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.
Practical Life Activities for Toddlers (24 Months) and {Learn & Play Link Up}
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
History Timeline Cards: Ancient Times
Monday, November 30, 2015
Up in the Shop is our World History: Ancient Times Timeline Cards and Booklet. The file includes the following:
- 40 timeline cards of the ancient times (occurred between the period of 5000BC to 500BC). The timeline cards has
- 40 definition cards for each timeline card
- 3 pages of timeline sheets can be connected to form as a guide. The pages are in A4 paper size.
Hope you like it, enjoy!
Our Favourite Toys for 2 to 7 Years Old
Thursday, November 26, 2015
**Contains affiliate links**
“As parents and grandparents, we think that we are showing children we love them by giving them things. In fact such practice, in and out of itself, may send them the wrong message. Children may conclude that if people give you things, they love you. If receiving things tells you that you are loved, the next logical step is to measure self-worth by what you have, not by what you are. The reality is that very young children can only truly love one doll, one stuffed animal, and a few toys at a time. This experience provides a basis for adult life where one must learn to cherish one spouse, one family, one life, instead of fantasizing that it is possible to ‘have it all’.” - MONTESSORI FROM THE START
We don’t have a lot of toys at home. Mavi just like two kinds of toys: LEGO and dinosaur/animal figures, that’s just it. All through the years, I don’t splurge nor buy toys as we don’t have the budget for it. I consider them as luxury so I just gave toys to Mavi as presents on his birthday and Christmas. But because we “home” school, I purchase learning materials that my kids see as “toys” but in reality they are NOT really toys. And because I am frugal, I buy toys that they can grow with, MULTIPURPOSE and something that they can play together. So let me share with you the kids’ favourite things in the house. These are the toys that we have in the house, except for the ones in my “wishlist and basket”. These toys are being played day in and day out by the boys.
NOTE: ALWAYS SUPERVISE YOUNGER CHILDREN WHEN USING ANY OF THESE TOYS. Do not leave them unattended.
FAVOURITE TOYS
LEGO, DUPLO and PLAYMOBIL. Need I say more? These are the favourite in the house. We have plenty of LEGOs as this is Santa’s favourite present EVERY Christmas for 4 years! And Vito’s Duplo and Playmobil were brought from the local store when they were on 50% off. I would never get them for a whole price! Vito is now snapping bricks together and loves the Playmobil people. Both of my boys spend hours and hours playing with these toys. They never get tired of them. Perfect toy for creativity, concentration and developing fine motor skills!
For Playmobils, we have castles and pirates. They’re Mavi’s favourite toy and can play with them for hours!
My son loves the LEGO CLASSIC Bricks. He doesn’t really like those with premade designs as he always wanted to design his own thing. So I highly recommend that you buy the basic LEGO BRICKS especially if you are getting your first Lego. Having a plate is also good.
miniLUK and BambiniLUK. Mavi and I looooves this! We can’t get enough of answering all the booklets, especially those tricky ones! I bought the Starter Pack and bought the advanced booklets separately. There’s a version for younger kids, the BambiniLUK and some friend in Instagram said that they like it. Mavi is like “Mom, its making my brain tired LOL”
Montessori Botany and Zoology/Insect Puzzles, Montessori Puzzle Maps. I invested on these this year and it was worth it! I have puzzle loving kids, and Vito is currently addicted to them. Aside from educational, these puzzles are also perfect for pincer grasp practice. Mavi on the other hand is obsessed with my Asia and Europe puzzles. He loves geography, loves to learn about countries and their locations. Tower High Learning is my favourite Montessori shop as of the moment and this is where I purchase my materials.
Schliech Animal Figures and Safari Toobs are also an all time favourite in the house. The uses of these figures include imaginative play, learning about animals, habitat play, exploring landmarks and just about anything! You see these mostly in my post! When Vito was younger, I made him use Schleich animal figures because they are bigger but now that he has overcome his mouthing, he uses both Schleich and Safari Toob. Mavi is obsessed with dinosaurs, and he uses them now as characters for his homemade videos LOL. Now he uses both types for play and learning.
Hape Uppercase, Lowercase and Number Puzzles. With Mavi, I used the Melissa and Doug Magnetic letters (I still have them) and they were really really loved. Now the problem is Vito mouths things and I made Vito use it, the sticker of the letters were removed. So I looked for an alternative alphabet toys for us to use and I discovered these amazing puzzles from Hape. They are WORTH-IT! We love using them in anything, from learning letters, puzzles to stacking! Yes, Vito loves to stack these together! We also use it to sort out colors! Multi-purpose indeed! But if you have older kids, Melissa and Doug Magnetic Letters are as good as well.
Because I love to cook (Asian and Italian), the boys also love to pretend cooking with me using these Melissa and Doug cooking toys. They can play for hours with these!
M-cro Maxi Scooter. And I just have to include this!! Because they play with this scooter in and out of the house! Mavi uses this to school and Vito uses this indoor for scooting practice. I love that it is sturdy and kids can easily balance!
And of course, nothing beats classic toys like balls, cars and PlayDoh! My boys wouldn’t complain if they receive any of these this Christmas.
WISHLIST
Magnatiles. Rave reviews everywhere but I just couldn’t bring myself to purchase these tiles or can’t even justify it Maybe when they’re 50% off I would probably get one for the boys!
