An Arctic Theme

A few weeks ago, I prepared an Arctic Theme for our little homeschooling.  It was a hit! My son became obsessed with polar bears and caribous for while.  And even with the books which I borrowed from our library, it took him awhile to get over them.  

Here are the activities we had based on our theme:

Matching game.  The animals were from Safari Toobs and I just made classification cards.  He enjoys matching but once he get used to it, he easily gets bored.  So what I do is to add a little excitement with the matching game.  Sometimes as we match an animal to the card, I would show him a video of that animal via our iPad (helpful because it is portable).  I would ask him for the different parts of the animals and what does it do or how does the animal behave.  It’s even more exciting if I would ask him of what sounds does that certain animal make according to the video. This activities and tactics help instill those animals in his heart and mind :)

Penguin puzzle.  I made this by myself.  Searched  a random image from google, printed it twice... with the other one as an outline.  Using the outline I use foam sheets for the puzzle and the remaining printout is for his guide. He was so excited to do this puzzle! 

His Ninong John and Tita Meyms gave him this toy camera.  He loves it to death!  Since he got his very own camera, he loves to pretend taking pictures of his accomplishments hehe.

Then for math, although this is not related to “arctic”, I just make use of our existing snowman number cards which I printed out from a website (sorry I can’t remember the link) two years ago. On the left is counting cards and the on the left is arranging size from smallest to biggest.

And that’s it for our arctic theme! I was hoping to do more activities on the “arts and crafts” side but we went on a vacation. Maybe in the future as I’m planning to revisit this theme again.

Parts of a Plant

While we were on a vacation at my parent’s house I grab the opportunity to teach Mavi all about plants and its different parts.  It was the best place to explore different types of plans as we are free to “pick” all parts necessary for our lesson.

Thus, we ended up having this.  The nomenclature card was from Montessori Print Shop.  I didn’t use the picture and label cards as of the moment as I was just introducing this to him.  Later, when the right time comes I’ll be giving him the full set of nomenclature cards so we can go to details as matching the labels to pictures and etc.  As of now, we just matched the actual parts to that on the control cards.

But what my son really enjoyed was how we collected all the parts.  He was very excited about it as he LOVES to pick flowers and plants! It’s a good thing they were my mother’s hehehe.

First stop, we picked some flowers.  That heart-shaped basket was borrowed from his cousin. It’s like were doing “groceries”!.

 

Then we went on to search some stems and buds. My Mom has a wide collection of plants in her garden, so we moved on from one plant to another after he has “touch and feel” the stems, buds and leaf/leaves.

 

And look! We saw this little thingy.  I don’t know how it is called in other language, but in our dialect, we called it “intsik intisk”.  Mavi was so amazed to see such a thing!

Then I have to show him the roots. This one is pretty hard because I have to pick a whole plant.  Luckily there was some grasses, I pulled them off the ground and showed him the roots.  He was so giddy when he saw them... but doesn’t want to hold it.  He was telling me it’s dirty!   He haven’t seen actual roots anyway so I can feel his excitement. (Shown on below are some roots and buds)

    

He truly enjoyed our activity! And I love it that we did this together.  He cooperated and very attentive.  I hope we could do more of this in the future.  This is one of the reason why I always dreamed of having a back (or front) yard so Mavi and I can do lots and lots of outdoor activities together.  The joy in teaching and learning!