The Rainbow Clouds Craft

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:

• strips of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple cardstocks
• white cardstock for the clouds
• cotton
• glue

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

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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The Animal Kingdom Revisited

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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Study of Ancient China

Few weeks ago, Mavi and I were learning about Ancient China.  I decided that this year, we’ll be focusing in country-based studies rather than continents.  Last month we worked on Australia, and because of Chinese New Year being celebrated during February, I guess this month is the best time to conduct Chinese-themed activities.

To start with, we created a small world play tray with Ancient China objects on it.  To know more about this, click the image below or here.

Then we worked on learning about the location, biomes, lifestyle and culture of the people of China.  We used our China Picture Book and Cards in these activities.  I printed the Asia Map from here and the fact cards were from our Asia in a Nutshell. Here you can learn about the way of life of the Chinese people and their religion. 

This picture book is Mavi’s current favourite obsession.  He reads it, enjoying his discoveries about China and love working on the coloring/writing pages.  So funny that Vito saw Mavi working on the cards that he couldn’t resist matching the cards to that of the outline pages!

My 2 year-old toddler loves the cards! He matched the control cards to the outline pages.

They’ve been practising how to write Chinese characters in school.  He’s good (But I coulnd’t understand what he wrote in the cards LOL)!

Lastly, we made Chinese lanterns on the eve of Chinese New Year.  The boys had fun making the lanterns and observing the lights.  We used this Hands-on HIstory Ancient Chinese book from the library for our arts and crafts. I highly recommend this book!

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Hands-on Learning: Biomes of Australia

A few weeks ago, while were doing an Australia Unit, Mavi and I talked about the animals in Australia and in which habitat they belong. We’ve done this years ago but it’s always nice to revisit and add a little depth in the topic. 

Instead of using felt papers for demonstration, I printed out pictures (paid for this) of the different biomes in Australia:  desert, temperate forest, tropical forest, wetland and grassland.  We also used the map that we have here to see where each of these are located.

Looking at the pictures, we talked about the difference of each biome, the temperature, the plants that grows in there and the animals. After which, we sorted out our Safari Toob Down Under figures and identified which animal/s lives in the desert, forests, grassland and wetland. We used our Animals in  Australia cards for reference.

I made him work on this activity sheet, he loves coloring so he’s happy to obliged   While doing this activity, he asked me “So Mom, where do the people live in this map?”  I just have to explain  that of course, they live everywhere in Australia (except in the desert), and mostly near the water!

I love this kind of activity, spontaneous and can be done while sitting down just like having an ordinary talk with your kid.  The photos helped.  I understand that you can also Google these images in mobile gadgets but I am trying to avoid using our tablets when the boys are around so I just printed the pictures.

Materials we used are from our Australia/ Oceania Adventure Book, Safari Toobs Down Under and Animals of Australia Cards.

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The Polar Regions for Gradeschoolers

January is usually the best time to have winter themed activities or do either Antarctica or Arctic activities.  It is the time when kids can envision these frozen part of the planet due to the cold/extreme weather.  To start with, I set up an invitation to play tray in our shelf and displayed books to go along with it.  These can be accessed by the boys whenever they want to and not age specific, big boys and little brothers can share and play with the tray!   

Our invitation to play tray contains the following:

• Safari Toob Penguins
• Safari Toob Arctic
• Schleich Arctic animals
• Playmobil Penguin Habitat Superset (the best!)

The books we used are:  (FREE shipping in Book Depository!)

• Usborne’s Antarctica
• Usborne’s Polar Bear
• Penguins

For Mavi’s activities, we started by doing a visual presentation of what Antarctica and the Arctic region looks like.  This was accomplished by recreating the landmarks of both polar regions.  You can read more about it here.

I also prepared some fact cards about the different animals that lives in both regions.  Here Mavi matched the animals to what the card is describing.  If you want to try this, have your kids read the description, in this way they can practice their reading skills and improve their vocabulary.

