The Nile River

Continuing our World History study, we read about the people of Egypt and the richness of the Nile River.  We pinpoint the location of the river in the map and how the civilization of the Egyptians started in this great river.

After reading Chapter 2 of the SOTW, we proceeded immediately with the mini-projects it suggested. One of which is creating a model of the Nile River.  We could have done this outside, but the weather has been really terrible this week so we made use of our art crafts at home and whatever we could find to make our model as close to the description of the river.

Below in the picture, Mavi using blue crepe paper for the river forming a delta going to the Mediterranean Sea.  Here we discussed what is a “delta”.  A good review of our landform lesson.

 

He added some playdough to plant our mini trees (from our front yard) and made pyramids out of LEGO bricks.

 

I added accent to his project by painting the base with green paint to represent some lush farmlands. And this completed his Nile River Project!

Next I will be sharing our map work and the first mummies :D

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Teeny Weeny Tot School

Vito’s activities were limited to a few because I was recovering from a flu and at the same time I was catching up on some chores.  Hopefully we’ll be doing something more meaning next week.

Lego Transfer

I’m allowing Vito to explore the bricks on his own.  We were supposed to do a Lego transfer activity but he couldn’t get it yet because he wasn’t paying attention. To him the bowl is more interesting rather than the bricks.

Finger Transfer

Again I used the yogurt and food colouring for this. He loves this activity!

 

And I have to capture his masterpiece on a piece of paper :)

Book of the Week:  Mr Brown Can Moo

We’ve been reading this book for days and Vito enjoys listening to my voice!  He’s so cute whenever he attempts to follow his Mom making the sounds in the book.  Then I would also show him the animal figures that are mentioned in the book.  Sorry no actual photos during the activity as I’m holding him and the book as well.

Ball Drop

This is such a simple activity with a homemade toy as I don’t want to splurge on kids’ commercial toys. I made a hole in a box of orange juice and would instruct him to drop the ball.  I would demonstrate and he attempts to follow but without success.  He can only hold the ball up to the top of the box but cannot make his little hands drop the ball. Awww. So cute!

                        

See the picture below? He’s attempting to drop it but couldn’t do it. He uses his mouth to catch the from dropping. So cute!

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Human Body Unit: The Internal Organs

The second week of our Science curriculum is all about the Human Body.  The first part of our study is the internal organs.  We’ve tackled this subject a couple of times now and below are the links of our previous studies:

• Introduction to Internal Organs
• Puzzles and Nomenclature Cards
• Different Internal Organs (Modelling using PlayDoh)

History: Earliest People

Here are the activities for the first chapter of the Story of the World Vol 1 Earliest People.  (Based on the Activity Book Vol 1) [Affiliate link]

Map and Activity Sheets 

I took a photo of Mavi’s interpretation of the nomads living inside a tent and with a campfire.

 

Cave Painting

The book also suggests that you try cave painting (pretend) as a means of communication or recording of events. 

LEGO Project

As much as possible to we love to incorporate LEGO in our work. So here we made Jericho, the first city… just as the book described it.

 

Jericho, the First City in LEGO Bricks

After reading the first chapter of The Story of the World Vol 1, Mavi created this. This is how he interprets Jericho, the first city built by the earliest people (nomads) who became farmers in the Fertile Crescent. 

“Soon, farmers discovered that it was best to build houses close together so they could help each other to water and tend their fields. These were the first villages.”

 

“Because they were afraid that they may be attacked and robbed by bandits, they built stone walls around their villages. These were the first cities.”

I will post the rest of the activities we did in line with the SOTW Earliest People.

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History and Geography

Teeny Weeny Tot School

Vito is 10 months.

I decided to start sharing what Vito has been doing.  He just can’t stop moving, the main reason why I would hesitate to take his pictures.  Major milestones as of the moment (1) he starts to walk (2) he can say “mama” and “dy” (3) and can follow certain hand gestures/signs. 

Here’s Vito practicing how to remove the disk from the pole.  He couldn’t figure it out yet so he would just turn the pole into different directions so the disk will come out. And once they’re out he would line them up on one side. 

Here, I’m showing him how to stack the disk.  All he could ever do is how to remove the disk from the stack LOL.

 

Open and Close.  He’s practicing how to open the container and closing it.  To encourage Vito, I place a horse figure so he can try to take it out from the container.

 

We’ve been reading books for months, so he knows how to navigate through the pages of the books.  This is a good practice for the pincer grasp as well.

 

He talks a lot when he holds a book and loves to point at the pictures!

Duplo Transfer.  An unsuccessful activity LOL. He’s move interested on the bowl rather than the Duplo.  We’ll try this again though, using different materials this time.

  

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REVIEW: Sink and Float Experiment using LEGO

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!