Phases of the Moon

It's my son's midterm break and I'm happy that we could do lots of activities now that he's at home the entire week.  Aside from the Internal Organs which we had earlier this month, we will also have lessons on Space and Astronomy.

Here are the activities we've been doing so far:

A Model of the Moon Phases.  We painted the phases for this year instead of using our felt moons :) 

 

He arranged the phases using the cards that we have and  a picture that we saw in Google.

 

 

And here's the finish product.  This artwork is now in his room.  He would refer to this at night whenever he checks for the phase the of the moon.

 

Observe and Describe. I also printed out this Moon Phases Mini-Book from Scholastic (please click the image below for the link of the file).  Here Mavi gets to describe the different phases.  I love how he can use one single word to describe the moon.

Moon Phase Calendar.  Every night we're checking out the moon and record it in the calendar which I made. If you are interested I made a generic calendar which you can use.  Just click on the image below for the link.

This recording will allow Mavi to learn how it all works!

 

Below is our reference.  We check this image (from Google) if the ones we are seeing is the same as the ones recorded in the internet :)

Here's a link to all astronomy related activities that we have done so far.

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Space and Astronomy Unit

We've been watching too much alien movies (animation) that Mavi begins to show a lot of interest in planets and the solar system once again.  This month we're doing the Moon and Solar System once again. 

You can read past astronomy themed activities here.

I also made printable materials to go along with our study.  It include planets and the astronomy cards all in one file.

And you might be interested... I made cute printable for preschoolers! Oh I can't wait to use this to my little one!  It's a 40 pages file which includes the following:

(Click the image for the link)

• Beginning sound word cards
• Matching activity that consist of control cards, picture cards and labels
• Memory Game Cards
• Word cards for reading and spelling (or practice writing)
• 1– 10 Counting Cards
• Number Cards
• Patterning activities
• Sizing/Sorting Size/Ordering
• Color Matching
• Shape Matching
• Upper and lowercase letter matching

Right now, we're making a small painting project of the Moon's phases and before the week ends, we'll be doing more moon-related activities.  I'll be sharing these activities once we're done.

Thank you so much and have a nice day!

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

Working on Green Series

This month we are doing Montessori Green Series. The pictures and labels you see on the picture was taken from The Helpful Garden.  We are using our moveable alphabets, and I also created some materials similar to our Blue Series (List).

 

My son loves working with moveable alphabets! It was worth-it!  I am also happy that he can work with this by himself, with just a little assistance from me.

See how identifies the consonant blends (Blue Series) by using the black alphabets. 

After each Green Series set, my son and I would make a sentence using the words.  It is a great practice of vocabulary and sentence construction.  As we progress I will let Mavi write these sentences on a paper and maybe use them in our grammar lesson next month.

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

 

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Home + School = Afterschool!
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Internal Organs of the Body

We're doing The Human Body this month and part of which is learning about the basic internal organs of our body.  This is a timely subject to tackle as my son has been sickly for the past few days because of the changes in weather.

I've always wanted to purchase a human torso model to show how these organs look and how they are positioned in the body.  But the price in this side of the world is ridiculous so what I did was got us a PlayDoh that comes in different colors and create our own model using our Internal Organs Nomenclature Card.

As you can see, we have two versions of the brain: his and hers :)

 

Here my son is working on the kidneys. He's using the cards to create a model.

  

I looooovee how they turned out!  These are my models....

 

.. and here's Mavi's models. 

 

Materials: 3 part card of internal organs and the models. (Click the image below for the link of the cards)  For other cards please check here.

We match the models with the picture cards.

We identified each organs with the labels.  As we do this we discuss the many functions and properties of each organs.

   

Here are the books we used.

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

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Linking to:

Montessori Monday
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Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Natural Homeschool's Montessori Linky

FREE Montessori Blue Series List

I'd like to share our consonant blend list which we used for our Blue Series lessons.  If printed on a cardstock or ordinary paper, it would something like in the picture below.  I chose to print mine on a blue cardstock so I can easily differentiate it with Pink and Green Series.

 

Here's how we used it and I have additional activity sheets to supplement his learning.

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Montessori Monday
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Natural Homeschool's Montessori Linky

Continent: Europe Puzzle Map

Mavi had a sudden interest on working with his Europe map.  It was quite a challenge completing this puzzle so I lend a hand.  As we work on it, I pinpoint the countries we lived in and the ones we visited.

Later on I urged him to work on the maps.  We are using the maps from The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads:Europe.

To make it stand, we used Blue Tacks.

Oh I'm loving the puzzle maps! Now, I need to add Asia map in my wishlist:)

Happy weekend!

Perfect 10 Snake Game

We are doing a lot of snake game for the past few days.  My son is now loving it unlike the first time he encountered it wherein he kept on complaining how tiring it is to count.  This time, he loves transforming his "jungle colorful snake" to "tiger snake".  For those new to Montessori,

Materials we used here are:

• Decanomial beads
• Black and white beads
• A mat
• Melissa and Doug Magnetic Alphabet box

So here Mavi made his own.  I made sure that the beads will make a perfect 10 just to demonstrate that the two numbers when combined will make 10. 

So here, we are replacing the colored beads (beads that makes a 10) to the golden beads.  The picture on the right is for the control of error. I am showing Mavi that the bead combinations form ten.  In this case: 6 (violet) and 4(yellow), 1(red) and 9(dark blue), 2(green) and 8(brown), 5(light blue) and 5(light blue),  and 7(white) and 3(pink) all makes a 10 (golden bead).

         

As I mentioned earlier, we've been doing this multiple times this week.  Here, I focused on two combinations only:  8(brown) and 2(green),  and 7(white) and 3(pink).  Because the snake is composed of repetitive combination of those beads he immediately memorized that those combinations make a 10.  In the middle of the snake, he did not bother counting... he just replaced the designated combination with the golden beads.

       

Same goes when we tried 9 and 1, 4 and 6 and, 5 and 5.  At the end of each activity, I showed him the equations that we can form out of those combination.  But of course, we will explore more of this "addition snake game" as we progress.

      

We are now starting our random snake game, and that's where the black and white beads will be useful.  They are basically used as a placeholder for the remaining beads after you have counted 10 beads (see the picture below). So here, we replace the colored bead into a ten bar (remove the blue and yellow beads) and add the 3 black beads to represent the remaining yellow beads (unaccounted).

 

This is just an overview of how we play the game. There's more into it actually with the snake game and we'll explore it one step at time.  I am not really good with words, so if my post is not enough, and if you need demonstration or an album, there are lots of it in the web.

All in all it was very effective, effective in a way that you will get the child to come sit with you and play and at the same time learning without getting bored.

Now, who says math is boring??  Happy Friday to all!

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Home + School = Afterschool!