Botany Unit: Trees and Leaves

Last week's activities. Sorry if I have to flood this post with pictures as I am short on words.  Migraine affects my thinking most of the time :(

               

Leaf matching worksheets from Education.com and my Tree Shapes matching cards (including sorting cards).

              

Leaf prints.  We did not do much of this as Mavi told me they were also doing this in school. 

Examining the parts of a leaf. He was really interested on this one.  Our cards and booklet were from my Leaf Pack or you can read about it here.

               

He loves identifying the parts.  I'm thankful that we are surround with plants so it's easier to pick leaves with pronounced parts.

                

And instead of bark rubbings (it rained the entire week), we talked about how the leaves and trees changes according to seasons. 

              

Note:  We were supposed to have leaf shapes as well.  We did this last year and my son had fun collecting leaves from our estate and at the park.  Unfortunately, the weather did no cooperate and we ended up staying at home the whole time we're doing this unit.  I was quite disappointed.  But... since summer is not over yet, we'll try to have this one when Mr Sun will shine brightly again. 

 

And I could not find my leaf sorting cards!  And with that I might have a little re-organizing and cleaning up to do next month.

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Trees in 4 Seasons

We made these wonderful trees last week and I think it deserves a post!

Materials needed:  some colored tissue paper and 4 tree trunks (cut-out from paper bags)

 

Cut the tissue paper into small pieces and crumple each.  For the trunks, glue them on a white paper or cardstock.  You might work on one tree at a time.  Such as here, we started with summer... thus the green tissue.  I also advice to use some range from light to dark colors for some accent.  My son had fun gluing the leaves on the trees!

 

Here's our winter and spring trees.  My son decorated the winter tree with some "snowy leaves" on the ground and leaving the tree almost bare.  Our spring tree is a Cherry Blossom thus the color pink.

 

For summer, we have light and dark green leaves and for autumn he wanted yellow and orange with leaves on the ground.

 

And this is how they turned out... and I love it! They all look good together!  I'll find a suitable frame for them so I could hang and display them in sitting room:)

 

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Famous Landmarks of the 6 Continents

Hello! How was everyone's weekend? I was caught up with my son's school activities and next is his last week of school, so pardon my absence.  Anyway, I finally completed our landmark materials for the 6 continents (Antarctica coming soon!).  They're are now up and ready to be used :)  I worked double time on this one as we are resetting our Geography lessons starting August.

Kindly click the pictures for the link of the files. 

Landmarks of North America

Landmarks of South America

 

Landmarks of Europe

 

Landmarks of Africa

 

Landmarks of Asia

Landmarks of Australia / Oceania

 

Thank you so much and I hope you are liking these!

Worksheets Again

I was doing some "spring cleaning" and was organizing my files the other day and my son saw old worksheets that he's been working on last year.  We stopped doing worksheets because there was a point that he's no longer interested in it and the fact that he doesn't like worksheets.

I was surprised because when he saw these sheets, he excitedly asked me if he can work on it. 

So this is what we're doing when we're taking a break from our Botany lessons.  I don't know how long this will last but as long as he wanted to work on them, I have to include it in our "afterschool" activities (and a good thing to do on rainy day!) . 

Montessori Addition Charts (FREE Addition Booklets!)

My son is enjoying the Addition Charts (FREE) which I got from Hope4Me.My son is currently working on Addition Tables Booklet 1 which is by the way downloaded for free using the Addition Chart 3 (of Hope4Me). 

Tutorials can be found here and here.

Once he figure out how to use the chart, he wanted to work on it independently!

We love Montessori Math!

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Animals Around the World

Finally! All files are up now and you can purchase materials for Antarctica, Australia/Oceania, Asia and Africa.  Here's the link to all of my animals around the world file. (Click the pictures for the link)

Animals of Antarctica

 

Animals of Africa

 

Animals of Asia

Animals of Australia

 

Animals of Europe

 

Animals of North America

 

Animals of South America

 

And for my FREEBIES you can check it out here.  I am currently working on a page listing all of my freebies and archiving all those with prices for easier access.  So I'm asking for your patience and understanding... it will be up soon and you can view the freebies and those with prices in one click. 

Thank you soooo much everyone! Hope you are liking all of these!

Happy happy Father's Day weekend to all!

Botany Unit: Plant Life Cycle and Photosynthesis

PHOTOSYNTHESIS

To wrap up our Plant Study, we looked into the process of Photosynthesis.  We talked about the source of light, the water and the carbon dioxide that the plant needed to produce oxygen.

I printed a few worksheets from Education.com for him to work on.      

Here's a helpful animation about Photosynthesis.

LIFE CYCLE OF A PLANT

Another worksheet from Education.com, here ordering the stages of a plant's life.

               

 EXPERIMENT

To see how the fluids move inside the plant, we did a little experiment.  We put some stalks of celery into a glass of water containing a blue food coloring.

              

The results as of Day 1.  The leaves and the tip of the stalks have blue spots and the leaves turned into blue.  That's because the blue water has been transported around the plants :)  I love how visible the blue pigments are in the leaves!  (You can click the pictures for a much bigger image)

              

Linking to:

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FREE Addition Tables Booklets!

Fresh from the grill!  I made these for son, to be used in our addition exercises.  We're using Book 1 as of the moment. 

The pdfs are set in booklet format, and I added page numbers as a guide.   You can also cut each tables if you do not wish to use it as a booklet.

Inside, this is how they  look like:

Addition Tables Book 1

Addition Tables Book 2

Addition Tables Book 3

If you have problem with the links, please let me know.  Hope you like it.  Enjoy!

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Botany Unit: The Plant

Last week's activity:  The Plant  (my son is obsessed with Legos and he made a Lego plant similar to our cards LOL)

This is how I store my nomenclature cards.  Nothing fancy, just a green cardstock (Green for Botany)  and divided it into three sections.  I measured the width and height of the cards to make sure they fit well in each pocket.

First we read books. I started discussing how does a plant grow, what does it do and it's essential role on our environment.

Then I took out our materials.  This sunflower plant is from his school.  It's a perfect model for our study.

Next thing, we talk about the different parts of the plant.  As seen here, he's working on the parts of the plant nomenclature cards.

We also have blank labeling card worksheets.  He colors each part of the plant and writes the label/s on it.  He loved this!

                

Because I run out of felt, I wasn't able to prepare a poor man's version of a plant puzzle.  So instead I have him make a plant out of colored papers.  He did most of the work here.  All I did was to draw the outlines on the paper and assist him in cutting the parts.

  This is how it looks like when he was done.  I read the booklet to define each parts as he formed his plant.

 

If you may ask, all materials seen here (nomenclature, worksheet and booklet) are all in one file (click the  picture for the link).

 

And because he can't get enough of what he has learned, he collected these on our way home from school. 

Next post is all about photosynthesis and plant life cycle.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
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Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
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