Vito

Hello everyone! Say hello to the smallest member of our family... Vito. That's his blog name.  I'd like to call him that because unlike his big brother Mavi, Vito is bossy and demanding, like much of a Don LOL.

  

Well, our little Don Vito has always been with us during our lessons.  Just sitting there in his Mamas & Papas Baby Snug (Green) Amazon UK (Amazon US), watching, observing and listening to our discussions.

And his big brother loves it that he's around.  Mavi adores him.

But now that he's in the "curious" stage, I started giving him baby activities, starting with those that can develop his fine motor skills.

 

And most importantly, I have to train him how to love the outdoors.

Exciting times ahead for our little Don Vito, Mavi and I!

Reading and Writing Numbers

I make it a point to make our Math a little bit interesting for Mavi. Yes, like some kids, he doesn't like Math (yet). So whenever we do Math activities, I try my best to put some twist into it to make it more interesting for him.

For example, this case he's learning how to write and read 3 digit numbers (hundreds). As I mentioned before he has no problem with reading, but writing hundreds and thousands seems off for him.  Like, he writes 324 as 300 24.   So this activity aims to help him practice how to write the numbers properly.

I setup six container box and filled it with the number tiles from our Stamp Game.  I also added a paper strip into it with color coded lines to guide him where to write the hundreds, tens and ones digit (same color with the tiles).

 

He's ecstatic to open each box and uncover the total number. 

             

Arranging the tiles per column, he counts the hundreds (red), tens (blue) and ones(green) then write those numbers in the paper strip.  Then we practice reading the number, pointing that the zeroes are left behind.

 

Surprisingly, after finishing the 6th box, he asked if could do more Math.  So I took out our worksheet and work on some addition problems and I made him use our cube links.

  

He has an audience you see.

 

I observed that he only used the links when dealing with big numbers (tens) but otherwise, he uses his hands :) 

And there goes our brief update for our Math activities. I am still planning what to do this June and I promise to share my plans once I'm done.

For more Math-related activities: Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Math Ideas on Pinterest.

Ciao!

Animal Habitats Cards

Hello readers! I am happy to present to you my product on learning Animal Habitats which is one of our favorite learning materials at home. 

This learning material will help the child learn about the different biomes in the world and the animals that thrive in those habitats.  What inspired me to create this material is that, my son loves to sort out his animal figures according to the places they live. He would ask me "Mom, does tiger live in the forest? or savanna?"  And it's pretty much hard to explain at times why certain animals can thrive in the colder regions and how others survive in the desert.  So I made this learning material so I can answer all of my son's questions.

You can get this printable here, Montessori Inspired Animal World Habitats Learning Pack or click the image below:

Molluscs: The Study of Snails (Part Two)

Materials:

We used the same materials as mentioned in my previous post.  Plus...

Mavi's Journal.  This is a sketchpad turned into journal.  He writes and draw everything he can think of in this pad.

Playdough.  We used PlayDoh for modeling our snails.

The Snail and the Whale.  This is my son's bedside table book which he borrowed from their school library.  Lovely book to read about saving the whale, traveling around the world encountering different animals and their habitats and a great book to teach rhyming words :)

 

Activity 1:  Life cycle of a snail.

I printed this out randomly from the web and discussed this with my son.  We previously had Animal Life Cycles so he's very well familiar on how animals reproduce and survive till their adult life.  Seen on the picture below he volunteered to add labels on the pictures.

Activity 2:  Parts of a Snail

We used our The Snail Definition and 3-Part cards for this activity.  I am a believer of this learning tool / method.  My son has been using nomenclature cards for 3 years and it has accelerated his reading skills, enhances logical thinking (for matching) and knowledge retention.

 

Aside from that, I urged Mavi to record what he has learned in his journal. I want him to keep a journal and learn how to record facts and his daily activities.            

            

Activity 3:  Modeling a snail

We love playdoh and the things that we can do with it!  Here, we try to model a snail using our knowledge of its body parts :)

     

Here's my work (left) and Mavi's work is on the right side.

         

Activity 4: How snails behave.

We watched random videos on Youtube to see how snails behave in a close-up manner.

Most of the activities here are for school-aged children but the nomenclature card is worth a try for preschoolers.  The playdoh modeling was a hit.  I can see how my son reviewed the parts of the snail and seriously applied what he had learned in his snail model.  I was hoping if we could explore more of the other types of Molluscs but I decided not to push through.  I'd like to reserve it for some other time when I have enough materials for it.  For now, snail is good enough.

And that's the conclusion of our Snail study folks! This week we'll be having a new topic for our science but I am still undecided what to tackle.  It's going to rain the whole week so we're stuck at home again and these activities make staying at home exciting LOL.

Thank you for reading!

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler FREE Downloads and FREE Learning Materials.

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