Leaves

To enjoy much of the Autumn season, I recalled our leaves theme last week even if I don’t have enough resources.

I first thing we did was walk along the estate to collect leaves and discuss the different shapes and textures of leaves. He was eager to learn! Especially when we touch the leaves and learn about their textures :) He loves it!

He enjoyed collecting leaves as well.  I explained why some leaves are orange/brown/red and some are green.

         

At home, we trace the leaves and differentiate their sizes.

 

We also made a leaves collage.  Unfortunately, we use a stick glue which doesn’t stick so well :)

         

So later, I decided if we could just paint a replica of our leaves collage.  He ended up painting a car.

I remembered that I also have a print-out of Leaf match activity which I got from Montessori for Everyone a long time ago. He just loves matching game and it surprises me that he can do it independently in a breeze. 

And of course, my favorite was the nomenclature cards for the parts of a leaf which I downloaded for free from here.    There’s another version of it from here too.  I only discussed relevant parts of the leaf that my son can easily identify.

All About Trees

Mavi is 37 months old.

Want to share with you our themed activity this week which is all about trees!

I was really inspired to do this because we’ve got lots of wonderful and huge trees in our backyard.  So we just have to make use of its presence and I need to instill on Mavi the importance of trees in our life :)  Although we’ve done this before, we didn’t get the chance to do outdoor and nature trips.  And as I mentioned in that post that we will probably do this theme again, and I was glad that we did because the boy had so much fun learning about trees.

First we started discussing sizes of trees.  We went to a nearby park and showed the little guy what’s it like to be in a forest full of trees.

Then we ate ice cream on the field.  As we do, I discussed all about the shade that the tree behind us produced.

Back at home, play the matching game of tree shapes and sizes.  This is a homemade printable and the graphics where taken randomly from the internet.

 

I love that he loves matching games! And the sight of him concentrating while working is precious.

                     

We made use of our 3-part nomenclature card for Parts of the Tress.  Again this is homemade. I was saving ink so I just colored it using our crayons.The book was given to him by his godfather on his 3rd birthday and it was very very useful.

 

And of course, we have to draw a tree!  As I was doing mine, I kept on discussing to him the color that I use in making a trunk, roots, grass, leaves etc.  He followed, and was doing his own version of a tree right beside me.

He’s making a trunk with branches.

Followed by green leaves. Later I told him we should add orange leaves to represent Fall.

And this is what he came up later on.  He added grass with red and pink flowers (he dictated the color), added yellow sun and blue skies.

  

Our felt Tree puzzle. 

Practice writing trees.  The first two he needed to trace (I wrote the tree word using a pencil), then later  he had to write the word tree on his own (no guide).

We made our outdoor tree using some twigs and braches and punched fallen leaves.  He enjoyed this.

                   

And we explored more of the trees in our area.  I told him that trees are very important for they provide us fresh air, a place to rest and play, cool surroundings and lots lots more.  That we have to thank God for trees, for their existence.

My favorite favorite shot of him. He loves climbing tress!

Oh and that’s him playing underneath the tree.  It is such a gigantic tree that my son looked so little with it.

 

Till next time!

B4FIAR: Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina (Part 2)

Mavi is 36 months old.

As a continuation of our B4FIAR for Caps for Sale, we did crafts, math and science after our language lessons . For math, I relied on the the packs which I downloaded from the site I mentioned in my pervious post.  Then I added some patterning activities using homemade materials.

ARTS AND CRAFTS.  We did tree painting and attempted to put monkeys on it too!  During our activity, I showed him how to create a simple tree using brown color for trunks and branches, and green for leaves.  As we go along, I would describe how I execute my strokes.  After which, I encouraged him to do the same.

                                    

But he was eager to do something different using his fingers.  Picture above is showing my son making a turtle hehe.

Below is a painting of my son’s version of a tree.  He did the trunk and branches and put a small amount of leaves on it.  Then I finished his work by adding more leaves.

MATH.  We read the book once again and while doing so, I made him arrange the caps according to the color that was mentioned on the book.  Again, the file was from the B4FIAR packs of Homeschool Creations (see previous post for the link).

        

Then I introduced the concept of patterns.  This is something new for him as he wasn’t interested with patterning before.  And I was surprise that he liked our matching activity this time and even asked for more!  All pattern materials are homemade (you can send me a PM if you want the file).   The graphics in the pattern file were just taken randomly via Google image.

Here, we did a pattern match.  So happy that he finished this activity in a minute.  But I was kind of disappointed that it didn’t challenged him a bit.

Next we did some “follow the patterns” activity. He was very keen on how he will position the patterns and made sure that he gets them right.

      

Below is a coin counting activity that my son enjoyed the most. To make it more “Montessorish”, I made him use some play coins for counting.  So instead of him counting the ones on the card, he counts as he places a coin on top of the picture on the card.  We use a wooden peg which I bought at a craft store nearby.

      

SCIENCE: PARTS OF A TREE

These activities were not supposed to be part of our B4FIAR.  I was preparing this for our “trees” theme activities  but decided to add it to our B4FIAR curriculum because a “big tree” is mentioned on the book.

So here’s what I came up... a tree puzzle made from felt sheets.  Totally forgot where I got the pattern... promise to add a link once I find the source.  I put labels so my son can familiarize himself with the different parts of the trees.

 

Mavi was very very excited for this material.  He loves puzzles and he kept asking me if he can do the puzzle all by himself.  See how he position the branches :)

     

We made use of the 3-part nomenclature card (homemade) for parts of the trees.

Inspired by this post, I made a matching game of tree shapes.  The graphics were all sourced from the internet randomly.

      

And here, we further discussed the parts of a tree by doing paper crafts.

 

Well there you go... our very own B4FIAR for Caps for Sale.  To end this post... here’s my little one pretending to be the peddler and balancing a throw pillow on his head :)

A Tree Dice Game

This week we tried the fall dice game after reading this post from My Montessori Journey.  I got bored with our numbers and counters activity that I wanted to try a different approach with math this time.

Since I'm saving ink, I just made all of these out of cardstock instead of the ones made available for download.  I made the dice direction by drawing the leaves, use crayons to color them and added the dice counterparts (was based on the original file).    This would have been better if I made the tree trunk out of brown foam sheet though so I can reuse it in the future.  But the thing is I can't find a brown foam sheet here so I might as well redo the tree trunk out of a felt paper.  Anyway, for the maple leaves... I printed it out of different colored cardstocks and cut each one.  It requires a lot of work, but you can save a lot of time if you can purchase small craft foam leaves.   

Here’s how my version works:

1. Position the tree.
2. Make the child identify the number that appears after rolling/tossing the dice. 
3. Based on your dice direction (see white paper), put the colored leaf that corresponds to the number of the dice.
4. If your child doesn’t recognize the number dots on the dice you can have him match it to your direction card.

      

My son loves playing this game.  He enjoys tossing the dice and becomes giddy every time he puts a leaf on the tree.  He can easily recognize the dots on the dice from 1-4 but gets confuse between 5 and 6 at at times.  We will continue playing this game especially Fall is just around the corner :)

 

Later on, he decided to group the leaves according to their colors :)