Molluscs: The Study of Snails

We've been seeing a lot of snails in our place and I just couldn't let this pass :)  So I paid a visit to the library and borrowed a few books about it so we could do a little study on them.  We've never done this before as I am really scared of anything that crawls, but my son was into it and excited so I just have to give in.

Materials:

Books about Snails.  Here I used Slugs and Snails (Minibeast Pets) and Snail (Bug Books). (Affiliates)

Snail Nomenclature Cards and Definition Booklet by The Pinay Homeschooler.  Click the image below for the link as well.

A snail.  We got this tiny fellow in one of our nature walks.

 

Activity 1:   In search of a snail

Prior to our lesson, we've been reading the books and learned about where the snails live and when do they usually come out from their hiding.  So one day, after the  tatrain, we set out to look for a snail that we can bring home.  We followed what the book said:  look for snails in dark places, under the rocks, the bushes or if in a surface that is wet or damp.  It was fun looking for them and educational.  My son knows exactly where to look for them!

              

 Activity 2: Observing the Snail

Once we have our snail, we put it in a tube (Safari Toob tube LOL) and brought it home for an observation.  My son named the little fellow Sally.  Seen on pictures below, we watched as Sally fed on the leaves, see how she moves and produces a slime to slide.

               

Below we read about the lifecycle of a snail.

 

Activity 3:  Parts of the Snail (Introductory)

At this point in time, we look at the different parts of the snail.  Mavi was more keen on the body parts as he kept on asking about the eyes of the snail.  We used our nomenclature cards in identifying the different parts of its body and read our booklet on how each of the parts function.  I like how our nomenclature cards turned out.  Before I used to draw images but I love that we're using pictures for a more realistic approach.  And at first I kept on questioning the size of our cards but I'm happy that I made it  3.5x4 inches, just enough for everything to be seen and was clear.

 

We stopped here.  There were a few more activities left for us to do but I can see that he was already tired.  We will continue this next week as we also study the world of insects.

The study of snail, as I mentioned earlier was something new and the fact that we've been seeing them everywhere helped in building up that eagerness to learn.  He was really curious with this smily creature and was very attentive in our discussions.  It also helped that we read books about snails beforehand for head start.

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

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Zoology Unit on Pinterest.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child

Natural Resources and their Products

Materials:

• Natural Resources Around the World by The Pinay Homeschooler (for purchase)

• Natural Resources and their Products cards by The Pinay Homeschooler (FREE DOWNLOAD)

 

• Reduce-Reuse-Recycle worksheet from Have Fun Teaching

 

Activity 1:

1. Presentation of the Natural Resources Around the World cards.  There are 5 natural resources for each continent in the file, and we talked about each one of them. We discuss how the resources are produced, harvested and processed to make consumer products.
2. To assess his understand we played a sorting game.  I took three resource cards from each continent and have him sort the cards to which continent they belong.
   

Activity 2:

1. Presentation of the Natural Resources and their Products cards.  Here I we matched the raw materials to their end product/s.
   
2. I made Mavi look around the house for products similar to the cards that we have and bring them on the table.
3. For edible products he brought coffee, sugar, rice, water, chocolate, bread and cheese. For other materials, he brought paper and his wool sweater.  I added my jewelries for the gold nugget. Aside from these he was able to identify more materials made from wood and rocks.

 

 

Activity 3:

1. Using the worksheet, we identify what can be recycled from the pictures presented. 
2. Cut the pictures that can be recycled/reused and glue them on the worksheet.

   

This is a new topic introduced to my son and he definitely loved it.  He was very very interested learning about the products of each continent, what they look like as raw materials and how these materials are processed so the people can use them. 

He was able to identify items that can be reused by pointing out that he sees his Daddy dropping old clothes and bottles in the recycle bin :)

Because my son had fun (especially on the taste test of the end products), I highly recommend this activity to children ages 5+ and with prior knowledge of geography.  Your kids will love these activities!

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!

Fun Under the Sun

If you are wondering what we're doing when the sun is up, here's a glimpse.

First I would take the boys in our backyard and do some little picnic.  The little one stays on his Mamas & Papas Baby Snug (Green) and plays with me.

Now for the big brother it's a little bit different.  Here you see him playing with his "fossil collections".   These are actually rocks in the yard that he gathered.  The Dinosaur Train inspired him to collect "fossils".  So these rocks are now piled in the yard.

 

After he checks his collection, I made him do some splatter painting.  A few days ago, I was telling him the story of Pollack, of how he paints using splatters.  After that we watched this video of a little girl who's famous of her painting.

 

Now that he is inspired, it's time to put his artistic side to action :)

             

Oh boy, how he love it!!  We just have to move to the grass though because it's getting messier.

Go out and enjoy nature!

The weather was really really good this holiday weekend so we spent most of our time in the park.  We're so thankful that we have this wonderful park just 10 minutes away from our place.  The park is HUGE and lots of areas to explore. 

If you skim through my blog... this is where we usually go when the weather is good.  I am an outdoor person and was an adventurous kid growing up. I grow up in a tropical country and our house is near the beach so imagine all the adventures I have there. And my boys experience this as well.  But living in a cold country has a lot of limitations especially here that we seldom have Mr Sun.

