Sifting and Discovering Gems!

This is one activity my son truly enjoyed :)  We never had "practical life" activities for quite a while and I was thinking to re-introduce some of it.

                

For this activity, I poured some flour on a bowl and added some gemstones we got from a recent trip to a leisure park.  Then I gave him a sifter to uncover all those precious gems!

                

And it is also a good practice in math! Try counting how many gems you discovered :) 

You can also use sand instead of flour and beads, letters, numbers or objects instead of the gems.

Try it! You're kids will looove it!

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner

Bird Study Part II

Sharing with you the conclusion of our Bird Study Unit which we started a last week. 

You can read about the first part here.

Activities related to our study can be found here and here.

Bird's Beak.  Now this is a new activity which we didn't touch last year.  It was way advance for a 3 yrs old but now that my son can grasp complex information, I decided to introduce this to him.  I got the picture from The Visual Dictionary, it shows some of the different sizes and shapes of a bird's beak.  Based on what we have learned from our Bird Parts Definition booklet (Bird Pack), the beak or bill is used mostly for grooming, protection and how birds catch and eat their food.  Some  are long so they can catch foods in the water, some are short because they mainly eat soft fruits and some can be sharp as they are used to hunt other birds and animals.

So we used our bird figures again to examine the different beaks.  These figures are from Safari Toob and Schleich... I have been collecting them for years as my son loves animals and they're learning materials.

Bird's Feet.  We also talked about the different shapes of a bird's foot.  They are designed to be different are birds live in different habitats. Like birds living in water have webbed feet for swimming, those living in trees have sharp claws etc.  Again, I printed out the picture seen below from here.

I also used this information in our discussion. You can get this from Science Buddies.

Next, we talked about different types of birds.  The picture cards (nomenclature cards) are included in my Bird Pack which you can get from here.  We talked about the unique features and characteristics of each.

This is how we differentiate each one (see picture below).  By using a printable bird facts, we were able to learn how each one differs from another. 

You can download this file for FREE from here.

I love how my son is eager to learn about these birds! 

 

Bird's Nest.  We were supposed to make a nest out of twigs and leaves in the backyard.   But it rained for days and I had a flu bug, so we ended up making some nest indoors LOL.  

               

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner

Weekend at the Park

We were blessed with a wonderful weather last weekend so we decided to visited a leisure park for rest and recreation :) 

First thing we did was of course visit the animals, as my son looooves animals!  We were so happy to see them all out in the open and were eager to entertain the kids.  I was glad that we get to see most of the birds from our Bird Study Unit I.  Rhea, Emu, Turkey, Chickens, Peacocks, Stork etc.  And surprisingly, there were lots of farm and zoo animals as well.

 

Oh and these are Bisons!! My first encounter with them.... such beautiful creatures!

 

When we're done with the animals, we proceeded to the activity  area the little boy to have some fun.  And look who's not scared of the Air Jump!

  

And the highlight of the trip was the pony ride :)  His teacher told me he can't stop talking about it in school LOL.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner

Bird Watching!

Oh the weather is just so wonderful today that we decided to skip indoor activities (read our Bird Study Part I)  and do some bird watching and look for some bird's nests :)

 

And look what we found along the way, feathers! 

Hoping to visit the port this weekend so we can see some gulls too!

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner