Continent: Antarctica Unit (Arts and Crafts)

Mavi is 41 months old.  Last of the 3-parter post on our Antarctica Unit.  

My was in the food for drawing (which was timely) when we started the activities so it wasn’t that hard to convince him that we will draw the things he sees in our Antarctica pictures.  Then to give him an idea on what to do... I showed him a picture of a child’s art work.  I randomly Googled the picture by the way.

He made mountains and and added oceans.  The glitters were snow.

 

We usually work together... I work beside him.  Here’s what I did.  I know! It’s a work of a child LOL. Obviously I am not an artist (I went to Engineering school)!

My son’s work.  He kept telling me he wants to go Antarctica... he whines about it all the time.

Then there was a time I encouraged him to paint.... I showed him an artwork inspired by Antarctica but he insist that he wanted to paint his letters.  He’s been obsessed with alphabets for 2 years!

Another variation was to use watercolors. 

His painting.

  And this was mine.

And lastly, our penguin crafts.  And cutting is his favorite thing to do here! 

The finish product.  Supposedly, there will be glitters all over... but it was already 8PM :(

And that’s our entire unit Antarctica.  If you haven’t read the first two, here’s the link":  Part 1 and Part 2.

We will be doing Asia: Philippines next, but I still have to prepare my materials.  Hope it’ll be ready by March or April.

Linking this to:

Continent: Antarctica Unit (Math Activities)

Mavi is 41 months old.

This is a continuation of our Antarctica Unit which we started last week.  Here are the math activities to go along with our unity study.

PENGUIN ADDITION

We used Safari Toob Penguins for our addition. The cards that you see were homemade.  It will make the addition game a little more interesting if he has these picture cards(control cards).

Another version of our penguin addition is using the concept of Montessori’s Addition Strip.  I previously used the technique using bear counters and it worked for him.

Later, he started to do it on his own using the control cards.

SKIP COUNTING BY 2’S AND 3’S

We haven’t done this for a long time.  So I decided to revisit it.  I used white and blue beads, pretending that they’re penguin eggs (and candies according to my son).

Here I told my son that the penguins are hungry and needed two candies each.  Once he placed the beads, we started counting by 2’s.  I explained that counting by 2’s means that we start counting from 2 and skip some numbers along the way (thus the 1,3,5,7,9).

Then he wanted to have another set-up.  He said that the penguins want to eat rice!  He gave each penguin 2 rice (LOL) and he started counting by 2’s again. I was surprise that he can do it on his own. I am in awe of how can a little one learn by doing repetitive activities. 

We did the same thing when we counted by 3’s.

And revisited a few activities using these penguin printables from Making Learning Fun.  See how we used these printables here and here.

Linking this to:

Continent: Antarctica Unit

Yehey! I was able to kick-off our Antarctica unit last week!  I’ll be sharing the first three days of our unit study, and how we go about on learning the continent.

DAY 1:  WHAT AND WHERE IS ANTARTICA

Introduced the continent.  Discussed where Antarctica is located and why it’s surrounded with ice.

We read Usborne’s Antarctica.  The book is very informative, it got lots of ‘real’ pictures too that attracted my son all the more.  I printed out the map of Antarctica as well.  (FYI:  the map was through Google images)

I provided pictures from Google and instead of printing it on a cardstock, I have it developed in a photo paper to make it look credible.  The pictures were basically composed of icebergs seen in Antarctica, pictures of scientists working, tourists, transportations and other animals inhabiting the region.

I also used these pictures to tell a story... random story about a boy who wanted to explore Antarctica.  He loves to hear it over and over again.

I tried presenting him these postcards and stamps(Google).  But he just looked at them, ask me questions about the pictures in the cards and that’s it.  He didn’t appreciate it that much.  

 

DAY 2:  PENGUINS

Second day is all about Penguins.  As seen below,  I printed this document (Life Cycle of Penguins) which I read from here and got it from here.  Here I talked about how Penguins live and survive the cold and harsh weather in Antarctica.  How the Mommy and Daddy penguins care for their young and explore the ocean to look for foods to feed their chick.

We also watched “March of the Penguins” together.  Oh boy, he enjoyed the film!  He kept tell his Daddy all about the “bad bird” eating the baby penguin :)  Having seen the film, he would imitate the penguin’s walk around the house and would make their sounds.  It’s quite amazing how he developed an interest on these birds!

With our Penguin Safari Toob, I made control cards so we can play matching games with them. As we play along, I explained how each bird differs from each other.

Here he is matching the penguins with the control cards.

 

He loves playing puzzles and enjoys putting labels.  This is a homemade puzzle out of foam sheets.  I had this since last year and this is the first time we worked on it.  What I did here was selected a penguin outline from Google and cut its parts to form a puzzle.

I also purchased the 3-part card of to go along with our Antarctic unit.  My son is addicted to these cards! Really, I tell you... he loves loves loves nomenclature cards.

DAY 3:  OTHER INHATBITANTS IN ANTARCTICA

Here’s our little Antarctica.  My son helped in putting all the animals in the it.  I plan to get wooden trays in the this month so we can build a much interesting one.

 

There are also scientists who lives in Antarctica to do some research.  We discussed how they dress up and play pretend using this paperdoll which I got from here.   I also dressed my son (winter clothings) so he can pretend he is one of the scientist (no pictures though).

So aside from penguins, we learned about the different animals that live in Antarctica.  Aside from using our animal figures, I also made 3-part cards for these animals.  As much as I wanted to use real pictures, I decided to save some ink so I just used black-and-white pictures and color them using colored pens.

Here’s a closer look.

So far, my son’s interest was more on the animals.  He’s always fascinated with them especially if her learns about their habitat. He also liked the pictures he loves to hear me tell stories about them (and he likes to ASK a lot of questions about them too!).  So what I would probably do for other Continent units is to focus on materials that I know he’ll grasp immediately. And it will give me enough reason to add up “new” learning materials each year (rather than preparing materials in one blow!) as he progress.

Next would be math related activities and crafts.

Linking this to:

B4FIAR: Corduroy Part 2

Was inactive for a while due to work loads.  While I was preoccupied with personal stuff, I keep my son busy doing activities while we’re still stuck at home due to freezing temperature outdoor.  So the past few days, we simply continued with our Corduroy unit activities.

Here he is doing the bear craft on his own.  I basically sat there watch him do this thing.  

              

              

We also worked with Read and Spell, which I downloaded from Homeschool Creations.  Since we started with Before FIAR, the read and spell became his all time favorite.

We practiced buttoning using the button snake which I made a few months ago.

Corduroy is a story that deals with emotions as well.  So I got this matching game from Montessori Print Shop and we enjoyed matching each facial expression.  My sad had a great time imitating the pictures :)