation.

How to take it even further? Take advantage of the next family meeting to project your child’s creation on a big screen. If you want to empower your children even more, enroll them in Tekkie Uni’s YouTube course. In this online live course, they’ll learn everything they need to know in order to create amazing videos. But not only that! They’ll be able to upload them to their very own YouTube channels to spread their creative creations all over the world.

Interviewing everyone in their environment, a Montessori activity for kids 10 years old and up

Having communicational skills and developing critical thinking is more important with each day. With this activity, your kids will master the best ways to understand others and they will develop their empathy and their social skills even more.

What skills they’ll strengthen: In this activity, your kids will work on their creativity, their communication skills, their ability to listen, their kindness, autonomy and independence. Amazing, isn’t it?

The materials you’ll need: A notebook, a pen or a pencil and a camera.

What to do, step by step:

  • Invite your kids to interview everyone in their nearest environment: Parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, and even aunts and uncles.
  • To begin with, your kids will prepare the activity adapting the questions for each one of the people they’ll interview. If they’re out of inspiration, suggest they ask everything they’ve always wanted to discover about the people they’re going to interview. Give them enough space to come up with hard or embarrassing questions and even motivate them to ask questions that’ll help them understand the personality of the person they’re interviewing.
  • Pretending they are the biggest journalist out there, they’ll do a few interviews to people from their closest environment, writing down both the questions and the answers, and filming the interview.
  • If they need help editing the videos and putting them together, consider Tekkie Uni’s YouTube course.

How can they take it even further?  Encourage them to create a newspaper with the best parts of each interview. They should add a headline, and even write a tiny bit about the personality of each person they interviewed.  Can you imagine how fun it would be to then give away copies of “The Family Newspaper” at the next family gathering?

Additional ways to take your children’s skills to the next level? Coding!

Do you know what else could boost your kids’ self-esteem, creativity, critical thinking, and ability to listen (among other abilities)? Coding. In Tekkie Uni’s online live coding courses, your children will learn in an open and safe environment, where mistakes are seen as learning experiences, where they’ll be surprised by the amazing apps, games, software and videos they will create.

Give your kids the possibility to reach their highest potential. Coding can help them do so while getting them ready for the requirements and demands of tomorrow’s world. The time is now… they can begin by creating their own app and maybe they’ll end up improving the future for all of us.

What are you waiting for?

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