Montessori Inspired Unit Study For Toddlers – Insects And Bugs!

We are in love with Montessori philosophy…both me & my toddler! So when I decided to put together our first insect themed unit study, i was as excited as a baby. And my toddler enjoyed this unit study like never before. I am so glad I put this together for him, though I had my apprehensions if a 21 month child will enjoy playing & learning about those squiggly, wiggly squirmy creatures!! So here goes, our Montessori-inspired unit study of Insects & bugs:

1. Language Activity:

Matching lower case alphabets with upper case. I created this simple butterfly artwork (using some crayons & sketch pens!) and had my son match the first four ones. He really did this in a jiffy, so next time i will add few more alphabets to this activity.

2. Language Activity:

Match the insect cards. I created these 4 basic insect cards using a thick laminate paper. This is such a simple, yet fun activity to introduce them to a “new” concept.

3. Language Activity:

Match the insects: We went a step ahead and matched various insects to their counterparts. I have used newspaper cuttings for the insect pictures..Can you beat that! (I did not get all the insects, so i used a flash card for honeybee & foam shape for the butterfly/ But nevertheless that didn’t come in his way at all! He matched all of them with same enthusiasm.) He kept calling all of them “bugs” “bugs!!”…and he named ladybird as lady bug too 🙂

4. Sensorial Activity:

Color matching activity of felt-shaped dragonfly. Got these from a local stationary mart. We went through the names of all the different colors.

5. Sensorial Activity:

Caterpillar play doh color match! I created this simple play doh color mat in the shape of a caterpillar (used sketch pens to color the insect). He had fun matching the colored play doh balls on the caterpillar. He did the activity twice. Third time he was tempted to taste the dough..so i had to distract him with activity no 6! Which he loved equally. So whilst he was checking that out, i kept our playdoh balls safely away 🙂

6. Sensorial Activity:

Insect hunt in the rice. This was the first activity he reached out to when he saw his shelf. He had so much fun hunting the insects from the rice and putting them one by one in the jar!

7. Math & Counting:

Ladybird counting. I created a 1-2-3 counting booklet and had him put the ladybird (foam stickers) on each of the corresponding leaf.

8. Math & Counting:

Pom pom on the butterfly. I made this butterfly artwork on a laminate sheet, and had my son to match the green pom poms on the green dots of the butterfly. Such a great one to one correspondence activity!

9. Math & Counting:

Honeybee counting. Again a similar counting activity. He had to put the corresponding honeybees on the honeycomb. Super fun!

10. Sticker Activities:

We did two sticker activities – the first one was decorating the ladybird with black dots, and second one was sticking on the puffy insect stickers on the paper. He started putting them on the paper, and did not find it interesting enough…he got bored and took the sticker sheet with him and started playing in our balcony. I went to the kitchen to get him a snack. When i came back i saw him putting the stickers on our window pane! We had so much fun with it. I love love love when he invents his own way to play or explore an activity, now for me that’s a WIN 🙂

11. Book reading:

No points for guessing…we read “The very hungry caterpillar” by eric carle. Such a classic! And this one is one of my boy’s fave book. We LOVE it. (You can see that from the condition of the book!)

Also read more about: Montessori-Inspired Shelf for my Toddler!, Why Montessori and what has Trigonometry got to do with it?”,  What’s On My Montessori-Inspired Shelf Today, Harmony Montessori From The Principal’s Point Of View!, Things You Didn’t Know About L’Ecole Montessori, What should you know about ‘Montessori’ learning for your child?

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