ASIA in a Nutshell

One of the most interesting continents to look into is Asia.  Oh yes! It is the biggest continent and with some of the most interesting countries like China, India, and Russia!  Now if you want to explore this wonderful continent in your class or home, checkout my ASIA in a Nutshell learning material.

What’s included?

Artist Study ~ Leonardo da Vinci (Making Portraits)

I am rebooting our Artist Study and we’re starting with portraits.  Now this project was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. See our previous activities with Leonardo da Vinci here.

To know more about this genius artist and for inspiration, we first examine his life. We used this amazing book from the library, Levelled Biographies: Leonardo da Vinci[aff. link].  We enjoyed the book, and Mavi loved learning about Leonardo, not just as an artist but as a scientist as well. The book is appropriate for kids as it has a simple way of telling a biography and has lots of pictures in it.

Aside from learning about Leonardo, we also talked about portraits. I showed Mavi random samples in the web.  Then I took some photos of him outdoor to demonstrate what’s the difference between a portrait and an ordinary picture.  (You can also do this with your kids!) After which, we started making our portraits.  We used the DSS lesson for  the tutorial and some inspirations.

To create portraits, we used two mediums:  oil pastel and tempera paint.  Mavi wanted to use oil pastels (I never liked them!) as this is what they mostly use in school. So I guess he’s quite confident with it.

As you can see I also tried creating my portrait using the pastel but the black which I used for the outline started to mess with my peach coloured face! I just have to stop because my portrait is starting to look messy.

Now this is Mavi’s portrait made from oil pastel. He’s so happy with his work :D 

Second try, we used tempera paints.  I like using paints! Easier to handle and less messy. 

And this is our finished product :) 

Tempera paints, oil pastels and other art materials can be purchased through Amazon, Target or any craft store available.

Mavi pointed out he doesn’t know how to make a nose and a mouth … so we’ll he'll be practising more.

Now this is an activity that you can easily do with your kids.  You can use any medium available, pencil, crayons or watercolour.  Discuss what is a portrait and what do they imagine to be in that portrait.  You can also talk about the back of your portrait, whether they wanted to be indoor or in the park, under the sun, the beach etc.

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Book Review: Grandfather’s Journey

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From Amazon: “Lyrical, breathtaking, splendid—words used to describe Allen Say’s Grandfather’s Journey when it was first published. At once deeply personal yet expressing universally held emotions, this tale of one man’s love for two countries and his constant desire to be in both places captured readers’ attention and hearts. Winner of the 1994 Caldecott Medal, it remains as historically relevant and emotionally engaging as ever.” 

I was forced to read this book because this is the first book in the FIAR list that’s in our possession.  Forced in a sense that, it doesn’t look interesting at all. The cover is lousy, with dull colours and doesn’t look like a children’s book at all.

But oh boy, I was wrong. It is true indeed that you should not judge the book by its cover.  Once Mavi opened the book and started reading, we were glued!  The story is so simple, yet it touched our hearts.  Mavi and I immediately fell in love with story as we see ourselves in the character.  We are expats, and we both love two countries.  There’s depth and emotions in the story.  After reading this book, we were so overwhelmed with emotions that we began missing the Philippines.

A very good book for kids.  The book has large pictures with easy to read texts.  I love the simplicity of it and how easily a child can read this.  Now I understand why it received a Caldecott Medal :) 

This book can also be purchased at Book Depository (free shipping!).  Seen in the picture: Japan flag using LEGO, transport counters from Learning Resources and a bird origami. 

Now listen to my 6 years old son, narrating the story:

Language Learning Materials for Toddlers (with FREE Alphabet Reading Booklet)

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This month in 12 Months of Montessori Series I am featuring Vito’s language shelf.  I didn’t have this opportunity with Mavi.  During his time, I was not prepared and most of these resources are not available.  So I decided that if ever I will have a second child, I want to be a bit organized with our homeschool process.

 

As you all know, Vito has been showing so much progress in his fine and gross motor skills.  Not to mention that he is everywhere in the house, trying to emulate our actions, communicates with us  using his own language and communicates verbally (as if he understands what he’s saying).  This  language shelf that I assembled for him will feed his “sensitive years”, his interest in communicating and in the area of language.

 

Here are some tips and ideas on how to start your own language shelf.

Book/s Basket

Read books to your kids.

We read endlessly.   We may not do Montessori works all the time, but we are religious in reading books. 

What books do I need to buy?  Board books are perfect for little ones who love to mouth objects.  I started with picture books for both boys. I got these from Book Depository and they were the same books I used with Mavi.  Read my review here.   Picture books are good for object recognition, especially if you read these books to your kids everyday.  You don’t have to read everything.  One at a time… baby steps as they say.

