Halloween Activities for Toddlers and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Halloween is just around the corner and we’re having the “feel” at home by working on some “halloweeny” activities.  Here’s our working trays for the next few weeks:

TOP:  tonging creep creatures,  scooping black beans into pumpkin bags

MIDDLE:  counting halloween objects using a pumpkin counter, letter matching using alphabet cards (all cards are from HALLOWEEN TODDLER PACK)

BOTTOM:  pouring corn kernels, pumpkin face crafts

Practical Life Activities

Practical life activities are those building and improving skills that are of use in the daily life, like pouring, scooping, transferring etc.  The benefits include hand-eye coordination and concentration.  To know more about practical life activities, visit my post here and here.

Everything that involves the corn kernels and the black beans were a hit!  Both Mavi and Vito played with it for long periods of time and I get to do chores while they’re messing around   To save you a lot of work, always use trays, the bigger the better!

Numbers and Alphabet

As I mentioned earlier, I always integrate a little bit of counting and phonics into our daily activities.  Vito is currently more into counting than the alphabets, so this counting cards that I made for him was a hit!  He loves identifying the objects in the cards and counting them using the pumpkin counters. 

An extra fun phonic game I included is discovering letters from the purse and matching them on the cards.  Similar activity with the Alphabet Sensory Bin except that we’re using a purse this time and used both the upper and lowercase letters.  The wooden letters used here were from Hape Uppercase and Lowercase Puzzle.

Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

Here are the featured Halloween activities for this week!

 

 

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything from Just Add Speech

Roll a Jack O' Lantern Game from A Little Pinch Perfect

Halloween Craft Pumpkin Mummies from Handson As We Grow

30 Preschool Halloween Crafts from Homeschool Preschool

Pumpkin Suncatcher and Color Mixing from Age of Montessori

 

Now it’s time for this week’s link party! This is a BRAND new link up for all blog posts that include learn and play activities and hands-on education for kids. We are excited to read your blog posts and to see what you have to share! Please link up below and grab our button to display on your blog.

If you are a blogger, share your family friendly posts here. We are looking for things which include:

• Montessori Education
• Homeschool
• Sensory Play
• Tot and Preschool Trays
• Fine and Gross Motor Activities
• Kids in the Kitchen
• Healthy Recipes for Kids
• Arts and Crafts
• Natural Living
• Free Educational Printables
• Family-Oriented Activities
• Healthy Living

Your post will be featured on each of our blogs where we will pick our favourite posts every other week. That means there is more of a chance that you will be featured!

Everyone, please meet our link party hosts:

Christian Montessori Blog ~ Please visit our CMN FB group ~ Pinterest

Vanessa from Mama’s Happy Hive~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jennifer from Study at Home Mama~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Marie from Child Led Life~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jae from Pinay Homeschooler~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Heather from Golden Reflections Blog~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Renae from Every Star is Different~FB~Pinterest

GUIDELINES FOR LINKING

• Please link up 1-3 posts
• Follow each of the hosts on social media
• When you link up, please add our button and place it at the bottom of your shared posts or link back with text link.
• By entering a link, you’re giving us permission to feature an image on our blogs. Proper credit & links will ALWAYS be given.
• Please visit a couple of shared posts and leave a comment for them
• Remember that you must link back in order to be featured

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Alphabet Sensory Bin

My greatest challenge as of the moment is how to make Vito interested in letters. Of course he loves them, but not in the way that Mavi does.  I know, I shouldn’t compare… reason why I try to give him stimulating and fun activities to get him interested in letters.  It was different during Mavi’s time.  Mavi had my undivided attention while with Vito, I feel that he always get the short end of the stick.  Good thing Mavi is now back in school so  I have time to focus on Vito in the mornings (in the midst of chores!).

Benefits:

• To kids, this is just play and children learn best when they are happy, enjoying and stimulated. 
• Understanding what the letter represents by making a sound
• Hand muscle exercise as a result of grasping and digging through the bowl of rice
• Letter recognition by feeling the letters, ingraining the picture of the letters in their minds
• Early discrimination skills (for matching)
• Sensorial experience influence the development of brain pathways, thus it improves mental capacity to learn

How it works:

Hide the letters (foam, magnetic or wooden letters) in a bowl of rice (or beans) and let your little ones find them.

