FREE Life Cycle Matching Cards

I have a bunch of life cycle figures which my Aunt brought from the US a few months ago.  I did not really intend to introduce them yet to Vito as he is too young.  But I observed that he’s into matching activities these days, so I managed to create matching cards for all of my life cycles. Wow, he definitely surprised me! He worked on all of these in one day and always picked these for his activity everyday!

Our Favourite Toys for 2 to 7 Years Old

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“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!

Europe Unit Study (Elementary)

We are revisiting our Europe study, this time I’ve decided to take it by regions.  But before we delve into that, we reviewed some of the things we’ve learned in the past years.

European Regions.  Here’s a new study for this year, learning Europe through each 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.

Flags. The same goes to the flags. To be able to remember the countries easily, we just limit to 3-4 countries per region. You can get these mini-flags from my Flags of Europe printable.

We always worked the pin flags because Mavi enjoys this activity.  The pin flags are included in my Flags of Europe file.  My pin flags are really old and has been used so many times.  I shall make a new set for Xavi when he needs it.

Animals of Europe.  Mavi is sometimes confused of the animal list between North America and Europe so we always review this.  The fact cards seen here are from my Animals of Europe printable (includes 3-part cards as well).

New activity this year is examining and matching European animals with their covers.  This was a hit!  My animal figures matches the printable. How cool is that?  The animal covers are part of my Europe in a Nutshell and the animal figures are from Schleich.

Here’s a closer look.

Landmarks.  Beautiful and historical landmarks in Europe are too many to mention, so in this study we’re only picking a few based on the regions.  My aunt who visited us early this year brought me a few Safari Toobs and one of which is the landmark toob that includes the Stonehenge in UK and the Colosseo in Rome. You can get the World Landmarks and Around the World Toob from Amazon and the cards are from Europe Landmarks file.

Now to put into action, Mavi worked sorting maps and flags according to regions using our Europe Puzzle Map. More about it here.

 

For our past Europe studies and materials, click the links below:

Europe Study Part I

Europe Study Part II

Continent Study: Europe Part I (Kindergarten)

Continent Study:  Europe Part II (Kindergarten)

Materials for Europe Study

Europe in a Nutshell

Learning About the European Regions

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Guide to Space and Heavenly Bodies Study for Kids (with FREE Resources)

I’ve been planning this unit since last month because I wanted to prepare ahead of time. We’ve done A LOT of space and heavenly bodies unit in the past and I wanted to upgrade the lesson, add something new for Mavi to learn.  So right now, I’m sharing our Space and Heavenly Bodies Study for this year. I’m also putting a bunch of links from our previous lessons and activities for your reference. I hope you find this post helpful.

Space and Solar System

               
Solar System and Planets Part I
Solar System and Planets Part II
Planets and Solar System for Preschoolers
Moon Phases

        
The Moon
Phases of the Moon
A look at the Northern and Southern Sky
We looked into the star constellation maps seen in the northern and southern hemisphere.  This is to make Mavi aware that there are stars that can be seen in the northern part of the world but not visible on the other side.

                   
Stars and Constellations
For the details of our constellation study, click here or click the image below.  The material we used here is the Fantacolor pegboard.
Space Exploration History
I made chronological cards of the space exploration history.  The pictures and the fact cards were all taken and referenced from Wikipedia and Wiki Commons.  Though Mavi can read this straight from the site, I wanted to have something tangible and something that we can work on, like arranging the timeline and matching it with objects.

The cards I created contains the year and a title of the major event that occurred in that year.  The description is very much readable by kids though there were a few words that Mavi couldn’t pronounce well or he needed to ask me for the meaning.  Such a good material to improve reading skills, spelling and vocabulary!
After which, I showed him how we can arrange the cards according to their timeline.  This gives him a visual presentation of the order of events. 

Aside from arranging the cards chronologically, you can also use them to match objects.  Here we used Safari Toobs Space, Safari Toob Insects (fly) and Safari Toob Farm (dog).

So if you wanted to have a copy of the cards for Space History Timeline, click here for the link.
Parts of a Space Shuttle
The parts of a space shuttle is something that Mavi really looked forward to.  Oh boy he was so happy that I made him another “flying object”.  The first one was the Airplane Nomenclature Cards, and here’s the newest Space Shuttle Nomenclature Cards.  This is based on the NASA’s space shuttle design.  Using the cards, a child will learn the different parts of a space shuttle.  I wrote the parts’ functions in a notebook because I was out of ink.

To get a copy of the Space Shuttle Nomenclature Cards, click here.
Sensory Tub
Now, this is something I prepared for both of the boys to play with.  Xavi had his own Letter S: Star Unit study last week so it was timely that I prepared this Space Sensory Tub for the boys.  Figures are from Safari Toob Space, homemade PlayDoh planets and homemade Earth felt.