Montessori-Inspired Parts of an Insect

We are having a blast looking into the world of insects! In this post, I will show you how we are learning the different parts of an insects as well as the source of our materials.

Seen on the picture are the materials we are using to learn about the insect’s body parts.  The insects that we examined here are ants, butterfly, ladybird, grasshopper and dragonfly.  As you can see, this is NOT really hands-on because of two factors:

• The absence of these insects (except for ants and ladybird) during the time we have this study.  No grasshoppers (tropical country) and no butterfly at all!
• We cannot dissect ladybird and ants.  They’re just too tiny!

With these, we just used our nomenclature cards and animal figures.  Speaking of animal figures, I highly recommend Safari Toobs Insects.  You can easily demonstrate the body parts because of the details in the figures.

Resources in the picture:

• FREE Insects and Spider Silhouette Cards.
• Insect cards from my Arthropods Pack
• FREE Butterfly Nomenclature Cards
• Grasshopper Nomenclature Cards
• Ants Nomenclature Cards
• Caterpillar Nomenclature Cards
• Dragonfly Nomenclature Cards
• Insect Nomenclature Cards
• Usborne Bugs Book
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• Montessori Butterfly Puzzle
• Montessori Wasp Puzzle
• Safari Toob Insects

Nomenclature Cards

We worked on the entire nomenclature cards in the span of one week.  Because of the repetition of the activity, Mavi was able to identify the similarities of these insects, like:

• They have segmented bodies: head, thorax and abdomen
• 6 legs
• Most have antennae

Each nomenclature card comes with a definition booklet of the body parts.  Mavi loves reading our booklets (this is a perfect way to let your child improve their reading skills!)

Montessori Puzzles
I purchased these puzzles before I had Vito.  We used it to identify the different parts of an insect and worked on it


Mavi loves to trace the puzzles and made his own version of butterfly.
The puzzle was also enjoyed by Vito.  He loves butterfly (even if he hasn’t seen one yet) and chose to work on the puzzle.

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Animal Unit Studies and {Learn & Play Link Up # 5}

Another week of Learn & Play Link Up! I am so excited to feature 5 blog posts that has captured my attention.  As you all know, we love doing animal studies at home because Mavi looooovess learning about them!! And my little Vito is now obsessed with dogs and spiders! Yes! spiders! So I’m thinking of having an animal study soon, and I now know where to get inspiration!

So here are the posts that are featured for this week:

Life Cycle Art from Minnie Monets and Mommies

Alligator Printable Pack from Mommyhood in Holland

Montessori Inspired Butterfly – Caterpillar Unit from Living Montessori Now

Dinosaur Color Sorting Activity from Stir the Wonder

Insect Sensory Bin from Rubber Boots and Elf Shoes

This week on The Pinay Homeschooler, I am going to feature our insect studies for the past years. Mavi loves everything about insects.  it is also important that kids understand how to differentiate insects from other creepy crawlers.  Remember, not everything that crawls are insects!  Like spiders, worms and centipedes… they belong to  different groups!  

Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

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:

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An InLinkz Link-up

FREE Animal Life Cycles Learning Material

At last! I was able to update my Animal Life Cycles file and I added life cycles of insects!  Yes, so many have emailed me asking about it. So sorry, I did not include it in the first edition because we were not studying it yet.

Vertebrate Sorting Cards

Here’s one of my bestseller files, the Vertebrate Sorting Cards!  Mavi loves using the files to create a chart of vertebrate animals.   Six animal pictures for each animal classification.

You can also use animal figures for this. Our animal figures were from Schleich and Safari Toobs

See how Mavi put all of these into action. 

The Animal Kingdom

We love using our printables and one of which is our Animal Kingdom cards.  We worked on this last year and hopefully we get to use it again this summer.  You can read about our lesson here.
When your kids are a bit old, it would be nice to introduce them to the much bigger picture.  This will help them understand that a starfish is NOT a fish and that sponges are animals!  Mavi learned a lot from this lesson and help him understand why animals are classified.

