The appearance of the honey bees in our front and backyard has led us to look into the lives of these beautiful creatures who are the main source of honey. Vito is terrified of them but not Mavi. We were out the other day catching a few of them, observing how they produce the buzzing sound and freed them up again.
Mavi borrowed this book from the library so we can revisit the Animal Kingdom and he wanted to explore more of the other kingdoms of life. We’ve done a couple of times before (here and here) and he loves revisiting this over and over.
We love our Safari Toob! I think every ‘Mom’schooler should have at least a set or two of these toobs. They are fabulous learning materials and my kids love them!
Anyway, Mavi is officially joining Vito’s weekly themed activities as he’s almost done with school. He misses “Mom” school and urged me to let him join with the activities. So while Vito is all about play and learn, I’m giving Mavi some serious investigative work like research, more readings, and selective hands-on activities.
I recently purchased a few science books for the boys which I bought from Book Depository. Mavi loves science and I am so happy that the books are child-friendly and can be read independently by older kids. I love investing in books because my boys love to read and it can be used over and over all through the years. Great heirlooms for family too!
Anyway, the first book he read was the Clouds Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 1 (AmazonUS)(Book Depository). This is by far the best book I’ve encountered that illustrated the different types of clouds in a simple way, and the explanations are so basic and easy to grasp for kids. So after reading the book, we sat down the next day and worked on some hands-on activities for retention.
Our recent trip to the United States has reignited Mavi’s interest in geography, and he asked me if he could review our landmarks of the world figures to check the places he has already visited.
I saw this beautiful rainbow craft a few weeks ago in Pinterest and I totally forgot the main site, so please if you own this craft leave a message and I’ll include the credits.
I’ve been introducing Vito to the spring season using our Spring Season Picture Cards, books and outdoor activities. Today, I’m sharing the rainbow clouds the boys made last week. The weather was terrible at that time and we couldn’t explore our yard so I made use of their free time doing crafts at home. So I tried to scan through Pinterest in search of simple crafts that BOTH of my kids could work on, and this is one of them!
Crafts projects allow children to exercise their fine motor skills, improve manual dexterity and understanding of visual-spatial relationships. They provide opportunities to use their imagination as well. Just be vigilant when using small items and sharp objects like scissors.
No school for Mavi means brainstorming for future activities. He opened up lately that he wanted to study about animals again, so I took out our cards on The Animal Kingdom and checked what else we missed and haven’t explored yet. He reviewed the cards and sorted out the things that he wanted to learn this year. He picked arthropods, starfish and jellyfish! Yay, something new!
Few weeks ago, Mavi and I were learning about Ancient China. I decided that this year, we’ll be focusing in country-based studies rather than continents. Last month we worked on Australia, and because of Chinese New Year being celebrated during February, I guess this month is the best time to conduct Chinese-themed activities.
A few weeks ago, while were doing an Australia Unit, Mavi and I talked about the animals in Australia and in which habitat they belong. We’ve done this years ago but it’s always nice to revisit and add a little depth in the topic.
January is usually the best time to have winter themed activities or do either Antarctica or Arctic activities. It is the time when kids can envision these frozen part of the planet due to the cold/extreme weather. To start with, I've setup an invitation to play tray in our shelf and displayed books to go along with it. These can be accessed by the boys whenever they want to and they are not age specific, big boys and little brothers can share and play with the tray!
Both of the boys are learning about the Polar Regions this month. I have shared our Polar Animals Sensory Bin last week, and today I’m sharing what Mavi has been working on. While Vito is having tray works, Mavi on the other hand is learning about the difference between the landforms of the Arctic Circle and the Antarctica. This activity is vital in understanding the environment in both regions.
This experiment is perfect for the winter season! Make use of the snowy days by performing this simple experiment on why we put salt on icy roads during winter.
Objective:
To determine which substance or what condition will make the ice melt faster.
Mavi and I are looking into the different regions of Europe and we started with Northern Europe (of course, that’s our location!). So as not to be overwhelmed, we only focused on 4 countries: Denmark, United Kingdom, Ireland and Sweden.
So to learn about Northern Europe we have the following activities:
I am thrilled to share with you our approach to learning the timeline of European history. As I mentioned earlier, my son is fascinated by world history, particularly the events in Europe and Asia (his home continent!). So, while he was exploring his interest, I took the opportunity to delve into the rich history of Europe. To accomplish this, I created these beautiful timeline cards that feature bold pictures (because kids are drawn to pictures) and include a brief description of each historical event. I conducted thorough research and handpicked the major events that were included in the cards. We were already reading the books of the Story of the World series, but most of the events in the cards were not mentioned in the book.
We are revisiting our Europe study, this time I’ve decided to take it by regions. But before we dive into that, we reviewed some of the things we’ve learned in the past years.
Europe Continent Study: European Regions
Here’s a new study for this year, learning Europe through its regions. Here I was showing Mavi the divisions and the boundaries in the map. I bought this map years ago at Montessori Print Shop. So we’re doing a color code here based on our map in Europe in a Nutshell. Blue for northern Europe, red for western Europe, green for eastern Europe and orange for southern Europe.
