Montessori Country Flags of Asia

I have recently upgraded my Montessori nomenclature flags set up. It has been a decade since I created my first set, and I felt it was time for a glow-up. Below are the new features added to our Montessori Flags of Asia

Learning about the Landmarks of Asia

Are you eager to uncover the beauty of some of the most famous landmarks in Asia and looking for educational resources to support your discovery? You've come to the right place! We're thrilled to present our Montessori Landmarks of Asia Nomenclature Cards. These cards showcase vivid and high-quality real images of some of the most iconic landmarks in Asia, accompanied by informative cards and pin flags to ignite your child's curiosity and deepen their understanding. Take a sneak peek at the preview and begin your journey of exploration today!

Learning About the Philippines

Philippines is celebrating its Independence Day this week and in line with it, I'm publishing our Philippine Country Study Learning Pack.  We worked on this last year before we went home for a vacation but I didn't get to post this in the blog.  Just like in any of our country study packs, this set contains tons of reading and writing materials and extension activities for children eager to learn and explore the Philippines.  In this learning material, the child will learn about the geography, flag, symbols, and icons of the Philippines, famous foods, and its culture and traditions.

Asia Continent Study for Kids

We love to travel and going to places, thus geography is very important in our homeschool and I make sure that we do continent and country studies yearly.  Now, this is not the first time I introduced Vito to Asia.  We've worked with a lot of continent activities before and because he is much older now and able to understand and grasp concepts, I reintroduced Asia once again.  Below are some of the works we had for the past 2 weeks we spent on learning about Asia.  It took us 2 weeks to finish because he got sick within the time frame so we paused in between.

Here are some of the activities that we included in this year's Asia Study:

Montessori Inspired Animal Continents Activity Sheets

I am so happy to share our Animal Continents Activity Sheets.  Mavi helped me assemble this learning material for identifying the different animals that thrive in each continent.  We’ve used the Antarctica and Asia sheets already and I can’t wait to try the rest with Vito.

Montessori Inspired ASIA Continent for Preschoolers

Vito is 39 months old.

This month, I’m helping Vito explore the Asia continent .  We’ve started continent study last year, which was followed by an exploration of the penguins in Antarctica.  We occasionally look at Maps and work on the continent puzzle, and based on my observation, Vito is ready to learn about Asia.

Study of Ancient China

Few weeks ago, Mavi and I were learning about Ancient China.  I decided that this year, we’ll be focusing in country-based studies rather than continents.  Last month we worked on Australia, and because of Chinese New Year being celebrated during February, I guess this month is the best time to conduct Chinese-themed activities.

ASIA in a Nutshell

One of the most interesting continents to look into is Asia.  Oh yes! It is the biggest continent and with some of the most interesting countries like China, India, and Russia!  Now if you want to explore this wonderful continent in your class or home, checkout my ASIA in a Nutshell learning material.

What’s included?

Holiday Homecoming Part I

As you all know, family and I went home last month to celebrate Christmas and New Year with the family in our homeland.  I've always wanted Mavi to experience how it's like to celebrate the holidays at home, to be with grandparents, cousins and relatives and to enjoy the local sights and festivities.

So allow me to share some pictures from our trip. First stop, the in-laws!

Zoocobia
We always visit the zoo whenever we go places. And we’re so lucky that there’s a new zoo located near my in-laws place.  Because we were considered as “VIP”, we get to have our own tour guide and had a close encounter with most of the animals in the zoo. 

Here we get to….

Hold a parrot

   

Get lost in the Garden Maze

          

Go Carting

Feed the ostrich

 

Feed the monkey

 

Feed a camel, goat, and donkey

And see in person the animal that produces one of the most expensive coffees in the world, the wild civet. 

Sky Ranch
We love that there was a night carnival in town!  First time for Mavi to be out at night (not in the cold), and enjoying the carnival ride!

Dinosaur Island
Saving the best for last, we visited the newly established Dinosaur Island, just a few minutes from the in-law’s place.  Mavi's obsessed with dinosaurs and he was ecstatic upon arrival!

The Dinosaur Island is right in the middle of a rainforest, and that dinosaur statues were so impressive! It's like an outdoor museum of dinosaurs, and even if their animation and sound effects were limited, Mavi and the entire had a wonderful time viewing the elect... dinosaurs.

Aside from these sights, we get to visit relatives as well. After celebrating Christmas at my in-laws house, we travelled again for a day via a domestic flight going to my folk’s house to spend the New Year. Pictures coming up for Part II!

Learning About East Asia

If you’ve been following my blog, we started our Asia Unit last month and so far we successfully completed our Southeast Asia Study.  In this post, I present to you materials and activities we worked last week for East Asia. 

Maps and Flags

As you all by now, we ALWAYS start our continent/country study with maps and flags.  This will familiarize the child of the subject’s location and each of the country’s national symbol.  For the East Asia, we identified three major countries: China, Japan and South Korea

Materials:

• Asia in a Nutshell
• Asian Flags Nomenclature Cards Pack

Again, we used Lego to recreate flags.  This activity is similar to our Southeast Asia flag activity.

Famous Landmarks

We have painting/crafts activity and Lego play.  Our tablet is very useful for this activity.  We used it to view pictures (for clear view) and watch videos related to our study. 

Materials

• Asian Landmarks Cards for other activities (3-part cards, fact cards).
• Lego
• Paints
• Pink Tissue Paper

Famous landmark for Japan is Mount Fuji

             

 

We chose Great Walls of China as our subject here.  Here we use our fact cards, which Mavi reads while we view the bigger picture in our tablet.

