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.

 

PH Math for May

I've been assessing my Mavi's progress in mathematics for the past days.  Math is the least of his interest as of the moment.  So during our Math hiatus, I was checking my list and so far he knows and understands everything on it.  In fact he is way beyond his years according to his teacher.

Now as summer vacation is approaching I'm thinking that we should be a little bit more serious with Math this time by being religious to our schedule :)

So for May here's what we're going to have for Math:

Skip counting.  We started with 2's and next will be of 5's and 10's.

Here we are using the beads in our Decanomial Bead Bars with Box and the number tiles from our Hundred Boards for the label.  He pointed out "Mom, it's just a pattern!".  Of course, he's referring to the 0,2,4,6,8 :) And that's what I wanted to instill in him... that in Math some concepts is all about patterns!

   

After the beads and label activity, I made him skip count all the way through 100 and counting it backwards as well.

 

Number Symbol and Quantity (Tens)

Here we're using the same materials.  My objective here is for Mavi to master the identification of number symbols and its equivalence in quantity. 

Activity 1:  Place the correct number of beads, given the number symbols.

Activity 2:  Identify the number symbols,  given the quantity.

 

Activity 3.  Writing the number symbols.  Mavi has no problem writing the numbers from 1 to 100.  But it's a different story when it comes to hundreds and thousands :)

Number Symbol and Quantity (Hundreds)

The same activities with the tens but here we are using our Bead Material and Wooden Small Place Value Cards 1-9999 .

Activity 1:

Activity 2:

Activity 3.  Mavi is still confused writing the hundreds and thousands.  When he wants to write 321, he writes it like 300 21, similar with 1100... he writes it 1000 100.  Now this is pretty normal but I just think that we needed to practice more on this during our spare time.

Hundred Board with Control Chart. I am still on the process of exploring hundred board games.  I have collected a few ideas from fellow homeschool Moms and I can't wait to try it with Mavi.

PS. This post includes affiliated links

Animal Life Cycles (FREE Learning Material)

We are still continuing our vertebrate study and at this point we are exploring the life cycle of each group.  The aim of this study is to compare the life cycle of each group, to differentiate their development and identify their similarities as well.

Prior to this, I introduced the Animal Kingdom and the Vertebrate group.

To start off, we have The Life Cycle of a Frog for amphibians. Printable materials used here are my Animal Kingdom file, Vertebrate Sorting Cards and the Animal Life Cycles FREE printable.  The link to the file is at the end of this post.

Introducing Vertebrate Animals to Kids

Mavi was very excited when I told him that we'll be sorting out animals according to their classification.  This was his long awaited activity and he was so happy that we get to finally do it (my cards were completed).

So after our talk about the Animal Kingdom and how the classification of the Vertebrate animals differ, I gave him our Vertebrate Sorting Cards to classify each of the animals in the cards based on their group.  First, we read each definition card of each group to know more about the features of their members. Then he sorted his Safari TOOB Animals and Schleich Animals according to their groups.