Dig dig dig! While they can use scoops or other materials, I prefer using their bare hands for the ultimate sensory experience!  As they discover the letter, let them feel it and I would sound it for him to follow.  As an extension, I made him match the letters to the one written on the paper as he loves matching.

He was so fascinated with the rice sticking on his hand!

Oh boy he was hooked! He had so much fun digging through the rice and and discovering the letters! Simple and easy to prepare isn’t it?

Like the post? Pin this for later!

EUROPE in a Nutshell

My son’s favorite continent (according to him)! is finally up in My SHOP! I am so excited and happy to announce that I’ve completed our Europe in a Nutshell learning material and is now cooking in the printer, to be laminated and will be used in a couple of weeks for our Europe study!  Mavi just loves my Nutshell Geography series and can’t wait to try it with Vito in the near future!

Letter L: Leaf Activities in Autumn

We are joining the bandwagon of autumn-themed activities and for Vito, we’re having leaf activities!

Leaf Color Matching

Got these beautiful craft leaves from a local store and used them for sorting colors.  I just dumped them in a container and would take one leaf at a time. I then mention the color and placed it to where it belongs.  Vito loves calling out their names!  I am not sure if he could recognize colors yet, it’s a hit or miss for him.  It’s a challenge to put up a color sorting activity for him so I put an extra effort on making it fun like making noises or funny sounds as I drop the leaf to the sorted group.

Letter Z: Zoo Animal Activities

** contains affiliate links **

Vito is 22 months old.

Vito is currently obsessing over his Schleich zoo animals.  I just started collecting these animal figures early this year as I can see that both of my boys can benefit from it.  I decided to put together zoo-themed activities for the little Vito, an opportunity to learn and explore the letter ‘z’.

Dear Zoo Story Basket

Vito loves this Dear Zoo book!  We read it over and over again each day, and he specifically loves opening and closing the flaps to discover the animal hidden in it.

Zoo Animal Tracks

My boys can’t get enough of playdough, and we used our Schleich animals to create beautiful tracks!  It was a total hit!

Animal Skin Covers

And who wouldn’t love skin patterns! It amazes me how Vito can match the animals with its cover!  I only prepared 6 of his favourite animals and he is working on them everyday.  As we progress, I’ll add up some more to make it challenging for him.

Letter Z Craft

Our letter of the week (craft) is usually hanged in the wall for a week’s view (for recognition) LOL.

Animals Clean Up

Original plan was to wash and brush these animals.  But it was cold and we couldn’t do it indoors so I ended up giving him the wipes instead.  He enjoyed this!

Zoo Animals Matching Cards

Something that he do everyday as well, matching the figures with the cards! This activity is for object recognition, discrimination and exactness. You can download your FREE copy from here.

The images in the cards are from Schleich.

Letter Z Object Basket

Our object basket is typically for letter recognition and phonics sounds.

And that’s all about our fun adventure of learning the letter z sound and zoo animals.  Stay tuned for our next letter sound of the week… something to do with autumn!  And yes, please don’t forget to pin this for later!

Other letter sound we’ve done:

Letter a for apple

Letter b for ball

Letter c for car

Letter d for dinosaur

Letter e for egg

Letter s for star

Collection of Human Body Activities for Kids and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Kids love to learn their body parts! Our human body activities has always been a favourite at home and with my readers as well.  Here are some of our favourites throughout the years:

Parts of the body for toddlers

Internal Organs

Human Body Parts for Grade Schoolers

The Human Bones

Skeletal System

 

Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

Here are the featured activities for this week!

 

 

 

Hands-on Study of Human Anatomy from Christian Montessori Network

My Body Activities for Tots from Every Star is Different

Teaching Human Anatomy to Your Toddler from Mama’s Happy Hive

Montessori Human Anatomy Activities from Natural Beach Living

Homeschool Unit Study Human Body from Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool

 

Now it’s time for this week’s link party! This is a BRAND new link up for all blog posts that include learn and play activities and hands-on education for kids. We are excited to read your blog posts and to see what you have to share! Please link up below and grab our button to display on your blog.

