Moon and Planets

Last week we were rowing Goodnight Moon and ABC Bunny.  We also read Papa Can You Take the Moon for Me and the Stars and Planets book from the Ladybird Read It Yourself Series as follow-on reads (related to moon and stars).

My son got really excited upon knowing that we’ll be doing activities related to space.  You see lately, he’s so obsessed with rocket ships and told me he wanted to go to the Moon riding a rocket ship.  And he loves to memorize the planets! Goodness. 

To feed his enthusiasm, we started with the nomenclature card of the Phases of the Moon.  I got mine for free from ETC.  It  helped that we arranged the phases of the moon on the events that occurred in Papa Can You Take the Moon for Me, for my son didn’t get bored or tired understanding the topic.  (He tends to listen intently when I discuss topics related or based on a book he read).  For him it was just a story telling.  But of course, he picked the concept that the moon can get bigger or smaller.

 

Then we did the matching game: picture cards with the control cards/label with the control cards.  Supposedly he should match the label with the picture card but then he still couldn’t do it so I just made him do the later.

          

And I was inspired by this project from Adventures of Bear that I just got to do it with Mavi too.   I did all the cutting as he can’t cut circles yet... he did all the gluing job including putting the labels.  My son considered it a masterpiece!

After I took his picture he insisted that he should take my photo too... with his work.

The last activity that we did was the planets.  This wasn’t supposed to be part of the unit but then he got the book and started reading it to me.  He kept on asking me the names of all the planets for at that time, he can only memorize the first three.  So I took my nomenclature card (homemade) and discussed each planets.  I did the discussion in a ‘story telling’ manner.

       

Le Louvre

The best museum we’ve been to.  My son enjoyed running around the museum.. of course he couldn’t appreciate it yet.  Hope we can go back so I can discuss to him valuable works of art that made it history.

Montessori Wrap-Up

Mavi is 37 month old.

Here’s the summary of our Montessori-related activities for the past two weeks.

MATH

Working with bead stairs worksheet.

Learning how to add and understanding the ‘teen numbers. 

         

Patterning using popsicle sticks.  The sticks were from National Bookstore (Bacolod).

Forming polygons using popsicle sticks.  We counted the sides of each polygons formed.  I realize that whenever we do some “shapes” activity related to polygons, I should give emphasis on counting the sides.

          

 

PRACTICAL LIFE

Sorting pompoms using a clamp.  The pompoms were from Spotlight Singapore.

Sorting pompoms using a chopstick trainer.  You can get this trainer anywhere in Singapore.

                               

Wooden nuts and bolts.  I bought this one at Daiso Singapore.  It was difficult for him at first to roll the nuts, he gets confused on what direction he should turn it.  Eventually he figure it out and started playing with it for hours.

         

 

SENSORIAL.

We have lots of old magazines at home so here I cut a few pictures and made it into puzzles for the little one to play.

         

Lots of drawing this week and he prefer using oil pastels and Crayola’s Pipsqueak.

LANGUAGE

Phonics search for letters CUSNPOLH.

         

Just wanted to show these landmarks :) I find it really cute.  Of course, they fall under U for United States and United Kingdom hehe.  In case you wanted to know where I got these, it’s from Safari Toobs.

Pink Series and moveable letters.  We’re still working on sets 1 to 4 and this time I taught him how to use the moveable letters with our CVC words.  The letters were made from foam art papers. 

         

Then we did more writing practice using his mini-chalk board, a gift from his Dad’s friend and using Kumon lowercase Write and Wipe.

         

Leaves

To enjoy much of the Autumn season, I recalled our leaves theme last week even if I don’t have enough resources.

I first thing we did was walk along the estate to collect leaves and discuss the different shapes and textures of leaves. He was eager to learn! Especially when we touch the leaves and learn about their textures :) He loves it!

He enjoyed collecting leaves as well.  I explained why some leaves are orange/brown/red and some are green.

         

At home, we trace the leaves and differentiate their sizes.

