Frog Unit for Preschoolers

Since last week, we’ve working on our Frog theme.  This is the second time we did a frog unit study.

My aim here is for my son to learn basic information about frogs, widen his vocabulary, understand that like us, frogs undergo a circle of life, that they use their body parts to survive and play around.  But of course, aside from the serious stuff, my main purpose here is for my son to enjoy the activities I prepared for him and create wonderful memories together.

LIFE CYCLE OF FROG and FROG BODY PARTS

The life cycle cards were homemade and the body parts were downloaded from Montessori Print Shop for free! 

I was so happy that my son, can pay attention to such subjects.  He was eagerly listening to me while I read the life cycle of frogs and how they survive.  He kept asking questions (which I love!) and for the most part, act out the pictures of the tadpoles or frogs from the book lol. 

When his Dad got home, he demonstrated how the frog would close their eyes to swallow... and at the same time, how they catch dragonflies.  He stuck his tongue out, lick his Dad’s jacket and told him he’s eating the Daddy dragonfly :)

Frog Math

Skip counting using my frog counter cards.  I placed the cards in a straight line, and told him that I only have numbers 2,4,6,8 and 10 and we should be able to put this on the frogs by counting 2’s.  Although he got the idea of skip counting, he’s still insisted that we just should start counting by 1 or 0 lol.

Then we arranged it so we can count them up to 20 (he was the one who requested this).

I also made this frog leaping game.  It was an on the spot preparation. I told my boy that the frog is very very hungry and he has to eat the dragonfly at the end of the lily pad.  To do this, we have to roll the dice to know how many jumps the frog has to make in order to reach the dragonfly.  To make it more challenging I added a few stops in between so the frog can either skip pads or return to the starting line again.

PUZZLE/CRAFT

A friend of ours gave my son some nice coloring book and I discovered that there was a frog on it.  I made him color it using do-a-dot markers, while using his red-eye frog toy as a guide.  Then when it dried, I cut it into pieces so he can play with it like a puzzle and stick it together as a craft project.

But he requested that I should take a photo of him before he started working :)

                

And lastly, we worked on some matching game.  I got this from Montessori Print Shop again for free.  He is always excited whenever I tell him that we will be playing a matching game.  It is his favorite activity... so I might get all those matching games from the Print Shop if I don’t have time to make my own :)

Wonderful memories were created once again.

Linked to :

 

Homeschool Wrap-Up (11.14 – 11.18)

Mavi is 38 months old.

Activities we did last week:

LANGUAGE

 

We had Bird unit this week.

Practice reading via Word Family Strips.

MATH

Learning how to use a ruler and played a bunch of measuring games.

 

Grid game using chicken grids which I downloaded from the net.  I had this for a long time and I totally forgot the link!

CVC word recognition using stamping game.

Skip counting using stamping game.

I laid out a roll of paper on the floor and made him connect the numbers :) Something to keep him busy for an hour.  Here he is figuring out how he can connect all the the numbers hehehe.  I love to see him concentrate!

My son currently undergoing a phase of being obsessed with writing numbers and letters.

SCIENCE.

We studied the life cycle of a chicken.

And the parts of the bird.

 

OTHERS

Practice coloring using do-a-dot markers.

Learning how to write words.  Can you see the word CARROT? He prefers writing in uppercase letters.

              

Creating colorful images using do-a-dot markers and kitchen towels.

I’m linking this to:

 

Word Family Strips

Aside from the Pink Series I made these word family strips. I made 3 for each phonic sounds “a-e-i-o-u”. 

At first he struggled with the concept or beginning letter sound and blending.  But with practice and his love for playing around the strips, he was able to figure out how it all worked. 

So can he read now? Yes! He was able to read them with minimal assistance from me :) Yipee! I couldn’t believe that this technique worked for him.

We still need to do Phonics Beginner Books of Progressive Learning so we can practice reading sentences and phrases.

Study of Birds

Last week my little boy got so interested with birds that I have to whip out my bird-related resources to give him a unit study of birds.  As you all know, I don’t have a printer yet and I just have to reuse old materials which I already have.

BOOKS. Each day, I TRY to read him books.  I use to schedule it in the morning, but we aren’t religious with it.  There were times he wanted to do lots of play pretend in the morning and would ask me to read him books in the afternoon, and vice versa.  Since I don’t have any access to our library yet, I just selected books which has “birds” on it for our theme last week.

 

3 PART CARDS.  We love these cards!  Oh and it’s tempting to hoard them Montessori Print Shop!  My son participated well when we did the Parts of a Bird.  To show him the parts aside from the control cards, I used our bird figures to point to him certain parts described in the cards.  He loves it!  And for a much understanding, I have to make a comparison of the bird parts and his body parts.  He understands well that he doesn’t have a tail :)  He keeps reminding me of that. 

What we normally do with nomenclature cards after discussing each part is to match the picture cards and the labels to the control cards.  My son loves matching cards that we did this activity in 3 straight days together with the Lifecycle of a Chicken.

LIFE CYCLE OF A CHICKEN.  Chicken are birds too, right?  LOL.  These cards were homemade, when I still have the time and energy to make nomenclature cards for personal use.  And then I realized that it’s eating much of my time, so rather than spending a full day of photoshoping I decided that it would be wise to purchase ready-made.