If you are a blogger, share your family friendly posts here. We are looking for things which include:

Montessori Education

Homeschool

Sensory Play

Tot and Preschool Trays

Fine and Gross Motor Activities

Kids in the Kitchen

Healthy Recipes for Kids

Arts and Crafts

Natural Living

Free Educational Printables

Family-Oriented Activities

Healthy LivingYour post will be featured on each of our blogs where we will pick our favourite posts every other week. That means there is more of a chance that you will be featured!

Everyone, please meet our link party hosts:

Christian Montessori Blog ~ Please visit our CMN FB group ~ Pinterest

Vanessa from Mama’s Happy Hive~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jennifer from Study at Home Mama~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Marie from Child Led Life~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jae from Pinay Homeschooler~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Heather from Golden Reflections Blog~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Renae from Every Star is Different~FB~Pinterest

GUIDELINES FOR LINKING

Please link up 1-3 posts

Follow each of the hosts on social media

When you link up, please add our button and place it at the bottom of your shared posts or link back with text link.

By entering a link, you’re giving us permission to feature an image on our blogs. Proper credit & links will ALWAYS be given.

Please visit a couple of shared posts and leave a comment for them

Remember that you must link back in order to be featured Grab This Button:

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FREE Zoo Animals Matching Cards for Toddlers

Vito is 22 months

Vito is in to matching these days! Whenever he sees an object that has a match on books, he would immediately get it and put it together.  We started matching activities earlier with our Farm Animal Activities, and since we moved to zoo animals, I also created a set of matching cards for our Schleich toy figures (all Schleich images).  So far we’re only using the tiger, jaguar, alligator, hippopotamus, elephant and lion figures.

How to Teach the Anatomy of the Human Heart to Kids

** contains affiliate links **

Mavi was so excited about this.  He has always been so curious of the human heart and how it works. Because he reads some biographies, he would encounter terms like “died of heart attack” LOL and most probably triggered his curiosity and enthusiasm in learning about the heart.  So I worked hard to create learning materials for our study and I’m so happy that they turned out pretty good, and Mavi loves them!

Objectives on why we study the human heart:

Learn how the heart works

Learn why it is one of the most important organs in the body

Learn its functions

Learn how to avoid getting heart diseases

Learn how to maintain a healthy heart

Learning about the human heart might be too advanced for a 7 years old.  But Mavi was persistent, and because I created the materials suitable for his age (lots of graphic presentation) he was so engaged the entire time we talked about this important internal organ.  Another advantage of learning this at home is that I get to filter “complex” concepts.  This means, I set aside information that he can’t absorb yet and save it once he’s old enough to understand complex functions of the heart.

So let me share with you how we worked on our human heart.  Links to the materials used are provided at the end of this post, including where to buy heart models.

The Human Heart and its Parts

It’s always been a practice that we always start learning about different parts of our subject.  And in Mavi’s case, he learns and absorbs everything with the use of The Human Heart 3-part cards.  We’ve been using this technique since he was 3 years old and so far he’s used to learning this way.  The retention is great, he can remember the parts by working on these cards over and over again. 

Of course, having a heart model adds up to the fun in learning. It’s the closest we can get to visualize what the heart really looks like, unless we dissect a pig’s heart

Aside from the 3 part cards, we also used the definition booklet included in The Human Heart learning pack. It was so handy whenever I needed to describe each part, its function and how it works. We took turns in reading and discussing the parts. 

Afterwhich, Mavi worked on the activity sheets, also included the The Human Heart learning pack.  It’s basically making his own heart anatomy booklet (less the description).

How the Human Heart Works

This part was for Mavi to understand how the blood flows in and out of the heart.  To demonstrate how this works, we used our materials mentioned below, plus pipe cleaners to trace the flow of blood.

In this part, we used the materials The Human Heart learning pack and Cardiovascular System Information Diagrams to learn how the heart works.  I created the information diagrams to see how the blood flows in and out of the heart and the blood distribution to the rest of the body.

As you can see, we used pipe cleaners to demonstrate the blood flow in the left ventricle (blue pipe cleaners) and the red pipe cleaners for the right ventricle. 

So now, Mavi knows which part of the heart is responsible for distributing deoxygenated blood to the lungs and the part which distributes oxygenated blood to the rest of the body.

