Animals and their Habitats (Part One)

In this post I'll present how we conducted our Animal Habitats study at home.

Vito

Hello everyone! Say hello to the smallest member of our family... Vito. That's his blog name.  I'd like to call him that because unlike his big brother Mavi, Vito is bossy and demanding, like much of a Don LOL.

  

Well, our little Don Vito has always been with us during our lessons.  Just sitting there in his Mamas & Papas Baby Snug (Green) Amazon UK (Amazon US), watching, observing and listening to our discussions.

And his big brother loves it that he's around.  Mavi adores him.

But now that he's in the "curious" stage, I started giving him baby activities, starting with those that can develop his fine motor skills.

 

And most importantly, I have to train him how to love the outdoors.

Exciting times ahead for our little Don Vito, Mavi and I!

Reading and Writing Numbers

I make it a point to make our Math a little bit interesting for Mavi. Yes, like some kids, he doesn't like Math (yet). So whenever we do Math activities, I try my best to put some twist into it to make it more interesting for him.

For example, this case he's learning how to write and read 3 digit numbers (hundreds). As I mentioned before he has no problem with reading, but writing hundreds and thousands seems off for him.  Like, he writes 324 as 300 24.   So this activity aims to help him practice how to write the numbers properly.

I setup six container box and filled it with the number tiles from our Stamp Game.  I also added a paper strip into it with color coded lines to guide him where to write the hundreds, tens and ones digit (same color with the tiles).

 

He's ecstatic to open each box and uncover the total number. 

             

Arranging the tiles per column, he counts the hundreds (red), tens (blue) and ones(green) then write those numbers in the paper strip.  Then we practice reading the number, pointing that the zeroes are left behind.

 

Surprisingly, after finishing the 6th box, he asked if could do more Math.  So I took out our worksheet and work on some addition problems and I made him use our cube links.

  

He has an audience you see.

 

I observed that he only used the links when dealing with big numbers (tens) but otherwise, he uses his hands :) 

And there goes our brief update for our Math activities. I am still planning what to do this June and I promise to share my plans once I'm done.

For more Math-related activities: Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Math Ideas on Pinterest.

Ciao!

Animal Habitats Cards

Hello readers! I am happy to present to you my product on learning Animal Habitats which is one of our favorite learning materials at home. 

This learning material will help the child learn about the different biomes in the world and the animals that thrive in those habitats.  What inspired me to create this material is that, my son loves to sort out his animal figures according to the places they live. He would ask me "Mom, does tiger live in the forest? or savanna?"  And it's pretty much hard to explain at times why certain animals can thrive in the colder regions and how others survive in the desert.  So I made this learning material so I can answer all of my son's questions.

You can get this printable here, Montessori Inspired Animal World Habitats Learning Pack or click the image below:

Molluscs: The Study of Snails (Part Two)

Materials:

We used the same materials as mentioned in my previous post.  Plus...

Mavi's Journal.  This is a sketchpad turned into journal.  He writes and draw everything he can think of in this pad.

Playdough.  We used PlayDoh for modeling our snails.

The Snail and the Whale.  This is my son's bedside table book which he borrowed from their school library.  Lovely book to read about saving the whale, traveling around the world encountering different animals and their habitats and a great book to teach rhyming words :)

 

Activity 1:  Life cycle of a snail.

I printed this out randomly from the web and discussed this with my son.  We previously had Animal Life Cycles so he's very well familiar on how animals reproduce and survive till their adult life.  Seen on the picture below he volunteered to add labels on the pictures.

Activity 2:  Parts of a Snail

We used our The Snail Definition and 3-Part cards for this activity.  I am a believer of this learning tool / method.  My son has been using nomenclature cards for 3 years and it has accelerated his reading skills, enhances logical thinking (for matching) and knowledge retention.

 

Aside from that, I urged Mavi to record what he has learned in his journal. I want him to keep a journal and learn how to record facts and his daily activities.            

            

Activity 3:  Modeling a snail

We love playdoh and the things that we can do with it!  Here, we try to model a snail using our knowledge of its body parts :)

     

Here's my work (left) and Mavi's work is on the right side.

         

Activity 4: How snails behave.

We watched random videos on Youtube to see how snails behave in a close-up manner.

Most of the activities here are for school-aged children but the nomenclature card is worth a try for preschoolers.  The playdoh modeling was a hit.  I can see how my son reviewed the parts of the snail and seriously applied what he had learned in his snail model.  I was hoping if we could explore more of the other types of Molluscs but I decided not to push through.  I'd like to reserve it for some other time when I have enough materials for it.  For now, snail is good enough.

