Religions in Asia (with Resources)

Last week we started our Asia Unit Study by looking at the different beliefs and religions of the Asians.    Click the link of the image for the product details.

We started off with the presentation of materials and an overview of each religion. 

Most of my learning materials come with fact cards. If you might be wondering why, I use these cards as a tool for reading practice for Mavi.  At times books are not available and these cards come in handy.

Speaking of books, our library has the best resource for this :)  My favourite so far are the books from World of Faiths series.  I HIGHLY recommend them if you are looking for books that teaches religion.  They are so engaging, easy to read, very informative but not overwhelming to little ones and it has suggested activities to go along with the specific religion of study.

The books on the series are the following [aff. links]:

• Christianity
• Hinduism
• Judaism
• Sikhism
• Islam
• Buddhism

These are really wonderful wonderful books.  If I have the resources, I would want them all.  They’re treasures! My son reads them every night.

Now, with the books and cards… I printed a map of Asia and Mavi and I tried to mark the places based on their religions.  And look what happened when Mavi encountered the YinYang symbol… he labeled it as Kung Fu Panda LOL. 

  

My next post would be about the craft activities that goes along with this study. So stay tuned!

In addition, we also watched videos of the important celebrations of the three major religions:  Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.

Christianity:  Easter and Christmas. Here we watched the death and resurrection of Christ.

 

Islam:  Observance of Eid-ul-Fitr

 

 

Hinduism:  Celebration of Diwali, the Festivity of Lights.

Linking to:

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

Teaching Ordinal Numbers

Earlier today, while all of us are so lazy to start our day, we read Chicken Licken while having breakfast.  Mavi started to memorize the order of the farm animals in the story and I decided to integrate ordinal numbers into it. 

Our Chicken Licken was from Usborne and got it via Book Depository.  The animals used is from Safari Toob Mega Farm Collection and Safari Toob Feathered Dinosaurs. [aff. links]

I made Mavi read the book and instructed to place the animals in the order of how they appeared in the story. So basically, if your child knows how to read and at this time, familiar with ordinal numbers he can work on this independently with minimal supervision.  But for preschoolers, the mother/teacher should demonstrate the concept of ordinal numbers by placing the animals according to the sequence of their appearance in the story.

PS. We didn’t have a turkey figure so we didn’t include it in our activity.

 

Other books that can be used in teaching ordinal numbers [aff. links]:

• Are You My Mother?
• Brown Bear Brown Bear
• A Very Hungry Caterpillar
• The Very Busy Spider

Another way to demonstrate ordinal numbers is by using similar objects (in our case dinosaurs), labels and instructions.

Mavi reads the instructions and happily obliged.  My instructions were simple… like “place a yellow rubber-band on the 4th (fourth) dinosaur”.

You can find more Math activities on my Pinterest Board:

 

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Math Ideas on Pinterest.

FREE Spelling Worksheets for Letter Sounds ‘i, p, n’

Sharing more Spelling Worksheets for Letter Sounds I, P, and N. You can download the activity sheets by clicking the individual pictures below.  You can read the post, FREE Spelling Worksheets for Letter Sounds ‘s, a, t’ to know more on how we use them.
          
         
         
Enjoy!

Learning From Books Using Narration Style Method

We are currently doing Charlotte Mason narration style at home.  We used to do Before Five In A Row (B4FIAR), where my son had a great time doing all the activities related to the book.  The only problem is, they have a book list and most books in the list are out of print.  With the narration style, we can use any book available and attack it the Charlotte Mason way :)

 

So without further ado, my first specimen is my son’s favourite book Where the Wild Things Are (Amazon US) (Book Depository)[aff. link].  We read it, pin pointed the words he couldn’t understand (for vocabulary lesson) and I took down notes as well for words worthy of spelling practice.

First activity is the Story Sequence using pictures.  I scanned and printed pictures from the book and had Mavi arranged them.  And then, I asked him to tell me the story (in his own word) using the pictures.  I couldn’t believe he remembers 70% of the lines from the book!

 

Spelling and Vocabulary.  Then we moved on to the spelling and vocabulary.  By this time I ran out of ink so I just have to rely on my papers and sharpies LOL (I don't run out of ink these days and I always print in high quality thanks to our ECO Tank Printer from EPSON).  For vocabulary, I have him read the definitions (practice reading) and then the meaning.  He figured out that he needs to match them.  The same with the spelling, decoding the scrambled letters to form the right words.

              

Story Sequencing using Words.  We’re doing the sequencing using words only.  This is to practice his reading analysis and skills.

Creating and Acting.  After the oral narration, we printed graphics from Making Learning Fun and colored them so we could make them as puppets.  This approach is similar to our Hickory Dickory Duck Unit. 

And here they are!  To assess, I made him retell the story (this was on a separate day) using the puppets and vocabulary words. 

I was so happy that we did this!! I have never seen Mavi become interested in “home” schooling again (he’s on vacation mode LOL).  He even told me “Mommy, can we do this again?”. 

So yes! We are doing this every week.  Now I am excited for our next book narration.