More fact cards from our Polar Region Pack.   These cards describes the regions with high quality images.

We watched March of the Penguins and Mavi and I feel sorry for the mommy Penguin.  A lovely documentary showing the hardships of the female penguin just to feed their chick.  I highly recommend it.  Here are some of our visual materials which I made years ago when Mavi was just in preschool.  These images were sourced out randomly in Google, printed and laminated.

Same thing with these pictures except that I printed them in a photo paper.  These shows the different transporation used in Antarctica (scientists and tourists), the different ice formations  and in general, the environment in Antarctica.

Benefits of these activities:

• Deeper understanding ont he environment of the polar regions
• Able to differentiate the Arctic to that of Antarctica
• Tell what animals inhabits the Arctic and Antarctica
• Learn about the life cycle of the penguins

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Landforms of the Arctic Circle and Antarctica

Both of the boys are learning about the Polar Regions this month.  I have shared our Polar Animals Sensory Bin last week, and today I’m sharing what Mavi has been working on.  While Vito is having tray works, Mavi on the otherhand is learning about the difference between the landforms of the Arctic Circle and the Antarctica.  This activity is vital in understanding the environmentin both regions.

So while Antartica is a huge land mass covered mostly in ice and located in the south pole, the Arctic Circle is mainly an area located in the north pole and includes several larger islands.  The islands in the Arctic region are comprised of Greenland, and borders of Canada, Russia and the Scandinavian countries.

Using plasticine (white for Antartica and green for Arctic) Mavi created the specific landforms for visual presentation.  We use these fact cards as  a guide.

Seen below is Mavi’s interpretation of the Arctic and Antartica.    He added landform cards that best describes the Polar regions.  The landform cards we used were from Tower High Learning in the UK.  But if you are in the US, you can purchase this at Leader Joy USA a Montessori shop that provides premium quality materials at affordable prices.  You should visit the site as it is having a sale as of the moment!

He’s checking his work by reading our fact cards which is included in Polar Activity Pack.

More Polar-themed activities in the coming days as we progress, I promise to share it with you! Hope this post helps in inspiring you with your homeschool activities.

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Simple Experiment: What Makes Ice Melt Faster?

This experiment is perfect for the winter season! Make use of the snowy days by performing this simple experiment on why we put salt on the icy road during snowy days.

Objective:

To determine which substance or what condition will make the ice melt faster.

Materials needed:

three bowls with ice

timer

sand

salt

marker/label

What to do?

1.  Fill the bowls with ice and label one bowl ICE, another bowl SAND and the last one is SALT.

2.  Place the salt ON the ice in the bowl that is marked SALT.

3.  Place the sand ON the ice in the bowl that is marked SAND.

4.  Observe your three subjects every 10 minutes for 30 minutes or more.

What happened?

The ice that is covered with SALT begins to melt but the one covered with SAND doesn’t melt.

Why?

As what we previously learned from our What Dissolves in Water experiment, we know that salt dissolves in water (easily).  This means that the salt breaks into small particles that thoroughly mix with the water.  A mixture or solution (mixture of a liquid a dissolved substance) of salt water has lower freezing point than the water alone.  So when salt is sprinkled on the surface of “wet” ice, the salt dissolves in the water-like surface layer of the ice causing the ice to melt.   Mostly, the salt water does not refreeze. 

Now you know why road workers sprinkle salt in the road or pavement on snowy days!

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History Timeline Cards: Ancient Times

Buy now

Up in the Sellfy Shop is our history timeline cards Ancient Times.  The file includes the following:

• 40 timeline cards of the ancient times (occurred between the period of 5000BC to 500BC). The timeline cards has
• 40 definition cards for each timeline card
• 3 pages of timeline sheets that can be connected to form as a guide. The pages are in A4 paper size.

Learn how we used it here and in how we study the European History.

Hope you like it, enjoy!

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