Revisiting The Seven Continents

I love the fact that my son’s school is sending newsletter each month to parents regarding the things that the children will be exploring and the activities that comes with it.  For this month, they’re learning about the solar system and the continents, must be the reason why my son was so eager to do some geo-related works a few days ago.  Though we’ve done this a few times its always nice to revisit and review what he has learned so far.  

As usual, he always forgets to name “North America”. He knows the location but finds it difficult to name it.

         

It helps a lot of your kids learn how to read early on. Here he pins the labels of each continent to the map.  I used to read the labels to him before, but now he’s doing it by himself.

           

Then he wanted to place the animals to their “homes” based on the map.  So I reused a paper bag, sketched the continents and he started sorting his animal figures according to the continents in which they inhabit.  So timely since we will be exploring Africa soon.

           

In addition we started identifying the oceans for familiarization.  This is what we end up later on.  I wanted to make something like this but I realized that it would eat up all my time and energy so I might probably look for a more easy way to make a world map inspired by Montessori.  But Leptir’s work is such an inspiration!

More Geography units to come!

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Hello 2013!

Happy happy new year dear readers! 

How’s everyone’s vacation?  Hope you and your family had a lovely time during the holiday break :)  I know most of you are anticipating a new post, but unfortunately, the Mommy (that’s me!) is still on vacation mode (LOL) and we only had a few random activities that aren’t post worthy.  And there’s still some work to be at home, like putting down our tree (not my favorite thing to do!), and some workers are coming here tomorrow to fix our water heater and tank (argh). 

But despite the fact that there’s a lot of things to be done in the next few weeks, I still long to start home “schooling” again.  It’s what I love to do and there’s never a day that I don’t think  about it.

For a head start, here’s what we’re having this JANUARY

• Science: Space and the Solar System
• Geography:  Africa
• Artist Study:  Michaelangelo
• Math:  Clock and Fractions
• Language:  Finish Green Series of Montessori Language, Spelling

There are just the MAJOR topics I want to accomplish this month.  In conjunction, we’re also doing worksheets (Singapore Math and the ones I bought locally), get lots of outdoor activities/ free play when the weather permits, and do random arts and crafts.

We’re gradually settling back to our old routine, and will definitely share some stuff the soonest :)

Thank you dear readers for a good 2012 and cheers to a much fruitful and enjoyable 2013! 

Planets and the Solar System

Saw this book from the library and I thought my son would like it.

 

And he did!  The book got lots of interesting images of the planets and is loaded of information which are very easy for an almost 4 yr old to understand.  I also love that each planet were discussed and has trivia on each one.

                        

Later we made planets using paints.   As we paint each planet, we first refer to the book, discuss the color and try mixing the paints so we can come up with the exact color as presented in the book. And this is how they look like as we wait for them to dry up.

Once they’re cooked, I cut them up so we can glue them on a black cardstock.  They look absolutely perfect!

My son started cutting the orange paper for his Sun.

Then we glue them on the cardstock.  We talk about the order  of the planets in the solar system as we glue them.  Here it seen that he is adding glitters on our space. 

 

Then we waited again for them to dry so we can start playing with it using our Safari Space Toob.

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