St. Patrick’s Day Activities for 28 Months Toddler
Monday, February 29, 2016
Vito is 28 months old.
St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner and we are excited to watch the parade in the city this year! To introduce Ireland’s big celebration to Vito, I prepared a bunch of work trays for him this month as he turns 28 months old. I featured 9 activities here but in reality we’re doing so much more, so I’ll just update the blog of our other activities that are not included here.
Montessori Color Box #2 Activity for Toddlers
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Mavi is 26 months.
I recently purchased the Montessori Color Box #2 for Vito. I have a few Montessori sensorial materials that Mavi didn’t really find interesting and I was expecting Vito to have the same reaction to the color tablets. But, I was wrong. The moment I took it out, it was an instant hit! I was thinking all along that he doesn’t know his colors, but surprisingly he knows them by heart already! He can match them perfectly but naming them is a hit or miss. He still calls them mostly “yellow” LOL.
As of the moment, I only introduced 4 colors to Vito: yellow, red, blue and green. Lately, he can identify orange, that’s because we kept on eating clementines and I refer to it as orange! So the color tablets are actually for “formal” presentation of secondary and tertiary colors (well, that’s my plan).
FREE Life Cycle Matching Cards
Saturday, November 28, 2015
I have a bunch of life cycle figures which my Aunt brought from the US a few months ago. I did not really intend to introduce them yet to Vito as he is too young. But I observed that he’s into matching activities these days, so I managed to create matching cards for all of my life cycles. Wow, he definitely surprised me! He worked on all of these in one day and always picked these for his activity everyday!
Our Favourite Toys for 2 to 7 Years Old
Thursday, November 26, 2015
**Contains affiliate links**
“As parents and grandparents, we think that we are showing children we love them by giving them things. In fact such practice, in and out of itself, may send them the wrong message. Children may conclude that if people give you things, they love you. If receiving things tells you that you are loved, the next logical step is to measure self-worth by what you have, not by what you are. The reality is that very young children can only truly love one doll, one stuffed animal, and a few toys at a time. This experience provides a basis for adult life where one must learn to cherish one spouse, one family, one life, instead of fantasizing that it is possible to ‘have it all’.” - MONTESSORI FROM THE START
We don’t have a lot of toys at home. Mavi just like two kinds of toys: LEGO and dinosaur/animal figures, that’s just it. All through the years, I don’t splurge nor buy toys as we don’t have the budget for it. I consider them as luxury so I just gave toys to Mavi as presents on his birthday and Christmas. But because we “home” school, I purchase learning materials that my kids see as “toys” but in reality they are NOT really toys. And because I am frugal, I buy toys that they can grow with, MULTIPURPOSE and something that they can play together. So let me share with you the kids’ favourite things in the house. These are the toys that we have in the house, except for the ones in my “wishlist and basket”. These toys are being played day in and day out by the boys.
NOTE: ALWAYS SUPERVISE YOUNGER CHILDREN WHEN USING ANY OF THESE TOYS. Do not leave them unattended.
FAVOURITE TOYS
LEGO, DUPLO and PLAYMOBIL. Need I say more? These are the favourite in the house. We have plenty of LEGOs as this is Santa’s favourite present EVERY Christmas for 4 years! And Vito’s Duplo and Playmobil were brought from the local store when they were on 50% off. I would never get them for a whole price! Vito is now snapping bricks together and loves the Playmobil people. Both of my boys spend hours and hours playing with these toys. They never get tired of them. Perfect toy for creativity, concentration and developing fine motor skills!
For Playmobils, we have castles and pirates. They’re Mavi’s favourite toy and can play with them for hours!
My son loves the LEGO CLASSIC Bricks. He doesn’t really like those with premade designs as he always wanted to design his own thing. So I highly recommend that you buy the basic LEGO BRICKS especially if you are getting your first Lego. Having a plate is also good.
miniLUK and BambiniLUK. Mavi and I looooves this! We can’t get enough of answering all the booklets, especially those tricky ones! I bought the Starter Pack and bought the advanced booklets separately. There’s a version for younger kids, the BambiniLUK and some friend in Instagram said that they like it. Mavi is like “Mom, its making my brain tired LOL”
Montessori Botany and Zoology/Insect Puzzles, Montessori Puzzle Maps. I invested on these this year and it was worth it! I have puzzle loving kids, and Vito is currently addicted to them. Aside from educational, these puzzles are also perfect for pincer grasp practice. Mavi on the other hand is obsessed with my Asia and Europe puzzles. He loves geography, loves to learn about countries and their locations. Tower High Learning is my favourite Montessori shop as of the moment and this is where I purchase my materials.
