Continent Fact Cards Game and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Mavi can’t get enough of these facts cards from my Nutshell Geography series! He wants us to play this when in the car, or when we're walking home.  I would ask him a questions based on the facts and he’s going to tell me the continent or the country it’s connected to.  We developed a scheme of giving him 3 clues (mostly letters from the answers) and I am PROBIHIBITED to give the answer. It’s amazing how both Mavi and I enjoyed it.  So happy that we found a new way to use these cards!

These cards are from:

• Asia in a Nutshell
• Europe in a Nutshell
• Africa in a Nutshell
• South America in a Nutshell

Classifying Vertebrate Animals

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I love unplanned activities.  Mavi would always resort to this activity whenever he’s bored on Fridays (swimming lessons were moved to Saturdays).  I like that he can do this activity independently, while learning the important characters of animals that belong in each group.

I believe that it is important for the child to have a clear and defined idea of the classes in the animal kingdom and its division.  What’s important to me is to have him gain the knowledge through this activity rather than reading and memorizing the difference in the books.

Exploring Fruits for Toddlers

Vito is 23 months old. 

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After, the zoo, farm animals and parts of the body, I decided to do a fruit unit for this little boy as he loves to name fruits whenever we are in the supermarket.  I like to come up with themed activities as it helps the child to expand their knowledge of certain objects and occasions, practice communication skills and improve their vocabulary.

 

Beginning Sounds. We’re using Hape Lowercase Puzzle.

Apple Prints. Color recognition and sensorial activity.

Bagging Fruits. A practical life activity that develops hand/eye coordination, concentration plus helping Mommy tidy up!  We’re using Learning Resources Fruit Counters.

Matching Real Objects with Pictures. Developing early discrimination skills (difference between objects), hand/eye coordination and concentration.  I made the fruit cards and you can get a copy from here or here.

Fruit Color Sorting using a Tong. Improving fine motor skills, pincer grasp, concentration and color recognition.

I love this tong from Ikea. 

As of the moment, our color sorting activity involves two colors, but I introduce one (new) color at a time.

He’s seriously concentrating.  Goodness!

Slicing a Banana. I was with him the whole time he’s doing this, reason why I don’t have an actual photo of the activity.  Another great practical life activity to introduce to kids.  This is an introductory activity of actual “slicing”, though we’ve done a lot of this using playdough.  He still has difficulty coordinating his hands.  We’ll get there though… need to practice more

And that’s about it! Thanks once again for taking time to read through the post.  Don’t forget to PIN this for your reference.

Check me out on Pinterest for more toddler and themed activities.

The Study of the Circulatory System for Kids

It’s another 12 Months of Montessori Series and today I’m going to share with you some simple and easy to prepare lessons and activities for learning the circulatory system of the human body.  I mentioned earlier how Mavi was asking me a lot of things about the human heart and the diseases of the heart that causes death in some famous people.  Bombarding me with so many questions and that eagerness to learn, we worked on this unit study to:

• Learn about the human heart and how it functions
• What causes heart diseases
• A better understanding of blood vessels: vein and artery
• How to prevent heart diseases
• What’s the role of the blood in the human body

In this unit study, we focused on the three major elements that comprises the circulatory system:

• the human heart
• blood vessels
• human blood

As a bonus, I also added a few pointers on how to have a healthy heart!

The Human Heart
Last month, we learned about the human heart, the different parts and how it functions. You can learn more about it in this post, How to Teach the Anatomy of the Human Heart to Kids.


Blood Vessels
First we plotted the network of  blood vessels in our body using our Cardiovascular Information Diagrams sheet as a guide and a printed outline of the human body.  We used PlayDoh (red and blue) to represent the vein and artery.

This activity will introduce the child to the basic concept of how blood is distributed in our body.  By plotting the veins and arteries, they will understand how the organs in the body receives oxygen and nutrients.


