Artist Study: Henri Matisse

Last week we tried looking into the works of Henri Matisse.

I told him that Matisse is an artist from France.  He loves to paint and later on got sick and was confined in bed. And because he loves art so much, he started using his scissors to cut paper to make pictures and paper collages.  He called this technique "painting with scissors". 

More of Matisse's biography here.

Making Organic Shapes

Because Matisse uses a lot of organic shapes, first we practice how to create organic shapes.

         

 

I realized that it was hard for him to make organic shapes than creating the geometric ones. Though he can identify organic shapes by visualizing leaves, clouds and water splatter he still could not create something 'close' to organic. We'll be practicing more on this :)

Matisse uses bright contrasting colors

Now it's time to put our little skills and knowledge to test.  I took a few art paper for him to cut into rectangle and squares. Then we draw organic shapes on the paper, cut them and place them on the squares (using the contrasting color scheme).

           

Now this is the activity my son enjoyed.  He loves cutting and gluing!

         

Well what do you think? 

Son loves Artist Study and I will compile the famous works of some artist so I can pile them in album.  So whenever we would do an Artist Study, we'll just skim through the album and select which one we would like to replicate :) 

As of the moment, we're doing A LOT of Halloween crafts so we can use them as decor inside the house.  I have a  FREE Nomenclature and Counting cards for you to use this season.  Hope you like it!

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The Human Skeleton

Hello everyone! Since it's the month of Halloween, we're doing a series of Halloween-related activities.  And my son picked the The Human Skeleton first.  We used our Human Skeleton Nomenclature Cards and a model (bought this at a Euro store). 

We discuss each parts and its function/s.  Here he talks about his hand bones.

We did the three lesson period and here, he matches the picture cards and the label to the control cards.

               

Since I have multiple pieces of those skeleton models, I cut out the parts, place them on a card stock and added label.  I read the definition of each part of the skeleton as my son observes them using a magnifying glass :)  Then he assembled the pieces (just like a puzzle) to form the entire human skeleton.

One activity he loved the most is the coloring and labeling of his favorite parts.  He enjoys this kind of activity.  This activity sheet is included in the The Human Skeleton file.

              

Another version of puzzle is the printed skeleton which I downloaded from here.  I told him he can form the skeleton in any way he wants it, like if he wants the skeleton to run, jump,walk or just stand.  You can also get a much bigger version of this puzzle from here.

             

This his dancing skeleton.

And his standing skeleton.

We  also talk about the foods that makes our skeleton healthy (he's been eating yogurt, cheese and drinking milk religiously since then).

For visual and animation, we watched this video of Make Me Genius.  It helped a lot in understanding how our skeletal system works.

 

Hoping some of this ideas would help you in your homeschool adventure.  Have a nice weekend everyone!

Get the Skeleton Montessori Cards here:

Language Lessons

Update on how we go about our spelling and reading activities at home.

We are wrapping up Consonant Blends this month.  I've added another set of activity sheets for our Consonant Blends and this is the Trace and Spell version.  If you have been following my blog, I have a version of this for CVC words as well.  Read about it here and here.

The file Consonant Blends Trace and Spell also contains list of words with pictures highlighting the blends' use.  Here we use Melissa and Doug magnetic letters to identify the beginning blends and the ending blends and how they are pronounced.

See how my son works it out.  By mastering the "sound" of the blends, he was able to spell the words perfectly.  He's just confused with 'sc' and 'sk' though, and the use of the double letters like 'll' and 'ss'.

You can purchase the file by clicking the picture below.

Now when it comes to reading, I have no problem with it for he's such a good reader.  He can read complicated words and my explanation to this is that he was exposed to reading early on.  I read books to him before he turned 1 yr old and by so much exposure I guess, he can now easily decode the words.

Since he is now five, I wanted to train him how to understand what he reads.  It's not good enough that he knows how to read.  I think that he should also learn how to understand what he is reading and be able to grasp and absorb the concepts.  I came across this English workbook in a local bookstore and thought that it would be a good material for reading analysis.  I can't say it is the best, but it's good enough to have something like this to practice on.  This worksheet is for 1st graders actually but he likes it and never gets bored as it challenges him.