When Vito was still a baby, we do one book in the morning and one at night.  Now that his attention span is longer, we read 3 books during daytime and 1 at night.  I put the books in this wooden box and place it on the shelf.  As you can see, little Vito can’t wait to get his books while Mommy do some photo-ops.  Can you guess what he wanted to read here?

Look for books that have bright colours and large pictures like this My First Numbers  and My First Colors book series. These are good books for introducing colours and counting.   Oh and yes, as much as possible use books that use realistic pictures! These are for younger ones of course. Study shows that 18 month old toddlers learn more in coloured photos than in coloured drawings.

For younger kids that might show no interest, try books that have manipulatives to get their attention. Like the flip flap books of Spot series (Amazon or Book Depository).  Vito loves these two! Or those that create sounds like Mr Brown Can Moo, Vito enjoys hearing me make sounds as well. So he keeps on pointing to the pages so I will make a sound.And once reading becomes a habit in your home, try reading books that tell beautiful stories (short stories)  and with less text per page, with bright colourful images.  Point to the text as you read and point to pictures, so they’ll associate it with one another.  These are Vito’s favourites so far.

Vito’s favourite books (in the picture):

• That’s not my tractor
• That’s not my frog
• Counting Kisses
• Mr. Brown Can Moo
• Goodnight Moon
• Brown Bear What Do You See?

Colour Basket

These are the contents of our colour basket.  We do one colour basket per week, and rotate. You don’t need toys to have these.  Think of socks, plastic container, shirts, books, handkerchief, plastic bowls, spoon and fork etc. By looking around your house you will be surprised of what you can assemble!

Am not really sure about including this here because in Montessori, colour is usually in Sensorial.  But in our home and in my approach here, I used it as of the moment for language.  I want Vito to learn his shapes and colours ASAP.  This is the reason why I included a colour basket in our language as we use this basket almost every day during play time.

My aim here is to reinforce the names of the colours and for Vito to recognize them.  What I do here is I would place it in the floor for us to play around and explore.  I will pick one object, describe it by saying “red feather”. I will pass it to him so he can touch and feel it (or play with it if he wishes). We’ve worked with red, yellow, blue and green so far.  I have no plans of introducing orange and purple yet.  Just like the books, we rotate this basket.

I will quote this from Montessori from the Start “…repetition is the key to the learning process at all ages.  Rotation, not substitution, is the answer to the process of habituation to objects. ”  It goes to say that you don’t need to buy “more” objects (substitution) but rather rotate the resources that you have.

Letter Sound Basket for the Week

This has been a popular approach, introducing letter sounds using objects. I introduced this to Mavi when he was 2 years old but at that time he already knows all about the letters and the sounds.  My aim during his time was to use the objects in learning how to read.

I’ve been introducing Vito to the alphabets since the beginning of the month through books, wall poster and singing the Alphabet Song.  He loves pointing at the letters as I sing them.  I prepared this basket so we can explore the letter, and its sound using the objects. Since Vito is only 16 months, I only have 3 objects for each letter and a booklet.  This is a letter sound booklet which has realistic pictures and a label.  This is similar to the booklet by Itsy Bitsy Books, but I wanted to use real pictures so I made one for myself.  Now if you are interested with my file, you can download it for FREE here.  On how to assemble the booklet… follow the instructions here. 

So what’s in the basket?

A – apple, alligator (Schleich), ambulance

B – banana, book, block

C – cow, carrot, car

Now what about small letters? I wanted to use small letters but I can’t find a foam letter that’s sturdy.  I used bath foam letters from Munchkins.  These were Mavi’s.  When Vito is old enough, I can add up all our objects here and add small and big letters (Melissa and Doug).

I know some of you are not able to assemble these because of limitations (in resource and space). Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have enough “materials” at home.  Look around your house, and you will be surprised that you have more than enough to present to your kids. The reason why I use fruits and vegetables is due to the fact that Vito usually eats and encounter these objects everyday.   All you needed actually is the principle behind it.  Teach through play, use objects around your house for your kids to explore, and read books!  Try thrift shops for books if they are not available in the library, or Amazon, or Book Depository (lesser price and they ship for free!)

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This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.
 

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now

The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama's Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Child Led Life

Every Star Is Different ~ Grace and Green Pastures ~ The Pinay Homeschooler

MEGA Collection of BOTANY Unit Studies

Finally, I compiled all our botany lessons in one post. It’s easier to make it as a reference in the future and to you dear readers as well! These are the activities we have done for the past years, when Mavi was still in preschool.  I hope you find all of these helpful in your own homeschool journey.  Just click any of the links below, to direct you to the specific post.