The file includes:

• The Animal Kingdom MASTER Chart in A4 SIZE
• Chart with pictures only (no labels) in A4 SIZE
• Chart with labels only in A4 SIZE
• Chart with no pictures and labels in A4 SIZE
• 15 cards with pictures and labels to form the chart
• 15 cards with pictures and no labels (for 3 part card use)
• 15 label cards (for 3 part card use)
• Matching definition cards

Hope you like it!

FREE Ikea Puppets Matching Cards

As mentioned in my Instagram, Vito (and Mavi!) enjoyed playing these cute puppets from Ikea.  Because Vito is starting to appreciate pictures, and learning to identify them, I made each puppet a matching card so we can play a matching game in the next few days.

Anyone interested to download a copy of the cards, feel free to click the image above for the link. Or click here.
Enjoy!

Animals in the Freshwater Ecosystem

A few weeks ago, I would take the boys in the park for nature walks.  And we would always stop by in this huge pond were we get to see different animals and insects like swans, flies and ducks.  It’s a good thing that we previously had our Insect Unit as Mavi was always on the lookout for insects and was identifying them.

So I was thinking then that since we have the Marine Animals, why not talk about the animals in ponds, lakes, streams etc.  And that’s what we exactly did yesterday.  I made picture cards similar to our Marine Animals Cards and talked about each of the animals in the pictures and identified in which freshwater ecosystem they belong.

If you would like to have a copy, simply click on the image below to go to our subscriber page for the download link to the free printable.

Animal Exploration: A Study Guide

One of my objective this year is for Mavi to have a bigger understanding of the animal kingdom.  During his preschool and totschool days, I introduced animals via themed activities which he truly enjoyed.  But there was a point that he would asks more complicated questions and I just knew that I have to put “depth” into our lessons.

So let me share with you our outline of study which I considered as a guideline whenever we have a study about animals.  Now, this outline is for elementary level and I would not recommend this to preschoolers.  Familiarization is the first key for preschoolers to understand about the animals and the themed activities are best for this.

ANIMAL KINGDOM (Blog Post, Animal Kingdom Chart and Cards)

• VERTEBRATE SORTING (Blog Post, Vertebrate Sorting Cards)

 

• Study of Birds (Bird Unit I, Bird Unit II, Bird Activities, Bird Printable Pack)

 

• Study of Fish
• Study of Reptiles
• Study of Amphibians/Frogs
• Study of Mammals
• Animal Lifecycles (Blog Post, FREE Animal Lifecycle Cards )

 

• MOLLUSCS:  The Study of Snails  (Part One, Part Two, Snail Nomenclature Card and Definition Booklet)

• ARTHROPODS (FREE Arthropod Chart)
  • ARTHROPODS: The Study of Insects (Part One, Part Two)

• Butterfly Nomenclature Cards  and Definition Booklet (FREE)
• Insect Nomenclature Cards  and Definition Booklet
• Grasshopper Nomenclature Cards  and Definition Booklet
• Ant Nomenclature Cards  and Definition Booklet
• Caterpillar Nomenclature Cards  and Definition Booklet
• ARTHROPODS: The Study of Crustaceans
  • Crab Nomenclature Cards  and Definition Booklet
• ARTHROPODS: The Study of Arachnids
  • Spider Nomenclature Cards  and Definition Booklet
• ARTHROPODS: The Study of Chilopods
  • Centipede Nomenclature Cards  and Definition Booklet

We also looked into the habitats of these animals:

ANIMALS AND THEIR HABITATS (Part One, Part Two, Animal Habitat Learning Materials )

 

For animals in freshwater and marine animals:

ANIMALS IN MARINE ECOSYSTEM (Blog Post, FREE Animals in Marine Ecosystem Cards )

ANIMALS IN FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEM (Materials Used, Blog Post)

There are fields that we haven’t touched yet, and I am hoping that we could explore them before the year ends.

Hope that you find this post helpful.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!

The World of Arthropods for Kids (Part Two)

This is the second part of our Arthropod Study.  I suggest you read the first part of this post to know more about our learning materials and how I started introducing this entire subject to my son.

Here are the activities we've done on the last part of our Insect Study.
Activity 1:  Moulding insects using plasticine and playdough.


Activity 2: Matching the insect figures to the insect picture cards we have. Also, we used our fact cards to learn about each insect group and their characteristics.
 

