Number Cards and Roman Numerals (with FREE Cards)

As you all know, we are rowing books from Five in a Row (we are loving this so far!).  This lesson in Roman Numerals is in line with the book The Glorious Flight (My son enjoyed every single page of this book! He even made a video narration of this book which you can watch here.).  This is the first time Mavi encountered such numbers and he was surprised to learn that the numbers are represented by letters!

I made use of our wooden Montessori number cards for this lesson and roman numerals handwritten on a paper (I ran out of printer ink!).  We started off with the units (ones).  He got the pattern right away and continued working up to the hundreds.




We stumbled on the thousands as I myself was not knowledgeable of the the Roman Numerals in thousands LOL.  We searched the web for the corresponding symbol for this.

He realized that he only needs to memorize a few letters because the representation is almost the same as counting 1,2,3. According to him, he just have to remember that…

ones is for I

five is V

ten is X

fifty is L

hundred is C

five hundred is D

thousand is M

five thousand is V with one bar on top

 
He worked on the rest of the numbers with less assistance from me and here he is so proud of his work! 

And now, if you are interested you can download your FREE printables of the Number Cards and Roman Numerals by clicking this link. Hope you find this helpful. Thank you! Don’t forget to like and pin this!

More Math activities from my Pinterest board!
Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Pinay Homeschooler on Pinterest.

Grandfather’s Journey {FIAR}

We started Five in a Row late last week.  If you have been skimming through my blog, I am a fan of this curriculum.  Mavi was around 3years old, we did Before Five in a Row (Caps for Sale, Goodnight Moon, Going on a Bear Hunt) and both of us enjoyed learning through literature.  If you want to know more about Five in Row curriculum, visit their website here.

This 2015, I am including it once again in our homeschool. So last week, I came across Grandfather’s Journey in the library and I was a bit hesitant to start FIAR with this book  (more of that in my book review). But because Mavi wants to read it, I gave in. It is the story about the author’s grandfather who moved to California from Japan.  We read the story every single day before we would start our activities.

Note that I did not purchase Five in a Row manual.  Because of my location, I have no access to it and can’t afford the shipping cost.  So what I did here is create my own activities that’s in line with the book and borrowed other activities from FIAR Moms as well. 

Family Relationships

Expose your child to your genealogy! We talked about how the author Allen Say loves his grandfather and how close they are as a family. So I told Mavi that we are going to trace his family(maternal side) starting from my grandparents.  Here’s how we worked them out.

Mavi was enchanted by this activity.  He enjoyed putting up together photos of his grandparents (and great grandparents!) and wished he knew his grandfathers even more.

Geography

The story’s settings are in Japan and United States.  So we traced how the grandfather travelled to California from Japan via a steamship in the Pacific Ocean.  I have to explain to Mavi that long time ago, there were no airlines yet, so travelling is quite difficult. 

 Social Studies:  Japanese Culture

We explored the Japanese culture using our Asia in a Nutshell fact cards.  Then we made kimono paper crafts which we printed out from Crayola.  We also tried origami (the art of folding paper in Japan).  Mavi’s origami was a flapping bird (in yellow) and mine was a crane (in red), and it WAS NOT EASY!!  The chopsticks in the picture was from Japan, given to me by my brother (who also travels a lot!). 

Landmarks of United States

We have not been to the United States yet.  So he was interested learning about the famous landmarks that was mentioned in the story.  We traced the places the grandfather visited in the story. The book did not mention any places but he only describes them.  And that’s what we did, we looked for those places in the web and identified each of them.

Math: Calendar

The grandfather travelled for 3 weeks to get to United States.  As a review of his knowledge with the calendar, I asked him to arrange the months in a year.   After which, we talked about the number of days in a month.  We identified the months with 30 days, and those with 31 days.  February is always a special month because it’s neither 30 or 31!

Math: Multiplication

Using the concept of multiplication (Montessori multiplication), we counted how many days did the grandfather travelled.  In the story, it took him 3 weeks. So how many days are there in 3 weeks? 

More of this Montessori Multiplication soon!  You can get this Montessori Multiplication board from Amazon or from Tower High Learning (UK)

Science: Learning about Birds

Birds  play a special role in the story.  So we reviewed parts of the birds using Montessori concept. This Bird Puzzle can be purchased at Amazon or from Tower High Learning.  We also checked our bird figure collections.  This set is from Safari Toob Exotic Birds. How I wish I have the Backyard Birds so we can explore birds that you can find in your yards or at home.  The cards are from here.

You might also want to check our past activities on birds, Bird Unit.

