The Pinay Homeschooler: play

Showing posts with label play. Show all posts

Learning Materials for Toddlers (21 Months)

Thursday, August 6, 2015

As you may have noticed, I have no posts on Vito for a quite a while. It's quite difficult to put up activities for him for the past weeks as all he ever wanted was to play with big brother Mavi. The only thing that I'm consistent with him is the reading of books.
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There were occassions wherein I would introduce an activity or we would play together randomly, but that's just about it. I find it refreshing though, of not thinking too much for the boys, of what they're going to do this summer.

Anyway, it's been raining for the past few days and we're stuck at home. Vito is turning 21 months in a few days and has entered the "sensitive years". He has memorized Dr. Seuss ABC books, obsessed with identifying objects, learned a few dance moves through Horrible Histories and can't stop counting whenever he sees a number. So I decided to organize a few materials for him to work on during the time big brother is in summer camp.

TOP: Farm animal basket, alphabet recognition and matching cards, bristle blocks

MIDDLE: Melissa & Doug number puzzle, Montessori knobbless cylinders, soft blocks

BOTTOM: Color matching, shape fitter, Melissa & Doug animal farm chunky puzzle

The knobbless cylinders is a current favourite, he loves stacking them every single day. It’s the first material he would remove from the shelf to work on.

He loves using the bristle blocks as well! This is a nice open ended toy, that also helps in the sensorial development of the child.

He enjoys touching the bristles!

Sorry about the letter B (Munchkin 36 Bath Letters and Numbers), Vito loves to bite it! We used the foam letters in so many ways, just like when we read books, I would present it to him whenever we encounter a certain letter.

And he recently learned how to match the letters! I made these outline cards for matching activity and I was surprised that he can actually match them!

These soft blocks are totally awesome! We’ve been using it since he was a baby, and right now it is being used for stacking activities, counting and for sensorial, as there are impressions on the sides that Vito loves to touch.

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Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

Here are the featured activities for this week!

Sound Sensory Jars to Make Play by Hands On As We Grow
Double Sided Tape Glitter Art Activities by Mini Monets and Mommies
Summer Side Walk Chalk Kids by Child Led Life
Felt Map by In Our Pond

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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!

Everyone, please meet our link party hosts:

Christian Montessori Blog ~ Please visit our CMN FB group ~ Pinterest

Vanessa from Mama’s Happy Hive~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jennifer from Study at Home Mama~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Marie from Child Led Life~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jae from Pinay Homeschooler~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Heather from Golden Reflections Blog~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Renae from Every Star is Different~FB~Pinterest

GUIDELINES FOR LINKING

Please link up 1-3 posts
Follow each of the hosts on social media
When you link up, please add our button and place it at the bottom of your shared posts or link back with text link.
By entering a link, you’re giving us permission to feature an image on our blogs. Proper credit & links will ALWAYS be given.
Please visit a couple of shared posts and leave a comment for them
Remember that you must link back in order to be featured

Grab This Button:

<div align="center"><a href="http://christianmontessorinetwork.com/category/learn-and-play" title="Christian Montessori Network"><img src="http://www.christianmontessorinetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/learn-and-play-link-up-150-150.png" alt="Christian Montessori Network" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

An InLinkz Link-up

Letter D: Dinosaur Unit Activities and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

The boys are crazy about dinosaurs so this is what we had last week for our letter D sound of the week. I think this is the very first animal Vito recognized because he’s been seeing these dinosaur figures since he was born.

I made use of all Mavi’s dino toys and used it for Vito’s unit. The activities here are so simple and easy to prepare especially if you have dinosaur figures already.

Cleaning dinosaur toy. This was the first activity I could ever think of. Knowing the boys like to play with water, surely they will like this. And they did! They washed and brushed their dinosaurs together outside. Vito mostly played with the water but Mavi was seriously doing the work. So even if Vito didn’t get to really “brush” the dinosaurs, it was a perfect way to expose him to such kind of activity.

Playdough Dino Prints. I wanted Vito to improve his “pressing” skills so I got out our playdough so we can make impressions.

As you can see, he doesn’t really press the dinos in the dough. He would just place them on it. At times he would push them into the playdough using his pointer fingers, not much of the entire hand yet.

Letter D. We started sounding the letter D around the house as we talked about dinosaurs. Aside from my foam letters, which I posted on the wall for Vito to see everyday, I also made him put dots on a letter D. He had fun sticking the dots on the letter. Vito is using more of his left hand these days. Hmmm… I think I might have a leftie!

Now Vito realized he can stick the dots to his face as well. And he had fun doing it!

Matching Dinosaurs. Vito can identify objects now, so I was wondering if he can match objects as well. This activity is more of a presentation rather than Vito matching the dinosaurs. I placed one piece of the dinosaur in the palette tray and the other on the basket. Then I take one dinosaur from the basket and say “let’s look for a match”. So basically, the child will learn objects that match.

Dino Prints using Paints. Another activity that I have to take picture before we do the actual thing. As much as possible I try to involve paints in our unit activities to introduce Vito to arts. This dino prints was not really appreciated by Vito. He couldn’t make a print out of a dinosaur yet, do he was quite frustrated, so he resorted to hand painting instead.

