Botany Unit: Trees and Leaves

Last week's activities. Sorry if I have to flood this post with pictures as I am short on words.

Trees in 4 Seasons

We made these wonderful trees last week and I think it deserves a post!

Materials needed:  some colored tissue paper and 4 tree trunks (cut-out from paper bags)

 

Cut the tissue paper into small pieces and crumple each.  For the trunks, glue them on a white paper or cardstock.  You might work on one tree at a time.  Such as here, we started with summer... thus the green tissue.  I also advice to use some range from light to dark colors for some accent.  My son had fun gluing the leaves on the trees!

 

Here's our winter and spring trees.  My son decorated the winter tree with some "snowy leaves" on the ground and leaving the tree almost bare.  Our spring tree is a Cherry Blossom thus the color pink.

 

For summer, we have light and dark green leaves and for autumn he wanted yellow and orange with leaves on the ground.

 

And this is how they turned out... and I love it! They all look good together!  I'll find a suitable frame for them so I could hang and display them in sitting room:)

 

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Spring Carnival

Worksheets Again

I was doing some "spring cleaning" and was organizing my files the other day and my son saw old worksheets that he's been working on last year.  We stopped doing worksheets because there was a point that he's no longer interested in it and the fact that he doesn't like worksheets.

I was surprised because when he saw these sheets, he excitedly asked me if he can work on it. 

So this is what we're doing when we're taking a break from our Botany lessons.  I don't know how long this will last but as long as he wanted to work on them, I have to include it in our "afterschool" activities (and a good thing to do on rainy day!) . 

Montessori Addition Charts (FREE Addition Booklets!)

My son is enjoying the FREE Addition Charts which I got from Hope4Me.  He is using the Addition chart with the Addition Tables Booklet 1 which is also FREE and can be downloaded here.

Animals Around the World

Finally! All files are up now and you can purchase materials for Antarctica, Australia/Oceania, Asia and Africa.  Here's the link to all of my animals around the world file. (Click the pictures for the link)

Animals of Antarctica

 

Animals of Africa

 

Animals of Asia

Animals of Australia

 

Animals of Europe

 

Animals of North America

 

Animals of South America

 

And for my FREEBIES you can check it out here.  I am currently working on a page listing all of my freebies and archiving all those with prices for easier access.  So I'm asking for your patience and understanding... it will be up soon and you can view the freebies and those with prices in one click. 

Thank you soooo much everyone! Hope you are liking all of these!

Happy happy Father's Day weekend to all!

Botany Unit: Plant Life Cycle and Photosynthesis

PHOTOSYNTHESIS

To wrap up our Plant Study, we looked into the process of Photosynthesis.  We talked about the source of light, the water and the carbon dioxide that the plant needed to produce oxygen.

I printed a few worksheets from Education.com for him to work on.      

Here's a helpful animation about Photosynthesis.

LIFE CYCLE OF A PLANT

Another worksheet from Education.com, here ordering the stages of a plant's life.

               

 EXPERIMENT

To see how the fluids move inside the plant, we did a little experiment.  We put some stalks of celery into a glass of water containing a blue food coloring.

              

The results as of Day 1.  The leaves and the tip of the stalks have blue spots and the leaves turned into blue.  That's because the blue water has been transported around the plants :)  I love how visible the blue pigments are in the leaves!  (You can click the pictures for a much bigger image)

              

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Spring Carnival

FREE Addition Table Booklets

I made these for my son for use in our addition exercises.  We're currently using Book 1.

Botany Unit: The Plant

Last week's activity:  The Plant  (my son is obsessed with Legos and he made a Lego plant similar to our cards LOL)

This is how I store my nomenclature cards.  Nothing fancy, just a green cardstock (Green for Botany)  and divided it into three sections.  I measured the width and height of the cards to make sure they fit well in each pocket.

First we read books. I started discussing how does a plant grow, what does it do and it's essential role on our environment.

Then I took out our materials.  This sunflower plant is from his school.  It's a perfect model for our study.

Next thing, we talk about the different parts of the plant.  As seen here, he's working on the parts of the plant nomenclature cards.

We also have blank labeling card worksheets.  He colors each part of the plant and writes the label/s on it.  He loved this!

                

Because I run out of felt, I wasn't able to prepare a poor man's version of a plant puzzle.  So instead I have him make a plant out of colored papers.  He did most of the work here.  All I did was to draw the outlines on the paper and assist him in cutting the parts.

  This is how it looks like when he was done.  I read the booklet to define each parts as he formed his plant.

 

If you may ask, all materials seen here (nomenclature, worksheet and booklet) are all in one file (click the  picture for the link).

 

And because he can't get enough of what he has learned, he collected these on our way home from school. 

Next post is all about photosynthesis and plant life cycle.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Spring Carnival

Tree Shapes Outdoor Activity (Worksheet and Printable)

Because of the wonderful weather, I decided to throw a Botany Unit for this month.  We've got plenty of trees around the estate, all with different shapes so I was thinking that we should jump-start our Botany lessons with Tree Shapes.

So I made him a learning material that would help us identify the tree shapes in our estate... and hopefully use it this weekend as we visit the park.  This is an activity sheet that is included in the printable material, Tree Shapes.  We've also brought along our green do-a-dot marker with our worksheet.

Sifting and Discovering Gems!

This is one activity my son truly enjoyed :)  We never had "practical life" activities for quite a while and I was thinking to re-introduce some of it.

                

For this activity, I poured some flour on a bowl and added some gemstones we got from a recent trip to a leisure park.  Then I gave him a sifter to uncover all those precious gems!

                

And it is also a good practice in math! Try counting how many gems you discovered :) 

You can also use sand instead of flour and beads, letters, numbers or objects instead of the gems.

Try it! You're kids will looove it!

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner