Template Blog Test: March 2016

Collection of Easter Activities and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Thursday 10 March 2016

How do you observe the Lenten season? I was raised in a Catholic family and growing up, I participated in a lot of church and community activities tied to the observance of Lent. The activties has helped me understand the meaning of Lent and the celebration of life on Easter.

Last year we observed the Lenten season with some religion study, identifying their traditions and practices to understand their faith. I find it important that we must introduce our kids to the different religions of the world not just ours, to be able to appreciate and respect everyone’s belief.

Now in celebration of Easter, I compiled the a number of amazing Easter Themed activities for all of you! Hope you these!

The Rainbow Clouds Craft

Wednesday 9 March 2016

I saw this beautiful rainbow craft a few weeks ago in Pinterest and I totally forgot the main site, so please if you own this craft leave a message and I’ll include the credits.

I’ve been introducing Vito to the spring season using our Spring Season Picture Cards, books and outdoor activities. Today, I’m sharing the rainbow clouds the boys made last week. The weather was terrible at that time and we couldn’t explore our yard so I made use of their free time doing crafts at home. So I tried to scan through Pinterest in search of simple crafts that BOTH of my kids could work on, and this is one of them!

Crafts projects allow children to exercise their fine motor skills, improve manual dexterity and understanding of visual-spatial relationships. They provide opportunities to use their imagination as well. Just be vigilant when using small items and sharp objects like scissors.

Materials:

Procedure:

1. Pre-cut the white cardstock into a cloud shape. I made one for each of the boys. Apply glue on the clouds, and I suggest you provide each kid a glue as they tend to fight over one object when working. In our case, I just instructed them of what to do, and they’re the ones who executed it. Mostly, Vito follows what his brother is doing Open-mouthed smile

2. Place a generous amount of cotton. The fluffiness of the cotton bothers Vito though and he tried to avoid touching the glue as well.

3. Apply glue at the bottom side of the cloud for your rainbow. Place accordingly the strips of coloured cardstock to form a rainbow. You can demonstrate this to the kids or instruct them of the order of colours if they are not yet familiar with rainbow.

4. Strike a pose when they are dry! See how Vito refuses to strike a pose in the camera LOL. See what happens when your toddler is camera shy.

5. And don’t forget to put them on display. They look adorable as wall decors and kids love looking at their masterpieces! The cherry blossom was another project that we made earlier last month and will post the details soon.

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Montessori Books for Older Children: The Universe Story Trilogy

Tuesday 8 March 2016

It’s time for another 12 Months of Montessori Series and today I am sharing Mavi’s favourite book series. We have been using these books for years now. The books are all about the cosmic history to the evolution of man. The stories are accompanied by stunning images and time-line to follow. Everything in these books are just too magical and enlightening for him!

About the books:

There are three books in the series and each tells a certain period in time. Here are the details of the books which you can purchase from Amazon:

BORN WITH A BANG. Story of the universe from the Big Bang to the formation of the sun and solar system.
FROM LAVA TO LIFE. Story of Earth from the appearance of the first life forms to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
MAMMALS WHO MORPH. The story of the first mammals to the story of humans.

When I asked Mavi how we’re going to showcase his books in today’s post, he suggested that we should make some kind of “interpretation”, similar to a museum but only in a series of activities. So I scanned and laminated his favourite parts in each book so we can do our “interpretation” of the story.

BORN WITH A BANG: how the universe was formed. Seen here, we replicated the bursting of lights in the universe forming into galaxies, stars and planets via the milk/soap/food coloring science activity. This was performed by Mavi and Vito. The mixing and contrast of colours looked like the big bang!

BORN WITH A BANG: the sun was formed. We painted the sun using yellow and orange paints. To make the flares as described in the book, we used plastic fork to create a dramatic effect on the sun.

FROM LAVA TO LIFE: the first life forms. We used the Safari Toob Cambrian Life to learn about the early life forms of mother Earth. We explored this before so it was another round of learning for Mavi and something new for Vito LOL.

FROM LAVA TO LIFE: the age of the dinosaurs. This was the kids favourite part of the history. Mavi relived the era of dinosaurs by setting up his Playmobil Dinosaur collections, which includes a gigantic volcano, some plants and dinosaurs. We’ve been using our dinosaur Playmobils for months now, they’re worth-it! I stopped buying LEGOs and started investing in Playmobils for more imaginative play (for both boys). Who couldn’t resist dinosaurs? Even Vito loves them to pieces!

MAMMALS WHO MORPH: the first humans. Next we moved on to the life of the first humans. This Playmobil Caveman set (a gift) is another favourite! It has a fire that glows (battery operated), a mammoth, sabertooth and humans. Mavi and I discussed what has changed after the dinosaurs left the planet. We talked about the difference of the dinosaurs and the (new set) animals of the stoneage era, how the first humans survived, how they produced food, clothings and homes.

MAMMALS WHO MORPH: the age of technology. This is the part of the book wherein it mentions about the human inventions and discoveries, of how it helped the lives of many people but at the same time how advancement destroys mother Earth. This is timely because Mavi’s school is currently educating them about biodiversity, of what is “going green”, building insect hotels and recycling old materials.

For this part of the book, we explored the house and identified machines and other technologies that have helped humans all throughout history. The oven for cooking, washing machine for the clothes, toilet and bathroom for grooming, electricity, water system, networks and world wide web… etc. We then discuss the ways humans destroy the planet and how we can help to rebuild it.

With just three books, were were able to learn history, science, math and all others in between! Hope you are inspired by this post and hopefully, grab a copy of the books as well! Happy reading and learning!

Follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus, Instagram or Twitter for updates! More learning materials at Pinay Homeschooler Shop.

This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool. Let’s check what my fave Montessori Mom bloggers are featuring this month!”"

The Best Montessori Friendly Books: Babies, Toddlers, Preschoolers, Elementary | Natural Beach Living

Montessori-Friendly Living Books Library | The Natural Homeschool

Favorite Montessori-Friendly Books for a 2 Year Old | Living Montessori Now

10 Ways To Make Your Kids Crazy About Reading | Planting Peas

Montessori Friendly Books -- Birth to Six | The Kavanaugh Report

Engaging Books for Preschoolers | Mama’s Happy Hive

Montessori & Fiction: Balancing the Bookshelf | Sugar, Spice & Glitter

Montessori Books for Older Children: The Universe Story Trilogy | The Pinay Homeschooler

Children’s Books About Birds | Every Star is Different

Favorite Montessori Resources | Grace and Green Pastures

Our Favorite Montessori Inspired Books for Babies to Preschoolers | Christian Montessori Network

Our Spring Season Picture Cards

Monday 7 March 2016

Spring is just around the corner and I’ve been thinking about the activities that the boys and I can do. I was very much inspired by Deb’s post on Spring Season Cards, so I borrowed the idea of printing pictures that relates to spring and we will be using them for the follwing:

introducing the season of spring to Vito
creating stories using the picture cards
inspiration for crafts
inspiration for outdoor activities
St. Patrick and Easter activities
farm animals and their babies
animal life cycles

Like for example, we’ll be doing cherry blossoms crafts and paint eggs during Easter. We’ve got dandelions in the backyard and we’ll disect them too! St. Patrick’s Day is next week, and we’re still contemplating how are we going to celebrate it with the rest of the locals.

We’ll be planting seeds in the coming weeks as well. I already prepared some pots for the boys. We can’t go out in the rain yet because honestly, it’s still freezing here. And hopefully, once the weather gets warmer we’ll take a short trip to the farm to see and feed some real live farm animals and explore the forest to observe insects!

So as you see, these cards will be our guide… and as Mavi would say it, it’s the ultimate checklist!

Exploring the Bucket Balance

Saturday 5 March 2016

Vito is 27 months old.

I have this bucket balance years ago and was mostly used by Mavi. He’s been using it to learn concepts like mass units and the concept of gravity. I’m so hesitant to let Vito use it for the obvious reason that at his age, he might break it or doesn’t know how to use it. But I was wrong! One day, I ran out of ideas for him so I bravely took our bucket balance and a bunch of Duplos for him to explore. Well, lo and behold! It was a total hit and didn’t expect that he’ll enjoy using it!

