Earth & Land Theme List of Materials

Here are all the materials and resources that we will be using in our Earth/Land Unit for the month of April.  I prepared this list for those who wanted to follow our activities and those who are inquiring about the materials we are using. 

Fish Themed Activities for Toddlers

Vito is 28 months old.
Here’s a recap of our week!  You may copy any of these for your own home school journey!

The Perfect Moon Sand (Cloud Dough) Recipe

Dear friends, I’m very busy and I don’t have an easy access to products that are sometimes required to create a dough or a slime.  So when I discovered this 2-ingredient cloud dough from Happy Hooligans, I was ecstatic!  To make a moon sand or cloud dough, you just need a lot of plain flour and baby oil. That’s just it!  Check the site for the measurements, the outcome was fantastic!

Sensorial Play with Kinetic Sand & Geometric Shapes

Vito and Mavi are loving our Kinetic Sand!  In all honesty, I’m hesitant to purchase the sand because of its price.  Growing up in my homeland, sand was free and I could play with it day and night with my mother not shedding a single cent.  So the thought of Kinetic Sand costing more than my monthly college allowance is just crazy.  When it went on sale (70% off!), I knew I just have to get one because I wanted my kids to enjoy sand all year round just the way I played with it.  It was worth-it!

Alphabet Sensory Bin

My greatest challenge as of the moment is how to make Vito interested in letters. Of course he loves them, but not in the way that Mavi does.  I know, I shouldn’t compare… reason why I try to give him stimulating and fun activities to get him interested in letters.  It was different during Mavi’s time.  Mavi had my undivided attention while with Vito, I feel that he always get the short end of the stick.  Good thing Mavi is now back in school so  I have time to focus on Vito in the mornings (in the midst of chores!).

Benefits:

• To kids, this is just play and children learn best when they are happy, enjoying and stimulated. 
• Understanding what the letter represents by making a sound
• Hand muscle exercise as a result of grasping and digging through the bowl of rice
• Letter recognition by feeling the letters, ingraining the picture of the letters in their minds
• Early discrimination skills (for matching)
• Sensorial experience influence the development of brain pathways, thus it improves mental capacity to learn

How it works:

Hide the letters (foam, magnetic or wooden letters) in a bowl of rice (or beans) and let your little ones find them.

Dig dig dig! While they can use scoops or other materials, I prefer using their bare hands for the ultimate sensory experience!  As they discover the letter, let them feel it and I would sound it for him to follow.  As an extension, I made him match the letters to the one written on the paper as he loves matching.

He was so fascinated with the rice sticking on his hand!

Oh boy he was hooked! He had so much fun digging through the rice and and discovering the letters! Simple and easy to prepare isn’t it?

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Sensory Play and Activities

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!

Sense of touch, smell and taste. Save the best for last. We made pizza !!!

 

This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

Amazing blogs involved in the 12 Months of Montessori Learning

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now ~ Planting Peas

The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama’s Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Child Led Life

Every Star Is Different ~ Grace and Green Pastures ~ The Pinay Homeschooler

Making Pizza with a Toddler

We’re rowing Little Nino’s Pizzeria  and Mavi requested that we should make a pizza.  So I asked him to create a list of ingredients he wanted to be in in pizza.  He wanted to make a pizza with lots of pepperoni and mozzarella, so that’s what we did!

And we just have to make Vito join or else we wouldn’t be able to accomplish this.

Watch this short video of how the boys, yes including Vito made pizzas!!

Toddler Beginnings 04

 

For language, I would read Goodnight Moon to Vito at night. He is starting to identify the book so every morning he would pick this from our shelf and give it to me to read.  The Baby First book, I only added this because we are having the “green” theme and the cover is green LOL.         

 

I love giving Vito these activities and he loves them as well!

Craft sticks sticking on playdough.  He loves the activity, but he loves squeezing the playdough more. 

               

Vito can now snap the Duplo together! Yehey! Such a milestone! His finger muscles must be developing well!  He loves snapping and removing the Duplo parts.

                 

And puzzles and meant to be eaten.  Yes, he still mouths most stuff!  He can grip  the holder properly (and remove the parts) but cannot put the pieces back yet. 

See, he can even grip perfectly the small holder of the puzzle LOL

We love these spools and we use it in our transferring activities.

 

                                

Our music exploration these days are merely listening to nursery rhymes and doing action songs at home. We use anything that  we could find in the kitchen to create music and I guess this would be enough for now. 

I can’t wait for winter to be over so we can explore the outdoors already.  I am not willing to set up a sensory bin as of the moment as it takes a lot of time (and planning) to prepare the bin and would require a great amount of work. 

Hope you like this week’s totschool series!

More toddler activities in my Pinterest board.

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Toddler Activities on Pinterest.

Non-Toxic Finger Paint for Babies

I got this from a friend and this mixture is very very simple!

Mixing a plain yogurt and food coloring (I used a small amount of organic food coloring) you will produce a yummy finger paint for little babies! The activity is intended for sensorial play and I was not encouraging him to taste or eat the yogurt.  But you know that at this age, babies mouth anything.

And the good thing about it is that big brother can join as well!  And they play with it for 30 minutes (I was able to wash dishes worry free)  Two kids (and a Mommy) happy with one activity. How cool is that?

 

Ice Sensorial Play

Yesterday I gave Vito a few ice for a sensorial play.  I’ve always wanted to see how he would react once he touched the ice.

I placed the ice on the tray and he was a little bit hesitant at first but quite excited.  So he’s trying to use his pointer finger to test the material.

 

I love looking at those little hands working and trying to figure out the ice cubes.  Pardon those red cheeks. I was feeding him with bolognese at that time.

 

When he was sure that the ice wouldn’t hurt , he starts to pick them up.  But he failed in the beginning as the ice were very slippery.

And finally, with determination and focus, he was able to lift up a cube with both hands and mouthed it.

           

 

Oh yes, it is cold!!

          

Note:  Always supervise your baby when doing this activity.  Be careful as the ice are slippery and if they mouth it, there’s a tendency that they will swallow it and choke.