 

We also made a leaves collage.  Unfortunately, we use a stick glue which doesn’t stick so well :)

         

So later, I decided if we could just paint a replica of our leaves collage.  He ended up painting a car.

I remembered that I also have a print-out of Leaf match activity which I got from Montessori for Everyone a long time ago. He just loves matching game and it surprises me that he can do it independently in a breeze. 

And of course, my favorite was the nomenclature cards for the parts of a leaf which I downloaded for free from here.    There’s another version of it from here too.  I only discussed relevant parts of the leaf that my son can easily identify.

Learning Addition

In attempt to add a little change and spice on our Math curriculum, I decided to introduce addition to Mavi last week.  I made orange boxes (in time for Halloween!) for this activity and use our blue pompoms (in lieu of our Blueberries for Sal unit). 

First, I discussed the plus and equal signs... it’s his first time to encounter the symbols.  I don’t know if he really understands it but he kept nodding his head whenever I talk about how these symbols work.  He just kept on calling the “equal” sign as eleven though :)

So after I place one pompom on each box and say “one pompom plus one pompom equals...” then I made him combine the pompoms in the steel container and count. 

We played around the numbers 1,2,3 so that all the sums would not exceed 5.  It seems that he wasn’t too giddy and attentive when we did this activity.  Although he participated and do exactly what I tell him to do, the interest wasn’t just there (at the moment).

I intend to teach him basic addition for now, playing around with small numbers and touch large ones as we progress.  

Counting 11 to 20

Mavi is 37 months old.

My son love is into counting these days so after we had this, we did numbers 11 to 20 as well.  We used the bead bars, although I wanted to use other counters, we just don’t have enough for this activity.

I presented 11 to 15 first, by placing the number cards and bead bars as presented below.  We counted the beads together to support the number the cards.

Then I put together the number cards and the bead bars and as seen on the picture below.  While doing this, I explained that a ten and a one makes eleven.  Same goes as I do twelve to fifteen.

Then we would do the activity all over again, but this time, it’s him leading.  I made sure that he understands the ‘teen numbers before we proceeded with the 16 to 20.

When we got to this part... he wanted to do the activity all by himself.  

I just placed 2 golden bead bars to represent 20.

We still haven’t done any numbers and counters for practicing 11 to 20 but so far he’s getting the point.  Since we’re done with lower numbers I would probably explore the ‘teen section of counting, up to twenties or thirties. 

B4FIAR: Blueberries for Sal

Mavi is 37 months old.

We’ve been reading this book along side Bear Hunt but I decided that we should separate the unit studies for each book.

Here are the activities we did in line with Blueberries for Sal.

LANGUAGE.  Determining beginning sounds of pictures from the clipcards which I downloaded from the B4FIAR packs. 

Read, build and spell of words based from the books.  This is currently his favorite activity. 

 

I love it that would read the word using their phonic sounds :)

 

PRACTICAL LIFE.  Sorting blueberries (blue pompoms) and other berries hehe using a clamp.

MATH. We did an introductory lesson on addition using blue pompoms as blueberries.

 

After combining the orange containers, here he is counting the number of blueberries after adding 2 plus 2.  Will provide a separate post on this.

 

Tracing lines.

         

I observed that on the end part of the line, his trace becomes a little jagged.  He must be tired.

 

Doing the worksheet from First School.

Later on I found him reading the words again. 

ARTS.  We made bushes with lots of blueberries and added tree stump.  I cut all the necessary stuff, then I taught him how to make mini balls of cottons and glue them on the bushes.  He made all the cotton balls here and asked him to put blue paints to make it look like blueberries.

We seldom have crafts activities and I was glad that we did this because he truly enjoyed the activity.  It’s his first time to work on cotton balls and he was amused.  He did this activity while I was doing the dishes, with less supervision he was able to do what I wanted him to accomplish.  By the time he finished his work, he was so happy and he immediately displayed it in his room.

This is his finish product.