So in a time like this we just have to go out...

... and play with the trees!

.... and check the pond for tadpoles and other insects breeding!

.... and see how the clear water flows in the creek.

 

PH Math for May

I've been assessing my Mavi's progress in mathematics for the past days.  Math is the least of his interest as of the moment.  So during our Math hiatus, I was checking my list and so far he knows and understands everything on it.  In fact he is way beyond his years according to his teacher.

Now as summer vacation is approaching I'm thinking that we should be a little bit more serious with Math this time by being religious to our schedule :)

So for May here's what we're going to have for Math:

Skip counting.  We started with 2's and next will be of 5's and 10's.

Here we are using the beads in our Decanomial Bead Bars with Box and the number tiles from our Hundred Boards for the label.  He pointed out "Mom, it's just a pattern!".  Of course, he's referring to the 0,2,4,6,8 :) And that's what I wanted to instill in him... that in Math some concepts is all about patterns!

   

After the beads and label activity, I made him skip count all the way through 100 and counting it backwards as well.

 

Number Symbol and Quantity (Tens)

Here we're using the same materials.  My objective here is for Mavi to master the identification of number symbols and its equivalence in quantity. 

Activity 1:  Place the correct number of beads, given the number symbols.

Activity 2:  Identify the number symbols,  given the quantity.

 

Activity 3.  Writing the number symbols.  Mavi has no problem writing the numbers from 1 to 100.  But it's a different story when it comes to hundreds and thousands :)

Number Symbol and Quantity (Hundreds)

The same activities with the tens but here we are using our Bead Material and Wooden Small Place Value Cards 1-9999 .

Activity 1:

Activity 2:

Activity 3.  Mavi is still confused writing the hundreds and thousands.  When he wants to write 321, he writes it like 300 21, similar with 1100... he writes it 1000 100.  Now this is pretty normal but I just think that we needed to practice more on this during our spare time.

Hundred Board with Control Chart. I am still on the process of exploring hundred board games.  I have collected a few ideas from fellow homeschool Moms and I can't wait to try it with Mavi.

PS. This post includes affiliated links

Animal Life Cycles (FREE Learning Material)

We are still continuing our vertebrate study and at this point we explored the life cycle of each group.  The aim of this study is to compare the life cycle of each group, to differentiate their development and identify their similarities as well.

Prior to this, I introduced the Animal Kingdom and the Vertebrate group.

To start off, we have The Life Cycle of a Frog for amphibians. Printable materials used here are my Animal Kingdom file, Vertebrate Sorting Cards and the Animal Life Cycles FREE printable.  The link of the file is at the end of this post.

 

I have the life cycle figures to represent the pictures. My son loooves them!

And I have my son name all the amphibians that he can remember.  I place the pictures on the left and their life cycle on the right.

Here, we concluded that:

Amphibians have jelly-life eggs.

They lay their eggs in the water.

They don't look like their parents when they are born.

They have silky slimy and sometimes toxic skin.

 

Next is we have the birds. Same process he has to name any birds and then we talk about The Life Cycle of a Chicken.

As you can see, our Baby Bear is participating as well :)

  

After the discussion of the life cycle, we concluded that:

Birds have hard shells.

They lay their eggs on nest or in soft area and keeps them warm.

They look like their parents when they are born.

Their skin is covered with feathers.

 

Reptiles are my son's favourite group because dinosaurs belong here.  We talked about The Life Cycle of a Snake and see how it differs with the other groups.

              

Here we concluded that:

They have hard leathery like egg shells.

They lay their eggs on land.

They look like their parents when they are born (hatchlings).

They have scaly hard skin.

Then we have the fish and we talked about the Life Cycle of a Salmon to represent this group.

             

My file includes the order of the cycle and also a brief description of each stage.

Here we concluded that:

Fish lay eggs in the water.

Salmons have food sac when they're still young.

They have gills and scaly skin.

 

And the last is the Life Cycle of a Dog for the mammals. My camera's batter ran out already so I wasn't able to take a picture.

Here we concluded that:

Mammals are born as their parent's young. Meaning they look exactly the same as their parents. Not in an egg form but a little version of their Mommies and Daddies.

Mother feed their youngs with their milk.

Mammals have furry or hairy skin that protects them.

 

At the end of our session, I gave him all the picture cards of the life cycle and asked him to arrange them in order.  Sorry the picture is not really clear as this was taken via my phone.  Here you can see that the child can easily differentiate how this animal groups differ from each other via their life cycle. 

Materials used here are:

All Safari Toobs in my Amazon My Favourites (located in my sidebar).

Insect Lore Life Cycle of a Frog

 

Animal Kingdom file and Vertebrate Sorting Cards

And Animal Life Cycles which you can download for free by clicking the image below.  Please note that the file doesn't include the definition cards for the insects as we are not touching this subject at the moment.  But I will definitely share the insect portion once we have our Insect Study in June.

Sorry if this is such a long post! I just have to explain and show how we used the file :)  Thank you so much for your time and I hope you find it useful in your school and at home.

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

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Zoology Unit on Pinterest.

Linking to:

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