Activity 3: Body parts.  Here Mavi worked on a worksheet identifying the major body parts of an insect.
 
Activity 4: Sorting of insect and non-insect animal figures.  Oh he loved this!! See how he identifies the figure? He sorted them by counting their legs!
 

Activity 5:  This is just out of the blue activity.  I was cleaning up our kitchen and saw Mavi's old learning materials in a box.  So I took them out and let him play with these minibeasts again.  We had this activity before when he was 3 years old, picking up the insects using the kiddie chopsticks.  The toy insects were from a local store here.


And that ends our Arthropods-Insect Study :)  Next is Crustaceans and Centipedes, but I'm reserving this topic in July or August. 

And there you go peeps! If you have any questions just leave me a comment and I will get back to you as soon as I can.  You are free to share this post and copy the activities (just link back to me if you find my activities interesting).

For more activities: Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Zoology Unit on Pinterest.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!

The Arthropods Learning Material (with FREE Files)

Finally! It's ready!   You can now purchase the entire  Arthropods Learning Pack from my shop.  I will give details below of what are the learning resources included in this packet.  

The World of Arthropods for Kids (Part One)

So where do I start? LOL

Arthropods, is quite a huge subject, especially for little ones who's exposed to this for the first time.  To them, there's only insects. But now, here I am explaining to my son that everything he sees that's not a mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian or fish is an insect.  And just like those vertebrates, insects are just part of a much bigger group that is called Arthropods.

Materials Used:

The Animal Kingdom Chart (Arthropods)  by The Pinay Homeschooler.  I am giving the master chart for free together with the definition cards and sorting activity.  The chart activities together with the rest of the pack are included in a bundle.  It is available for purchase from my shop, "The Arthropods Learning Pack".

Arthropod Cards.  I am giving away the common insect nomenclature and fact cards for free.  Again, the entire arthropods cards will be included in the Learning Pack bundle.

Animal Lifecycle Cards.  We used this to identify insects that undergo incomplete metamorphosis (grasshopper) and complete metamorphosis (butterfly).


Animal Figures. All are from Safari Ltd Insect TOOB and Safari Ltd Butterflies TOOB.

Books used (affiliates), please refer at the end of this post.

Activity 1:  Presentation of the Arthropod Chart

To introduce the Arthropods, I presented the Animal Kingdom Chart -> Arthropods to Mavi.  He's already familiar with this as we have had Animal Kingdom lessons previously.  Now I just have to explain, that similar to the Chordates, Arthropod is a group composed of different species like crabs, centipedes, millipedes, spiders and insects.

He loves the chart!  It helped that we did The Animal Kingdom before :)  As you can see in the picture, we worked on sorting the animal figures according to the description cards which is included in my printable.  You need not worry if you don't own any of these, I included picture cards in the files so you can still conduct this activity.

I let him read the description cards and he investigated whether the descriptions are indeed true! Like the number of legs, whether they have antennae or if they have indeed body/thorax/abdomen composition.
          
 
As you can see, our little Vito is quite interested with what we do as well!

We first looked into the group of Insects
Activity 2:  Life cycles.  There are two lifecycles which we discussed here.  First, the one  with incomplete metamorphosis like grasshoppers (egg->nymph->adult) and the complete metamorphosis like ladybugs (egg->larvae->pupa->adult).  You can get a copy of my ANIMAL LIFECYCLES HERE.

Activity 3: Body parts.  Here we looked into the body parts of the insects and how each of these parts differ. Like how does the wings of a butterfly differ from that of the grasshopper and dragonfly.  The difference between the shape of the abdomens of each insect etc.
          
          
Activity 4:  Books. We read a lot of books! And my son loves matching our animal figures to those in the books!
          
And that ends the first part of our study.  More coming up in the next post, The World of Arthropods for Kids (Part Two)! 

PS. I did not proof-read my post.  Please understand that I breastfeed and babysit while I write and sometimes, my brain is faster than my fingers.  So if you encounter typo/grammar errors, my bad and my apologies.  I just have no time to read-proof, thus the reason why I place as much pictures as I can to demonstrate our activities without too much explanation.  Thank you for your understanding!

For other activities: Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Zoology Unit on Pinterest.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!