Sifting and Discovering Gems!

This is one activity my son truly enjoyed :)  We never had "practical life" activities for quite a while and I was thinking to re-introduce some of it.

                

For this activity, I poured some flour on a bowl and added some gemstones we got from a recent trip to a leisure park.  Then I gave him a sifter to uncover all those precious gems!

                

And it is also a good practice in math! Try counting how many gems you discovered :) 

You can also use sand instead of flour and beads, letters, numbers or objects instead of the gems.

Try it! You're kids will looove it!

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner

Lego Eiffel Tower!

We're looking at the some of the famous landmarks in Europe and he chose to build the Eiffel Tower using his Legos :)

        

Here he tops the tower using France pin map flag.

 

Look who's proud of his masterpiece!  And he keeps on saying "Mom can we go there again?" 

Ahhh... Legos are simply the best isn't it? We haven't tried Playmobil yet, but he's been eyeing them too.

Happy Friday everyone! And have a nice weekend as well :)

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner

Color Your Homeschool with Pasta!

So there’s so much you cian do with pasta :)  It was once a favorite learning tool in our home. Since I’m quite frugal, I barely give him toys from stores unless necessary, instead I made use of what we in kitchen (LOL) to save money and to be practical as well.

With that said, I made these colorful (rainbow) pasta when Mavi was just a teeny weeny.  We used it in so many ways! And here’s how I done it:

Gather various shapes of pasta like bowtie, penne, Rotelle, macaroni, shells etc.  Then measure the right amount of pasta you wanted to use and put them in a zipper bag (Ziploc).  Add around 1 tablespoon of alcohol and 5-10 drops of food coloring into the bag.  Close the bag, and mix (shake the bag) until everything is covered with color.  Leave the pasta inside the bag for 5-10 minutes.  To dry them up, cover a tray with cookie sheet or kitchen towel.  Carefully pour the colored pasta and spread them in single layer.  And that’s just about it!

 

So here’s how we use them:

1.  For color sorting activity.  I have this egg carton box which I painted with watercolor :)  He matches the pasta to that of the color in the egg box.

           

2.  Stringing and Beading.  Good for penne pasta :)

        

3. Playdough Tower

       

4.  Counters.  Again using an egg carton box as our tray.  I wrote numbers at the bottom of the box and he’ll put the right amount of pasta based on the number written. 

      

Those rainbow pasta are really beautiful!  How I miss them :)

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Preschool Corner

FREE Playdough Mats (Numbers and Letters)

I’m currently cleaning up my hard drives and I came across old files that were used during Mavi’s tot years :) Some of which are these play dough mats which I customized because I wanted something plain, smaller and requires less ink. So what I did was create my own version, and I added number play dough mats as well.

So if you are interested, you can grab a copy of it for FREE by clicking the links below.  And if someone wishes to have a copy kindly direct them back here to my site. Enjoy!

Number Playdough Mats

Letter (Upper and Lower letters) Playdough Mats

 

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
Preschool Corner
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me

Washing Dishes

I let him wash the plastic dishes.  It’s not that I asked him to, it’s just that everytime he sees me working… he would say “Mom, can I help?” Because at the moment he loves to offer a helping hand and enjoys responsibilities I am grabbing the opportunity to teach him how to “work” on some simple things around the house.  

 

And yes, I don’t stack plastic dishes in the dishwasher anymore :) 

Do you let your kids work or help as well?

The Colorful World of Fruits

This was inspired by this post from How We Montessori.

The printed materials were downloaded from At Home with Montessori.

 

This was one activity my son totally loved! What’s not in the picture was when we ate the other half of each fruit LOL.

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Flowers in Spring (Part Two)

It’s so difficult to write a post these days. (been busy with personal work).  Good thing I keep pictures so it’s for me to track back the activities we did on a specific day/week. 

Here’s the conclusion of our Flower Unit which we started a few weeks ago. 

We picked flowers and identify them.  We later on used them as paint brushes.  Read about it here.

Another thing we did was make flowers out of cupcake cases.  We used do-a-dot markers to color each cases then let them dry.

While for our flowers to dry up, Mavi painted the egg carton so we can use them as plant box.

We use pipe cleaners as stems and inserted some beads on it to add a more decors to our flowers.

 

The end product.  I realize that the cases were too big for our plant box, thus... it is no longer visible LOL.  He placed this in his bedroom window and admired it for a few days.

He worked on flower nomenclature cards and puzzle as well.

 

Practical Life

Using clamp and chopstick trainer to transfer rose petals.  

 

Outdoor

Now this is exactly the reason why I always procrastinate to write any updates... we spend my free time outdoors!    It was just so timely that during the time we did our flower unit, we were blessed with a wonderful weather!

  

  

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Flowers in Spring (Part One)

Flowers are blooming everywhere! My loves smelling daffodils, picking up dandelions and admiring cherry blossoms.  With his current interest, I pulled out a flower theme so I can make use of these interests.

Here’s a craft which was inspired by No Time For Flashcards.  The number corresponds to the number of petals in the flower.  Then he insisted on adding stems and leaves and grasses.

 

Then on sunny day, we explore the estate to pick up some flowers and identify some wildflowers as well.

 

Once at home, we identified each flowers and matched them to the ones in the books. (Books were borrowed from our library)

We also used some of the flowers as paint brushes for his artwork.

He managed to use the leaves as well :)

We such had a great time working with flowers!  Reminds me of myself wayyy back a long time ago... enjoying picking up flowers during summer with my friends as well. 

Happy Monday everyone!

 

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