December Update :)

Hello! It's been a long time since my last post. As most of you know, we recently welcome the newest member of our little family and he's the reason why I haven't been on a the web lately.  My time is mostly spent nursing, and taking good care of the 3 boys.  And the fact that my Mom and sister in law are here for the holidays, we're skipping a few after school activities.

Anyway, here's a brief update on what we've been doing so far:

Weekends, my little family would visit parks to enjoy the good weather.

We also had a Mexican Unit.  I already posted the first part.  The second part of our Mexican Unit were mostly crafts and worksheets.

 

Then for Math, we're doing Snake Game...

 

and learning about quantities using math cubes: greater than, smaller than, one more than the other etc.

Language, we're using moveable objects for our blue and green series.  I will talk more about on this soon.

 

Mavi's busy with his Nativity Play.  He has a big role on it so he practices his line every day as well as reading lots of Christmas books :)

And as for me and hubby, we're busy raising a family :)

I am currently planning our 2014 activities and will share it once I'm done. It's a flexible plan and will serve as a guide.  With a new baby, anything can happen and change on the fly... so it is always best to have a guide. 

Taking pictures would also be challenge as I nurse little X most of the time.  So I'll attempt to "copy" the technique of Mari Ann of Counting Coconuts by taking pictures ahead of time so my hands will be free during the actual activity.

I am thankful for...

... the answered prayers.

... God's blessings we have received and yet to receive

... my mother who's with us right now

... a loving and supportive husband, my prince, my guiding star

... my 5 yrs old Mavi who rocked my world and turned my world upside down (in a good way)

... my 3 weeks old Zaev, who made me a morning person once again

and

... for old and new friends and fans (Facebook, Blogger and Pinterest) whom I met here remotely in the world wide web.  I have so much respect to all of you because of the inspiration you all have given me. 

Thank you!

Happy thanksgiving!

Artist Study: Frida Kahlo

Since we're having a Mexican Unit, I have been itching to tie in an artist that would go with our study.  And by no brainer, we had Frida Kahlo. 

Frida is a very famous Mexican artist who lived a very interesting yet sad life.  She's in pain because of the unfortunate events that happened in her life and one of which is having a vehicular accident.  Because of this, she stayed in the hospital for a long time.  To make herself happy, she painted.  She loves to paint self-portraits with things that would make her happy.

I wanted to delve deeper into the life of Frida but my knowledge of her is very limited.  Maybe when I have the luxury of time, I might as well spend it reading the life of famous artist so I can accurately relay the information to Mavi.  He loves learning about the lives of other people and how it reflects on their works.

Moving on... we started by looking at self-portraits of Frida from the web after which I made these portraits for us to work on.

Using an oil pastel, Mavi put colors on Frida's portrait according to his liking.

 

 

Then he made a self portrait.  He drew his face as I described it to him. He invested too much effort on this one!

"Mom! We should put this in the library!"

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!

MEXICO, the place you thought you knew

It is so hard to to have after "school" activities lately as it gets dark early in the afternoon. Mavi would ask me why we're doing school in the evening when in fact it is just three in the afternoon.  Though we still have a lot of things to cover up before the year ends I'm not letting  myself stress out and be pressured of my "to dos".  As I always say, the journey of our schooling at home is all about the experience and fun that we have NOT entirely about the output.

Okay, enough ranting.  This post is all about our Mexico Unit which we started last week.  The materials that we used in this unit are the following:

• Flags of North America
• Flags of Australia/Oceania
• My Adventure Book (North America Edition)  (read about it here)

We started with flags.  We review the countries that we have studied so far and compare them.  As you can see we work on the 3 part cards, and country-capital city matching cards.  These are all included in the printables mentioned above.

 

We talked about the colors used in the Mexican flag, and Mavi discovered that Australia and the United States uses the red color as well! So we discuss the meaning of the red color (and why it is always used in flags) and the green color and what it means to the history of Mexico.

Aside from coloring, we made a Mexican flag similar to this project. We used tissue paper and a cardstock.

 

Mavi made an eagle at the center of the flag representing the coat of arms of Mexico.

Moving on... we also worked on the biomes of Mexico.  We did this with Australia, and I decided that we should try a different approach this time. 

We made a map of Mexcio (biomes) using PlayDoh. We use yellow for desert and light green for deciduous and tropical rainforest (I can't find a darker shade of green to represent the tropical rainforest).  Our maps (left) and Mavi's (right) show below.

 

And we added plants, animals and landmarks found in Mexico.

And that's it for now. I'll be posting a second part of our study as I don't want this post to end up like a novel LOL.

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

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
All and things beautiful: history geography

Intro to Decanomial Beads

Finally, my Decanomial beads has arrived!  This is the first Montessori materials I purchased and it's so worth it.  Son loved it immediately. Actually, if you've been following my blog, I have a few homemade beads.  But the problem is that I don't have enough and don't have the storage box. 

Now that I own this set we can do a lot of Montessori math :)  And the box really comes in handy.

The first thing we tried was the Snake Game.  I am using Karen Tyler's Math album for this one but you can read about the mechanics of the activity here.

