Activities We Do at Keen Kidz: Montessori Edition
If you’re exploring Montessori Waterford options for your child, you might be wondering what a typical day actually looks like. What do children do during their time with us? How does Montessori learning work in practice? At Keen Kidz, our days are filled with purposeful, joyful activities that nurture curiosity, independence, and a genuine love of learning.
Our recent 2025 inspection rated our children’s learning experiences as “Excellent,” and inspectors specifically praised our child-led Montessori approach and the way our children demonstrate confidence, independence, and curiosity. Let us give you a glimpse into the activities and experiences that create this environment.
Understanding the Montessori Approach
Before we dive into specific activities, it’s helpful to understand what makes Montessori different. Dr Maria Montessori developed her educational approach based on careful observation of how children naturally learn. Rather than adults deciding exactly what every child should do at any given moment, Montessori environments allow children to choose activities based on their interests and developmental readiness.
This doesn’t mean chaos or children doing whatever they fancy-quite the opposite. The environment is carefully prepared with purposeful materials and activities. Children are free to choose within this prepared environment, working at their own pace and repeating activities as many times as they need to master new skills.
Our team at Keen Kidz follows the child’s lead and interests, building an emergent curriculum that responds to what captivates and challenges each individual child. Our curriculum is closely linked to Aistear, Ireland’s Early Childhood Curriculum Framework, ensuring that children’s learning experiences are developmentally appropriate and cover all essential areas of growth and development.
Practical Life Activities
Some of the most beloved activities in our Montessori sessions fall under what we call “Practical Life.” These activities might look simple, but they’re laying crucial foundations for concentration, coordination, independence, and self-confidence.
Pouring and Transferring
Children spend focused time pouring water from one jug to another, transferring dried beans with spoons, or using droppers to move coloured water between containers. These activities develop hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and concentration. They also teach children about cause and effect, volume, and controlling their movements with precision.
Care of Self
Children practise buttoning, zipping, tying shoelaces using special frames designed for learning these skills. They learn to wash their hands properly, put on their own coats, and take care of their personal belongings. These activities build independence and self-care skills that will serve them throughout life.
Care of Environment
Sweeping, wiping tables, watering plants, arranging flowers, and tidying shelves—these activities teach children to take responsibility for their environment and develop a sense of community. When children contribute to caring for their space, they develop pride and ownership.
Sensorial Activities
Montessori sensorial materials help children refine their senses and develop their ability to observe, compare, and classify. These beautifully designed materials are often the ones that catch parents’ eyes when they visit our Waterford setting.
The Pink Tower
Ten pink cubes of graduated sizes that children stack from largest to smallest. This deceptively simple material teaches visual discrimination, coordination, and early mathematical concepts about size and dimension.
Colour Tablets
Matching and grading colour tablets helps children refine their visual perception and learn colour names. It’s wonderful to watch a child’s face light up when they discover subtle differences between shades.
Sound Cylinders
Pairs of cylinders that make different sounds when shaken. Children match the pairs by listening carefully, developing auditory discrimination and concentration.
More Reading: Inclusion & Diversity at Keen Kidz
Language Development
Language activities are woven throughout our Montessori Waterford programme. Our team is trained in Hanen approaches, which means we use evidence-based strategies to support every child’s language development.
Stories and Books
We have a rich collection of books reflecting diverse experiences and cultures. Children can choose books to look at independently or join in for group story times. We encourage children to tell their own stories too, valuing their narrative skills and imagination.
Sandpaper Letters
Children trace sandpaper letters with their fingers, learning letter shapes through touch as well as sight. This multisensory approach helps cement letter recognition and prepares children for writing.
Moveable Alphabet
Using wooden or plastic letters, children can compose words before they have the fine motor skills to write them. This allows their literacy development to progress without being limited by handwriting ability.
Oral Language Games
Through conversations, rhymes, songs, and games, we support children’s oral language development. We follow the child’s interests—if they’re fascinated by diggers, we’ll learn the vocabulary around construction. If they love animals, we’ll explore animal names, sounds, and characteristics.
