A Visit to the Zoo

A few weeks ago, we visited the city zoo.  Mavi has been asking about it for a long time now and since husband was on leave we just have to grab the opportunity see the animals while it’s still summer.

We have been to 4 zoos in the past three years, and they’re all in different places.  Will tell you about it soon.  And by far, he enjoyed this one the most.   I love the zoo, and it’s not just my son who enjoys seeing the animals but its me and my husband too.  Just like this one, it’s our first encounter with a white rhinos and gorillas.  We were so enthralled!  They were even more beautiful in person rather than in books!

                  

The zoo has mini-conservatories as well.  They have this house that preserves the furs of lions and tigers.  My son had a great time ‘feeling’ their furs.  

         

And they have displays of some animal skulls.  Here they have the skulls of zebra, giraffe, chimpanzee, crocodile etc.

And of course, what made my son even more happier is encountering a human skeleton!! He loves it to bits!

 

Then before we headed home, we passed by the “Farm” area... and here kids are allowed to feed the farm animals.  Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the cow milking session.  My son would have like participating on it :)  Oh well, maybe next time.

 

I don’t usually share or talk about our trips because I wanted to keep it private.  But some readers have asked me if there are some things that we also do aside from homeschool activities. 

Of course we do have a lot of fun things whenever the weather permits!! Whenever it’s safe to go outside (am talking about the weather), we definitely go out and play some ball, or go to playgrounds, or somewhere else other than the 4 corners of our house LOL.  We travel as well too. 

Anyway, will share about it soon.

Happy Thursday everyone!

3D Shapes

We had a short vacation last week thus the absence of homeschool activities. We had so much fun exploring the beautiful sites of the north, visited the zoo and a lot more.  Will share it here soon!

Anyway, Mavi and I made some models for our 3D shapes lesson.  But it seems that the little guy was more interested in making cards for his friends and applying glitter glues on it.

              

                

We waited for it to dry up. And here they are...

Too bad I couldn’t make a sphere!  As you can see, my son wrote letters on it LOL.  We sorted out the printables that I got from Montessori Printshop.

Using these models, I’m happy that he can now distinguish 3d shapes with the plain ones.  And it is surprising that he memorizes the name of all the models that we created!

 

Source:  Patterns for the 3D models are all from Paper Models of Polyhedra

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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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AUGUST PLANS

Here are some of the few things we needed to do before the September.  My son will start school next month and is enrolled in a Montessori class.  Though he will be in school in the morning,  we still have the afternoon to do home “school” if he asks for it (he doesn’t watch TV), or when we can’t play outside because of bad weather. 

LANGUAGE.  We’re still in Montessori blue series... currently finishing the secret words, then will be doing some sentence strips and last would be the word list.  I hope we can finish this by end of August so we can start with the green series by September.

MATH.  I’m using worksheets as a guide. But I used Montessori-Inspired Math activities first then once he can grasp the idea I supplement it using worksheets. 

SCIENCE.  This really depends on what I could find from the library and mostly the subject depends on the season.

GEOGRAPHY.  We’ll be doing North America this month and hope to finish the rest of the continents by the end of the year.

RELIGION.  This is something I have yet to add in our curriculum.  Currently, we’re just reading Bible stories for children. I am not worrying about this since Mavi will be enrolled in a Catholic school next year.

I am currently working on our curriculum/schedule for September.  Since he’ll be in school for at least 3.5hrs, I wouldn’t want to load him with so much work here at home, he can play as long as he wants but in case he gets tired of playing and wanted to do something else.... then perhaps we can do some home “schooling”.