Calligraphy

We are using the Japanese numbers in this activity.  I painted the characters on papers and cut them for presentation.  Now Mavi has to make the characters as well.

After the activity, Mavi was like “Mom it is so difficult!”. 

 

Animals

We’ve studied Asian Animals previously, so in this activity we’re doing a Panda puzzle.  I printed this from DLTK Kids, and Mavi has to color and form the Panda according to the cheat card.

 

Arts and Crafts

We made oriental fans and learned how to make origami items.  For the oriental fans, we used paper plates, used watercolor for the background and black tempera paint for the details.  Our origami papers are homemade because the real ones are so expensive in this side of the world.  They’re colored crafts paper and I cut them to a size of 6 x 6 inches.

Books

We used lots of books, but here are my son’s favourites [aff.links]:

• Letters Around the World:  China --->> OUR FAVOURITE SERIES!
• Discover Countries:  Japan

For more Asia Unit please check my Pinterst Board Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Continent Study: Asia on Pinterest.

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History and Geography

Learning About Southeast Asia

Here’s a summary of activities for learning about Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia Map and Flags

This activity is all about familiarization of the Southeast Asia Map and identification of countries which belong to this region.

Learning materials used in this activity:

• Asia in a Nutshell
• Flags of Asia Pack (Nomenclature and Pin Flags)

Bahay Kubo (Nipa Hut)

Bahay Kubo is square shaped house with no divisions, just a door and windows.  It is made up of local materials such as wood or bamboo or  nipa grass.  It is a Philippine icon and represents the Filipino culture.  Note that these houses are raised, for proper ventilation I guess since the flooring is made up of bamboo.  Another reason is to avoid the flood.

Yes I have seen Bahay Kubo and have friends and relatives who used to live on this type of house.  Until now, they still exist and I can’t wait to show them to Mavi.  He has always been fascinated with Bahay Kubo. Maybe he can’t imagine how people can live on just a square house. 

Thus, I decided to create a model using cardboard boxes from Book Depository. 

There are still people who lives in this stilt houses and I can’t wait to show it to Mavi when we visit the folks this year :)

I cut out the cardboard boxes into strips then stick them on a wooden BBQ skewers.

And here’s how the skeleton  looks like when all four sides are attached.

Adding the roof which is made up of cardstock and a wooden ladder here’s the end product.

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ASIA Unit Study 2014

It always excites my son to study Asia.  For some reason, he finds this continent so mysterious.  As I said before, maybe it’s because of the diversity in culture, people and lifestyle.  We came from the Philippines and in a short time we stayed in Singapore.  Mavi even attended a Chinese school and yes at 2 years old he can speak a few Chinese :D  So Mavi was exposed to the different culture and people but he was young then, so he couldn’t appreciate it yet.

Anyway, here are the materials/activities I prepared for Mavi for this year’s study.  This is just Asia in general, I have separate post for each study of the Asian regions.

MAP WORKS

A review of the Asia Map.  We are also doing a puzzle map similar to this activity. 

Presentation and work of the Asian Regions. Asia is divided into 6 regions, namely:  Southeast Asia, East Asia, South Asia, West Asia, Central Asia and North Asia (Russia).  Here we identified major countries of each regions and place the Asia Pin Flags to plot their location.  Mavi also worked on the 3-part card of the Asian regions.

 

HABITAT

Study of Animals of Asia and Habitats. 

Below is a worksheet for Mavi to work plotting the appropriate habitat.

ANIMALS OF ASIA

The study of habitat is side by side with our animal study.  We use the cards to look into the animals and sort them out whether they live in a rainforest, desert or grassland. 

In addition, we made animal skin prints similar to Africa Study.

           

 

Now this study won’t be complete without learning about the treasures of Asia.  We used the Natural Resources of the World cards for this.  In the set-up I placed papers and a pen to write/draw the end products of Asia’s resources.

 

ASIAN CUISINE

Now this is part of daily life as this what I always prepare at home (Asian Cuisine cards).  I just have to emphasize to Mavi from what country our meal of the day came from.

     

Coming up… Southeast Asia!

More activities from here:

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Continent Study: Asia on Pinterest.

 

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Religious Crafts and Activities for Kids

Sharing with you some religious crafts we did to go along with our study of Religions in Asia. 

Hinduism

Hindus offer garlands to God and to their guests as a sign of welcome.  Our garland was made of tissue paper and I used a thread to tie them up all together to form a garland.

 

Mavi decorated his hand.  This is a Hindu tradition wherein a Hindu bride would decorate its hand with a red dye called mehndi on her wedding day.

Christianity

One of the poignant moment in Christianity is the death of Jesus Christ.  So here, we made Mount Cavalry using paper plates and paint and added three crosses.  This is where Jesus died with two other outlaws.

  

Islam

We made prayer rug used by the Muslims when they worship Allah.  Instead of making a stunning and complicated design which Muslim craftspeople are known of, we just weaved our rug using cardstock.

              

Seen below, Mavi demonstrates how it is used.

Using Legos, we made a model of a Muslim mosque.  We used a styro paper cup and top it with a crescent symbol for the dome.  to signify an Islam mosque. Mavi loved this one the most!

 

Hope you enjoy this post.  More of our Asian Unit Study coming your way.  Till next time!

More Asia Unit in my Pinterest Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Continent Study: Asia on Pinterest.

Linking to:

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