The Short Bead Chain (Squaring Chains)

I've been searching high and low for affordable bead squares here but unfortunately, there's none.  So I decided to make my own square chains using our decanomial beads.  Supposedly, I'm going to form them using connectors like suitable tie wire but again, none is available. 

So what I did here was to use the ever reliable contact paper. It was tricky though.  What I did was lay the beads flat on the table, attach a strip of contact paper and then I carefully turn them on the other side to completely cover the other side of the beads with the rest of the contact paper.

And this is how they turned out!  So far so good :) 

Surprisingly, they were sturdy LOL.

 

Here, I am presenting to Mavi how to identify the square of a number (because they will form a square).  He's more interested in the skip counting rather than identifying the square of a number.

 

The next time we tried, we worked on squares of 1 to 5 and we use the bead chain paper we got from Montessori Print Shop (free) to record the square of the numbers.

This is a good introduction for skip counting and a wonderful visual exercise for squaring.  But for now, we'll just proceed with the skip counting disregarding the squares as Mavi isn't interested on it yet.

Happy counting!

Linking to:

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

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.

Linking to:

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

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.

 

Linking to:

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

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.

Linking to:

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
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.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
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!