History:  World War II I got Mavi some books about World Wars to give him a little bit of idea what it is all about. We would skip the rest of the topic and go straight to the war in Japan.  Here I’m showing Mavi the effects of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan. 

Here are the links for the books in case you are interested:

• Usborne World Wars from Amazon.
• The Second World War (Young Readers series) from Amazon.  I HIGHLY recommend this book.  It is easier to read for a 6 years old and got lots of beautiful pictures. 

You can also get the books from Book Depository, Abe Books or Barnes and Noble.

Pin this for later!

And that’s about it! Next on our list is The Glorious Flight and we’ll be exploring France, UK and airplanes!

Artist Study ~ Leonardo da Vinci (Making Portraits)

I am rebooting our Artist Study and we’re starting with portraits.  Now this project was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. See our previous activities with Leonardo da Vinci here.

To know more about this genius artist and for inspiration, we first examine his life. We used this amazing book from the library, Levelled Biographies: Leonardo da Vinci[aff. link].  We enjoyed the book, and Mavi loved learning about Leonardo, not just as an artist but as a scientist as well. The book is appropriate for kids as it has a simple way of telling a biography and has lots of pictures in it.

Aside from learning about Leonardo, we also talked about portraits. I showed Mavi random samples in the web.  Then I took some photos of him outdoor to demonstrate what’s the difference between a portrait and an ordinary picture.  (You can also do this with your kids!) After which, we started making our portraits.  We used the DSS lesson for  the tutorial and some inspirations.

To create portraits, we used two mediums:  oil pastel and tempera paint.  Mavi wanted to use oil pastels (I never liked them!) as this is what they mostly use in school. So I guess he’s quite confident with it.

As you can see I also tried creating my portrait using the pastel but the black which I used for the outline started to mess with my peach coloured face! I just have to stop because my portrait is starting to look messy.

Now this is Mavi’s portrait made from oil pastel. He’s so happy with his work :D 

Second try, we used tempera paints.  I like using paints! Easier to handle and less messy. 

And this is our finished product :) 

Tempera paints, oil pastels and other art materials can be purchased through Amazon, Target or any craft store available.

Mavi pointed out he doesn’t know how to make a nose and a mouth … so we’ll he'll be practising more.

Now this is an activity that you can easily do with your kids.  You can use any medium available, pencil, crayons or watercolour.  Discuss what is a portrait and what do they imagine to be in that portrait.  You can also talk about the back of your portrait, whether they wanted to be indoor or in the park, under the sun, the beach etc.

Like my post? More activities here!

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Pinay Homeschooler on Pinterest.

Introducing Picture Graphs

One of the most important topics which I find very useful when I was in the university and as a professional for some time was picture graphs.  As an engineer, we always looked at statistics, comparing data and interpret them to come up with a solution to a problem.

Now, this is where our picture graph lesson comes in. I introduced this to Mavi because of my experience, and of how useful this in real life.

There are a lot of ways to come up with data collection activities and interpreting the output using picture graphs.  Here I will show you how we did it at home in two ways.

Roll a Dice

Roll the dice a number of times (depends on you) and record the how many instances the number appears.  Discuss the graph to your child.

Link Cubes in a Bag

I placed the equal number of link cubes in the bag, Mavi and I have to pick up a cube one at a time.  We then have to put an X or mark the chart when a certain colour appears.

In each activity, try to describe your graph and ask questions like:

1. Which link cube did you pick the most?
2. Which link cube did you pick the least?

Another suggestion is that, you can create a WEATHER CHART.  Let your child record the weather, if it’s sunny, rainy or cloudy.  We were supposed to do this, but you know in Ireland… it is always RAINING… so this idea will not actually work for us :D

So there you go!  This is a very very easy activity to prepare. Use anything that you see in the kitchen, no need for printables… just create the chart in a piece of paper and that’s it!  Enjoy the activity and goodluck!

More math ideas from my Pinterest board!

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Math Ideas on Pinterest.

Study of Rocks and Minerals for Kids (with FREE Cards)

** Contains affiliate links at no cost to you **

Oh here we are again, my son’s favourite topic: rocks! Last year we worked on identifying the types of rocks: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic.  This year, I added minerals to our studies, to advance our learning about the Rock Cycle.
This years’ objectives for  Rock Cycle study:

1. Review the classification of rocks
2. Identify the characteristics of rocks
3. Identify the characteristics of minerals
4. Difference between rocks and minerals
5. Products of rocks and minerals

Materials used:

• Igneous rock collection
• Metamorphic rock collection
• Sedimentary rock collection 
• Minerals collection.    
• Digital microscope (optional) Was used to examine and take magnified digital pictures of the surface of rocks and minerals. This device can become handy in taking magnified digital pictures of tiny insects, objects, or any creatures.
• Rock and Fossil Hunter Book  A really good book that provides a table of rocks and minerals, with lots of experiments and activities.

