Human Body Unit: The Skeletal System
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
FREE Teeth Development Nomenclature Cards
Monday, October 20, 2014
This week we will explore on how teeth grow. I made the cards so we can look into the permanent set and discuss the functions of each. Download the file by clicking the image below.
Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board The Human Body on Pinterest.Linking to:
Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Share It Saturday
The Natural Homeschool
Color Gradient Painting
Sunday, October 19, 2014
We try to have an art class every Friday as what I indicated in our October Calendar. I bought new sets of paint last week, they’re 80% organic, non-toxic, water washable and doesn’t have the strong smell like that of Crayola. So my son had a renew interest in painting and he’s been doing it randomly not just during Friday.
This idea was from a picture I saw in my Facebook newsfeed and I wanted to try it with Mavi, teaching him the colour progression… from light to dark or the other way around.
He picked the primary colours and the green. We added 3 drops of white paint each time we lighten the colours. Son totally enjoyed this activity! He especially loves the part wherein we changes the shade of the colour and he gets excited to see the effect.
So here’s Mavi’s work and mine. I didn’t get to finish my work as I ended up assisting him in his colour mixtures.
As an extra work, he ended up mixing the primary colours…. to produce secondary colours so he can paint a rainbow. A few years ago we had colour mixing activities, you can pay it a visit as it became really popular and was featured in other blogs as well.
I’m so happy of his renewed interest! And with the new paints, I can allow him to do lots of art works without worrying of the strong paint smell :D
Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Art and Crafty Inspirations on Pinterest.Tally and Finger Counting Cards
Friday, October 17, 2014
I mentioned in Facebook that this activity (one to one correspondence) of numbers is one of my son’s favourite works. Here, we used the number symbol cards, Montessori beads, counting finger cards, dot cards, number words and bear counters.
You can get the number cards, tally and finger counting cards from this post of Linton Academy. The number dots were made by yours truly. Unfortunately, I lost the file and couldn’t retrieve it. But this is so easy to do. The number words were homemade as well (handwritten).
Enjoy!
More Math activities in my Pinterest Board Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Math Ideas on Pinterest.Linking to:
Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Share It Saturday
The Natural Homeschool
The Nile River
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
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
Linking to:
Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Share It Saturday
The Natural Homeschool
Teeny Weeny Tot School
Monday, October 13, 2014
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!
Linking to:
Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Share It Saturday
The Natural Homeschool
Human Body Unit: The Internal Organs
Sunday, October 12, 2014
- Introduction to Internal Organs
- Puzzles and Nomenclature Cards
- Different Internal Organs (Modelling using PlayDoh)
History: Earliest People
Saturday, October 11, 2014
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
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
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.
Linking to:
Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Share It Saturday
The Natural Homeschool
History and Geography
Teeny Weeny Tot School
Thursday, October 2, 2014
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.
Linking to:
REVIEW: Sink and Float Experiment using LEGO
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
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!
Language and History Books
My books from Book Depository arrived yesterday. We were able to work on some grammar lessons using First Language Lessons Vol 1. I have heard good reviews about this book (and the series) so I’m giving it a try. The tools used in the book are memory work, copywork, narration and grammar (leading to a Charlotte Mason’s principles). I observed the A LOT of repetitions though. But that’s fine with me. I have nothing against that technique worked for me, especially with mathematics. In case its too much for my son to handle I’ll just skip some pages LOL.
For our history, I got The Story of the World Vol 1. I love world history and I can’t wait to use this with Mavi. I bought a hardcopy of the book but purchased a PDF version of the activity book so I can reuse it with Vito.
Will update more on this as we progress. Happy Wednesday!
Teaching Addition within 10
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Here’s a little recap of what Mavi has learned of our Math lessons for the past weeks. And the best part of it is that Mavi has learned how to do mental calculations! Yehey! I’m so happy that he has discovered this all by himself. He’s like “I’m using my brains to count Mom”.
We are using Singapore Math workbooks, and we use manipulates as well. Read here if you want to know how we integrated workbooks and manipulatives. We’ve been using manipulatives for some time (Montessori and other learning materials) and now that he is older, we’re going to use less of these.
Anyway, here’s what he has learned so far:
Ways to Add
- Number Bonds. We’ve studied number bonds before so it was easy for Mavi to apply his knowledge once we’ve touched Addition. You can also get a free NUMBER BOND ACTIVITY SHEETS by clicking this link.
- By counting on from the greater number. This is something new for Mavi. I told him it’s a trick that he can use to add numbers. He liked it and he’s been using it ever since.
Making Addition Stories
Another part of the lesson that Mavi really really love doing was making stories! Favourite characters in his stories were his classmates and the dinosaurs lol. This is an introductory part for problem solving which we will be doing as we progress.
Next would be subraction. I wonder if he will like it in the same way he did in addition.
Life Cycle: Organisms
Saturday, September 27, 2014
We started our Organisms Unit early this week and it was a joy Mavi had a great time learning about the living organisms and the different forms of life. I like that we will only have a few activities here. Focus on the quality, making sure that the child truly understands the concept behind the activity.
The key concept of this unit is for the child to learn that there are other organisms besides human and animals. That these organisms thrive and reproduce for survival. The following are the activities that we performed for the unit:
LIVING AND NON-LIVING
Objectives: To be able to sort the living and the non-living objects.
Task:
- Describe the characteristics that makes an object a living organism.
- Distinguish objects that are non-living but have been created from living objects (wooden cabinet).
- What are the three important requirements of a living organism to thrive or grow?
Vocabulary: animal, living, non-living, organism
ANIMAL FAMILIES
Objective: Classification and sorting of objects, in order to group them into larger groups (Families)
Task:
- Discuss the families of the animals, what do you call the father, the mother and the baby and their group.
- Comparing the animal tracks. Those with round shape, hoofs or prints with toes.
- Classifying animals whether they live in land, water or sky.
Vocabulary: family, group, classification
ANIMAL HABITATS
Objective: Comparing where animals live.
Mid this year, we have conducted a study of the different habitats of animals around the world. You can view our lesson here and here.
Next week, my son and I will work on the human body. Still part of the Life Cycle theme… that evolves around organisms.
Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Science on Pinterest.Linking to:
Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Calendar: October Schedule
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
I printed this calendar and posted it in Mavi’s room. He loves looking at schedules and is looking forward for me to put a star on it once we’ve accomplished something. So in October our lessons would be:
- Math: shapes, ordinal numbers, number and shape patterning
- Grammar: First Language Lessons (we will be using Montessori Grammar Symbol for this)
- ART: artist study, crafting, random painting activities
- History: SOTW
- Science: Human body (organs, skeletal system, teeth), plants, natural environment
Our Science Curriculum (K-6, Kindergarten to Grade 6)
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
- Living and Non-living things
- The Human Body
- All About Plants
- Nature and Environment
- Water Cycle
- Oceans
- The Weather
- States of Matter
- Minerals
- Rocks
- Discovering Dinosaurs (Dinosaurs, Geological Times)
- Volcanoes
- Earthquakes
- Continents and Oceans
- Hazards
- Universe
- Solar System
- Earth
- Land and Water Forms
- Science and Math, Tools of Discovery
- Physics, Observation, Electricity, Magnets
- Technology, Machines, Inventions
- Natural and Man Made Environment