Welcome to the Japan stop on the Montessori Inspired world book tour!
Montessori Inspired Activities for Pre-Schoolers
Written by: Jo Ebisujima
Published by: jojoebi designs
Published on: January 8, 2014
As a fellow blogging mom in Japan, I have been following Jo Ebisujima for years. Her book is the best of her great ideas kid activities.
The title of her book makes it sound like the activities are only for young kids, but my 6-year old enjoys them as much as my 4-year old! These activities are Montessori inspired and Jo gives a bit of background on the method and how she got involved with it in the introduction, but I think one of the best things about this book is how adaptable they are. You don't have to be a hardcore Montessori mom, you don't have to have lots of time on your hands, and you don't have to live next to a well-stocked craft store to use these activities with your kids. I am a full-time working mom living in the sticks of southern Japan and there wasn't a single activity in this book we weren't able to prepare for, and I can't say that about any other activity book or magazine I've bought for my kids, so this gets a two thumbs up from mama!
From a bilingual parenting point of view, there are two activities covered in the book that are really great for practicing the minority language, whatever that language is (see- totally adaptable to any situation!)
One is the Mystery Bag activity. We used a drawtring bag from the hundred yen store and place a couple of objects in the bag without the target kid seeing. That kid has to reach her hand in and describe it (we make sure that there is a minority language only rule, and boo if the majority language is used!) until the other kid(s) can figure out what is in the bag.
The other activity that really worked well for us was the Mini Cafe! We have used this many times and you can read about our experience here, as my son calls this his Tea Shop activity. There are so many variations on the Mini Cafe, but kids love it no matter what they are serving. It is a sneaky way to get your kids to try out new skills like serving and food prep, while using their written and oral language skills!
There are so many other activities to try out in this book as well. Check out what the other Book Tour participants love about this book by visiting their pages.