(In no specific order)

• Learning about flowers. This is THE FIRST TIME we dissected a flower and Mavi had a fabulous time learning about the parts!
• The Tree. Our FIRST LESSON ON TREES and comes with a DIY tree felt puzzle
• Parts of a plant. Mavi was only 2 years old here when we study the different parts of a plant using nomenclature cards.  Was he bored? No!! He had fun looking for the different parts in grandma’s garden.
• Fruits and Vegetables Unit
• The Bean Seed. Identify the parts of a bean seed and observed how they sprout.
• The Plant. Mavi was attending Montessori preschool and brought home his plants.  We review the parts of a plant using a real  one at home. 
• Looking into Trees and Leaves.  We matched leaf shapes, create trees in different seasons and identify the parts of the leaf/tree.
• The Plant Life Cycle (Photosynthesis).  We did a little experiment on how water travels through the plants.
• Tree Shapes. Yes! Trees have different form and shapes.  We worked on this outdoors and identified the shapes of the trees in our yard. How fun!
• The Poinsettia.  Seasonal lesson, especially during Christmas.
• Leaf Shapes.  Montessori-inspired activities. We collected leaves in the park and matched our collection to the leaf shapes nomenclature card.
• Inside of a fruit.  Making fruit prints!
• Life Cycle of an Apple.  Lots of crafting!
• All about flowers [1] and [2].  We usually study flowers in springtime.  Here we looked into the different parts by dissecting a flower, collected flowers in the yard and used it as a paint brush.. and more outdoor flower observation.
• Flower DIY foam puzzle.
• Parts of an apple and tomato.  Yes, we dissected these!

 

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Toddler Beginnings 06

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Aside from endlessly reading books, I added farm animal basket for him to explore as he is showing interest on them now (he just used to mouth them!).  You can get these animals from Amazon, Schleich, Symths Toys or Safari Toob.  Mine was from Amazon UK .  The picture book (Baby’s First) on the other hand was from Book Depository, and again you can get them from Amazon.  I love that these animals are big!  They are easily to grasp and play with.

I’ve seen these animals at Marks and Spencers as well, and you can get them from Hamley’s too.

                    

  I am making use of our Learning Resources Critters Counters from Amazon.  Since Vito loves putting small objects into small spaces, this is what I put up.  Oh don’t worry, that empty tub of Pringles is mine!

See how I placed the tub in the floor and the counters on the table? That’s for Vito to bend, good practice for gross motor skills ey?

                       

Oh those tiny fingers!  He would complain whenever the counter will not fit.  Oh, they do fit sweetheart, you just have to push it a little bit harder LOL.  I’m showing him how to push it more… though at times he still couldn’t get the idea.

Scribbling, we do this mostly in the afternoon when I’m sitting down resting.  I got him this My First Crayola Jumbo Pens from Amazon. 

And this, Melissa and Doug jumbo puzzle from Amazon again (don’t well love Amazon).  He loves taking away all the animal pieces, and putting them in the basket LOL.

Oh yes, don’t forget to check our St. Patricks’ Day activities! 

No formal musical instruments here.  Just more on singing songs, dancing and making music with our body!

We were blessed with a beautiful weather last Sunday.  And you know me, I don’t love staying at home when Mr. Sun is out. So here we are… even if it is still a little bit cold. 

More tot series here!

Introducing Picture Graphs

One of the most important topics which I find very useful when I was in the university and as a professional for some time was picture graphs.  As an engineer, we always looked at statistics, comparing data and interpret them to come up with a solution to a problem.

Now, this is where our picture graph lesson comes in. I introduced this to Mavi because of my experience, and of how useful this in real life.

There are a lot of ways to come up with data collection activities and interpreting the output using picture graphs.  Here I will show you how we did it at home in two ways.

Roll a Dice

Roll the dice a number of times (depends on you) and record the how many instances the number appears.  Discuss the graph to your child.

Link Cubes in a Bag

I placed the equal number of link cubes in the bag, Mavi and I have to pick up a cube one at a time.  We then have to put an X or mark the chart when a certain colour appears.

In each activity, try to describe your graph and ask questions like:

1. Which link cube did you pick the most?
2. Which link cube did you pick the least?

Another suggestion is that, you can create a WEATHER CHART.  Let your child record the weather, if it’s sunny, rainy or cloudy.  We were supposed to do this, but you know in Ireland… it is always RAINING… so this idea will not actually work for us :D

So there you go!  This is a very very easy activity to prepare. Use anything that you see in the kitchen, no need for printables… just create the chart in a piece of paper and that’s it!  Enjoy the activity and goodluck!

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