The Pinay Homeschooler

REVIEW: Sink and Float Experiment using LEGO

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

It is a known fact that my son LOVES LEGO. He loves to think that he can make anything with LEGO. And one of the MAJOR discoveries that we have this year is that we can incorporate LEGO bricks in our homeschool activities. Because I find it helpful to use LEGO bricks into our schooling, I decided to add a few more to his collection so we can create more stuff together. You can see some of our works in our Geography lessons and our ever famous Eiffel Tower.

I cannot tell you how happy am I when I was asked to review the visual tutorial of the sink and float experiment of LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Manchester. This idea never crossed my mind at all! And what made it more exciting is that it involves water play (who doesn’t like water play?)!

The visual tutorial is similar to the instruction booklet that you get whenever you purchase a LEGO set. The directions are simple and since Mavi can read, he did the experiment on his own (I end up being the audience LOL).

So he made his raft out of his brown bricks with details of green. He made it float and later on added objects in the raft and moved them around to test whether the locations would make the raft sink or float. The tricky part is when he needs to balance the items in the raft so it won’t sink! It took him gazillion of tries to finally succeed :)

Mavi had so much fun doing this experiment and would love to do this again and again. We would laugh so hard every time we fail! And even I as an adult enjoyed the activity.We are so glad we did this experiment. It is also a good way to bond with little ones :) After which, Mavi was like “Mom, can we do more experiments?”, “Mom, can you think of more activities with LEGO?”.

I will definitely look for more science experiments using LEGO bricks. And LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Manchester is one place where I can look for those amazing ideas. And hopefully in the near future… we’ll be able to visit the place and try out their exciting learning activities!

Language and History Books

My books from Book Depository arrived yesterday. We were able to work on some grammar lessons using First Language Lessons Vol 1. I have heard good reviews about this book (and the series) so I’m giving it a try. The tools used in the book are memory work, copywork, narration and grammar (leading to a Charlotte Mason’s principles). I observed the A LOT of repetitions though. But that’s fine with me. I have nothing against that technique worked for me, especially with mathematics. In case its too much for my son to handle I’ll just skip some pages LOL.

For our history, I got The Story of the World Vol 1. I love world history and I can’t wait to use this with Mavi. I bought a hardcopy of the book but purchased a PDF version of the activity book so I can reuse it with Vito.

Will update more on this as we progress. Happy Wednesday!

Teaching Addition within 10

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Here’s a little recap of what Mavi has learned of our Math lessons for the past weeks. And the best part of it is that Mavi has learned how to do mental calculations! Yehey! I’m so happy that he has discovered this all by himself. He’s like “I’m using my brains to count Mom”.

We are using Singapore Math workbooks, and we use manipulates as well. Read here if you want to know how we integrated workbooks and manipulatives. We’ve been using manipulatives for some time (Montessori and other learning materials) and now that he is older, we’re going to use less of these.

Anyway, here’s what he has learned so far:

Ways to Add

Number Bonds. We’ve studied number bonds before so it was easy for Mavi to apply his knowledge once we’ve touched Addition. You can also get a free NUMBER BOND ACTIVITY SHEETS by clicking this link.

By counting on from the greater number. This is something new for Mavi. I told him it’s a trick that he can use to add numbers. He liked it and he’s been using it ever since.

Making Addition Stories

Another part of the lesson that Mavi really really love doing was making stories! Favourite characters in his stories were his classmates and the dinosaurs lol. This is an introductory part for problem solving which we will be doing as we progress.

Next would be subraction. I wonder if he will like it in the same way he did in addition.

Life Cycle: Organisms

Saturday, September 27, 2014

We started our Organisms Unit early this week and it was a joy Mavi had a great time learning about the living organisms and the different forms of life. I like that we will only have a few activities here. Focus on the quality, making sure that the child truly understands the concept behind the activity.

The key concept of this unit is for the child to learn that there are other organisms besides human and animals. That these organisms thrive and reproduce for survival. The following are the activities that we performed for the unit:

LIVING AND NON-LIVING

Objectives: To be able to sort the living and the non-living objects.

Task:

Describe the characteristics that makes an object a living organism.
Distinguish objects that are non-living but have been created from living objects (wooden cabinet).
What are the three important requirements of a living organism to thrive or grow?

Vocabulary: animal, living, non-living, organism

ANIMAL FAMILIES

Objective: Classification and sorting of objects, in order to group them into larger groups (Families)

Task:

Discuss the families of the animals, what do you call the father, the mother and the baby and their group.
Comparing the animal tracks. Those with round shape, hoofs or prints with toes.
Classifying animals whether they live in land, water or sky.

Vocabulary: family, group, classification