And that's the conclusion of our Snail study folks! This week we'll be having a new topic for our science but I am still undecided what to tackle.  It's going to rain the whole week so we're stuck at home again and these activities make staying at home exciting LOL.

Thank you for reading!

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler FREE Downloads and FREE Learning Materials.

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Home + School = Afterschool!

Molluscs: The Study of Snails (Part One)

We've been seeing a lot of snails in our place and I just couldn't let this pass :)  So I paid a visit to the library and borrowed a few books about it so we could do a little study on them.  We've never done this before as I am really scared of anything that crawls, but my son was into it and excited so I just have to give in.

Materials:

Books about Snails.  Here I used Slugs and Snails (Minibeast Pets) and Snail (Bug Books). (Affiliates)

Snail Nomenclature Cards and Definition Booklet by The Pinay Homeschooler.  Click the image below for the link as well.

A snail.  We got this tiny fellow in one of our nature walks.

Activity 1:   In search of a snail

Prior to our lesson, we've been reading books and learned about where the snails live and when do they usually come out from their hiding.  So one day, after the rain, we set out to look for a snail that we can bring home.  We followed what the book said: look for snails in dark places, under the rocks, the bushes or if in a surface that is wet or damp.  It was fun looking for them and educational as well.  My son knows exactly where to look for them!

              

 Activity 2: Observing the Snail

Once we have our snail, we put it in a tube (Safari Toob tube LOL) and brought it home for an observation.  My son named the little fellow Sally.  Seen on pictures below, we watched as Sally fed on the leaves, see how she moves and produces a slime to slide.

               

Below we read about the lifecycle of a snail.

 

Activity 3:  Parts of the Snail (Introductory)

At this point in time, we looked at the different parts of the snail.  Mavi was more keen on the body parts as he kept on asking about the eyes of the snail.  We used our snail 3-part cards in identifying the different parts of its body and read our booklet on how each of the parts function.  I like how our nomenclature cards turned out.  Before, I used to draw images but I love that we're using pictures for a more realistic approach.  And at first I kept on questioning the size of our cards but I'm happy that I made it  3.5x4 inches, just enough for everything to be seen.

 

We stopped here.  There were a few more activities left for us to do but I can see that he was already tired.  We will continue this next week as we also study the world of insects.

The study of snail, as I mentioned earlier was something new and the fact that we've been seeing them everywhere helped in building up that eagerness to learn.  He was really curious with this slimy creature and was very attentive in our discussions.  It also helped that we read books about snails beforehand for a head start.

Our snail study did not end here, you can check the second part of our activity here (Molluscs: The Study of Snails Part Two).

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler FREE Downloads and FREE Learning Materials.
Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Zoology Unit on Pinterest.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child

Natural Resources and their Products

Another extension to our continent unity study is learning about the natural resources that are mined or abundant in certain parts of the world.  This is a new topic that I introduced to Mavi and he definitely loved it.  He was very interested in learning about the products of each continent, what they look like as raw materials and how these materials are processed so the people can use them.

Fun Under the Sun

If you are wondering what we're doing when the sun is up, here's a glimpse.

First I would take the boys in our backyard and do some little picnic.  The little one stays on his Mamas & Papas Baby Snug (Green) and plays with me.

Now for the big brother it's a little bit different.  Here you see him playing with his "fossil collections".   These are actually rocks in the yard that he gathered.  The Dinosaur Train inspired him to collect "fossils".  So these rocks are now piled in the yard.

 

After he checks his collection, I made him do some splatter painting.  A few days ago, I was telling him the story of Pollack, of how he paints using splatters.  After that we watched this video of a little girl who's famous of her painting.

 

Now that he is inspired, it's time to put his artistic side to action :)

             

Oh boy, how he love it!!  We just have to move to the grass though because it's getting messier.

Go out and enjoy nature!

The weather was really really good this holiday weekend so we spent most of our time in the park.  We're so thankful that we have this wonderful park just 10 minutes away from our place.  The park is HUGE and lots of areas to explore. 

If you skim through my blog... this is where we usually go when the weather is good.  I am an outdoor person and was an adventurous kid growing up. I grow up in a tropical country and our house is near the beach so imagine all the adventures I have there. And my boys experience this as well.  But living in a cold country has a lot of limitations especially here that we seldom have Mr Sun.

So in a time like this we just have to go out...

... and play with the trees!

.... and check the pond for tadpoles and other insects breeding!

.... and see how the clear water flows in the creek.