This is how we worked on each rock.  I created learning cards for each collection, the links are at the end of this post.
  Comparing rocks and minerals
Comparing Pyrite (fools’ gold and real gold)
Colours of minerals.  Trying to draw and identify the colours of each mineral.


Rocks vs Minerals.  Combined a few igneous, metamorphic and minerals then have Mavi sort them according to:  minerals, rocks and “not sure”.  Mavi had so much fun here!
  Looking closely.  We used our digital microscope (husband provided this) to have a closer look at our rocks and to check for some crystal formations :)

Metamorphic

 Igneous

 Minerals

Get your FREE printable files from the links below:

• Igneous Rocks
• Metamorphic Rocks

You can also purchase an entire pack of rock materials (I suggest this!).  If you have a budget, it's better to get them all at once so you can pull out a prolific rock study.  Any of these two would be perfect!

• Rock and Fossil Collection
• Earth Science Collection

Fun Math Activities for Numbers 20 to 99

So we’ve been practising our Mathematics since we came back from our big break.  We’re almost done with our study on 2 digit numbers (20 to 99).  Now you might be wondering why we need to stick around here. Well you see, though Mavi knows his addition and subtraction by heart, there’s still a lot more in mathematics than that.  To explain, here’s a few of our “brainy” activities (this is how Mavi describes it!).

Count Me!.  Using our decanomial beads, I laid out 20 sets for Mavi to count using what he has learned previously on counting tens and ones! 

Place Value.  Here’s it is in Singapore Math. I copied the activities in our Math notebook so that we can reuse the workbooks from Singapore for Vito.  Mavi works on this using mental math, no manipulative needed.

Find the number. This thinks that this is a very tricky game. I made a lot of questions and clues for him to find the correct number using our hundred board.  This is to test his analysis. Example:   8 less of 35 is?

 

Smallest and Greatest number. Given the number series (I prepared 10 for him), identify the smallest and greatest.  Again he finds this difficult, but upon teaching him the trick, he was able to answer the questions quickly.

Another version is to arrange the given set (15 sets) from smallest to greatest and greatest to smallest. Arranging from smallest to greatest was very easy for him, but he complained that doing the other way around is more difficult. He gets confused between numbers.  I even added 1 digit number (number 6), to my surprise he considered it as “60” rather than “06”.  So I therefore conclude that conventional counting, that is from smallest to greatest is waaay more easier for them than the other way around!

                

Why don’t you try this with your kids and let me know how they feel about it! 

More math activities here!

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Math Ideas on Pinterest.

A Continent Study of AFRICA for Kids

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!

The Study of Ancient Egypt

Here’s a collection of activities for Ancient Egypt Study.  We’ve been using the books The Story of the World Vol 1 and The Usborne Ancient World [aff.link] as our guide and references. This is the first time we’ve ever had an Egypt Study and I was very happy of how Mavi showed so much interest.

 

The Desert.  Learning all about the desert and the environment of Egypt.  We used oatmeal to represent the sand and the figures seen here are from Safari Toobs. 

Mummification.  We tried to apply what we’ve learned of how mummies are made.  Here we prepared a few spices and a tissue wrap to embalm our skeleton model (sorry we did not have any human model LOL). So after wrapping the body, we placed it in sarcophagus (box) and added jewels for the buried King to bring with him in the after life.Familiarization with the Egypt Map and the Nile River.  We used the worksheet from  The Story of the World Vol 1 to recreate the map in a painting.  This will familiarize the child of Egypt’s geography .  See how Mavi made his Nile Delta and the river met in the Mediterranean Sea.

                     

Ancient Egypt Toob.  These are fantastic!  The figures are so detailed and Mavi loved examining each one.  Here, we are learning about each figure (vocabulary) so he’s researching in the internet and the book what each means/represent.  The cards are from Memorizing the Moments.

Pyramids. Mavi recreated the pyramids using his LEGO. That’s supposed to be three pyramids, but Vito played and broke the smallest one.

Papyrus.  We also made this using parchment paper! See how we did it here!

And that’s how we study Ancient Egypt. Next year, when we revisit our World History lessons, we’ll dig a little bit deeper on this subject :)  Hope you like this post. Have fun!

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Ancient Egypt Studies on Pinterest.