Mathematics
Montessori maths materials are concrete and hands-on, allowing children to literally see and feel mathematical concepts before moving to abstract understanding.
Number Rods
Rods of graduated lengths introduce children to the concept of quantity and counting. Children can see and feel that five is more than three.
Spindle Boxes
Children place the correct number of spindles in numbered compartments, learning to associate numerals with quantities and understanding the concept of zero.
Creative Expression
While Montessori has its specific materials, we also provide abundant opportunities for open-ended creative expression.
Art Materials
Children have access to painting, drawing, collage materials, and playdough. We focus on the process rather than the product—it’s about the experience of creating, experimenting with colours and textures, and expressing themselves.
Music and Movement
Singing, dancing, playing simple instruments, and moving to music are regular parts of our day. Music supports language development, mathematical thinking, physical coordination, and emotional expression.
Sand and Water Play
Sand and water play are staples of our Montessori Waterford programme, offering rich sensory experiences and endless opportunities for exploration, experimentation, and learning.
Water Play
At our water play area, children pour, measure, transfer, and explore the properties of water. They discover concepts like volume, capacity, flow, and cause and effect. Watching water move through funnels, fill containers of different shapes, or create currents teaches physics in the most natural, engaging way possible.
Water play is also incredibly calming and therapeutic. Children can spend extended periods absorbed in the gentle, repetitive motions of pouring and transferring, developing concentration and fine motor control whilst enjoying the soothing sensory experience.
Sand Play
Our sand area invites children to dig, build, mould, and create. Wet sand behaves differently from dry sand—children discover this through experimentation. They learn about texture, weight, and structural integrity as they build castles, create roads, or simply enjoy the feeling of sand running through their fingers.
Sand play supports mathematical thinking (measuring, filling, comparing), language development (describing textures and actions), and creativity (imaginative play scenarios). It’s also wonderful for developing hand strength and coordination.
Learning Through Sensory Play
Both sand and water play offer what we call “sensory play”—experiences that engage children’s senses and allow them to learn through touch, sight, sound, and movement. These activities are particularly valuable for children who learn best through hands-on exploration.
We provide various tools and containers—scoops, funnels, sieves, moulds, measuring cups—that extend the play possibilities and introduce new challenges and discoveries.
Outdoor Learning
Our location at the Ballygunner GAA Complex gives us access to outdoor space, and we make the most of it. Outdoor play is essential for physical development, risk assessment skills, and connecting with nature.
Children explore, run, climb, dig, observe insects and plants, feel different weather conditions, and experience the changing seasons. Some of our most powerful learning happens outdoors.
Child-Led Learning
While all these activities are available, what makes our Montessori Waterford approach truly special is how we follow each child’s interests. If a child becomes fascinated with a particular topic, we expand on it through various activities and materials.
Recently, several children showed great interest in growing things, so we created a whole project around planting, caring for plants, observing growth, and learning about what plants need. This emergent curriculum approach means learning is meaningful and engaging for children.
The Three-Hour Work Cycle
Montessori sessions typically follow a three-hour work cycle. This extended, uninterrupted time allows children to become deeply engaged in their chosen activities. They’re not rushed from one thing to the next; they can work, concentrate, complete their activity, tidy up, and choose again—all at their own pace.
This extended work cycle is one reason why our inspectors noted how confident and independent our children are. When children have time and space to engage deeply with meaningful activities, they develop focus, persistence, and genuine self-confidence.
Come and See for Yourself
Reading about Montessori activities is one thing, but seeing children engaged in purposeful, joyful learning is quite another. If you’re considering Montessori Waterford services for your child, we’d love to welcome you for a visit.
You’ll see our carefully prepared environment, meet our qualified and passionate team, and observe children absorbed in activities that are building the foundations for lifelong learning.
Get in touch with us at hello@keenkidz.ie or call 051 821732 / 085 743 7701. We’re always happy to show you around, answer your questions, and help you decide if our Montessori approach is right for your child.
Because at Keen Kidz, every child, every day, matters—and we believe the activities we offer should honour each child’s natural curiosity, capability, and potential.
