I needed to discard some herbs, but before doing so I decided to whip a sensorial activity with the boys to make use of these scented plants. I already have Herbs and Spices learning materials from years ago, so the preparation was quite easy. I also added more spices like turmeric, cumin, black peppercorn, garlic, ginger, and cloves.
Showing posts with label homeschooling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homeschooling. Show all posts
FREE TREE Matching Cards Activity
Thursday, July 13, 2017
This is a matching and memory game I made for Vito during our Plants and Trees Unit Study. He absolutely loved this! I regretted that I didn’t make more, because he kept on asking for more matching games.
The Elements of Art: Learning about Lines
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
It is timely that I get to share how we nurture the artistic side of the kids using Montessori principles. In this month’s 12 Months More of Montessori Learning, I’m sharing Vito’s current obsession: drawing! If you’ve been following me on Instagram, I shared how Vito enjoys making faces of us (Dad, Mom and Mavi). He just uses lines and dots, a little bit of shading to convey the emotions and faces of his family. So Mavi suggested if we could teach him how to make different kinds of lines, just like we did before.
Top 30 Learning Activities for 3 to 3.5 Years Old
Friday, July 7, 2017
I created a list of Vito’s favourite activities starting from 36 months to 3.5 years of age. I know we’ve had a lot more than 30 but these are his favourite and my top picks as well. I chose these activities over the rest because he mostly asked for these activities to work on more frequently than others. He’s more engaged, he learned a lot of vocabulary words and these were the activities where he spent a lot of his time exploring. So I hope this list will inspire you and give you ideas for things to do with your child around this age.
** Note: Always supervise your child, especially if he/she is handling sharp tools and small objects.
** Note: Always supervise your child, especially if he/she is handling sharp tools and small objects.
First Great Lesson (2) : The Volcano
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Continuing our Great Lessons this week with a lesson on Volcanoes. The only thing that we prepared here was the paper mache volcano we made few weeks ago. Check out this post, Science Project: How to Make an Erupting Volcano Model, to know more about our DIY erupting volcano model. Now, to encourage the kids to explore the materials when I’m not around, I displayed our learning materials on top of our shelf.
Science Project: How to Make an Erupting Volcano Model
Monday, July 3, 2017
We made this volcano to go along with our First Great Lesson: The Volcano and this is our first paper mache project at home. I tell you, I tried to avoid these kinds of activities and projects because they are messy, and requires a lot of work. But since it’s summer, I decided to try it and much to my surprise I enjoyed making this model more than the boys did. This project was inspired by a post I read from Red Ted Art. So read along and learn how we made our model as simple as possible for less work.
Montessori Inspired Life Cycle of a Green Bean Plant
Thursday, June 29, 2017
This is a follow-up activity on our Montessori Inspired Parts of a Plant.
After learning about the parts of a plant, Vito and I talked about how plants grow. We walked around the estate and identified baby plants, some of them were just actually sprouting off the ground and this amazed Vito. We also read the book How A Seed Grows to go along with our activity, this is a really good book! The book illustrates the different stages of a plant’s (bean plant) life, from the preparations to planting up to the the part where the grown plant needs to be moved into a ground soil. We have a few of these Read and Find Out books and Mavi loves to use them as reference. Anyway, aside from the book, I also used the very beautiful Life Cycle of a Green Bean Plant from Safari Toob and a homemade life cycle cards (this are now available in my shop, Early Childhood Life Cycle Mats).
Montessori Inspired Parts of a Plant
Monday, June 26, 2017
It always excites me to introduce new things to Vito. Our recent activity is learning about plants, specifically in this post, the parts of a plant. I love doing plant study with the boys. I’ve been doing this with Mavi since he was 2 years old, and I love doing it all over again with Vito! Printed materials used in the activities were all homemade, and some were used during Mavi’s preschool days. This is Vito’s second year of plant study, and you can read related studies here:
Building Words with the Moveable Alphabet and Objects
Sunday, June 25, 2017
Vito is 43 months old.
I am so excited to share that we’ve finally started building words using our moveable alphabet! I had fun working this with Mavi long time ago and I can’t believe I’m doing this again with Vito. This is the part of Montessori language arts that I love the most, teaching kids how to read! In my previous post, I talked about how we are using objects and miniatures in learning about letter sounds which is essential in reading.
