The Pinay Homeschooler: 12 Months of Montessori series

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Nature Study: The Plant Kingdom

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Have you ever explored the fascinating world of plants? If not, you're missing out on a truly amazing subject area! One way that we've learned about plants is by visiting our local forest park. During these visits, we take the time to observe and discuss the different types of plants we see there, including trees, flowers, shrubs, and more.

For example, we've talked about why mushrooms are not technically classified as plants. We've also explored the differences between ferns and mosses, which are two unique types of plants that often grow in the forest.

But our learning doesn't stop there! We've also brought the study of plants into our home. We've researched different plant species online and in books, and even started our own small garden to observe how plants grow and develop.

Overall, exploring the plant kingdom has been a fun and educational experience for us. If you haven't delved into this subject area before, we highly recommend giving it a try!

It looks like Mother Nature has finally answered our prayers for good weather, as we have been blessed with a week of bright sunshine and warmth!

Today, we started our session by introducing the Plant Kingdom Chart. Just like the Animal Kingdom, plants are also classified based on their structure and characteristics. During the presentation, Mavi had a lot of questions, but thankfully, I had fact cards prepared for him to read aloud, which helped him understand the different groupings better.

Mavi is an active learner who asks a lot of questions. Whenever you answer one of his questions, expect more follow-up questions. That's why I always have fact cards on hand. Sometimes books are not available, and I don't use the internet during our lessons.

Of course, if you have books available, you should definitely use them for reference. At home, we have a book called 'World of Plants' which we've been using for the past three years. I absolutely love this book because it's very informative and has lots of beautiful pictures that can be used for presentations.

After learning all the necessary concepts, we headed out to the nearby forest or park to observe and investigate the plants. It is worth noting that the helmet worn by one of us was not a fashion statement, but rather a safety measure while using the scooter. Mavi collected some plant samples so that we could examine them more closely at home.

Liverworts and mosses are abundant in this forest and throughout Ireland. The sides of this tree stump are covered with non-vascular plants.

Mavi is investigating a conifer tree in search of its male and female reproductive parts. He notes that the leaves are waxy.

And there you go, any kind of non-vascular plants again.

We investigated the stream to confirm the growth of mosses, liverworts and horsetails in damp places.

The last part was identifying dicot and monocot plants. Daffodils were identified as monocots. We plan to extend our nature study to include dicots.

We collected some samples and brought them back home for examination.

That concludes our introduction to the plant kingdom. We will continue our nature study in the upcoming warm weather, particularly during summer vacation. I am excited to have Vito join us for sensory exploration.

Here's a preview of our Plant Kingdom Learning Resource:

The Plant Kingdom file can be purchased from here:

Also available on TPT.

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This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

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Amazing blogs involved in the 12 Months of Montessori Learning

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now

The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama’s Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Child Led Life

Every Star Is Different ~ Grace and Green Pastures ~ The Pinay Homeschooler

Language Learning Materials for Toddlers (with FREE Alphabet Reading Booklet)

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

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This month in 12 Months of Montessori Series I am featuring Vito’s language shelf. I didn’t have this opportunity with Mavi. During his time, I was not prepared and most of these resources are not available. So I decided that if ever I will have a second child, I want to be a bit organized with our homeschool process.

As you all know, Vito has been showing so much progress in his fine and gross motor skills. Not to mention that he is everywhere in the house, trying to emulate our actions, communicates with us using his own language and communicates verbally (as if he understands what he’s saying). This language shelf that I assembled for him will feed his “sensitive years”, his interest in communicating and in the area of language.

Here are some tips and ideas on how to start your own language shelf.

Book/s Basket

Read books to your kids.

We read endlessly. We may not do Montessori works all the time, but we are religious in reading books.

What books do I need to buy? Board books are perfect for little ones who love to mouth objects. I started with picture books for both boys. I got these from Book Depository and they were the same books I used with Mavi. Read my review here. Picture books are good for object recognition, especially if you read these books to your kids everyday. You don’t have to read everything. One at a time… baby steps as they say.

When Vito was still a baby, we do one book in the morning and one at night. Now that his attention span is longer, we read 3 books during daytime and 1 at night. I put the books in this wooden box and place it on the shelf. As you can see, little Vito can’t wait to get his books while Mommy do some photo-ops. Can you guess what he wanted to read here?

Look for books that have bright colours and large pictures like this My First Numbers and My First Colors book series. These are good books for introducing colours and counting. Oh and yes, as much as possible use books that use realistic pictures! These are for younger ones of course. Study shows that 18 month old toddlers learn more in coloured photos than in coloured drawings.

