Montessori at home

 It's not often that I find myself coming up with good ideas, but to blow my own trumpet, I think this one is pretty great!

I found a book of flags at my mums house, and thought it would be a good basis for a flag and geography based activity, but without realising came up with an activity that was great for lots of other reasons too.

Firstly I cut out rectangles out of card and drew basic flag shapes and designs on them. These can obviously be adjusted to simpler or more complex designs dependent on age/ability.

We then picked a flag and looked through the book to see if we could find a matching design, (so a good matching game in itself) and once we found a matching flag we then talked about what colours it is and what order the colours come in. (Good for colour recognition and pattern making!)

Theo doesn't have much interest in sitting and drawing pictures (much to my dismay!) but he does like colouring with a purpose, so this activity suited him really well. It taught him about trying to stay in the specific areas, and about colouring shapes. After this he applied glue to a lolly stick and we attached our flag to it.

We also talked about the countries that the flags represent, and this game would be great as he gets older, and can remember what different countries flags look like, and could even be used to locate the countries on a map.

I really like activities that use and teach lots of different skills, and I think this one is simple and fun and the results are pretty cute too!