Jericho, the First City in LEGO Bricks

After reading the first chapter of The Story of the World Vol 1, Mavi created this. This is how he interprets Jericho, the first city built by the earliest people (nomads) who became farmers in the Fertile Crescent. 

“Soon, farmers discovered that it was best to build houses close together so they could help each other to water and tend their fields. These were the first villages.”

 

“Because they were afraid that they may be attacked and robbed by bandits, they built stone walls around their villages. These were the first cities.”

I will post the rest of the activities we did in line with the SOTW Earliest People.

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History and Geography

2D Shapes Using GEOMAGs

This week, we’re studying shapes, which led us to study polygons as well. I used our GEOMAGs to demonstrate how polygons look like and how do we identify them.

Initially, I took photos of the shapes and printed them out for him to replicate.  The names of each are written at the back for him to check.  After working out all the cards, we talked about the names of each shapes.  He can only name triangle, square and rectangle.  I have to remind him that the diamond shape is a rhombus (that’s how mathematicians call them LOL).

As I identify the rest of the shapes, I emphasized that the names are related to the number of sides the shapes have.  So when we talk about triangle, I made him count the 3 connecting sticks of the triangle. We did the same thing for square which has 4 connecting stick (sides) and we did it with the rest of our polygons as… naming then counting the sides.

  

Mavi worked on it over and over again. He enjoyed breaking them and putting them all back again memorizing the names and the sides!

He was not this interested with shapes and counting the number of sides when we were just working with nomenclature cards.  I guess, it’s more fun when you use something that is tangible and something that they can manipulate to make learning fun.

These cards are displayed in his study table so that whenever he wanted to work on them, they are just available.

Check my Pinterest for more Math activities

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Math Ideas on Pinterest.

Linking to:

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Home + School = Afterschool!
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The Natural Homeschool

Teeny Weeny Tot School

Vito is 10 months.

I decided to start sharing what Vito has been doing.  He just can’t stop moving, the main reason why I would hesitate to take his pictures.  Major milestones as of the moment (1) he starts to walk (2) he can say “mama” and “dy” (3) and can follow certain hand gestures/signs. 

Here’s Vito practicing how to remove the disk from the pole.  He couldn’t figure it out yet so he would just turn the pole into different directions so the disk will come out. And once they’re out he would line them up on one side. 

Here, I’m showing him how to stack the disk.  All he could ever do is how to remove the disk from the stack LOL.

 

Open and Close.  He’s practicing how to open the container and closing it.  To encourage Vito, I place a horse figure so he can try to take it out from the container.

 

We’ve been reading books for months, so he knows how to navigate through the pages of the books.  This is a good practice for the pincer grasp as well.

 

He talks a lot when he holds a book and loves to point at the pictures!

Duplo Transfer.  An unsuccessful activity LOL. He’s move interested on the bowl rather than the Duplo.  We’ll try this again though, using different materials this time.

  

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REVIEW: Sink and Float Experiment using LEGO

It is a known fact that my son LOVES LEGO.  He loves to think that he can make anything with LEGO.  And one of the MAJOR discoveries that we have this year is that we can incorporate LEGO bricks in our homeschool activities.  Because I find it helpful to use LEGO bricks into our schooling, I decided to add a few more to his collection so we can create more stuff together. You can see some of our works in our Geography lessons and our ever famous Eiffel Tower.

I cannot tell you how happy am I when I was asked to review the visual tutorial of the sink and float experiment of LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Manchester. This idea never crossed my mind at all!  And what made it more exciting is that it involves water play (who doesn’t like water play?)!

 

The visual tutorial is similar to the instruction booklet that you get whenever you purchase a LEGO set.  The directions are simple and since Mavi can read, he did the experiment on his own (I end up being the audience LOL).

So he made his raft out of his brown bricks with details of green.  He made it float and later on added objects in the raft and moved them around to test whether the locations would make the raft sink or float.  The tricky part is when he needs to balance the items in the raft so it won’t sink! It took him gazillion of tries to finally succeed :)

Mavi had so much fun doing this experiment and would love to do this again and again. We would laugh so hard every time we fail!  And even I as an adult enjoyed the activity.We are so glad we did this experiment.  It is also a good way to bond with little ones :)  After which, Mavi was like “Mom, can we do more experiments?”, “Mom, can you think of more activities with LEGO?”.

I will definitely look for more science experiments using LEGO bricks. And LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Manchester is one place where I can look for those amazing ideas.  And hopefully in the near future… we’ll be able to visit the place and try out their exciting learning activities!

Language and History Books

My books from Book Depository arrived yesterday. We were able to work on some grammar lessons using First Language Lessons Vol 1.  I have heard good reviews about this book (and the series) so I’m giving it a try.  The tools used in the book are memory work, copywork, narration and grammar (leading to a Charlotte Mason’s principles).   I observed the  A LOT of repetitions though. But that’s fine with me. I have nothing against that technique worked for me, especially with mathematics.  In case its too much for my son to handle I’ll just skip some pages LOL.

For our history, I got The Story of the World Vol 1.  I love world history and I can’t wait to use this with Mavi.  I bought a hardcopy of the book but purchased a PDF version of the activity book so I can reuse it with Vito.

Will update more on this as we progress. Happy Wednesday!

Teaching Addition within 10

Here’s a little recap of what Mavi has learned of our Math lessons for the past weeks.  And  the best part of it is that Mavi has learned how to do mental calculations! Yehey!  I’m so happy that he has discovered this all by himself.  He’s like “I’m using my brains to count Mom”.

We are using Singapore Math workbooks, and we use manipulates as well.  Read here if you want to know how we integrated workbooks and manipulatives. We’ve been using manipulatives for some time (Montessori and other learning materials) and now that he is older, we’re going to use less of these. 

Anyway, here’s what he has learned so far:

Ways to Add

• Number Bonds. We’ve studied number bonds before so it was easy for Mavi to apply his knowledge once we’ve touched Addition.  You can also get a free NUMBER BOND ACTIVITY SHEETS by clicking this link.

• By counting on from the greater number.  This is something new for Mavi.  I told him it’s a trick that he can use to add numbers.  He liked it and he’s been using it ever since. 

Making Addition Stories

Another part of the lesson that Mavi really really love doing was making stories! Favourite characters in his stories were his classmates and the dinosaurs lol.  This is an introductory part for problem solving which we will be doing as we progress.

Next would be subraction. I wonder if he will like it in the same way he did in addition.

Life Cycle: Organisms (w/ FREE Material)

For our lesson 1 in Science:  Organisms (Life Cycle theme).  Click the image below to download the file.

Below is a free printable pack for the first two activities:  (1) Living and Non living things and (2)  Animal Classification

For the animal habitats, we used our Animal Habitat Cards.