Unit Block. I know that the boys will love this as well. They can build and create so many things with this but the price is just too much for me. I still have to think about this a million times.
Beleduc Puzzles. My puzzle loving kids will love these puzzle series, especially the Your Body Layer puzzles!
FREE European Countries Fact Cards
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Download your copy now!
The Study of Northern Europe
Sunday, November 22, 2015
So to learn about Northern Europe we have the following activities:
Learning the Timeline of European History
Monday, November 16, 2015
Europe Continent Study for Grade Schoolers
Saturday, November 14, 2015
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.FREE Safari Toob Tree Matching Cards
Friday, November 13, 2015
Vito uses these cards a lot in my post on TREE ACTIVITIES and even in random days, he would pick this up from shelf and work on it.
You can get the Safari Toob Tree miniature objects from here.
Learning History of Ancient Europe for Kids
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Pre-K Problem Solving Cards
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Mavi didn’t like math. When he was around 5yrs old, he would rather read books than work with math. He’s excuse would always be “I’m tired” or “it’s difficult”. I can truly understand him though. I didn’t enjoy math when I was younger. Until I stepped into secondary school and discovered why we need math.
So instead of forcing him to solve arithmetic problems and giving him number activities, I exposed him to real life problems so he can appreciate math. I made him understand WHY WE NEED TO LEARN NUMBERS AND MATH. We would go to the groceries and count our items all together, doing addition and subtraction in between. Of course, he’s not aware we’re doing math, all he knows is that he’s helping Mommy do some groceries. At home, I secretly incorporate addition and subtraction by counting his missing pens, his toys and how many books he has read.
He loves the real life math! He can’t stand arithmetic problems but he enjoys real life problems. So what I did was create a bunch of colorful cards for us to work on, making sure there’s pictures (and we mostly use counters as well) to make it attractive. In the problems, I used his friends’ name so he’ll like it, and of course he finds it funny! He kept asking for more, more questions as he liked solving the problems. And that was the game changer.
Through these problem solving cards, he was able to appreciate math, and could now understand why he needs to practice arithmetic. He loves to solve math problems these days on his own and still loves solving problems.
So I created these problem solving cards for Pre-K students. It contains:
- 1 step problem solving for addition and subtraction
- 12 unique questions for addition within 10 (with pictures)
- 12 unique questions for subtraction within 10 (with pictures)
- 12 fill-in questions for addition to let the parents change the numbers for more practice (for advanced students, based on the questions with pictures). You can use counters for this.
- 12 fill-in questions for subtraction to let the parents change the numbers for more practice (for advanced students, based on the questions with pictures). You can use counters for this.
Mavi worked on these cards when he was 5-6yrs old. Though this is intended for 5-6yrs old children, older or younger kids can still use the cards as a practice material. Hope you like it and find it useful like we do. Thanks!
Classifying Vertebrate Animals
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
The Study of the Circulatory System for Kids
Friday, October 16, 2015
It’s another 12 Months of Montessori Series and today I’m going to share with you some simple and easy to prepare lessons and activities for learning the circulatory system of the human body. I mentioned earlier how Mavi was asking me a lot of things about the human heart and the diseases of the heart that causes death in some famous people. Bombarding me with so many questions and that eagerness to learn, we worked on this unit study to:
- Learn about the human heart and how it functions
- What causes heart diseases
- A better understanding of blood vessels: vein and artery
- How to prevent heart diseases
- What’s the role of the blood in the human body
In this unit study, we focused on the three major elements that comprises the circulatory system:
- the human heart
- blood vessels
- human blood
As a bonus, I also added a few pointers on how to have a healthy heart!
The Human Heart
Last month, we learned about the human heart, the different parts and how it functions. You can learn more about it in this post, How to Teach the Anatomy of the Human Heart to Kids.
Blood Vessels
First we plotted the network of blood vessels in our body using our Cardiovascular Information Diagrams sheet as a guide and a printed outline of the human body. We used PlayDoh (red and blue) to represent the vein and artery.
This activity will introduce the child to the basic concept of how blood is distributed in our body. By plotting the veins and arteries, they will understand how the organs in the body receives oxygen and nutrients.
Working diligently to replicate our guide
And he realized that even the head have blood vessels!
We went a little farther by inspecting the network of blood vessels, learning the difference between the veins and arteries and capillaries. Below is a demonstration of the direction of the blood flow in the body through the blood vessels, of how oxygen rich blood enters the artery (except pulmonary arteries) to the capillaries (where oxygen is distributed to the organs) and passes through the vein to enter the human heart.
Here Mavi’s creating an artery, vein and capillary.
He even made his network and labelled the parts.
The Human Blood
This is to demonstrate the composition of blood. 45% red blood cells (red coloured water), 54% plasma (cooking oil) and 1% platelets (bubbles in between).
Care of our Heart
These cards are included in our heart model. It identifies 10 foods that are essential for a healthy heart. Mavi was seriously reading all through the 10 cards and checking if he’s consuming them. Well of course, he eats almost everything in the list except for the broccoli and wine
And that ends our circulatory system unit. For more biology related posts see the following:
For more details on the Circulatory System learning materials you can check this post, Circulatory System Learning Materials.
Don’t forget to PIN this for later! I assure you that you will be needing this in the future