The Planets and The Solar System (Part I)

Hello everyone! I'm back! Sorry for my absence as my time was eaten by chores and errands for the past few days. 

We're been doing a lot of Space and Astronomy activities lately and I wanted to share with you some of our activities.  We started off by reviewing the planets in the Solar System. The cards seen on the picture were from Usborne and while we identify the planets Mavi tried creating models using his plasticine.

(You can check this link to view our past activities)

We also play a game "guess the planet". I adapted this game from the toy which he received last Christmas.  He loves this game! 

I also took out our nomenclature cards and he worked on it as well.  For the link of the file, please click here or the image below.

On a separate day, Mavi tried using playdough to create another set of model planets.

I have to say the second batch look better :)

And just like the project that we did with the Phases of the Moon, Mavi wanted to decorate his room with planets too. And instead of simply painting them on a cardboard, we made a similar approach to this one.

I cut out circles for our planets and covered them with aluminum foil. We color the planets using Sharpies. 

  

And look how they turned out! They are so colorful and looks festive!  I love how it glittered on a black background!

Next step is to plot them into the "space", but since they're still a little bit wet we'll continue the rest of the work by tomorrow.  We'll identify the inner and outer planets, add some asteroids and stars and add labels as well.

           

And there you go!  Ideas for your planets and solar system.  I will share with you how this decor turned out once we're done. 

Happy Monday to all!

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
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Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Natural Homeschool's Montessori Linky

The Short Bead Chain (Squaring Chains)

I've been searching high and low for affordable bead squares here but unfortunately, there's none.  So I decided to make my own square chains using our decanomial beads.  Supposedly, I'm going to form them using connectors like suitable tie wire but again, none is available. 

So what I did here was to use the ever reliable contact paper. It was tricky though.  What I did was lay the beads flat on the table, attach a strip of contact paper and then I carefully turn them on the other side to completely cover the other side of the beads with the rest of the contact paper.

And this is how they turned out!  So far so good :) 

Surprisingly, they were sturdy LOL.

 

Here, I am presenting to Mavi how to identify the square of a number (because they will form a square).  He's more interested in the skip counting rather than identifying the square of a number.

 

The next time we tried, we worked on squares of 1 to 5 and we use the bead chain paper we got from Montessori Print Shop (free) to record the square of the numbers.

This is a good introduction for skip counting and a wonderful visual exercise for squaring.  But for now, we'll just proceed with the skip counting disregarding the squares as Mavi isn't interested on it yet.

Happy counting!

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Natural Homeschool's Montessori Linky

Phases of the Moon

It's my son's midterm break and I'm happy that we could do lots of activities now that he's at home the entire week.  Aside from the Internal Organs which we had earlier this month, we will also have lessons on Space and Astronomy.

Here are the activities we've been doing so far:

A Model of the Moon Phases.  We painted the phases for this year instead of using our felt moons :) 

 

He arranged the phases using the cards that we have and  a picture that we saw in Google.

 

 

And here's the finish product.  This artwork is now in his room.  He would refer to this at night whenever he checks for the phase the of the moon.

 

Observe and Describe. I also printed out this Moon Phases Mini-Book from Scholastic (please click the image below for the link of the file).  Here Mavi gets to describe the different phases.  I love how he can use one single word to describe the moon.

Moon Phase Calendar.  Every night we're checking out the moon and record it in the calendar which I made. If you are interested I made a generic calendar which you can use.  Just click on the image below for the link.

This recording will allow Mavi to learn how it all works!

 

Below is our reference.  We check this image (from Google) if the ones we are seeing is the same as the ones recorded in the internet :)

Here's a link to all astronomy related activities that we have done so far.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Natural Homeschool's Montessori Linky

Space and Astronomy Unit

We've been watching too much alien movies (animation) that Mavi begins to show a lot of interest in planets and the solar system once again.  This month we're doing the Moon and Solar System once again. 

You can read past astronomy themed activities here.

I also made printable materials to go along with our study.  It include planets and the astronomy cards all in one file.

And you might be interested... I made cute printable for preschoolers! Oh I can't wait to use this to my little one!  It's a 40 pages file which includes the following:

(Click the image for the link)

• Beginning sound word cards
• Matching activity that consist of control cards, picture cards and labels
• Memory Game Cards
• Word cards for reading and spelling (or practice writing)
• 1– 10 Counting Cards
• Number Cards
• Patterning activities
• Sizing/Sorting Size/Ordering
• Color Matching
• Shape Matching
• Upper and lowercase letter matching

Right now, we're making a small painting project of the Moon's phases and before the week ends, we'll be doing more moon-related activities.  I'll be sharing these activities once we're done.

Thank you so much and have a nice day!

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.