For younger kids that might show no interest, try books that have manipulatives to get their attention. Like the flip flap books of Spot series (Amazon or Book Depository). Vito loves these two! Or those that create sounds like Mr Brown Can Moo, Vito enjoys hearing me make sounds as well. So he keeps on pointing to the pages so I will make a sound.

And once reading becomes a habit in your home, try reading books that tell beautiful stories (short stories) and with less text per page, with bright colourful images. Point to the text as you read and point to pictures, so they’ll associate it with one another. These are Vito’s favourites so far.

Vito’s favourite books (in the picture):

Colour Basket

These are the contents of our colour basket. We do one colour basket per week, and rotate. You don’t need toys to have these. Think of socks, plastic container, shirts, books, handkerchief, plastic bowls, spoon and fork etc. By looking around your house you will be surprised of what you can assemble!

Am not really sure about including this here because in Montessori, colour is usually in Sensorial. But in our home and in my approach here, I used it as of the moment for language. I want Vito to learn his shapes and colours ASAP. This is the reason why I included a colour basket in our language as we use this basket almost every day during play time.

My aim here is to reinforce the names of the colours and for Vito to recognize them. What I do here is I would place it in the floor for us to play around and explore. I will pick one object, describe it by saying “red feather”. I will pass it to him so he can touch and feel it (or play with it if he wishes). We’ve worked with red, yellow, blue and green so far. I have no plans of introducing orange and purple yet. Just like the books, we rotate this basket.

I will quote this from Montessori from the Start “…repetition is the key to the learning process at all ages. Rotation, not substitution, is the answer to the process of habituation to objects. ” It goes to say that you don’t need to buy “more” objects (substitution) but rather rotate the resources that you have.

Letter Sound Basket for the Week

This has been a popular approach, introducing letter sounds using objects. I introduced this to Mavi when he was 2 years old but at that time he already knows all about the letters and the sounds. My aim during his time was to use the objects in learning how to read.

I’ve been introducing Vito to the alphabets since the beginning of the month through books, wall poster and singing the Alphabet Song. He loves pointing at the letters as I sing them. I prepared this basket so we can explore the letter, and its sound using the objects. Since Vito is only 16 months, I only have 3 objects for each letter and a booklet. This is a letter sound booklet which has realistic pictures and a label. This is similar to the booklet by Itsy Bitsy Books, but I wanted to use real pictures so I made one for myself. Now if you are interested with my file, you can download it for FREE here. On how to assemble the booklet… follow the instructions here.

So what’s in the basket?

A – apple, alligator (Schleich), ambulance

B – banana, book, block

C – cow, carrot, car

Now what about small letters? I wanted to use small letters but I can’t find a foam letter that’s sturdy. I used bath foam letters from Munchkins. These were Mavi’s. When Vito is old enough, I can add up all our objects here and add small and big letters (Melissa and Doug).

I know some of you are not able to assemble these because of limitations (in resource and space). Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have enough “materials” at home. Look around your house, and you will be surprised that you have more than enough to present to your kids. The reason why I use fruits and vegetables is due to the fact that Vito usually eats and encounter these objects everyday. All you needed actually is the principle behind it. Teach through play, use objects around your house for your kids to explore, and read books! Try thrift shops for books if they are not available in the library, or Amazon, or Book Depository (lesser price and they ship for free!)

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This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now

The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama's Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Child Led Life

Every Star Is Different ~ Grace and Green Pastures ~ The Pinay Homeschooler

A Continent Study of AFRICA for Kids

Monday, February 16, 2015

It’s a month of Africa Continent study in the house. Mavi enjoyed learning about this beautiful continent, its geography, exploring the different places and landmarks, the wildlife and habitats and of course the different culture and traditions that make Africa unique!

Montessori Practical Life: Folding Clothes

Saturday, January 17, 2015

We're back from our 3 weeks vacation and it was amazing! Now I'll save details on a separate post, for now allow me to show you how Mavi has been very helpful for the past few days. I give credit to the years of training of practical life activities based on Maria Montessori philosophy.

The traditional work in the family is known as the practical life work and is the most important area of an education for life. These practical life activities provides children the groundwork for physical, mental and social development. And what’s more important is that it’ll teach them the work habits that will lead to success in academic and in all aspects of life later.

One of the chores I dread doing is folding the laundry. My husband usually do this for me, but since he's busy most of the time, the folding doesn't get done and the laundry would pile up at times. Now this is where Mavi comes in handy. I gave him the responsibility of folding his own clothes, sort and put them directly in his closet.

To start with, Mavi would sort his own clothes from the pile of laundry.

I placed masking tape on his shirt, pants and underpants and these serves as a guide for folding. There's a number on the tape to indicate which one he will fold first.