Mavi is into geography once again and we are revisiting the Continent of Europe. My approach for this year’s study is to look at Europe through the different regions. It’s easier to understand and internalize facts when they’re into smaller groups than attacking them as a whole.
So I created these label cards for northern (blue), western (red), southern (orange) and eastern (green) Europe. The color coding is based on our map in Europe in a Nutshell. The mini flags seen in the photo is from Flags of Europe printable.
We are continuing on our study of animal identification and learning more about their characteristics. After watching Deadly 60 series of Steve Backshall, we discovered that you can also identify animals by the tracks they make! So we used our favourite Schleich animal figures to test this. We randomly dipped the animals in the black paint and freely made tracks. Vito’s helping as well!
The tracks and trails an animal leaves can tell us the type of animals it is and whether it was walking or running, and you can also tell if it was by itself or with a group of other animals.
Footprints of animals are very tricky to identify unlike that of humans! But by thorough investigation, you can tell if the animal is hoofed or with paws or toes. To learn about the footprints of these animals, one must have a proper observation for these unique characteristics.
Animal tracks to note:
Did the animals walk on 2 or 4 feet?
Does the animal left a large or small track?
Was it walking or running?
Was it just one animal or followed by another?
Using our printable and the actual tracks, Mavi grouped the animals according to the characteristics of their footprints:
Raccoon and bear have 4 toes front and 5 toes rear, they have claws.
Dog, fox and wolf have 4 toes front, 5 toes rear and produces an egg shaped track
Lion, lynx produces a round track with claws, 4 toes front and 5 toes rear
Deer, elk have heart shaped tracks and has 4 toes front and 5 toes rear
And the highlight of this lesson is for them to see how their footprints look like!
Materials Used:
Thank you for taking time to read this post! You might as well visit our Zoo Animal Tracks post for another activity that involves playdough. It’s a not as messy as black paint
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Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!
Here are the featured animal-themed activities for this week!
Now it’s time for this week’s link party! This is a BRAND new link up for all blog posts that include learn and play activities and hands-on education for kids. We are excited to read your blog posts and to see what you have to share! Please link up below and grab our button to display on your blog.
If you are a blogger, share your family friendly posts here. We are looking for things which include:
Montessori Education
Homeschool
Sensory Play
Tot and Preschool Trays
Fine and Gross Motor Activities
Kids in the Kitchen
Healthy Recipes for Kids
Arts and Crafts
Natural Living
Free Educational Printables
Family-Oriented Activities
Healthy Living
Your post will be featured on each of our blogs where we will pick our favourite posts every other week. That means there is more of a chance that you will be featured!
Mavi and I got the chance to work on some experiments last weekend due to bad weather. First we started off with a simple test of which substance dissolves in water.
Objectives:
Discovering which substance dissolves in water
Why the said substance dissolves faster in water
Materials needed:
salt, sugar, flour, chalk powder
4 bottles of water
teaspoon
stirrer
Procedure:
Findings:
Salt and sugar easily dissolved in water after stirring. They have grainy texture and are crystalline thus making it more soluble in water.
Flour and chalk powder partially dissolved, most of the powdered portion resided at the bottom of the bottles. They have powdery and dry texture, thus making it hard to dissolve in water.
FOR OLDER KIDS
Now, for older children who can grasp complex explanation… I prepared a visual and hands-on demonstration for Mavi to understand how the substance are more soluble, partially soluble and insoluble. Make sure though that when you try to discuss this with your kids, he/she is already familiar with the elements in the periodic table and can understand what “attraction” means, similar to the concept of magnetism. The link I provided is the one where I introduced the Periodic Table to Mavi in a fun and interesting way.
Anyway, here’s how the chemicals of the substance interact to water when mixed. SOLUBLE SUBSTANCE
I used plasticine to demonstrate the chemical composition of salt and water to Mavi. Salt is composed of: sodium (Na+) in green and chloride (Cl-) in purple. Water is made up of H2O, hydrogen (H+) in white and oxygen (O-) in red.
When mixed with water, the salt molecules are easily “attracted” to the water molecules. It’s like the positive and negative attraction in magnetism (polarity). Thus, sodium (Na+) is attracted to oxygen (O-), while chloride (Cl-) is heavily attracted to the two positively charged hydrogen (H+).
Because of the strong attraction between molecules in the two substances, salt is easily dissolved in water.
PARTIALLY SOLUBLE
For partially soluble substances, the molecules that made up the flour or chalk have weak attractions with the molecules of the water. Thus some have dissolved but most of it didn’t and the result are the residues found at the bottom of the bottles. INSOLUBLE SUBSTANCE
For insoluble substances (don’t dissolve in water) like oil, the molecular contents are NOT attracted to water. This means they do not mix with water and if you combine them, you will definitely see the separation.
Though some advanced students can explain that this is because oil is a non-polar substance and can only be dissolved with another non-polar substance, the way I explained it to Mavi is that oil molecules are just so heavy that water molecules can’t “bond” with it.
This was a fantastic activity for both Mavi and I. More experiments coming up! So follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus, Instagram or Twitter for updates!
And you might as well PIN this for reference. Thank you!