Learning how to tell the TIME

My son and I had the most wonderful time learning how to read clocks and telling the time. I was able to purchase this clock board at ELC with 50% discount last Christmas and I just waited for the holidays to be over so I could teach the little one how to use it.  Then I printed out a matching game from this site, First-School Preschool Activities and Crafts, to go along with our lesson.  You can also check this Write & Wipe Demonstration Clock from Amazon US as an alternative learning clock.

First thing, I talked about the clock and how it’s long and short hands works, and telling him that it is the hands that tell us the time.  Then I demonstrated how we read the HOUR through the hand’s position.  He was listening intently which really surprised me.  Then, I showed him how to ‘read’ the clock using it’s hands.  So I demonstrated this by configuring the hands and telling him what time it is set on.  Halfway through, he figured it out so instead of me, telling what time it is... I would just set the hands and would ask him “What time does the clock say?”

I guess it’s not that complicated because he got everything right.  In fact, he insisted that he can do it by himself.  So here he is, doing the manipulation of the hands and would ask me what time does it say!  He’s like that these days... likes to play my role :)

These clock cut-outs were also taken from the penguin activity which I downloaded. Here, I set up the clock and he would look for the match using the printables.

For another matching game, I made him match the clocks to the appropriate time indicated in the penguin card. He only did a few cards though... might be tired already from all the drills we did previously.

So currently, we’re only learned the concept of the “time on the hour”. I will introduce the minutes and seconds as he progress.  As a followup activity on learning about clocks you can check this other post, The Clock.

Linking this to:

 

Color Mixing

Our first activity for 2012!

I’ve been wanting to introduce this to Mavi for a loooonnnggg time but I’m always hesitant.  You know why?  He doesn’t have his own table and chair yet! So that’s what we gave him last Christmas.  Mind you, this is his 3RD table set. As you know, we’ve been moving countries from the past 2 years, so the first one was left in Belgrade and the second was given to my nephew in Singapore.  Thus, this is the third and hopefully the last!

Going back... I placed his table set in the kitchen since we will be dealing with water.  I bought food coloring (naturals are washable) from the grocery store and poured a few drops of primary colors on the ice tray.  I told him we’ll be mixing colors and see what colors we can come up with.  Oh boy, he was so so excited!

First I mixed blue and yellow... and he shouted “It’s green!”.  Then I asked him what happens if we mix yellow and orange(I did this while I mix the colors), and we came with orange and he shouted “It’s orange Mama!”.  We did the same with purple as well.

Then he asked if he can do color mixing on his own. He was experimenting a lot of colors!  He even came up with a grey color.

By the way, I used a medicine dropper.  So aside from teaching him all about color mixing, I was also demonstrating how to use a medicine dropper... that we can use it to transfer water from one container to another.  He struggled at first... but I kept on saying “squeeze and release” whenever he would dip it on the water.  I made him practice a few times as he was frustrated that he can’t get any water into the dropper.  Well, he was persistent so he finally figured out how it works.

  

I also made him do this... putting water drops on marks using medicine dropper.  Well, it’s his first time so he still can’t control the water coming out of the dropper.  But he loved doing this.  One time when we did this activity again, he made a car using the medicine dropper.

 

Just a note, I discovered that some food coloring can stain your hands.  I bought a  Natural food coloring for red and yellow, thus the one that stained on my son’s hands is blue color.

Happy mixing!

Welcome 2012!

Hello everyone! I’m back!

Well we haven’t resume regular homeschooling yet due to loads of work that needs to be done.  Though I have made a few plans for our curriculum but I plan to execute it next month.  For now, activities for Mavi will be random, we’ll be reusing old resources and if I’m in the mood we’ll be doing new ones.

Anyway for this year, I plan to:

1. Continue B4FIAR now that Homeschool Creations have available printables for subject units. 
2. We’ll do Geography!  Yes! I am so excited for this.  I’ve been preparing materials for quite a while now... thus I needed the time this month to finish my printables.  I plan to focus on countries we’ve been to like Singapore and Philippines for Asia :)
3. Introduce worksheets in the mid of this year.
4. Blue series and lots of reading practice.

And a whole lot more! Whatever comes into my mind... or whenever I get inspired by some homeschool blogs.

So there you go... my plans for 2012. 

Wishing everyone a happy and peaceful new year!

Christmas Themed Activities

Due to my work loads and activities, I’ve been missing here in the blogosphere for quite a while.  It’s a good thing I take pictures though, and organize it weekly in that way I can easily track and document them easily. 

So here are some of the “Christmas” themed activities we did for the past few days, most of which are Montessori related.

Sorting pony beads using a tweezer.  Surprisingly, he finished it without my assistance considering that this is his first time to use a tweezer.

              

Scooping red and green pompoms using a milk powder scoop.

              

Stringing pony beads by colors using pipe cleaners.

              

He finished all of it breezily!

One time I caught him doing this to our hand towel.  I asked him what he’s doing and told me “I’m ironing.  Just like Lola Merlit.” (Lola Merlit means Grandma Merlit) .  This is a surprise because the last time we were home (my parent’s house) was July.  He still remembers what his Grandmother do at home!

 

Peeling foam stickers during our Alpha Christmas Countdown.

I am still on the process of learning how to organize some of these stuff properly.  Currently, I am collecting food coloring so I can create colored pasta and at the same time do some color mixing activities.

Wishing everyone a happy Tuesday!