 

Oh we'll be very busy in the next few days :)  We'll use this alongside our study of Mexico and United States.

My Adventure Book (North America Edition)

I'm happy to announce that My Adventure Book for North America is now available!  It covers three countries of North America:  Canada, Mexico and the United States.  My first release was Australia/Oceania and Mavi loved it.  We had a wonderful time learning all about Australia... and you can read about it here, here and here.

This is just in time to for a brief introductory of the United States for Mavi in this month of US Thanksgiving. And we'll also be using our Turkey Nomenclature and Definition Booklet to complete the theme :)

 

Each country in the file contains:

• Fact sheet
• Meaning and use of the country's flag and coat of arms
• Maps of the country
• Biomes and landmarks

• Known animals existing on each country
• Famous people
• Famous cuisine/food
• DIY postcards, images for coloring, postage stamps, immigration stamps for play pretend
• And activity sheets
• Spanish and French Salutation Flash Cards (For Mexico and Canada)

Here's how I keep them in clear folder.  We'll be working with Mexico tomorrow (Mavi's special request)

Hoping that you will try it!  Thank you!

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

Turkey Nomenclature Card and Definition Booklet

Look what I made for our Thanksgiving Theme activity this month!

The file contains:

• 13 picture cards
• 13 labels
• 13 control cards
• 13 definitions for booklet
• activity sheets
• title cards

Hope you like it.  Enjoy!

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

Continuing our Blue and Green Series

I have been busy making materials for the past few days.  Although Mavi has done these a lot of times already, I decided to have new activities when it comes to language to enhance his fluency, vocabulary and improve his spelling.  These activities were very much inspired by Making Montessori Ours.  I love the depth of their math and language lessons so I decided to try it with my son as well using Montessori materials (I purchased a few). 

Since my moveable alphabet will be arriving next week, I already prepared these cards to jumpstart our lesson.  I am still contemplating whether to get a language manual or not.  As of the moment, I am just relying on other's Montessori mom blogs and the ones that are free online.  If ever I will purchase a manual, I am torn whether to get it from Montessori Research and Development or from KHT Montessori.  Having said that, I also busy reading reviews of which one will fit our home school.

As of now, we're practicing the digraphs sounds and practice writing the words.  We'll be doing the beginning and ending digraphs, and identifying digraphs used in the middle of the words.

Same with my green series, we'll be practicing the sound of the phonograms used in the beginning, ending and middle of words.

Aside from these, my son is still loving my activity sheets on consonant blends.   

Consonant Blends Trace and Spell

Consonant Blends Activity Sheets

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

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!

Continents Revisited

Okay so we haven't done serious "schooling" during the midterm break as I wanted then little boy to have some rest and recreation.  In between Fresh Beat Band and Carrie and David's Popshop, I inserted a few math activities which he truly loved.  Then just before the weekend, he asked if we could do "the world map" again.  So what we did was paint the Montessori World Map. Mavi attended Montessori School last year and we've done a lot of Geography lessons, so he's very well familiar with this already.

Because we've done coloring a lot of times, I asked him to paint the map this time.  I showed him some tricks so that he won't go over the outlines of the map.

Then we started mixing colors for the continents (what makes brown? what makes a pink color?).

            

I printed an activity sheet from The Helpful Garden.  I'm surprised he can easily identify the continents just by looking at their outlines even though we haven't done this for a a while now!

          

We'll be having visitors and they'll be staying with us this week so I am not sure if we can have after school activities.  Wishing everyone a happy happy Monday!

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!

Learning about LENGTHS (Measuring)

This is an introduction to a RULER, and new concepts like length, inches and centimeters were also introduced.

We have done measuring activities previously but at that time, my son wasn't really interested and cannot grasp the concept. 

But I happily announce that in this activity, he was totally engrossed!  I can't describe the concentration and dedication he showed me whenever I ask him to cut a center length of paper strip or make a worm of  certain length using PlayDoh.

Make sure that your child understands the concept of length (or how long) as you will be using it often in this activity.  Also I recommend that you talk about the ruler first, describing inches and centimeters (this depends on the age of your child).

Here are some of the tools we used that can be easily found inside your house:

• Small and large paper clips.  You can connect them and make your child measure (inches or centimeters) it or the other way around.

 

• PlayDoh or homemade dough.  I asked him to make a very long "worm" of playdough and cut them into specific lengths.

 

• You can also use craft sticks. 

   I also cut different strips of paper and made him match the labels for each strip using a ruler. 

Now this time, I made him create the strips according to my instructions.  BUT first, you need to show the child how to use the ruler to measure strips of paper and most importantly TRY TO DEMONSTRATE at first.

Here, I have to keep on reminding him always start at '0'.  I didn't realize it was complicated because he has to adjust the ruler's position from time to time to make the starting point at '0'.

                  

   He labeled the strips.

And what more would interest your child than to measure parts of his body!  In our case, we measure his fingers LOL.

Hope this post gives you idea on how to go start learning about lengths and sizes.  My next objective is we'll measure weights.  But I still have to get some materials for this one and I am eyeing this weighing scale.  A wishlist for Christmas!

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!