If you’ve been following along for a while, you know that we have been studying the continents in our homeschool preschool. Montessori continent studies are taught in a very specific way that makes so much sense — you start with the big, concrete concepts and work your way in to the small details. I’ve put together a round-up of all of our favorite Montessori continent studies for toddlers and preschoolers here — click on each photo to go to a full write-up of that particular work. These activities are listed below in the order in which we introduced them, and this particular study took us almost a full month to get through.
We began with the whole Earth and discussed the land and water forms that can be found. I used beautiful cards from Every Star is Different and added some play doh models that were super easy to put together even with my limited artistic abilities.
We then moved on to the continents using this DIY Montessori Continents Globe. Each continent is the same specific color throughout all of the Montessori materials — they serve as a control of error as they help correct the child because each continent is ALWAYS the same color, whether it’s on a globe, a map, or a card. I painted my globe myself, which I don’t particularly recommend.
Next we “unwrapped” the globe with this Montessori felt continents map. This one I DO recommend making yourself. Once again, the continents are the same colors as they are on the Montessori continents globe, and there are ways to use the map and the globe together to reinforce the concept that the map is just what the globe would look like if it was flattened.
Finally, we separated each continent by looking at each individually on 3-part cards from The Helpful Garden. These can be done even with pre-readers, as your child can simply match the shapes of the words.
I just so happened to win an Instagram giveaway from Max and Naoli which included some Montessori continent printables! L loved this continent map coloring page. I gave her a bowl with each of the continent colored markers and a control map — although she didn’t really need it because by this point she was an expert in the colors of each continent.
So now that you’ve studied the PHYSICAL continents, it’s time to go a bit further in to study some details of the individual continents. These are some fun activities we did to look at the differences between some of the continents before we dove even further in to focus on each continent individually.
Ok, you’re finally ready to begin your individual Montessori continent studies. Where do you start? I wrote a post for Montessorium about how to begin gathering info for each continent based on your own child’s interests.
Stay tuned for some round-ups of each continent as we go through them! Here is what we have completed so far:
Amazing