B4FIAR: Blueberries for Sal

Mavi is 37 months old.

We’ve been reading this book along side Bear Hunt but I decided that we should separate the unit studies for each book.

Here are the activities we did in line with Blueberries for Sal.

LANGUAGE.  Determining beginning sounds of pictures from the clipcards which I downloaded from the B4FIAR packs. 

Read, build and spell of words based from the books.  This is currently his favorite activity. 

 

I love it that would read the word using their phonic sounds :)

 

PRACTICAL LIFE.  Sorting blueberries (blue pompoms) and other berries hehe using a clamp.

MATH. We did an introductory lesson on addition using blue pompoms as blueberries.

 

After combining the orange containers, here he is counting the number of blueberries after adding 2 plus 2.  Will provide a separate post on this.

 

Tracing lines.

         

I observed that on the end part of the line, his trace becomes a little jagged.  He must be tired.

 

Doing the worksheet from First School.

Later on I found him reading the words again. 

ARTS.  We made bushes with lots of blueberries and added tree stump.  I cut all the necessary stuff, then I taught him how to make mini balls of cottons and glue them on the bushes.  He made all the cotton balls here and asked him to put blue paints to make it look like blueberries.

We seldom have crafts activities and I was glad that we did this because he truly enjoyed the activity.  It’s his first time to work on cotton balls and he was amused.  He did this activity while I was doing the dishes, with less supervision he was able to do what I wanted him to accomplish.  By the time he finished his work, he was so happy and he immediately displayed it in his room.

This is his finish product.

Montessori Wrap-Up

Mavi is 37 months old.

September 26 to October 2, 2011.

Pink Series

Practice CVC words using our pink series sets 1 to 4. 

He loves our reading activities and I was surprise that he reads using their sounds not through memorization.

Then we worked with our ‘rambitg’ alphabets and try to build CVC words from it. I really would like to instill in him that using letters, we can form words!  This also increased his vocabulary for he learned some new words like: rib, tab, bar, fig etc.

 

We made trees using oil pastels.

 

Phonics

I talked about it here.

  

Math

Read about our math lessons here.

Since it was also raining, I made use of our size ordering cards which I downloaded from Confessions of a Homeschooler two years ago. He’s learning sizes here and using “smallest” “biggest” and “bigger” words.

         

Art

Attempting to do a Kadinsky painting.  It was a lovely day so I took him out on the balcony to paint. 

Too bad, the paper we used were not made for watercolor :(

Here’s my version. I was also painting with him so I can show him what to do and describe the mechanics.

Drawing and Writing

These activities were his favorite this week.  He kept on making drawings and describing them with words that he alone can understand.  I ask him “what is it?” and he would say something like “it’s a blurg”.  Still I admire it in front of him and telling him that he did a great job.

This is a table.

Practice writing his name.

         

Practical Life

 

His favorite practical life activity:  cutting.  Aside from this, he kept helping me with the laundry.

Botany: Trees

A wonderful week of studying trees! Read about it here.

All About Trees

Mavi is 37 months old.

Want to share with you our themed activity this week which is all about trees!

I was really inspired to do this because we’ve got lots of wonderful and huge trees in our backyard.  So we just have to make use of its presence and I need to instill on Mavi the importance of trees in our life :)  Although we’ve done this before, we didn’t get the chance to do outdoor and nature trips.  And as I mentioned in that post that we will probably do this theme again, and I was glad that we did because the boy had so much fun learning about trees.

First we started discussing sizes of trees.  We went to a nearby park and showed the little guy what’s it like to be in a forest full of trees.

Then we ate ice cream on the field.  As we do, I discussed all about the shade that the tree behind us produced.

Back at home, play the matching game of tree shapes and sizes.  This is a homemade printable and the graphics where taken randomly from the internet.

 

I love that he loves matching games! And the sight of him concentrating while working is precious.

                     

We made use of our 3-part nomenclature card for Parts of the Tress.  Again this is homemade. I was saving ink so I just colored it using our crayons.The book was given to him by his godfather on his 3rd birthday and it was very very useful.

 

And of course, we have to draw a tree!  As I was doing mine, I kept on discussing to him the color that I use in making a trunk, roots, grass, leaves etc.  He followed, and was doing his own version of a tree right beside me.

He’s making a trunk with branches.

Followed by green leaves. Later I told him we should add orange leaves to represent Fall.

And this is what he came up later on.  He added grass with red and pink flowers (he dictated the color), added yellow sun and blue skies.

  

Our felt Tree puzzle. 

Practice writing trees.  The first two he needed to trace (I wrote the tree word using a pencil), then later  he had to write the word tree on his own (no guide).

We made our outdoor tree using some twigs and braches and punched fallen leaves.  He enjoyed this.

                   

And we explored more of the trees in our area.  I told him that trees are very important for they provide us fresh air, a place to rest and play, cool surroundings and lots lots more.  That we have to thank God for trees, for their existence.

My favorite favorite shot of him. He loves climbing tress!

Oh and that’s him playing underneath the tree.  It is such a gigantic tree that my son looked so little with it.

 

Till next time!

Counting Numbers 0 to 9

Mavi is 36 months old.

(September 26, 2011)

We’re back in practicing serious counting and number identification. 

The activity let the child learns numerals, amounts and how to match amounts with numerals (1:1 correspondence).

I am using the “identification-recognition-recall” mechanics of Montessori which is known as the 3-lesson period.  This site gives a clear explanation of how this 3-lesson period works.

Working with Numbers 0 to 4.

We started with play coins. 

I let him identify the numerals first, and I would say “let’s put the x(representing the numeral) number of coins in the grid”.  As I place the coin/s in the grid, I let my son count with me.

After I have placed the coins from 1 to 4, I would ask him “where is 3? where is the 0?” .  Then to end our 3-lesson period, we recalled each number of coins in the activity. 

My son participated well in this activity.  I was surprise that he’s beginning to have longer attention span.  After my presentation I let him do the activity by himself:  he placed the correct number of coins according to the number it represented.

Since he wanted to do more, we did other variations by using two more objects:  the beads and the popsicle sticks.

Basically, we just performed the same 3-lesson period as we did previously with the coins.

He’s always in deep concentration when he works.  I grabbed the opportunity to take photos while he’s busy.

This is how it looks using colored popsicle sticks.

 

Working with Numbers 5 to 9

 

Similar procedure on what we did with numbers 0 to 4, we practiced counting 5 to 9 as well.

That’s Mavi placing the appropriate number of coins to the grid.

He did very well with the beads :)  (Our 8 aka brown beads is a little shorter because it is made of smaller beads.  I didn’t find any brown beads of the same size as the rest)

Counting popsicle sticks. It came to a point where the sticks won’t fit on the space allotted to number six so he placed the rest below number 7 hehe. 

You can vary different objects or counters for this activity. Lakeshore Learning has a wide variety of math counters, but I find them quite pricey.  My playmoney is around 60PHP which I got from a thrift shop in Singapore as well as the craft popsicle sticks.  You can also you use erasers, cupcake topping designs, pebbles, flat marbles and much much more!