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Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Layers of the Earth for Kids

I went home one day with a bunch of avocadoes for Vito and I to eat. Then as I was slicing it, Mavi saw the huge seed inside and blurted out that it looks like the Earth’s core! And just like that, I whipped a brief activity on the layers of the Earth!

For the book, we had this since 2 years ago that Mavi really really loves to read. It’s an easy read for young kids and the good thing about it is that it’s like an adventure book that takes its readers into an adventure of digging a hole down to the Earth’s center! So I am HIGHLY recommending it to those who are interested.

Get the book from:

After looking into the avocado and discussing how it looked similar to the Earth’s layers, I took out some coloured rice (we already have this and stored in ziplocks) and have Mavi create the layers in a piece of cardstock in the way it is described in the book.

And this is what he came up with. He completed this with a little assistance from me. Well actually, my work only includes getting the rice and beans for him LOL. He added some space shuttle and man in suit. The book indicates that it is impossible to reach the center of the Earth as no machines or human can stand the pressure and heat. But the book allows the reader to imagine and pretend, that if it’s possible, a super duper powerful digger and super suit is needed for humans to reach the Earth’s core.

And since Mavi is now 6 yrs old, I am “training” him to discuss to me what he has learned from the book. So he narrated what he learned using his artwork. Okay, this is like reporting or project presentation in school, but it is at home and you’re doing it with your Mom :D Mavi actually loved doing it and wanted to do it again!

After which, we took out some stuff at the kitchen and put up together the elements that made up the Earth. Now, the CRUST is soil (we don’t have any so we used oatmeal for representation), MANTLE is made up of thick hot rocks, OUTCORE is made up of hot molten metal (we used ketchup!) and the INNERCORE is made up of a huge solid metal, a ball of iron (seed of Avocado).

See how spontaneous we are at home! My son enjoyed this activity and so do I! Hope you find this helpful :)

Pin this for later use!

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Life Cycle: Organisms (w/ FREE Material)

For our lesson 1 in Science: Organisms (Life Cycle theme). Click the image below to download the file.

Below is a free printable pack for the first two activities: (1) Living and Non living things and (2) Animal Classification

For the animal habitats, we used our Animal Habitat Cards.

Friday, September 26, 2014

Life Cycle: Organisms

We started our Organisms Unit early this week and it was a joy Mavi had a great time learning about the living organisms and the different forms of life. I like that we will only have a few activities here. Focus on the quality, making sure that the child truly understands the concept behind the activity.

The key concept of this unit is for the child to learn that there are other organisms besides human and animals. That these organisms thrive and reproduce for survival. The following are the activities that we performed for the unit:

LIVING AND NON-LIVING

Objectives: To be able to sort the living and the non-living objects.

Task:

Describe the characteristics that makes an object a living organism.
Distinguish objects that are non-living but have been created from living objects (wooden cabinet).
What are the three important requirements of a living organism to thrive or grow?

Vocabulary: animal, living, non-living, organism

ANIMAL FAMILIES

Objective: Classification and sorting of objects, in order to group them into larger groups (Families)

Task:

Discuss the families of the animals, what do you call the father, the mother and the baby and their group.
Comparing the animal tracks. Those with round shape, hoofs or prints with toes.
Classifying animals whether they live in land, water or sky.

Vocabulary: family, group, classification

ANIMAL HABITATS

Objective: Comparing where animals live.

Mid this year, we have conducted a study of the different habitats of animals around the world. You can view our lesson here and here.

Next week, my son and I will work on the human body. Still part of the Life Cycle theme… that evolves around organisms.

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Home + School = Afterschool!

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Science Lesson Plans 2014 – 2015

For a change, I made plans/curriculum for Mavi’s after school lessons. I think I needed this for I am about to start schooling Vito as well. What happens here is that we talk, discuss the topic and he will work on the tasks or lab experiments then answer the activity sheets. The tasks should be done with minimal help from Mommy. This will encourage him to think for himself, work on his own and start to make decisions.

Note that even if Mavi’s knowledge on Science is way beyond his age, I started with the K lessons so as not to miss the little things. Anyway if we’re done ahead of time because he knows it already, we will proceed to Year 1 level even before the school year ends. So here are the things we need to accomplish for this year :

Life Cycle

Living and Non-living things
The Human Body
All About Plants
Nature and Environment

Water

Water Cycle
Oceans
The Weather

Earth’s Crust

States of Matter
Minerals
Rocks
Discovering Dinosaurs (Dinosaurs, Geological Times)

Earth’s Moving Force

Volcanoes
Earthquakes
Continents and Oceans
Hazards

The Story of the Universe

Universe
Solar System
Earth
Land and Water Forms

Applied Science

Science and Math, Tools of Discovery
Physics, Observation, Electricity, Magnets
Technology, Machines, Inventions
Natural and Man Made Environment

Source: The curriculum is based on Math/Science Nucleus

Monday, September 15, 2014

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:

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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Linking to:

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Home + School = Afterschool!

Friday, September 12, 2014

Dinosaur Books!

These are ALL the books we used as reference for Dinosaur Study. This post contains affiliated links.

Alphabet of Dinosaurs

I highly recommend this book for preschoolers who love dinosaurs and letters at the same time. Mavi has been obsessed with the alphabet for years and he always always relates the alphabet to any object he sees.

These are specific books that describes dinosaurs according to characteristics. My son borrowed ALL of these books from the library.

Amazing Giant Dinosaurs

I personally prefer this book, unfortunately it is only limited to giant dinosaurs. It missed out some of my son’s favourite dinos.

Hope this post is helpful in giving you ideas on what books to use when studying dinosaurs.

Have a nice day!

Thursday, September 11, 2014

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.

Linking to:

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

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

FREE Feathered Dinosaur Cards

Hello everyone! I made these cards ages ago and we use it to play matching game with our Safari Feathered Dinosaur Toob. I’ll be posting our Dino Study this week for more dino-related activities that you can do with your little people. Hope you like my cards. Enjoy!

Friday, September 5, 2014

The Human Skeleton Book References

I’ve got lots of inquiries regarding the books we used in our human body and skeleton unit. These books were from the library and they are amazing resources! You can get them in Book Depository [aff.link] and they have FREE DELIVERY worldwide.

Books used were[aff.links]:

Try checking them out now :)

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Animal Exploration: A Study Guide

One of my objective this year is for Mavi to have a bigger understanding of the animal kingdom. During his preschool and totschool days, I introduced animals via themed activities which he truly enjoyed. But there was a point that he would asks more complicated questions and I just knew that I have to put “depth” into our lessons.

So let me share with you our outline of study which I considered as a guideline whenever we have a study about animals. Now, this outline is for elementary level and I would not recommend this to preschoolers. Familiarization is the first key for preschoolers to understand about the animals and the themed activities are best for this.

ANIMAL KINGDOM (Blog Post, Animal Kingdom Chart and Cards)