It has activities on it as well.  He loves working with words :)

For more learning materials, please check Pinay Homeschooler Shop or the FREE Downloads and FREE Learning Materials page.

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There's nothing like... AUSTRALIA (Part II)

This post is waaaay past its due date LOL  We've been busy for the past few days and I can't seem to include this in my schedule.  Good thing, it is a school day today and the little guy is in school and that gives me enough time to write about the second part of our Australia study.

To start with, we discuss about the animals that can be seen in Australia. 

Animals

Using the Animals of Australia/Oceania Nomenclature and Fact Cards and the Safari Toob Down Under, we talked about the habitats and the diets of these animals, juxtaposed to the biomes as well.

 

And there's the Parts of a Kangaroo (Nomenclature and Definition Booklet).  (Click the picture for the link)

And Mavi continued working on the identification of the body parts and added labels onto it.

          

 

Biomes

We discuss biomes as well, which is something new to him and he loves it! Read about here.

We work on the activity sheets that is included in My Adventure Book: Australia

 

 

Map works

For the studying the map, again using My Adventure Book: Australia, we talked about the different states and territories of Australia and he worked on the activity sheet which I provided. (He's obsessed with coloring as of the moment) i 

Flag

I gave him options on how to go about the flag and he wanted to paint it :) 

Aboriginal Arts

We did these few days ago.

Postcard from Australia

And lastly,we created our postcard to send it to a friend.

              

Activity sheets, maps and information pages of Australia that was used in this study is all in My Adventure Book (Australia/Oceania).

Other related stories for studying Australia as a country and continent:

There's nothing like... Australia (Part I)

Biomes of Australia

Aboriginal Arts

Continent Study: Australia

My Adventure Book (Australia/Oceania)

 

For more FREEbies, learning aids and downloads, please visit The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads. 

Linking to:

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Biomes of Australia

I made these "biomes mat" based on the My Adventure Book (Australia/Oceania) for hands-on learning.  It's made up of felt paper glued on a cardstock for durability.  Then I printed pictures for each biomes so my son will have an idea how they actually look like.  I also added handwritten labels.

The objects of the activity are:

• to identify the biomes of Australia
• to distinguish the difference of each biome (I used the description chart included in the book I mentioned above)
• to sort out the the animals of Australia based on its habitat-biome it thrives (Animals of Australia / Oceania)

These are the animals cards we used (Animals of Australia / Oceania).

And for the animals, I used the Safari Toob Down Under.

And here's my son working on the activity.  I looooovee how effective this technique is, because if I would just use worksheets first and just talk about biomes without a hands-on activity, for sure I won't get his attention.  But this one, he loves sorting the animals and the felt mats really helped!

              

For more printables and downloads, you can visit The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

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Aboriginal Arts

You've been following me on Facebook, I've shared pictures of our work of Aboriginal arts.  This is still in line with our Australia study (Part I here). Sorry if some pictures are dark as we've been doing the activities late in the afternoon.

To start with, we talked about the Aborigines of Australia and how they use paintings or artworks to communicate.  I used our trusted iPad to check some pictures of the artworks and made my son choose which one he wanted to replicate (he wanted the turtle).

 

I also pointed out that most arts of the Aborigine people uses the technique of Pointillism.  We talked about how we can execute it using the back of pencils or using Qtips/buds. 

When we're done studying the pictures, we started making our version as well.  Here we used red background with contrasting colors for the dots.

            

Another day he asked if we could do it again.  And this time I printed out from a random Google search a ready made art for him to color.

We allowed all the artworks to dry and here's how they look like now that they're dry.  The one on the upper left is my work :)

My son enjoyed the painting, especially with animals on it.   The problem is that he doesn't like pointillism, for he gets tired after making a few dots. 

Linking to:

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I Can Teach My Child