So what did Vito exactly do with the balance and what are the things he discovered?

First, it goes up and down! This was the first thing he learned! Up and down, up and down he keeps on saying it as he manipulates the scale by placing Duplos in the bucket.

See his smile?

Then he realized he can control it as well by moving the center hold. So he’s ignoring the weights (Duplos) but controlling the balance by moving the center to left and right, thus making the scale goes up or down.

Next, he discovered that there’s a mini drawer where he can open and close. So we practiced it, open and close saying those words all together to learn the concept.

He started putting in some objects (weight) to see what will happen. And he closes it and said “hide”.

Vito kept playing with this for the next 30 minutes, and we varied the number of Duplos in each bucket to see the effects.

I honestly didn’t know that this old learning material of Mavi can have a big effect on Vito. It’s currently one of his favourite “toy” and we kept on using it as a tool in play pretend. This is such an amazing tool for introducing early concepts of math, science and simple machines! This Learning Resources Bucket Balance if you have the chance can also be a wonderful gift for birthdays and Christmas. I’m happy that both of my boys have benefited from this!

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Goodnight Moon Storytelling Basket

Thursday 3 March 2016

Oh my, Goodnight Moon is one of my kids favourite books and I can’t wait to share with you the contents of our storytelling basket! I assembled it over the weekend and both Vito and Mavi are having fun tinkering and exploring the objects.

I read this book everynight. It’s calming, relaxing… makes them ponder of what’s out there in the night, letting them observe their room and the silence of the night. And may I just say, there is so much love in the story. The old lady as I would always say to the boys, is lovingly watching her little kid going to sleep, just like most Mommies do!

So this is our storybasket where I placed all of our objects and the book. I put this on the top of the shelf. Some of the items here are small so I need to assist and supervise whenever they play with it. Items here were from the following Playmobil playsets:

The clock was from Amazon, the moon is a DIY, the kittens were from Safari Toob Domestic Cats and the bears were from Learning Resources counting bears.

Now, we’ve read this book a hundred times LOL. Vito knows this by heart. So he knows each of the objects in the book and he was quite fascinated that he gets to see them and touch them personaly! Take a look at our three little bears sitting on chairs, the comb, brush and the bowl full of mash!

He obviously loves the bears!

But his favourite of all was the clock! Now I highly suggest that you read the book to your child first. Give it a week of reading before starting the storytelling basket as there might be times they’ll get distracted of the toys. When that happens, just allow your child to play with it for as long as he wants.

Vito can’t take his eyes from this clock so we have to pause and explore this. We talked about the numbers and hands and he was fascinated!

I hope you like this post. It will give you an idea on how to put fun into your reading time. We previously had the Papa Please Get the Moon For Me and it was also a hit!

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Dr. Seuss Books and Activities and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Wednesday 2 March 2016

Celebrating Dr. Seuss Day, I’m featuring 5 fantastic posts of Dr. Seuss! We have a lot of Dr. Seuss books at home and they were Mavi’s first set of books. I used the book Put me in the Zoo to teach Vito all about colors. Check here or click the image below for details.

Now for this week’s featured posts!

The Use of Funnel for Toddlers

Tuesday 1 March 2016

Vito is 28 months old.

I recently introduced the use of funnel to Vito and boy oh boy, it’s non stop play!

The addition of funnel in our beans and water transfer has added an extra spice in Vito’s daily activity. He’s been doing activities like pouring and scooping for quite sometime now and let’s say he’s getting tired of it. So to explore the other capabilities of pouring, I added funnel in his activity tray.

Benefits of using funnel or tubing:

the difference between wide and small mouthed containers. Make sure that the bottle is clear so the child can see the flow for the elements.
from one step water transfer to pour-funnel-pour procedure (additional step)
learn the concept of water flow

Children are fascinated with water and by making the flow. The use of funnel is one of these elements that can help children understand about small spaces and how the flow of water works. They will discover that to easily transfer water to a small mouthed container, they’ll be needing a tubing or funnel to successfully pour elements into it.

To demonstrate here’s a video of Vito transferring lentils and water using a funnel.

Your kids will definitely have fun with this one, mine can’t stop playing! Hope that this will work on you!

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