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. 

Calendar: October Schedule

I printed this calendar and posted it in Mavi’s room.  He loves looking at schedules and is looking forward for me to put a star on it once we’ve accomplished something.  So in October our lessons would be:

• Math:  shapes, ordinal numbers, number and shape patterning
• Grammar:  First Language Lessons (we will be using Montessori Grammar Symbol for this)
• ART:  artist study, crafting, random painting activities
• History:  SOTW
• Science:  Human body (organs, skeletal system, teeth), plants, natural environment

Bright Beaming Toddler Week 2

Mavi is 16 months old.

Theme: Jungle| Vocabulary: Vines| Color: Green| Letter: B | Number: 2 |Nursery Rhyme: The Little Nut Tree

 

MONDAY

Theme: Jungle
Vocabulary Word: Vines
The theme for this week is Jungle and the vocabulary is Vines. I introduced to  him the theme by showing pictures of jungles and vines, read a book related to the theme, sing songs and do some activities related to the theme.  Per usual, Mavi immediately got excited seeing the pictures.  He pointed out to the written words and tried identifying the letters all by himself.  It's just confusing to teach him the vines versus the jungle by just looking at the pictures  because I mistakenly printed out similar pictures of jungle and vines, plus they're all green!  I should have printed out a more discreet picture of the vines.

Anyway, he can properly say "vines".. as in "vayyynnnns" but he didn't manage to say jungle correctly, he's version was "dader".

Months ago, husband and I were able to buy the book "Just Like Me".  It was on sale, so instead of 1k rsd, we bought it for 500rsd only.  I used this book as my tool of teaching him the Jungle.  It's about an armadillo, lost in the forest and is looking for something that looks like him.  He likes this because it's a look and feel book and he loves to rub his fingers on the photos' surfaces.

 

TUESDAY

Shape: Green
Up until now, I find it difficult to teach Mavi about colors.  I don't know if he can understand it yet because he doesn't respond that much . I mean, he can point at the colors I'm asking him first, then the second time around, he will miss out.

To introduce him to the color green this week, I first tried to show him my cut-out of leaves printed in green art paper.  Then I started to put glue into it and demonstrated to him the proper way of putting it in the paper.  But he wasn't interested on the leaf or on the gluing activity.  Instead, he finds the glue stick more fascinating and he  took it away from me.  He played it for the rest of the day, and gets mad if I ask for it.

When he was already calm, I attempted again on teaching him the green color by showing the square shape that we have on our previous lesson.  When I have his attention, I showed him the green colored pen, the green colored-crayola stamps and the green crayon.  I told him "Mommy will color the square GREEEEN".  Then I started putting stamps on the square and shaded it with a green crayon. Enticed, he took the stamp from me and started tapping the paper with the stamp.  Sadly, the stamp was too small, I expected that it would produce a larger and more visible stamp, but it's too small and so light that Mavi can't barely see the effect if he taps the paper with the stamp.  When he was tired, he took the crayon and started doodling on the square.. and on the table as well.

This is what he loves to do most, removing the cap from the pen or glue stick and putting it back again.  He keeps doing it again and again, somewhat fascinated and that he can do it by himself.  I allowed him to do it anyway, so he can practice his hand and eye coordination.  I tell you, he's really good at it.

We also did "find a green color object" activity.  We looked around the house for toys and objects that's colored green.  Everytime we see one, I would say "green car", "green cup" etc.  Then we collected those objects and put it in the paperbag.  Since he likes car, I also cut out  square shapes from a piece of green art paper and constructed a car.  He doesn't like pasting the squares on the paper, but he loves the end product... green car.  Even if I use stickers, he doesn't know how to paste the on a surface yet. . Hmmm, I wonder why.  And I wonder how I  can teach him to do that.

Wednesday

Letter: B

Letter B was introduced and I didn't print the letter, I just wrote it and made him trace the letter with his finger.  He already knows the letter so teaching him was not that difficult. Same thing as letter A, he matched the right hole for the letter B by successfully dropping the letter B on it.

Since we still got enough time, we read his favorite Nursery Rhymes book and ask him to identify the letter B on the writings.  So far, he's doing well with the letters because he didn't miss any.

Thursday

Number: 2
As I mentioned earlier, to prepare for this lesson, I printed out two sets of matching frogs and clover leaf pictures on a piece of green colored art paper.  I put numbers 1 and 2 at the center of the picture.  These actually have dual purpose, first that is for counting, and then the other for our matching game.

