Materials needed:
- Glue mixture. (mix 1 cup of flour with 2 cups of water)
- strips of parchment paper. You can use anything you like here, but I decided to use parchment paper to make it more realistic
- Aluminium foil
- kitchen towel
- rolling pin
Last year, I was able to purchase the Cambrian and Prehistoric Life Toobs from Amazon because it was on sale. I’ve always wanted to have them so we can use the figures in our Geological Time lesson. Remember the first time Mavi and I had the lesson at home? It was a hit! He love it so much! His interest came to light when he started reading the Universe Trilogy:
After which he started to do his own “timeline” by connecting the dots in the stories (based on the books). Because we didn’t have the appropriate figures, our representation of the timeline is incomplete. And finally, these toobs were on sale and we just have to finish what we started!
So here are the additional toobs that we used (aside from the dinosaur toobs)":
The Cambrian Toob. Loooove them! They are so colourful and the details! OMG!
The Prehistoric Life Miniatures. Love this well! Too bad it doesn’t have enough animal figures on it though. But we love it anyway.
So here are my boys, Mavi putting things in action. I made the paper mat. I simply added the label on the side.
And Vito, taking away the items from the mat and destroying everything that Mavi has created LOL.
Ahhh… here it is! I finally got the chance to snap a photo of Mavi’s work while the little one is napping.
Pictures below how Mavi would research each of the figures. Yes I’m beginning to teach him to do research using the web. He’s getting there, he loves reading out loud his discoveries (soon I’ll teach him how to take down notes!). I told him we can do research in books and in the internet nowadays. I also made labels for each figures. They are actually etched on each but it so difficult to read.
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More of Science-related activities here!
Follow Pinay's board General Science on Pinterest.The highlights of our stay at my parents house were the New Year's celebration and our island beach escapade.
It is a tradition in our family to gather and celebrate all together on New Year’s eve. It was Mavi’s first time to party with his grandparents, uncles and aunties.. and cousins! (Sorry can’t post family pictures for privacy :D)
Seeing a whole roasted pig for the first time.
I was teaching him how to light a sparkler!
And the little boy so interested with this horn.
After the New Year, we headed out to an island beach resort which is 4 hrs drive from home. I really wanted Mavi to experience how we enjoy the beach in the Philippines. It’s not just about swimming in the water but doing lots of play and island adventure as well.
Making sandcastle :)
Island hopping with cousin
Beach
Starfish!
Cave!
Riding in front of the fishing boat is so much compared to being inside. Mavi with my not so little brother.
Early morning walk at the beach, finding dead corals, shells and hermit crabs!
Oh we are missing all of these already!!
My son suffered separation anxiety for awhile. But I comforted him that we’ll have lots of family adventures here as well once it is springtime. I know its different with other families and relatives around, but we can’t do anything about it since they’re millions miles away from us. I love it that Mavi appreciated the trip, that he was able to appreciate the presence of other family members and felt the love that they have for him (and his brother).
Now I can’t wait to go back! LOL
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.
He enjoys folding as he finds the approach “scientific” due to the order of how you fold a piece.
For now, I’m giving him the task to fold his own clothes. Once he masters this, then he can fold his little brother’s clothes.
At the end, he's happy that he was able to help, felt accomplished and proud that he was able to contribute something for Mommy.
More practical life activities can viewed in my Pinterest Board:
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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.
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 ~ Every Star Is Different ~ Child Led Life ~ Grace and Green Pastures ~ The Pinay Homeschooler
Painting a Monet-inspired Christmas tree.
Remember how I raved about the books of James Mayhew (the Katie series)? We'll one of our favourite books is the Katie Meets the Impressionist [aff. link]. We talked about the style of Monet and why he is called an “impressionist” artist.
And since its Christmas, we use the Christmas tree as an inspiration.
Below, we work together all the time. His and hers.
We dabbed and smeared our drawing paper with green for the tree. He used a pencil to draw a triangle outline as guide which is not visible in the picture. Then we added details for the balls, lights, stars and presents under the tree.
Mavi’s tree.
Now here’s a macro look of our tree…
Salt Water vs.. Fresh Water
Majority of the Earth’s water is in the oceans but the water here is not pure. Ocean water contains components and elements that have been dissolved in the water through time (water eroded the Earth’s surface).
From here, I started to discussing why water in the ocean is called salty water and those in the lakes are called fresh water. Note that the term “fresh water” can be misunderstood. Water in the ocean is not good for humans as it is salty. Too much salt in our body is not good because the body cannot take it out. Same thing as water in the lake, though it may be called “fresh” or may look clear, it may still have something in it that can be dangerous to our body.
Seen below is our “salty” water mixture. It’s made up of clean warm water, plenty of salt and a blue food colouring for the ocean effect.
Create a salty water mixture as mentioned above and let them taste the salty water and the freshwater for comparison.
Properties of Salt Water (Ocean)
Around 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by seawater (water, salt, and other substances and gases). Seawater is more dense, meaning if you mix salt and fresh water without mixing, the salt water will stay UNDER the fresh water. Other amazing facts about sea water includes:
To demonstrate this, we conducted a few experiments to see first hand the properties of salt water and fresh water. Click on the image below to see our experiments!
Investigating Oceans, Sea and Lakes
Using our printed and painted map, we identified four major ocean bodies: Indian Ocean, Atlantic ocean, Pacific Ocean and Arctic ocean.
Also, we revisited our study of organisms that live in salt water and the fresh water and a refresher of our landforms (an island is part of the Earth, it doesn’t float in the water LOL).
Animals in the freshwater ecosystem: lakes, ponds and streams. Animals in the marine ecosystem which includes the seashore, temperate and tropical oceans.
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