Stag Beetle Learning Pack – 109-Page Montessori Printable Unit Study (Ages 3–6)

Who lives inside an old tree stump? A full week of hands-on woodland learning, ready to print.

This beautifully illustrated learning pack follows the stag beetle from a tiny egg in rotting wood to the big beetle with antler-like jaws. Children also look inside a tree trunk and find out how the rings tell its age. The pack is inspired by Montessori and the Cambridge Early Years framework. Every page is marked with a level, so one pack grows with your child from age 3 to 6.

🪲 What's inside (109 pages)

• A Monday–Friday week plan with clickable links to every page
• Read-together pages: meet the stag beetle, mum and dad beetle, inside a tree trunk, old wood is a home, from egg to beetle, years under the ground, wings under a shell, help the stag beetle
• Grown-up notes about stag beetles and how to help them in your garden
• Parts of a tree trunk: poster, three-part cards, label-the-trunk page and "how old is the tree?" ring counting
• Stag beetle life cycle: poster, life in an old stump, sequencing, name each stage, three-part cards, control and child booklets
• Parts of a stag beetle: anatomy poster, label the parts, 3-part booklet, nomenclature cards (pencil drawings with one part in colour), definition cards and a fold-up mini book
• Big tracing letters b, B, S, G, L and O with stroke order, word tracing, copywork, first sounds, ABC order and word puzzles
• Counting to 10, count and clip, skip counting by 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s, number puzzles to 100, missing numbers, adding and taking away
• Memory game with full-page card backs, size game, patterns, I spy, who am I?, true or false and a male/female Venn diagram
• Old wood hunt, make a beetle home, bark rubbing, nature journal and a certificate
• A book list with living books and information books

🌱 Three levels

• ●○○ First steps (3+): tracing, matching, counting to 5
• ●●○ Growing (4+): cutting, building words, counting to 10
• ●●● Challenge (5+): writing alone, numbers to 100, adding and taking away

🌳 Make it hands-on

The last pages are made for our tree stump and stag beetle set. Children press the life cycle stamps in playdough, lay each stage on the stump and build tree rings with playdough snakes.

• Tree Stump & Stag Beetle Life Cycle Set: 3D printed stump tray with roots, a tree-ring slice and playdough stamps for egg, larva, pupa and beetle. Ready to play.
• Tree Stump & Stag Beetle STL file: have a 3D printer? Print your own set at home or for your classroom.

Touch the real rings and stages, then name them on paper with the posters and cards. It all follows the Playtessori Flow™: Movement → Pressure → Focus.

Details

• PDF digital download, A4 (prints on US Letter with "fit to page")
• Ink-light design with white backgrounds; memory cards and booklets set up for double-sided printing
• Illustrations created with the help of AI tools in the Playtessori watercolour style
• For personal and single-classroom use. Resale or sharing is not permitted.

This is a digital product. No physical item will be shipped.