Schliech Animal Figures and Safari Toobs are also an all time favourite in the house. The uses of these figures include imaginative play, learning about animals, habitat play, exploring landmarks and just about anything! You see these mostly in my post! When Vito was younger, I made him use Schleich animal figures because they are bigger but now that he has overcome his mouthing, he uses both Schleich and Safari Toob. Mavi is obsessed with dinosaurs, and he uses them now as characters for his homemade videos LOL. Now he uses both types for play and learning.
Hape Uppercase, Lowercase and Number Puzzles. With Mavi, I used the Melissa and Doug Magnetic letters (I still have them) and they were really really loved. Now the problem is Vito mouths things and I made Vito use it, the sticker of the letters were removed. So I looked for an alternative alphabet toys for us to use and I discovered these amazing puzzles from Hape. They are WORTH-IT! We love using them in anything, from learning letters, puzzles to stacking! Yes, Vito loves to stack these together! We also use it to sort out colors! Multi-purpose indeed! But if you have older kids, Melissa and Doug Magnetic Letters are as good as well.
Because I love to cook (Asian and Italian), the boys also love to pretend cooking with me using these Melissa and Doug cooking toys. They can play for hours with these!
M-cro Maxi Scooter. And I just have to include this!! Because they play with this scooter in and out of the house! Mavi uses this to school and Vito uses this indoor for scooting practice. I love that it is sturdy and kids can easily balance!
And of course, nothing beats classic toys like balls, cars and PlayDoh! My boys wouldn’t complain if they receive any of these this Christmas.
WISHLIST
Magnatiles. Rave reviews everywhere but I just couldn’t bring myself to purchase these tiles or can’t even justify it Maybe when they’re 50% off I would probably get one for the boys!
Unit Block. I know that the boys will love this as well. They can build and create so many things with this but the price is just too much for me. I still have to think about this a million times.
Beleduc Puzzles. My puzzle loving kids will love these puzzle series, especially the Your Body Layer puzzles!
Learning about Reptiles: Snakes
Monday, November 2, 2015
If you are in the UK or Ireland, you must have heard of Steve Backshall and his animal shows like the Deadly 60. Mavi is obsessed with Steve, due to his witty and pleasant hosting of the show. You can learn about it here. Now, going back, he’s been featuring reptiles lately, mostly how dinosaurs evolved into crocodiles, birds, snakes etc.
What are Reptiles? We learned from our previous study of the Vertebrate animals that REPTILES have a covering of bony plates or scales. They vary in sizes and shapes and include forms like snakes, alligators, crocodiles, turtles and lizards. Reptiles make their homes in great variety of places .
In this post, I will be focusing on snakes, as Mavi and I had a brief discussion about them a few days ago. This is the book we’ve got of Steve Backshall and we used it as a reference. We had a few snake figures from Safari Ltd Reptiles TOOB .
Books. These are the books of Steve Backshall we borrowed from the library. Youcan check them out here:Steve Backshall's Deadly 60
Characteristics of Snakes (things we learned):
Life Cycle of a Snake
This life cycle material is for FREE and you can download it from my SCIENCE PRINTABLE PAGE.
So we looked into the process of how snakes give birth. We also learned that NOT ALL SNAKES GIVE BIRTH BY PRODUCING EGGS. ANACONDAs give birth to their young!
Snakes Around the World
So I gathered a list of snakes and we looked at them over the internet. I didn’t produce any printable file as the images are all copyrighted. But I provided the link below on where you can find them, and see how they look like or learn about their habitats.
- Ribbon Snake [wiki]
- Coral Snake [wiki]
- Rubber Boa [link]
- Rough Green Snake [link]
- Timber Rattler [link]
- Desert Gopher Snake [link]
- Ring Necked Snake [link]
- Sidewinder or Horned Rattlesnake [link]
- Pike Headed Tree Snake [link]
- Pilot Black Snake [link]
- Copperhead Snake [link]
- Southern Hognose Snake [link]
- California Lyre Snake [link]
- Water Moccasin [link]
- Gray Pilot Snake [link]
You might also be interested in these amazing Snake Units:
FREE Insect Habitats Learning Material
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Complete Guide to Insect Study for Grade-Schoolers
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
- The World of Arthropods Part One
- The world of Arthropods Part Two
- FREE Arthropods Chart
- Insect Activities for Preschooler
- Life Cycle of a Butterfly for Preschoolers
- Grasshoppers
- Parts of a Ladybird
- Life Cycle of a Ladybug
If you need some learning materials about insects you can also buy the following from my printable shop:
The Arthropods Learning Pack
The Insect
The Ant
The Grasshopper
The Dragonfly
This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.