First Great Lesson: Experiments on the Laws of the Universe
Thursday, June 22, 2017
It’s that time of the year in our home wherein we're doing "The Great Lessons". Maria Montessori’s plan for the framework of elementary education is cosmic education and cosmic education is attained via telling the five great stories and followed by key lessons. These stories are typically told in the beginning of the Montessori school year for lower elementary and repeated ever year. This is our second year of the great lessons and I decided to document it so you can replicate it in your homes as well.
Montessori For Everyone has a beautiful summary of what The "Five Great Lessons" are all about. This post is all about the First Great Lesson: The Beginning, and we'll showcase the experiments to demonstrate the basic laws governing our universe.
Montessori For Everyone has a beautiful summary of what The "Five Great Lessons" are all about. This post is all about the First Great Lesson: The Beginning, and we'll showcase the experiments to demonstrate the basic laws governing our universe.
How To Introduce Clocks to 3 Years Old
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Vito has been playing with Mavi’s learning clock and pretending that he’s able to tell the time (he always says 8' o’clock), so I decided that it’s about time that I should introduce this very important tool in telling time. I remember doing this activity with Mavi back in 2012. In this post, you will see how Mavi and I worked from creating a paper plate clock to matching analog clock with its digital label.
Favorite Activities at 43 months
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Montessori Geometric Solids as a Sensorial Material
Monday, June 12, 2017
I would like to introduce one of our favourite Montessori material at home: the geometric solids. This has been on my bucket list for the longest time and I finally get to own one! This is totally worth-it! This material will introduce the child to the 3D objects and shapes, that will later on be helpful in the learning of geometry. I listed below the progression of activities of the geometric solid intended to guide parents on how to use this material in case you own one or are planning to have one in the future.
Montessori Inspired Insect Activities for Preschoolers
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
Here’s a summary of our insect activities for the past week. Most of these materials are old and reused and many of our activities were not planned but are based on Vito's interest because bugs and other tiny creatures appeared earlier than expected. Hope this post will give you some ideas on learning activities about these creatures!
Hape Domino Set
Monday, June 5, 2017
Have you heard of the Domino Set by I Love Hape? This toy is just awesome! I got it early this year to teach Mavi how to strategically design a game, basically a maze made by dominoes. Now that Vito is older, we decided to share this with Vito so he will learn how use it and enjoy the fun of creating dominos. And oh boy, this has been Vito’s favourite for the past few days!
Beginning Reading: Language Objects and Activities
Saturday, June 3, 2017
Language activities are a favourite in the house now as Vito’s interest in reading has peaked. We are using language objects more often to practise letter sounds through games (aside from sandpaper letters). These language objects that we have were collected through the years, starting from Mavi’s time and it has been very useful now in Vito’s journey on beginning reading.
What are Insects?
Thursday, June 1, 2017
Here’s a simple way of telling whether an animal is an insect: has 6 legs (with or without wings). This is something new to Vito, the word “insect”. He usually calls them with their real names like flies, bees, dragonflies, etc. but is not familiar with their category. Now, this is the first time that I introduced this concept, so he struggled a little bit until we started counting the legs!
Montessori Inspired Life Cycle of Insects
Monday, May 29, 2017
Vito and I have been talking about insects in the past few days. I mentioned in my previous post, the current interest on insects was brought about by their sudden appearance. So far he has encountered quite a few already like garden ants, flies, wasps and bees, and bugs. It’s a shame we haven’t seen grasshoppers and dragonflies here, I used to catch and collect them as a child (back in Asia). Anyway, since our last activity on Farm Families, Vito still loves to learn about mommies, daddies, and babies, thus I introduced the life cycle of insects early on in our activities. Unlike my past activities with Mavi, this one is very simple and straight forward.
Montessori Inspired Butterfly Coloring Matching Activity
Friday, May 26, 2017
Saw this idea from one of my favourite Instagram account Momducator. It’s a brilliant idea of using Montessori color tablets (set 3) to match with the butterfly colors of Safari Toobs (Insects, Butterflies, Bulk Bag). This is a great practise for visual perception, picking the right color combination to match with the butterflies.
Plants versus Animals Sorting Activity
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
I am so thankful for The Helpful Garden for providing us this printable (saved me a lot of time!). Of all the plant and animal activities that we have done in the past, I have forgotten this one basic activity for Montessori botany and zoology: identifying plant and animals.
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