Template Blog Test: February 2016

St. Patrick’s Day Activities for 28 Months Toddler

Sunday 28 February 2016

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Vito is 28 months old.

St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner and we are excited to watch the parade in the city this year! To introduce Ireland’s big celebration to Vito, I prepared a bunch of work trays for him this month as he turns 28 months old. I featured 9 activities here but in reality we’re doing so much more, so I’ll just update the blog of other activities that are not included here.

1. Ireland Matching Cards. These cards are similar to the picture books that I have already in the shop. The cards here are all about the icons of Ireland.

2. Sorting Erasers. Owned this since last year and it is just now that Vito enjoys sorting it. You can get the erasers from here.

3. Sorting Colors. Using the Montessori Colour Tablets #2, Vito will be sorting the rainbow colors using our Learning Resources counters. In the picture we’re using the insect counters, he likes them!

4. Letter R and Round Magnets. This Rainbow Do a Dot was printed from here and I saw this from Deb’s page. It’s a good practice of hand eye coordination. Vito makes sure he places the round magnets exactly into the dots.

5. Creating a rainbow using Do a Dot Markers. Similar to the Rainbow do a dot but this time we’re using the markers. I showed Vito how to color the rainbow and he finished half of the page. And no, he didn’t follow the order of the rainbow colors (as expected). You can get the rainbow pattern from Making Learning Fun.

6. Pouring lentils using a funnel. Out of all the activiites, this one is Vito’s favourite. More on this later.

7. Scooping lentils. He’s quite bored with scooping activities lately, I guess its because we’ve been doing it all throughout the week. And besides, he enjoys using his hands more than using a scoop or spoon.

8. Counting gold coins. I bought the gold coins in Amazon for our Pirate Unit last year, and this time Vito gets to use it for St. Patrick’s Day. We have more counting activities than letters because believe it or not, Vito is more interested in counting than letters.

9. Patterning. This is for colour recognition and introduction to patterning. We are using the link cubes I bought from Singapore years ago, but you can also purchase this in Amazon. This March, we’re working on orange and green colors, so our color activities will revolve around this two.

10. One to one correspondence using clothes pins. A new addition to our monthly work trays is this counting cards and clothes pins. We have lots of pins at home but found them difficult to open, so I bought the wooden ones for Vito to practice on. He’s able to open and close it, and now his biggest challenge is to clip it on the picture. This activity is counting practice and enhancement of hand-eye coordination skills.

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The Animal Kingdom Revisited

Saturday 27 February 2016

No school for Mavi means brainstorming for future activities. He opened up lately that he wanted to study about animals again, so I took out our cards on The Animal Kingdom and checked what else we missed and haven’t explored yet. He reviewed the cards and sorted out the things that he wanted to learn this year. He picked arthropods, starfish and jellyfish! Yay, something new!

Here are the animals we have studied so far:

annelids
arthropods ( we haven’t worked crustaceans and centipedes yet) (Part One, Part Two)
vertebrates (birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, amphibians) (Blog Post, Vertebrate Sorting Cards)
mollusc (Part One, Part Two, Snail Nomenclature Card and Definition Booklet)

And the ones we have yet to explore…

echinoderms (starfish)
cnidaria (jellyfish)

We love using our animal kingdom chart as our guide in our zoology activities at home. It’s easier much easier to identify animals and Mavi can easily memorize it through constant exposure. If you are interested, you can check out our Animal Kingdom printable here or click the image below.

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Having Fun with London Playsets & Cards

Friday 26 February 2016

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We are all in love with our wooden London Playset/s which we acquired recently. It’s so precious and beautiful that I can’t seem to take it out the bag!

Now how do we use these figures?

As LEGO would say it, “imagination is the limit!”, we use these wooden materials in so many ways! We use it for imaginative play, setting up the London city with trains and cars and use our Playmobil figures to play pretend as tourists.

And to enhance its educational value, I created a picture booklet with cards so we can learn more about the story behind the icons. Another playset we’re using is the Playmobil where we’re using the Queen as an additional character in our set. The picture book that we have has this beautiful clip arts of United Kingdom’s landmarks (including Scotland and Wales). Mavi reads the picture book as he identifies the figure.

Vito is the one who mostly uses the cards (Mavi uses the outline pages for colouring) as he loves identifying and matching things.

Now a little bit of the London playset, the Big Ben and London Bridge are stackable, and is made up of little pieces. It doesn’t bother me though. Mavi suggests we glue them but I don’t really want to do that. The London Eye is impressive, Vito loves to spin it!