              

And he asked me where’s the part that we have to eat the chicken. LOL.

My homemade bird puzzle :)  My son wants to add a goggly eye but strangely I couldn’t find them at that time.  I found this puzzle pattern  (together with other animal patterns) in this site.  Boy, I’m so glad they’re sharing it on the web!

GRID GAME.  My son can’t get enough of this game.  We tried this game last year but he was more interested with the dice than the game itself.  But this time, I was glad that he got over with his fascination with the dice and participated well in the game.  He can identify the number of dots in the dice long before we did this, so he didn’t find it difficult at all reading the dots.  He loves putting “candies” on the chicken. 

 

SIZING. I got it from here. 

To be honest, I wanted to do more with this subject but sadly, I couldn’t provide additional resources.  So next time we revisit this, I might add the following:

1. Bird matching game.
2. Own Exotic Birds and discuss each birds, how they differ, and probably make control cards to match the object with the card.
3. Create bird’s nest for crafting.
4. Outdoor bird watching.  It rained the whole week so we were not able to bird watch.
5. Paint birds. 

But even though we miss a few activities, it was still fun theme to explore!

Linked to :

More Use of Do-A-Dot Markers

Wow! It’s been months since we last used these markers.  My son love them the first time I gave it him.  He loves making dots and sometimes would smear them if he gets tired.  He enjoys using these markers so much that he started to apply them on his body and it was so difficult to remove them.  Sadly, it wasn’t that washable in same way as the other markers and crayons. 

And he was so happy to see these markers again. I decided that maybe... he’ll try to use it properly this time (crossing fingers). Just note, when a child uses them, be sure to supervise.

Math.  Tens stamping game.  Here we used the marker to stamp the number/s whenever I mentioned them (on a story).

LANGUAGE.  Word identification.

ART/COLORING.  We also used it for coloring.

        

Homeschool Wrap-Up

Mavi is 38 months old.

These days, my son isn’t into homeschooling.  All he wanted to do was play-pretend Artzooka or Mister Maker.  Whenever I ask him if he wants to play a game, he would always say “No, I’m playing artzooka.”  And this is the reason why I, at the moment, postponed my planned homeschool curriculum and decided to whip out activities randomly whenever he wants to do some ‘schooling’.  I really don’t want to take that play pretend at the moment because he really really enjoys pretending that he can create crafts and stuff without me being there. 

I am religious in reading books to him in the morning, but there were times that I get to be busier during the day so I would up reading books on him in the afternoon or during bedtime.  Sometimes, I also forget to read books because of chores and personal work.  So I decided to read at least one book everyday just to ensure that we have read a book.  And this week, we read Gingerbread Man (and The Very Busy Spider, The Elves and the Shoemaker, The Billy Goat Gruff and Kid’s Bible, etc).  Here  Mavi took out the animals that appeared in the Gingerbread Man story and in The Very Busy Spider.  We did some role playing using these animals.

We made Gingerbread Man paper dolls and dress them up.  My son enjoyed this the most!

 

Made window ornaments using colored tissue, construction paper and contact paper.

MATH

Practice counting using the leaves as we were discussing about the season Fall the other day.

Then we work with some patterns.  I downloaded this from here.

In lieu of Thanksgiving, we made our Gratitude Leaves and hung them in his room.  While I wrote all the things that I am thankful for, my expressed his gratitude by drawing those things in the leaves! (He’s busy with his Button Snake)

 

Counting from numbers 1 to 50 using these number chip cards which I made out of cardstock.

I made these CVC cards so we can practice more of CVC words. We're done working with our pink series and before I move to blue series, I wanted to expose him to other cvc words, those that were not included in our pink series set.

 PRACTICAL LIFE/SKILLS

I made this button snake for him to practice buttoning (and unbuttoning).  He got hooked! I was surprised to discover that it was difficult for him to insert the button in the felt squares. But after a few tries... he finally figured out how to do it.  I plan to make a few more, and vary the button shapes/sizes.

 

He’s just into writing these days. His favorite sketch pad is my notebook even though there are plenty of paper around the house! Thank goodness he doesn’t write on the wall.

 

Tearing paper and gluing them.  He wasn’t into this activity.

I am still trying to expose him to painting.  For some reason, he lost his interest in painting.  He just wants to draw(using oil pastels) and write... and painting his least favorite. Maybe, it’s because he doesn’t have a suitable table to paint, and is not comfortable doing this activity on the floor :) Yep, we’re still looking for his work table.  And we left his Crayola Paints back in SG, so that means, I need to shell out a few more cashing(again) to get him some paints.

 

Playdoh free play.  Always a favorite :)

FIELD TRIPS/OUTDOORS

A friend asked if we do outdoor activities.  Of course we do! We never missed an opportunity to go out when there’s sun! I’m an outdoor person and I wanted my son to pass that to my son :) It’s just that, well I wanted to keep those moments private so I try not to talk about it here nor post pictures of it.  So here’s the proof that we do go out.  This was when we took a day tour at the city center.  We visit this beautiful park where we get to see lots of ducks on the pond.  Then we walked our way around, do some sightseeing and just enjoy the crowd, the sun and mother nature.

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