Discovering Dinosaurs in Ice. This was a total hit! I made these ahead of time and once they were ready both boys were so excited to touch and taste the ice!

Integrating learning with sensory activities is so much fun!

Dinosaur Free Play. And of course, how can we not have a free play. I let Vito play with the dinosaurs most of the time. Vito and Mavi played the dino figures indoors (Mavi making stories)…..

… and they also played with it outdoors!

More dinosaur activities!!
Over the years, we’ve done a number of wonderful dinosaur activities. Click on the links below for more ideas!

Dinosaur and the land before time
Dinosaur activities
Digging Dinosaurs
Dinosaur and Worksheets
Preschool Dinosaur Activities
Homemade Dinosaur Fossils

Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

For this week, I’d like to feature simple and easy to prepare activities. These would be best for busy moms like me!

FREE Yoga Poses Nomenclature Cards by Eager Ed
Spell Your Name Busy Bag by Spark and Pook
Beach Crafts for Kids to Make Dinnerware by Hands On As We Grow
A Week in the Life of Unschoolers by Nourishing My Scholar

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!

Everyone, please meet our link party hosts:

Christian Montessori Blog ~ Please visit our CMN FB group ~ Pinterest

Vanessa from Mama’s Happy Hive~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jennifer from Study at Home Mama~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Marie from Child Led Life~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jae from Pinay Homeschooler~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Heather from Golden Reflections Blog~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Renae from Every Star is Different~FB~Pinterest

GUIDELINES FOR LINKING

Please link up 1-3 posts
Follow each of the hosts on social media
When you link up, please add our button and place it at the bottom of your shared posts or link back with text link.
By entering a link, you’re giving us permission to feature an image on our blogs. Proper credit & links will ALWAYS be given.
Please visit a couple of shared posts and leave a comment for them
Remember that you must link back in order to be featured

Grab This Button:

<div align="center"><a href="http://christianmontessorinetwork.com/category/learn-and-play" title="Christian Montessori Network"><img src="http://www.christianmontessorinetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/learn-and-play-link-up-150-150.png" alt="Christian Montessori Network" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

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An InLinkz Link-up

GALT Cotton Reels

Friday, June 19, 2015

This is Vito’s current obsession. These are cotton reels from GALT. We love it to pieces! It’s an inexpensive toy which you can use in soooo many ways!

If you’re asking if he can successfully accomplish this on his own, the answer is no. The only thing he can achieve right now is insert the lace in the reel’s hole but he doesn’t know that he has to pull it yet. I love that this activity uses both hands and working together with the eyes.

And he always saves the best for last. Using the reels as stacking toys! Now this is something that he’s really good at!

More toddler activities coming soon!

Teaching Animals to Toddlers

Sunday, May 31, 2015

What is it with animals that kids love? My husband asked me this question when he saw my pile of Safari Toob animal figures years ago and asked me why I incorporate animals in our homeschool activities. I have no scientific answer to his question but all I know was that Mavi was enchanted with animals (until now!). The way I see it, it's because of the unique sounds they make and how different they look from their parents and siblings LOL.

As a young boy, Mavi loved singing the Old McDonald song because he enjoys making the animal sounds. He can get hooked for hours to any animal-related activities and play. Of course, a visit to the zoo completes all these lessons and activities. We've been to four zoos for the 6 years, all of which are in different countries. As of this writing, Mavi is obsessed with dinosaurs even if he haven't seen one.

Now comes Vito. He also loves animals. The first animal sound that he ever made was that of the dinosaur's (thanks to his big brother!). Aside from dog, cow, bird and cat, Vito identifies other animals through their sound. Now with this sudden interest, I am joining the bandwagon of "invitation to play". If you haven't heard about it yet, here's an amazing tutorial from Teach Preschool.

So this is my first attempt of setting up an invitation to play of animals for Vito. Oh boy! He was so happy, kept on jumping and clapping his hand showing his excitement! As we play, I keep telling him the names of the animals and their sounds. This is what he likes best. See the picture on the left? He's asking "what's this?" and that's a cue for me to answer and make the sounds LOL.

But guess who enjoyed it the most??? The big brother!

I wish I could get rid of all the furnitures in the sitting room and replace it with a huge play table for these boys lol.

He specifically loves this popsicle stick cage Mavi created for him. Vito still mouths objects so I'm not letting him use our Safari Toob animal figures. What we are using here are Schleich animals and Duplos. The stacking cups you see there are Playskool Barrels which are my son's favourite toy.

Now this was an awesome and unplanned activity, and it turned out enjoyable for the boys! Why not start doing your invitation to play?

You don't need to buy new toys. Just make use of what you already have, set it up in table accessible for the kids, add some craft sticks.. papers, baskets and playdough and you're all set!

Now be sure to pin this for later!

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We do a lot of fun and educational activities at home. To keep up with the updates, visit in the blog The Pinay Homeschooler, or in Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

Teaching Colors With Cars

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Making the most of Vito’s interest in cars, we played this colour matching game. This is an example of “follow the child”. Observe your child’s interest and use that in you advantage lol.