Of course, it wouldn’t be London without those iconic “red” buses, guards, postal kiosk and telephone box.

I am so pleased with this toy, and when not in use as a toy, you can display it in your shelf to add colours to your sitting room. I couldn’t recommend this enough!

If you are interested in our United Kingdom Picture Book (which includes the cards as well), click here or the image below to purchase. It’s absolutely worth-it!

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Spring Arts & Crafts and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Wednesday 24 February 2016

There’s so many wonderful posts I’d like to feature this week in our Link & Play Link Up! I love seeing all these beautiful artworks and crafts which are so colorful and spirited! Here are my picks!

Learning about Faces!

Tuesday 23 February 2016

The boys (and I) had so much fun making faces! This is a simple activity that you can do with your kids with minimal preparation. It’s the perfect opportunity to learn about emotions and the facial expressions they can make!

I printed and laminated this My Face template from Twinkl and each boy has one so they draw their faces on it using dry erase pens. Vito was telling me he’s making a spider!

Another option is to use playdough to create faces! You can get your kids practise their fine motor skills by letting them use some cutters and moulders.

Matching cards is always part of our activities because Vito is obsessed with it. I printed this faces printable from Natural Beach Living.

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Learning the Parts of the Human Eye

Saturday 20 February 2016

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It’s Mavi’s midterm break and we decided to look into the parts of the human eye! We examined our model unit this morning which we bought last year from the local store. It’s so perfect and goes along so well with our Human Eye Nomenclature Cards and Booklet.

To start with, we disassemble our eye model and identify the parts using our nomenclature cards. Mavi was surprised that his eye is actually shaped like a sphere and yes, a ball! All the while he thought it was flat. So as we identify the parts using the model, he can’t stop himself from examining my eye as well LOL.

When the parts were completely taken apart, we read our booklet to know the purpose of each part. Don’t you just love our eye model? Even the inside of the eyeball has drawings of blood vessels on it. So detailed!

I’m so used of making these booklets that I was able assemble it in just a few minutes. I laminated the pages as well for longevity.

These are the 3 part cards. I decided to add the eyelid and eyelash in the parts as they are also essential in defining the human eye.

Our little man was also as excited and thrilled to examine the human eye. He was observing his brother and was attentively listening to Mavi’s soliloquy LOL.

And finally! He got the chance to borrow the eyeball and started to emulate his brother.

For the eye model/s here are the links where you can get them:

UK/Ireland

Easons or Hamely’s (where I found my model)
Learning Resources Cross Section Eye in AmazonUK
Giant Eye Model in AmazonUK

Eastcolight Opthalmology Set

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Small World Play: Giant Pandas

Friday 19 February 2016

Early this year, when everything in Amazon was on sale, I got this one of a kind Panda and the Bamboo Forest Playset from Playmobil. I’ve been eyeing this for months since last year and I was lucky enough to chance this set on sale! Giant Pandas are one of those animals that are in the endangered list and I think somehow, by having this playset at home I can introduce this beautiful animal to the kids, talk about their characters and habitat.h

PS. We’ve visited a lot of zoo, but we haven’t encountered a Giant Panda. We didn’t chance upon them in Singapore Zoo either.

We love the the Panda Playset! The bamboo, tree, hilltop and bridge plus the panda family! It’s a perfect playset for our little pandas to play with their Moms and Dads. In setting up the tray, I added a felt craft paper (grass) and a few more figures from Safari Toob to create a community of pandas. Mavi assembled everything in this Melissa and Doug wooden tray. Note that the Playmobil pandas are much bigger than the Safari Toobs’.

The boys love the bamboo objects included in the playset. We talked about what pandas eat and in what environment they thrive. We also discuss about bamboos and where we can find these.

Vito loves the small cave in the playset. He “hides” the pandas there as he counts them.

Day and night, this is Vito’s favourite play material. He plays with this in the morning while I’m busy preparing Mavi for school. Just make sure to keep an eye on those baby pandas, they’re quite small and toddlers tend to put them in the mouth or throw them anywhere in the house.

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March Activities and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Thursday 18 February 2016

March is fast approaching and I’ve been doing some planning for the boy’s activities for next month. I am also looking forward for a warm weather so we can do outdoor play and exploration. For this week’s featured activities, let me share Vito’s first “themed” unit:

We had a lot of fun with these, especially the scooping of pompoms and the paint works!

Now, for this week’s featured posts, I am sharing the activities that you can do for the month of March!