When I showed it to him, he was amused.  I showed to him the frog in sequence, "1 frog", "2 frogs"... "1, 2". In effect, he keeps on pointing at the numbers and saying it out loud. After I while, I tried showing to him that we can match the two items.  I demonstrated this by placing the two frogs together at one side of the table and the clovers on the other side.  Unfortunately, he couldn't get the idea.  This is the first time he encountered a matching game so I know that he couldn't grasp the thought at first.  I kept on pairing the frogs and the clovers... but he just grabbed the frog and run away shouting "2!" "2!".

That afternoon, after his nap time, we draw the number 2 on a piece of paper.  I let him held the colored pencil and moved his hand to draw the number 2.  Then I cut out small squares on a piece of green sticker and instructed him to paste it on the paper below the number.  I peeled the sticker; put it on his finger indicating that he should paste it on the paper.  I guided his fingers while he put the sticker, and then we counted "1 square", and then followed by the second square "2 squares".  When we were on our last number 2, he immediately run to his other days and doesn't want to do the counting activity.  He definitely doesn't like the sticking activity and he still has difficulty in pasting the stickers.

 

Friday

Nursery Rhyme: The Little Nut tree
I posted the rhyme on our learning wall, and I kept on reciting it to him every time he plays around the house.  He keeps on pointing to the tree picture that I put beside the poem.  He's not much into the poem, even on the previous poems that we've been reading.  I think the reason for this is that there's not much picture or colors on the printouts that made.  Mavi usually prefers a book and sad to say, English books are scarce in this country :-).

We didn't do any motor skill today for I was not feeling well. Mavi just spent the day doing free-play.  Still, I wasn't able to plan for motor skills activity because I didn't have the time to prepare.  Hopefully by next week, I will be in the mood to do some fun activity with him.

The Geological Times

 

By now, you all know that my son is into history … the beginning of times.  I’m thinking of feeding this current interest and I find myself introducing topics which are unplanned.

I’m so thankful that I purchase The Universe Series (Trilogy) by Jennifer Morgan.  This book series tells the story of time, starting from the big bang theory (cosmology).. followed by the first animals and dinosaurs and the last book is about how the mammals that survived morphed into human beings.  The book is engaging (my son is only 6!) yet he reads this book on his own.   Amazing amazing book. All those science concept were explained in such a way that little fellows can understand as well. 

I got my books from Book Depository.  I find that it is much cheaper there, and ships for free worldwide.  The books are:

• Born with a Bang
• From Lava to Life
• Mammas who Morph

So we used these books to study the geological times.  We read them over and over, noted the import events and arranged them according to the period in time.

  

Information about the pictures:

HADEAN,ARCHEAN, PROTOZOIC--I used my felt planets to represent the events of the formation of the solar system (moon, planets, stars)

PALEOZOIC (early life) –- we placed Dimetrodon, appearance of first insects, amphibians, rocks

MESOZOIC –- time of the dinosaurs

CENOZOIC – evolution of humans

 

How I wish I have the Safari Toob Cambria Life and Safari Toob Prehistoric Life to make our time line much more interesting.  Maybe in another, if I have the budget :)

 

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Dinosaur and the Land Before Time

My son is obsessed with dinosaurs. Majority of the books he borrowed from the library is about dinosaurs.  His birthday cake was decorated with dinosaurs. So when he begged that we’ll play with dinosaurs, I couldn’t resist.  At the same time, Mavi’s favourite books are the ones in Life to …. He reads it every night and is eager to learn all about the beginning of times.  So considering all the factors, I put up an afterschool learning activity about the geological times and the era of dinosaurs.

Here are the activities we worked on…

Geological Time  

This topic deserves a separate post.  But here’s a preview of what we did here. My son is obsessed with the books that you see in the picture.  It is a three book series which tells the story of the beginning of time, from the big-bang to the appearance of humans.  Now, using these books we traced the geological period from the creation of the stars and planets to the first humanoid.

Dinosaur Family Tree

Another topic which I will have a separate post as well.  My son’s fascination with dinosaurs started this year and so far he has memorized the names of all the dinosaurs that appeared in the books which I shared at the very end of this post.  He’s been watching Walking With Dinosaurs non-stop and Dinosaur Train.  He wants to be a paleontologist and would make videos of dinosaur stories.

With this “burst” of interest, I’m gave him a challenging task of forming the Dino-Family tree using the cheat-sheet and our dinosaur figures.

Periods of the Dinosaur

We’ve done this activity a couple of times but I always add it whenever we re-visit dinosaur study.  For this year, the focus was for him to tell the difference between the three periods (time and the characteristics of dinosaurs living in that period).

Learning About Dinosaurs

  I made a new set of cards for him (he requested this).  I previously made him this, but he wanted to have a new one.  The images where from BBC Walking With Dinosaurs and all the information in the card were from Enchanted Learning.  The are only 8 dinosaurs in this set that I made because I fell sick but I plan to add some more when I see beautiful images of other dinosaurs in our figures.