You see Vito knows his shapes and can identify objects, but I’m not really sure with his colours . This is the reason why I do colour activities everyday. And as much as I want to push him, colour activity is not really his type. So I was wondering if we could do colour matching and play cards at the same time.

Oh boy it was a total hit!

Cars and Cards

Presentation:

I suggest start the presentation slowly. It’s like saying “Vito, this car is red. This card is also red. So I’m going to put them together here.”

Observations:

I wanted to present three colours only (red, blue and yellow) but he took out the rest of the cards and gave it to me (a sign!). So I proceeded with the other colours. After the presentation he started playing with the cars, making sounds and gestures. While he is at it, I asked him to show me a car according to the colour I will mention. In the picture below I asked him for a blue car, and he pointed correctly on the car. I asked him for a yellow car, but he ignored me and continue playing with the blue car. If that’s the case, let him be. No pressure. The point here is exposing the child to colours, not pushing them to know it instantly.

Cars and M&D Latches Board

Presentation:

He loves this toy, so I used it as a tool in teaching colour as well. Here I was telling him a story that the cars need to go home, and they have to go to the doors of which they matches their colours.

Observations:

He listened all throughout the presentation (I guess he loves the story), but ignored me whenever I ask him to give me a certain coloured car. He was too busy playing opening and closing the doors, while moving the cars in any directions.

Well this was a nice attempt of teaching Vito colours. We’ll be doing this frequently, as he loves playing with cars as of the moment

More activities in my Pinterest Toddler Activities

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Measuring Mass of an Object

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Mavi and I started some activities for Applied Science. Here, math and science works together to solve problems. Applied Science enables the child to do critical thinking.

Experimenting and predicting Mass (Weight)

I chose this lesson because I’ve always wanted to use our bucket balance which I got from Learning Resources. I had this since last year but Mavi has been using it for play and have not used it as an educational toy yet.

Materials needed:

Balance scale or bucket balance from Learning Resources
Items to weigh ( we have rugby ball, a small book and box of Jenga toys)
Items to serve as measuring unit. I used transportation and fruit counters from Learning Resources (make sure they’re all similar) and crystal pebbles.

Objective:

To develop skills in predicting and estimating the mass of the an object.
To use knowledge in science and math to come up with a mathematical conclusion based on the experiment.

Mavi will predict the weight of the materials without putting them in the scale. The prediction of how heavy an object is will be based on the unit material we are using. For example, how many unit trains does the rugby ball weigh? Then we will determine if his predictions are correct by testing it in the balance against the number of units he predicted.

As you can see we keep a notebook here to record his data. There should be three columns with labels: [object] [prediction] [actual]

Once he has tested all the materials, we will then come up with a conclusion if his predictions are correct or not. Then compare each object, from the lightest to heaviest using the number of units each has.

Results:

Objects	Prediction	Actual
Rugby ball	17 pebbles	35 pebbles
Book	20 pebbles	33 pebbles
Box	10 pebbles	11 pebbles

We concluded that the heaviest item was the rugby ball and the lightest was the Jenga box.

This was an exciting activity for Mavi. After our lesson he continued playing with the balance in his room, with his brother. He’s trying to test how will two different objects balance. Of course, he has a little helper.

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Sensory Play and Activities

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Welcome to another post on 12 Months of Montessori Series! For May, we’re exploring Montessori sensorial activities and I am sharing with you fun activities that led to discoveries using their senses.

My initial plan for this was for a nature exploration outdoors since we all know that nature provides the BEST sensory experience. But because mother nature wasn’t in the mood (rained throughout the week!), I decided to do most of our sensory activities at the backyard and indoors.

Montessori emphasized that children learns with their senses. It is important that they use their senses to explore the world they live in. Stimulating these senses will send signals to the child’s brain that will help to strengthen the neural pathways which are important for all types of learning.

In a Montessori classroom, there are a lot of sensorial materials that are used to help the child develop discrimination, order and broaden and refine their senses. But just because we don’t own any of these materials, that doesn’t mean we can’t do sensorial at home. In fact, I prefer giving my kids the REAL experience when it comes to sensory.

Without much further ado, here are Mavi and Vito…

Sense of touch. We started off with ice and water play. This was the time when we got Mr Sun. I immediately took out the materials and let the boys play together. This activity introduced the concept of warm and cold to Vito.

Sense of hearing. We explored the rhythm bells I got earlier this year. Oh boy, it was really something new to him and he loves shaking it to produce sound. Here, I introduced Vito the loudness and softness sound.

Sense of touch and smell. We went crazy over Crazy Soap!! Thanks to Stimulating with Rachel who suggested this brand to us. I wanted to use kid-friendly soap as I used shaving cream before which gives a strong scent. The Crazy Soap has gentle smell that the kids love, and the foam is just amazing! You can shape it and it bounces! This activity introduces Vito to vocabularies like “good smell”, “soft”, “bouncy” and “squishy”.

Sense of sight. Activity we did in the backyard where we enjoyed the abundance of dandelions and blowing the seeds! We also planted garden pinwheels around the yard so Vito and Mavi can enjoy watching it turn (it can be relaxing!). My Vito was so amazed by the wheels!