Working diligently to replicate our guide


And he realized that even the head have blood vessels!


We went a little farther by inspecting the network of blood vessels, learning the difference between the veins and arteries and capillaries.   Below is a demonstration of the direction of the blood flow in the body through the blood vessels, of how oxygen rich blood enters the artery (except pulmonary arteries) to the capillaries (where oxygen is distributed to the organs) and passes through the vein to enter the human heart.


Here Mavi’s creating an artery, vein and capillary.



He even made his network and labelled the parts.


The Human Blood
This is to demonstrate the composition of blood.  45% red blood cells (red coloured water), 54% plasma (cooking oil) and 1% platelets (bubbles in between).  


Care of our Heart
These cards are included in our heart model.  It identifies 10 foods that are essential for a healthy heart.  Mavi was seriously reading all through the 10 cards and checking if he’s consuming them.  Well of course, he eats almost everything in the list except for the broccoli and wine


And that ends our circulatory system unit.  For more biology related posts see the following:

• Dental Unit for Kids
• Tooth Cross Section
• Skeletal System
• Study of Internal Organs

For more details on the Circulatory System learning materials you can check this post, Circulatory System Learning Materials.

Don’t forget to PIN this for later! I assure you that you will be needing this in the future

This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

 

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now ~ Planting Peas

The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama’s Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Child Led Life

The Pinay Homeschooler ~ Every Star Is Different ~ Grace and Green Pastures

Halloween Activities for Toddlers and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Halloween is just around the corner and we’re having the “feel” at home by working on some “halloweeny” activities.  Here’s our working trays for the next few weeks:

TOP:  tonging creep creatures,  scooping black beans into pumpkin bags

MIDDLE:  counting halloween objects using a pumpkin counter, letter matching using alphabet cards (all cards are from HALLOWEEN TODDLER PACK)

BOTTOM:  pouring corn kernels, pumpkin face crafts

Practical Life Activities

Practical life activities are those building and improving skills that are of use in the daily life, like pouring, scooping, transferring etc.  The benefits include hand-eye coordination and concentration.  To know more about practical life activities, visit my post here and here.

Everything that involves the corn kernels and the black beans were a hit!  Both Mavi and Vito played with it for long periods of time and I get to do chores while they’re messing around   To save you a lot of work, always use trays, the bigger the better!

Numbers and Alphabet

As I mentioned earlier, I always integrate a little bit of counting and phonics into our daily activities.  Vito is currently more into counting than the alphabets, so this counting cards that I made for him was a hit!  He loves identifying the objects in the cards and counting them using the pumpkin counters. 

An extra fun phonic game I included is discovering letters from the purse and matching them on the cards.  Similar activity with the Alphabet Sensory Bin except that we’re using a purse this time and used both the upper and lowercase letters.  The wooden letters used here were from Hape Uppercase and Lowercase Puzzle.

Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

Here are the featured Halloween activities for this week!

 

 

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything from Just Add Speech

Roll a Jack O' Lantern Game from A Little Pinch Perfect

Halloween Craft Pumpkin Mummies from Handson As We Grow

30 Preschool Halloween Crafts from Homeschool Preschool

Pumpkin Suncatcher and Color Mixing from Age of Montessori

 

Now it’s time for this week’s link party! This is a BRAND new link up for all blog posts that include learn and play activities and hands-on education for kids. We are excited to read your blog posts and to see what you have to share! Please link up below and grab our button to display on your blog.

If you are a blogger, share your family friendly posts here. We are looking for things which include:

• Montessori Education
• Homeschool
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• Tot and Preschool Trays
• Fine and Gross Motor Activities
• Kids in the Kitchen
• Healthy Recipes for Kids
• Arts and Crafts
• Natural Living
• Free Educational Printables
• Family-Oriented Activities
• Healthy Living

Your post will be featured on each of our blogs where we will pick our favourite posts every other week. That means there is more of a chance that you will be featured!

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