 

You can get with activity sheet (fact sheet) from here. I made this so I can train Mavi to “record” information of his dinosaurs.

      

Currently, our dino collection is composed of Safari Toob Dinos and Safari Toob Feathered Dinosaurs. 

Dinosaur Fossils

I got Mavi an air dry clay from the craft store and we made dino fossils.  This was a fun activity for both of us as we are trying to make the “best looking fossil ever”.  I realize that it was actually hard to make a realistic dino fossil LOL.

When they dried up, I made Mavi paint the fossil light brown to make it similar to those in the museum.

But he had plans of his own :)  According to Mavi, the blue ones where fossils discovered in water, the red in volcanoes, the green and yellow in mountains and the brown ones were excavated from he ground.

 Parts of a Volcano

Since volcanoes were pretty active during the time of dinosaurs, I added parts of a volcano in our lesson. This one is from Montessori Print Shop.

 Volcano Experiment

And for the most exciting part…. volcanoes and dinosaurs in one gigantic eruption!   

Books

Will prepare a separate post for the books.

More activities in my Pinterest Board Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Dinosaur Theme on Pinterest.

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Learning About East Asia

If you’ve been following my blog, we started our Asia Unit last month and so far we successfully completed our Southeast Asia Study.  In this post, I present to you materials and activities we worked last week for East Asia. 

Maps and Flags

As you all by now, we ALWAYS start our continent/country study with maps and flags.  This will familiarize the child of the subject’s location and each of the country’s national symbol.  For the East Asia, we identified three major countries: China, Japan and South Korea

Materials:

• Asia in a Nutshell
• Asian Flags Nomenclature Cards Pack

Again, we used Lego to recreate flags.  This activity is similar to our Southeast Asia flag activity.

Famous Landmarks

We have painting/crafts activity and Lego play.  Our tablet is very useful for this activity.  We used it to view pictures (for clear view) and watch videos related to our study. 

Materials

• Asian Landmarks Cards for other activities (3-part cards, fact cards).
• Lego
• Paints
• Pink Tissue Paper

Famous landmark for Japan is Mount Fuji

             

 

We chose Great Walls of China as our subject here.  Here we use our fact cards, which Mavi reads while we view the bigger picture in our tablet.

Calligraphy

We are using the Japanese numbers in this activity.  I painted the characters on papers and cut them for presentation.  Now Mavi has to make the characters as well.

After the activity, Mavi was like “Mom it is so difficult!”. 

 

Animals

We’ve studied Asian Animals previously, so in this activity we’re doing a Panda puzzle.  I printed this from DLTK Kids, and Mavi has to color and form the Panda according to the cheat card.

 

Arts and Crafts

We made oriental fans and learned how to make origami items.  For the oriental fans, we used paper plates, used watercolor for the background and black tempera paint for the details.  Our origami papers are homemade because the real ones are so expensive in this side of the world.  They’re colored crafts paper and I cut them to a size of 6 x 6 inches.

Books

We used lots of books, but here are my son’s favourites [aff.links]:

• Letters Around the World:  China --->> OUR FAVOURITE SERIES!
• Discover Countries:  Japan

For more Asia Unit please check my Pinterst Board Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Continent Study: Asia on Pinterest.

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History and Geography

The Beginnings

Hi everyone! As promised, I am sharing with you the early childhood activities I gave to Mavi when he was about 1+yrs old.  We started at 14 months and I was just giving him random activities I know of. It was then around 16 or 18 months that I learned about the importance of fine motor skills which they will eventually need in their preschool years and beyond.  So I made some research and started our journey in “home” schooling.

Reading Books

Now this is what we do since he was months old.  At first, we started with books for babies… simple stories, books with large pictures to capture his attention. 

Pre-writing Skills

Very basic activity but very important.  This will introduce them to writing, papers and pens.  I bought Crayolo jumbo for him for this.  Because I started Mavi early on writing, I never had problems with him when it comes to proper holding of a pencil/pen.

    

Transferring/Sorting

Just an introductory to sorting and colors and at the same time a practice grasping.  We are using an ice tray and M&M’s blue and yellow chocolate :)

   

Puzzles

Who doesn’t like puzzles? Don’t expect your child will immediately figure out this one or fell in love with it.  Mavi doesn’t know how to do with it at first.  He just loves to hold the puzzle pieces and admiring the pictures. 

Hand and Eye Coordination

This is a simple activity of dropping the M&M’s on a hole (we’re using a milk container).  I love watching him concentrate!

 

Linking to:

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Home + School = Afterschool!