Autumn is the time for our leaf study and while doing so Vito keeps calling the leaf's midrib as "stem". Instead of correcting, I decided to give him a proper lesson on the parts of a leaf. This is for him to know what each part is called and be able to understand how these parts function.
I love seeing our printables getting used and being shared on Instagram! For the past years, our Free Insect Silhouettes have been really really popular and getting used by tons of teachers and homeschoolers. Because it became so popular and a favorite, I decided to publish our Leaf Silhouettes as freebies to all my subscribers.
Presenting our letter “l” activities! We’ve started “letter of the week” kind of activities since September because of Vito’s interest in letter sounds and reading. We’ve been reading FIAR books over the summer and this led him to further explore words and language activities.
This is a matching and memory game I made for Vito during our Plants and Trees Unit Study. He absolutely loved this! I regretted that I didn’t make more, because he kept on asking for more matching games.
Download here or click the image.During the midterm break I’ve been taking the boys out because of the glorious weather. And since whenever we’re out, Mavi would climb the trees (and Vito would do the same), I took the chance to formally introduce Vito to trees. Since he’s able to say words straight and could grasp simple concept, it’s about time I show him the wonders of trees!
The BEST way to learn about trees is to have a personal encounter with it. And since we’re surround by them, we explored trees’ by climbing, touching and feeling their barks, observing the leaves colors, compare sizes and more.
For Vito though, trees are something that he can climb on. Whenever he sees a tree, he would just insist to climb onto it, like the picture below. He was just in that position for about 30 minutes, not complaining and enjoying every single moment of it.
With these, I can conclude that Vito can somehow understand now that trees :
Now, for extensions, I also prepared simple tree-themed activities for Vito at home for indoor play and learning. Here are the trays I prepared for him:
Counting Trees. Vito loves this! I stamped four dots in the paper with a number symbol and we count as we place a tree on each dot. I used a do-a-dot marker for this.
Matching Trees (Abstract-Abstract). Remember when we worked on leaves and he’s not interested in matching cards at all? Well, that changed now as he was able to work on our matching tree cards without hesitation! And yes he completed the four pairs with much concentration. I love it! You can get these beautiful cards from here or click the image below.
Tree Puzzle. He loves working on tree puzzle but somehow, our tree puzzle is still too complicated for his age. He knows where to place the roots and trunk as of the moment, but finds it hard to fit them in the puzzle board. So what I do is just ask him where the piece is supposed to go, he points and I do the fitting.
Tree Matching. Similar matching activity as above, but in this case we are using a tree figure and matching it to cards. We are doing lots of matching activities as this introduces early math concepts and object discrimination. Tree figures are from Safari Toobs.
Books. These are the books that we focused on during the week of our tree themed activities: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and The Acorn’s Story, both of which are so enjoyable to read!
And how long do we have this for a theme? Mostly for 7-10 days! Of course, these are just some of the thing he does, he also plays with his toy and read book, learn letters and numbers. It’s just that I love introducing new concept/s each week and in a way its easier for me to focus on just one or two things.
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We made these wonderful trees last week and I think it deserves a post!
Materials needed: some colored tissue paper and 4 tree trunks (cut-out from paper bags)
Cut the tissue paper into small pieces and crumple each. For the trunks, glue them on a white paper or cardstock. You might work on one tree at a time. Such as here, we started with summer... thus the green tissue. I also advice to use some range from light to dark colors for some accent. My son had fun gluing the leaves on the trees!
Here's our winter and spring trees. My son decorated the winter tree with some "snowy leaves" on the ground and leaving the tree almost bare. Our spring tree is a Cherry Blossom thus the color pink.
For summer, we have light and dark green leaves and for autumn he wanted yellow and orange with leaves on the ground.
And this is how they turned out... and I love it! They all look good together! I'll find a suitable frame for them so I could hang and display them in sitting room:)
Linking to:
Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Spring Carnival
Mavi is 38 months old.
These days, my son isn’t into homeschooling. All he wanted to do was play-pretend Artzooka or Mister Maker. Whenever I ask him if he wants to play a game, he would always say “No, I’m playing artzooka.” And this is the reason why I, at the moment, postponed my planned homeschool curriculum and decided to whip out activities randomly whenever he wants to do some ‘schooling’. I really don’t want to take that play pretend at the moment because he really really enjoys pretending that he can create crafts and stuff without me being there.
I am religious in reading books to him in the morning, but there were times that I get to be busier during the day so I would up reading books on him in the afternoon or during bedtime. Sometimes, I also forget to read books because of chores and personal work. So I decided to read at least one book everyday just to ensure that we have read a book. And this week, we read Gingerbread Man (and The Very Busy Spider, The Elves and the Shoemaker, The Billy Goat Gruff and Kid’s Bible, etc). Here Mavi took out the animals that appeared in the Gingerbread Man story and in The Very Busy Spider. We did some role playing using these animals.
We made Gingerbread Man paper dolls and dress them up. My son enjoyed this the most!
Made window ornaments using colored tissue, construction paper and contact paper.
MATH
Practice counting using the leaves as we were discussing about the season Fall the other day.
Then we work with some patterns. I downloaded this from here.
In lieu of Thanksgiving, we made our Gratitude Leaves and hung them in his room. While I wrote all the things that I am thankful for, my expressed his gratitude by drawing those things in the leaves! (He’s busy with his Button Snake)
Counting from numbers 1 to 50 using these number chip cards which I made out of cardstock.
I made these CVC cards so we can practice more of CVC words. We're done working with our pink series and before I move to blue series, I wanted to expose him to other cvc words, those that were not included in our pink series set.
PRACTICAL LIFE/SKILLS
I made this button snake for him to practice buttoning (and unbuttoning). He got hooked! I was surprised to discover that it was difficult for him to insert the button in the felt squares. But after a few tries... he finally figured out how to do it. I plan to make a few more, and vary the button shapes/sizes.
He’s just into writing these days. His favorite sketch pad is my notebook even though there are plenty of paper around the house! Thank goodness he doesn’t write on the wall.
Tearing paper and gluing them. He wasn’t into this activity.
I am still trying to expose him to painting. For some reason, he lost his interest in painting. He just wants to draw(using oil pastels) and write... and painting his least favorite. Maybe, it’s because he doesn’t have a suitable table to paint, and is not comfortable doing this activity on the floor :) Yep, we’re still looking for his work table. And we left his Crayola Paints back in SG, so that means, I need to shell out a few more cashing(again) to get him some paints.
Playdoh free play. Always a favorite :)
A friend asked if we do outdoor activities. Of course we do! We never missed an opportunity to go out when there’s sun! I’m an outdoor person and I wanted my son to pass that to my son :) It’s just that, well I wanted to keep those moments private so I try not to talk about it here nor post pictures of it. So here’s the proof that we do go out. This was when we took a day tour at the city center. We visit this beautiful park where we get to see lots of ducks on the pond. Then we walked our way around, do some sightseeing and just enjoy the crowd, the sun and mother nature.
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