Learning History of Ancient Europe for Kids
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Hands-on Learning on the European Regions
Thursday, November 5, 2015
So I created these label cards for northern (blue), western (red), southern (orange) and eastern (green) Europe. The color coding is based on our map in Europe in a Nutshell. The mini flags seen in the photo is from Flags of Europe printable.
Science Experiments: Twinkle Twinkle Stars and {Learn & Play Link Up}
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Objective: To simulate the twinkling of stars in sky.
Materials needed:
Procedure:
1. Crumple your square foil and place it on a table or on a floor.
2. Fill your clear bowl with tap water and place it on top of the crumpled foil.
3. Darken the room by turning off the lights. Hold the torch or flashlight above the bowl. Distance from the bowl is about 12 inches.
4. Observe the foil through the undisturbed water.
5. Now using your pencil, tap the surface of the water gently. Observe the foil through the moving water.
What happened?
The light rays reflecting from the foil when there was a movement in water appears to blur or twinkle.
Why?
The movement of the water causes the depth of the water to vary. The light rays twinkle because they bend or refract in different direction when it passed through the different depths of water.
This is similar to the light rays of the stars. They appear to be twinkling when you are observing from earth because they refract differently as the light rays move through the different thickness of air in the atmosphere. Scientifically, this twinkling phenomenon is called ‘scintillation’.
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Source: Janice VanCleave Astronomy
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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:
Pre-K Problem Solving Cards
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Mavi didn’t like math. When he was around 5yrs old, he would rather read books than work with math. He’s excuse would always be “I’m tired” or “it’s difficult”. I can truly understand him though. I didn’t enjoy math when I was younger. Until I stepped into secondary school and discovered why we need math.
So instead of forcing him to solve arithmetic problems and giving him number activities, I exposed him to real life problems so he can appreciate math. I made him understand WHY WE NEED TO LEARN NUMBERS AND MATH. We would go to the groceries and count our items all together, doing addition and subtraction in between. Of course, he’s not aware we’re doing math, all he knows is that he’s helping Mommy do some groceries. At home, I secretly incorporate addition and subtraction by counting his missing pens, his toys and how many books he has read.
He loves the real life math! He can’t stand arithmetic problems but he enjoys real life problems. So what I did was create a bunch of colorful cards for us to work on, making sure there’s pictures (and we mostly use counters as well) to make it attractive. In the problems, I used his friends’ name so he’ll like it, and of course he finds it funny! He kept asking for more, more questions as he liked solving the problems. And that was the game changer.
Through these problem solving cards, he was able to appreciate math, and could now understand why he needs to practice arithmetic. He loves to solve math problems these days on his own and still loves solving problems.
So I created these problem solving cards for Pre-K students. It contains:
- 1 step problem solving for addition and subtraction
- 12 unique questions for addition within 10 (with pictures)
- 12 unique questions for subtraction within 10 (with pictures)
- 12 fill-in questions for addition to let the parents change the numbers for more practice (for advanced students, based on the questions with pictures). You can use counters for this.
- 12 fill-in questions for subtraction to let the parents change the numbers for more practice (for advanced students, based on the questions with pictures). You can use counters for this.
Mavi worked on these cards when he was 5-6yrs old. Though this is intended for 5-6yrs old children, older or younger kids can still use the cards as a practice material. Hope you like it and find it useful like we do. Thanks!
Animal Tracks Learning Material
Friday, October 30, 2015
Download a FREE copy of our Animal Tracks Cards via this link or by clicking the image above.
On how we used this learning material, click here or the image below. Enjoy!
Investigating Animal Tracks and {Learn & Play Link Up}
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
** contains affiliated links **
We are continuing on our study of animal identification and learning more about their characteristics. After watching Deadly 60 series of Steve Backshall, we discovered that you can also identify animals by the tracks they make! So we used our favourite Schleich animal figures to test this. We randomly dipped the animals in the black paint and freely made tracks. Vito’s helping as well!
The tracks and trails an animal leaves can tell us the type of animals it is and whether it was walking or running, and you can also tell if it was by itself or with a group of other animals.
Footprints of animals are very tricky to identify unlike that of humans! But by thorough investigation, you can tell if the animal is hoofed or with paws or toes. To learn about the footprints of these animals, one must have a proper observation for these unique characteristics.
Animal tracks to note:
- Did the animals walk on 2 or 4 feet?
- Does the animal left a large or small track?
- Was it walking or running?
- Was it just one animal or followed by another?
Using our printable and the actual tracks, Mavi grouped the animals according to the characteristics of their footprints:
- Raccoon and bear have 4 toes front and 5 toes rear, they have claws.
- Dog, fox and wolf have 4 toes front, 5 toes rear and produces an egg shaped track
- Lion, lynx produces a round track with claws, 4 toes front and 5 toes rear
- Deer, elk have heart shaped tracks and has 4 toes front and 5 toes rear
And the highlight of this lesson is for them to see how their footprints look like!
Materials Used:
Thank you for taking time to read this post! You might as well visit our Zoo Animal Tracks post for another activity that involves playdough. It’s a not as messy as black paint
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Letter N: Going Nuts!
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
I love nuts! We’ve got plenty around the house, thus I decided to come up with activities for Vito since he’s been seeing them around the house and loves to play with my walnuts.
Letter N Object Basket. Reinforce literacy, letter ‘n’ symbol and phonics, vocabulary, and verbal skills. In the basket we have: nine, upper and lowercase N/n, necktie, DIY sandpaper ‘n’, nuts.
Hammering Peanuts. This is a practical life activity that develops hand and eye coordination, and develop those hand and arm muscles. I first set it up in a tray, but the peanuts were slipping so I had to put cling film to hold them. Vito loves physical activities so he enjoyed this. The only drawback is that the hammer that we used were so tiny
Letter N Craft. I always make sure to include crafts in our weekly activities. My main goal here is for Vito to practice his manual dexterity like squeezing the glue, picking up small objects or pencils. Now that he’s familiar with glue, I gave him a glue with small opening for him to squeeze it.
Here he is applying peanut shells on the letter N. Improves pincer grasp through picking up small objects. Note to parents: always supervise your children when dealing with small objects.
Color Green. I’m introducing letter green this week. I gathered a few objects from his toys and place them all in a basket.
And we painted green in an A3 paper. Working with one color a week works for him.
When they dried up, we place them on the wall for everyday viewing.
Nut Matching. For visual discrimination (difference in objects), widen vocabulary and concentration.
Counting Walnuts. Builds early number and counting skills.
Forming Shapes using Nuts. Teaches shapes, fine motor skills and hand/eye coordination. This is Vito’s idea! I made a circle using the walnuts then he took the circle puzzle and place it in the middle, matching them together. Brilliant! We practice some more by drawing shapes on a piece of paper and he would trace the line using the peanut shells to form the shape. He enjoyed it!
And that’s about it! And what I happened to the nuts? I’m still consuming them LOL.
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