Heart Diseases

I just have to include this to answer Mavi’s question about “heart attack”. Included in my Cardiovascular System Information Diagrams, is a presentation of the different heart diseases. One of the main focus of our study is the coronary heart disease which is the main cause of a heart attack. Here, I pointed out which part of the heart is affected and how it is causing the problem.

Our model comes with arteries showing the progression of fatty residue that limits the flow of blood flow.  See how Mavi discovered that there’s not enough space for the blood to flow when the walls of the artery is covered with fats.

Now his question is, can he still eat fatty foods? Now that’s another story and will be included in my Circulatory System post next month.

By the way, if you wish to demonstrate this with your kids, you can either use a straw or a hose, tissue rolls can also be used, and for the fatty residue Playdoh would be best.

And that’s about it, our human heart study.  I hope you find this post helpful!

Materials Used:

• Cardiovascular System Bundle Pack, this is the bundle that includes Cardiovascular System Information Diagrams, The Human Heart learning pack, and The Cardiovascular System
• Cardiovascular System Information Diagrams
• The Human Heart
• The Cardiovascular System

Where to buy Heart Model (US):

• Tedco Human Heart Anatomy
• Learning Resources Human Heart Model
• Heart Conditions Model

Where to buy Heart Model (UK/Europe):

• Eason’s  (if not available online, visit the store)
• Hamley’s  (if not available online, visit the store)
• 4D Human Heart Anatomy
• Learning Resources Human Heart

I know you’ll be needing this for later, so here’s a pinnable image for you!

Please follow my Pinterest board for more ideas!

Learning Materials at 22 Months and {Learn & Play Link Up}

*** Contains affiliate links ***

A summary of learning materials for Vito this month:

TOP: feather color sorting using Galt Pop Up toy, parts of the body toddler edition, Duplo Baby Zoo

MIDDLE:  Alphabet puzzle by Hape, Letter e phonics sound and objects, zoo animal patterns

BOTTOM:  letter E craft, zoo animal tracks, Dear Zoo story telling

 

Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

Here are the featured activities for this week!

 

 

 

Fall Sensory Bin with Practical Life Activities from Living Montessori Now

Seashell Washing Practical Life Activity from Christian Montessori Network

Montessori Math Introduction to Toddler from Mama’s Happy Hive

Squiggle Monster Craft from There’s Just One Mommy

Hacks for travelling with Kids from Child Led Life

10 Crossing Midline Activities for Toddlers from Growing Hands-on Kids

 

Now it’s time for this week’s link party! This is a BRAND new link up for all blog posts that include learn and play activities and hands-on education for kids. We are excited to read your blog posts and to see what you have to share! Please link up below and grab our button to display on your blog.

If you are a blogger, share your family friendly posts here. We are looking for things which include:

• Montessori Education
• Homeschool
• Sensory Play
• Tot and Preschool Trays
• Fine and Gross Motor Activities
• Kids in the Kitchen
• Healthy Recipes for Kids
• Arts and Crafts
• Natural Living
• Free Educational Printables
• Family-Oriented Activities
• Healthy Living

Your post will be featured on each of our blogs where we will pick our favourite posts every other week. That means there is more of a chance that you will be featured!

Everyone, please meet our link party hosts:

Christian Montessori Blog ~ Please visit our CMN FB group ~ Pinterest

Vanessa from Mama’s Happy Hive~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jennifer from Study at Home Mama~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Marie from Child Led Life~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jae from Pinay Homeschooler~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Heather from Golden Reflections Blog~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Renae from Every Star is Different~FB~Pinterest

GUIDELINES FOR LINKING

• Please link up 1-3 posts
• Follow each of the hosts on social media
• When you link up, please add our button and place it at the bottom of your shared posts or link back with text link.
• By entering a link, you’re giving us permission to feature an image on our blogs. Proper credit & links will ALWAYS be given.
• Please visit a couple of shared posts and leave a comment for them
• Remember that you must link back in order to be featured

Grab This Button:

<div align="center"><a href="http://christianmontessorinetwork.com/category/learn-and-play" title="Christian Montessori Network"><img src="http://www.christianmontessorinetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/learn-and-play-link-up-150-150.png" alt="Christian Montessori Network" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

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Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Pinay Homeschooler on Pinterest.

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