Montessori Inspired Animal Continents Activity Sheets

I am so happy to share our Animal Continents Activity Sheets.  Mavi helped me assemble this learning material for identifying the different animals that thrive in each continent.  We’ve used the Antarctica and Asia sheets already and I can’t wait to try the rest with Vito.

Introducing the North American History

Based on my experience, the best way to teach kids about history is through famous landmarks.  I remember growing up with my father’s stories of Greece, Spain, Egypt and South America.  He has photos taken at the Great Pyramids of Giza, Sphinx, in Acropolis, Christ the Redeemer in Rio and more.  He’s telling me a bit about history through the landmarks in his photos, which fascinated me.  Since then, I’ve been very interested in travelling and learning about world history. I wanted to inspire Mavi in the same way.  I always start my history lessons with the famous landmarks using our travel photos and the Safari Toobs (Around the World, World Landmarks).  Recently, I purchased the Safari Supertoob USA (on sale) because Mavi wanted to know more about the US (inspired by our trip there last May).

So in this post, I’m sharing how we worked on understanding the history of North America through famous landmarks, figures and playsets that depict the life of the early people of North America.

Intro to Number Bonds

Here's another bead work we did the other day.  The aim of the activity is to identify the two beads that would form the number in the number cards (2 parts and a whole).

First we laid out the number cards from 1 to 10.

Then we placed the bead correspondence of each number cards.  After which, we started 2 and identify smaller numbers that would make 2.  It was difficult for Mavi at first to grasp the concept.  We went on slowly and I did most of the presentation. 

In between, I would take 1 part of the bond and ask him for the other part. Say for 5, I put number 3 (part) and asked him the other missing part that would complete the number 5.

 

As you can see he is using his fingers to calculate the missing part.

I also encouraged him to count the beads instead of using his fingers.

 

I love how this activity ended.  This will familiarize the child that bigger numbers can be formed by putting small numbers together (in different ways). This is also a good introduction to fractions, addition and subtraction.

We will be doing this again and again though as enjoys the mystery and the challenging of finding out the other part :)

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!

MEXICO, the place you thought you knew

It is so hard to to have after "school" activities lately as it gets dark early in the afternoon. Mavi would ask me why we're doing school in the evening when in fact it is just three in the afternoon.  Though we still have a lot of things to cover up before the year ends I'm not letting  myself stress out and be pressured of my "to dos".  As I always say, the journey of our schooling at home is all about the experience and fun that we have NOT entirely about the output.

Okay, enough ranting.  This post is all about our Mexico Unit which we started last week.  The materials that we used in this unit are the following:

• Flags of North America
• Flags of Australia/Oceania
• My Adventure Book (North America Edition)  (read about it here)

We started with flags.  We review the countries that we have studied so far and compare them.  As you can see we work on the 3 part cards, and country-capital city matching cards.  These are all included in the printables mentioned above.

 

We talked about the colors used in the Mexican flag, and Mavi discovered that Australia and the United States uses the red color as well! So we discuss the meaning of the red color (and why it is always used in flags) and the green color and what it means to the history of Mexico.

Aside from coloring, we made a Mexican flag similar to this project. We used tissue paper and a cardstock.

 

Mavi made an eagle at the center of the flag representing the coat of arms of Mexico.

Moving on... we also worked on the biomes of Mexico.  We did this with Australia, and I decided that we should try a different approach this time. 

We made a map of Mexcio (biomes) using PlayDoh. We use yellow for desert and light green for deciduous and tropical rainforest (I can't find a darker shade of green to represent the tropical rainforest).  Our maps (left) and Mavi's (right) show below.

 

And we added plants, animals and landmarks found in Mexico.

And that's it for now. I'll be posting a second part of our study as I don't want this post to end up like a novel LOL.

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
All and things beautiful: history geography

My Adventure Book (North America Edition)

I'm happy to announce that My Adventure Book for North America is now available!  It covers three countries of North America:  Canada, Mexico and the United States.  My first release was Australia/Oceania and Mavi loved it.  We had a wonderful time learning all about Australia... and you can read about it here, here and here.

This is just in time to for a brief introductory of the United States for Mavi in this month of US Thanksgiving. And we'll also be using our Turkey Nomenclature and Definition Booklet to complete the theme :)

 

Each country in the file contains:

• Fact sheet
• Meaning and use of the country's flag and coat of arms
• Maps of the country
• Biomes and landmarks

• Known animals existing on each country
• Famous people
• Famous cuisine/food
• DIY postcards, images for coloring, postage stamps, immigration stamps for play pretend
• And activity sheets
• Spanish and French Salutation Flash Cards (For Mexico and Canada)

Here's how I keep them in clear folder.  We'll be working with Mexico tomorrow (Mavi's special request)

Hoping that you will try it!  Thank you!

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.