Bird Study Part II

Sharing with you the conclusion of our Bird Study Unit which we started a last week. 

You can read about the first part here.

Activities related to our study can be found here and here.

Bird's Beak.  Now this is a new activity which we didn't touch last year.  It was way advance for a 3 yrs old but now that my son can grasp complex information, I decided to introduce this to him.  I got the picture from The Visual Dictionary, it shows some of the different sizes and shapes of a bird's beak.  Based on what we have learned from our Bird Parts Definition booklet (Bird Pack), the beak or bill is used mostly for grooming, protection and how birds catch and eat their food.  Some  are long so they can catch foods in the water, some are short because they mainly eat soft fruits and some can be sharp as they are used to hunt other birds and animals.

So we used our bird figures again to examine the different beaks.  These figures are from Safari Toob and Schleich... I have been collecting them for years as my son loves animals and they're learning materials.

Bird's Feet.  We also talked about the different shapes of a bird's foot.  They are designed to be different are birds live in different habitats. Like birds living in water have webbed feet for swimming, those living in trees have sharp claws etc.  Again, I printed out the picture seen below from here.

I also used this information in our discussion. You can get this from Science Buddies.

Next, we talked about different types of birds.  The picture cards (nomenclature cards) are included in my Bird Pack which you can get from here.  We talked about the unique features and characteristics of each.

This is how we differentiate each one (see picture below).  By using a printable bird facts, we were able to learn how each one differs from another. 

You can download this file for FREE from here.

I love how my son is eager to learn about these birds! 

 

Bird's Nest.  We were supposed to make a nest out of twigs and leaves in the backyard.   But it rained for days and I had a flu bug, so we ended up making some nest indoors LOL.  

               

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Preschool Corner

Color Theory Part II

We continued our activities on colors and this time, we discuss how tertiary colors are produced using primary and secondary colors.  (Color Theory Part I here)

I took out the rest of Crayola paints that we have and printed out the Color Wheel worksheets from Spell Out Loud.  Again, we used cotton swabs instead of paint brushes.

Here we started filling up the primary and secondary colors in the wheel.

I used this glass that we have to mix the colors.  As you can see on the left side, he wanted to see whether the orange paint matches the orange color he produced out of mixing red and yellow.  We did this comparison to the rest of the colors in the wheel.

 

We completed the wheel but eventually he complained that he’s tired (more on BORED actually).

So right on the spot I cut out small papers and showed him some color mixing activity.  He enjoyed it to bits!  He keeps on guessing the abstract image that we produced.

Look at all these lovely colors!  You should try this at home :)

I made these little butterflies.  My son wanted to hang them in his room, brilliant idea!

Happy Monday!

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Color Theory Part I

Helloooo!! How’s everyone??? I haven’t been in this blog for a week!  Oh well, it must be the Easter vacation hangover or probably enjoying much of our Spring break :)

I’m participating in this Spring Blog Hop, it sounds fun!  That is why we did colors today to jumpstart our Spring activities :) 

I decided to take this one slow, so we only did two color schemes and skipped the colorwheel.  I’m using the The ABC’s of Art to discuss the primary and secondary colors (we’ll be doing other colors next).  So I took our red, yellow and blue paints to create secondary colors.  I made use of cotton buds LOL as our paint brushes.  Since we’ll just be mixing paints, it would save me a lot of work since I can dispose them easily rather than using paint brushes where I have to wash them after we use them.

Mine is on the upper portion.  I made sure to have my own work too… and surprisingly, I enjoyed it!

With all colors available (primary and secondary), we made a rainbow :)  These are the colors that makes a rainbow in order from the colorwheel.

This is my son’s version of rainbow colors.

Next, we’ll do the colorwheel and study other color schemes like complimentary colors, warm and cool colors, and maybe neutral colors as well.

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Montessori Monday 
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The City at Night

This idea was from Deep Sparkle.  This is a great activity and a perfect way to practice cutting and pasting skills.

First we made our background by creating swirls and spots.

         

Mine is on the left side and my son selected blue and purple for his background.

While we wait for our paints to dry, Mavi cut some small pieces of squares/rectangles for our windows. 

 

An hour later, we added skyscrapers to our background using black art paper (sorry no picture as my hands were busy).

Then I let my son paste the small squares  on our skyscrapers.  I explained that at night you cannot usually see the exterior of the buildings, what you see are just shadows (thus it’s black). So what you can see are the windows that are lit from inside.

Here’s Mavi’s work.  He’s still adding some details :)

 

And here’s mine.  I didn’t get to design my own skyscrapers as he did mine too LOL.

 

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Still Life 101 ~ Apples

We haven’t done any painting activities for quite a while now.  So I was inspired when I came across this blog of an art teacher.   This site is full of wonderful art projects for little ones and are so easy to emulate. And I said to myself that we have to try her works!

We started with Still Life.  As inspired by one of her art projects for kindergartens, I salvaged some of the apples from the fridge and use it as our subject. Please excuse some of the stains in the mat and plate, prior to this, my son has been playing with them LOL.  So by the time I took the photo, one apple has a bite mark, the paper plate has Nutella on the side and the mat has some orange watercolor stains.

To start with, I created the outlines using a drafting compass.  Using a plastic spoon, we swirled (circular motion) the red tempera paint on each smaller circles.  Then we let it dry for about 3-4 hrs.

               

When it was ready, I let him trace the outline of the apples and plate using a black permanent pen.  Then he added details for the apples as well.

We completed the work by applying green watercolors on the background and yellow on the plate. 

 

And here’s the finish product. Tada! He loved his work so much that he placed this in our hallway (his gallery LOL).  I am amazed on how he can finally follow instructions with regards to painting and enjoy the activity as well.  He told me we should paint the muffins next :)

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Planets on Strings

I love how this little project turned out, though initially I wanted to paint the planets like what we last year but my son insisted that we should use his oil pastels.  This simple planet mobile is so easy to do and would make a lovely decor in your kids room if done correctly.

First, I made circles using my compass and cut them to be used as our planets in the mobile. I made different sizes to make it more believable.

Afterwards, we color our circles on both sides.  Mavi used his oil pastels as he is fond of them.  I am not really a fan of pastels as they can get really messy with the hands, but my son loves them, probably because it produces more vivid color than crayons.

Now each of the planet will hang from the paper plate using a string.  We attached each string using a sticky tape and position them accordingly on the plate.  To add more effect, the strings should have different lengths.

Here’s our finished product :)  It turned out to be a plain simple mobile, it would have been better if we really painted the circles to make them more eye catching.  However, the little one was so happy with his work.  He was really proud of what he had accomplished.  We placed this in our hallway and he would sing his Solar System song whenever he passed by under it :)  So cute.

Don’t miss out my Space and Solar System Cards! We used them as well during our Solar System lesson, will talk about it on my next post :)

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