Montessori Inspired Bird Unit Activities for Preschoolers

The inspiration behind this unit activity is because we’ve been seeing a lot of birds now and that Vito loves chicken. In my IG account, I shared how much he adored the chickens in the park and can’t stop talking about them.  So I've put up these activity trays for him to work on while he’s still interested in birds.  We started with some of these already and so far he’s having fun!

Introducing the Life Cycle of a Chicken to Preschoolers

We are learning about birds this month, and the first activity that we did was to look into the life of a chicken.  The chicken, especially the hen is a popular subject for bird study because it’s convenient and always available for nature-study.  Take for example in our case, Vito got really interested into chickens during our visit to the park weeks ago.  He just can’t stop talking about his experience with the chickens in the park, so I decided to borrow some books in the library about chickens so we can talk about this bird more.

Beginning Letter Phonics Cards

Hello everyone! I wanted to share with you Vito’s current favourite printable, our Beginning Letter Phonics Cards.  You might have seen these in some of my letter-themed post.  These are card strips which contain letters and their corresponding objects (real images matching the  beginning letter sound).  The product comes in two sets: control cards and the activity cards.  Below is a glimpse of how we use the materials, which Vito would work on every day (sensitive period for letters)!

Introducing the Solar System to Preschoolers

In line with our Days of Creation activities, the boys and I talked about how the universe came to be.  Mavi used his Usborne Fact Cards once again to review some solar system concepts and this made Vito get into the mood of exploring the planets as well.  

Days of the Creation for Preschoolers

In our home, we would read Bible stories and relived some beautiful stories during the Lenten season.  We are approaching it in a spiritual manner (for faith formation) rather than doing lots of egg activities.  Mavi and I have been talking about the Exodus the other day, while Vito and I did the Days of Creation.  This post shares our little project in learning about the great story of God’s creation of the world.   I’m also sharing our kid-friendly Bible which we are using at home.

Montessori Inspired April Activities for Preschoolers

I am so excited to share our April activities!    We will be revisiting some activities we did in the past, and there are new ones too!  I only prepared a few activities for April because (1) we still have to work on Earth Science activity trays (2) it’s Mavi’s Easter vacation so Vito would probably prefer to play with his brother than “home” school with Mommy and lastly (3) weather permits, we’ll be spending most of our days outdoors or do some field trips here or there.  Anyway, just to be sure that I have something for Vito to work on in case we needed to stay home, here are some preschool activities for him!

B4FIAR: Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?

Sharing to you the activities that we had to go along with Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? unit.  Sorry for the overdue post, we’ve been enjoying the outdoors these days... and that explains the less homeschool activities.

I dressed him in red shirt and blue pants... “Just like Jesse Bear Mommy!” he said.

  

Clipcards from Homeschool Creations.

Learning how to read, write and spell.

Sorting the foods  that Jesse Bear ate.  Surprisingly, he got it all correct.

Completing the pattern.

We use potatoes for stamping and he draw the family of Jesse Bear using oil pastels.

         

We had Bear in 4 Seasons craft.

Sort out clothing according to season.

After our sorting game, he wanted to show me his shoes too... and we arranged it according to season as well (winter, spring, summer and autumn).

Same thing with his coats and jackets LOL.

 

For math, we measure fruits and vegetables.

 

He loves to dress his bear :)

   

It was a fruitful unit.  He keeps on telling me “I love Jesse Bear Mommy, it’s my favorite!”.   And I love that fact that he enjoys the Before FIAR approach, that once in a while he gets to have an in depth knowledge of certain books and exposure to literature. 

Learning how to Measure

Another activity we did for our Before FIAR unit last week was measuring fruits and vegetables using a ruler and a tape measure.  I list the names of the objects that we used on a paper and added two lines for each object for the result (ruler, tape measure).

 

We used the ruler to measure the height and ended up measuring the circumference using the tape measure.  Anyway, using the result I discussed why the the circumference has a bigger value compared to the height of the apple.

 

For the carrots, it was easy to measure the length using both medium.

  

Then he asked what’s the number on both sides of the ruler for.  Though it’s pretty early for me to discuss centimeters and inches, I explained it a little bit to him.  I realize that he gets confused on which side to use.  Maybe I should have used a customized measuring tool wherein there’s only one unit to use :)

Our record sheet.  It was fun!  Am thinking of measuring his body parts the next time we do measuring.  For sure he would love it!

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Bear in 4 Seasons

Mavi is 41 months old.

We’re rowing Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? this week... and I included “the four seasons” as a side topic to go along with the book.  We accomplished this today and I might as well share it here.

We started by making him color the four teddy bears which I printed out on a cardstock.  It’s just a random clipart from Google... and I chose a simple image that we can simply cut and paste.  He traced the bears when he realized that the lines were no longer visible (covered by the brown crayon).

And he got tired along the way so he decided to color the remaining two bears on the manner shown on the picture below LOL.

Once he’s done with the bears, I told him that we will be setting up the four seasons in each paper and place each bear on it. 

He wanted to cut the yellow craft paper first so I decided that we should do “Summer”.  Here he’s cutting the paper so we can have a sun.

 

Once he glued the son, I described to him what is summer.  What can be seen on summer... and kept on saying “grasses, oceans, beaches and playing”.He made grasses, and glued them.  I was just there to guide him, he did 90% the work :)

We did spring next, where I cut some flowers.  When he glued it, he told me that the stems and leaves were missing, so he added those to each of the flowers.  Love love love it that he includes the stems and leaves here, it’s unbelievable that he was able to absorb what he learned from our plants and flower units.

In autumn I made leaves from different crafting paper.  I showed a leaf prototype and he made the rest.  He wants his version to be as detailed as mine so he added veins on each one.  Again, he enjoys cutting!

Winter was the last and I explained to him why we needed to use a blue paper instead of white.  Then we added a few snows and a snowman.

 

And this is what we ended up afterwards.  It would have been better if we dress up the bears according to season, but I wasn’t in the make one.  Maybe you can try it :)

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Continent: Antarctica Unit (Arts and Crafts)

Mavi is 41 months old.  Last of the 3-parter post on our Antarctica Unit.  

My was in the food for drawing (which was timely) when we started the activities so it wasn’t that hard to convince him that we will draw the things he sees in our Antarctica pictures.  Then to give him an idea on what to do... I showed him a picture of a child’s art work.  I randomly Googled the picture by the way.

He made mountains and and added oceans.  The glitters were snow.

 

We usually work together... I work beside him.  Here’s what I did.  I know! It’s a work of a child LOL. Obviously I am not an artist (I went to Engineering school)!

My son’s work.  He kept telling me he wants to go Antarctica... he whines about it all the time.

Then there was a time I encouraged him to paint.... I showed him an artwork inspired by Antarctica but he insist that he wanted to paint his letters.  He’s been obsessed with alphabets for 2 years!

Another variation was to use watercolors. 

His painting.

  And this was mine.

And lastly, our penguin crafts.  And cutting is his favorite thing to do here! 

The finish product.  Supposedly, there will be glitters all over... but it was already 8PM :(

And that’s our entire unit Antarctica.  If you haven’t read the first two, here’s the link":  Part 1 and Part 2.

We will be doing Asia: Philippines next, but I still have to prepare my materials.  Hope it’ll be ready by March or April.

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