The Skeletal System

EDIT: SORRY, I POSTED THE WRONG LINK FOR THE SKELETON PRINTABLES. CLICK THIS ONE FOR THE CORRECT LINK. I already corrected the wrong link I posted below.

My son has been fascinated with the human skeletal system.  He’s been singing Dem Bones for months now and enjoys the skeleton dance.  With this, I decided to throw a human body system unit so he can have an overview of what he is made of.

There’s the books which I got from the library.  I am so thankful for our wonderful library, they have an amazing collection of fiction and non fiction books for kids!

Then I downloaded the human skeletons from Game Crafts Coloring.  I picked this one among the others I encountered on the net because the bones here are easier to cut and they’re sized for my little boy.  First he figure out how to connect the bones... of course with a little guidance from me.  As we do this, we discuss how each bones differ from each other and how they function.

               

Once we’re done, we glue each of them on a brown paper.  Here I used the bag of a paper bag. 

 

As we glue, he got so excited that he wanted to position his body just beside the skeleton.LOL.

Once we’re done, I gave brief introduction about the internal organs and how each are positioned inside the body.  By the time we get to the digestive system.... he lost his interest (might be tired already) so I decided to stop the activity.

 

We continued the activity the next day... will talk about it on my next post.

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Learning about LINES

My son enjoyed making different lines using marker pens.  Next would be using paints :)

Source:  The ABCs of Art

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A Visit to the Zoo

A few weeks ago, we visited the city zoo.  Mavi has been asking about it for a long time now and since husband was on leave we just have to grab the opportunity see the animals while it’s still summer.

We have been to 4 zoos in the past three years, and they’re all in different places.  Will tell you about it soon.  And by far, he enjoyed this one the most.   I love the zoo, and it’s not just my son who enjoys seeing the animals but its me and my husband too.  Just like this one, it’s our first encounter with a white rhinos and gorillas.  We were so enthralled!  They were even more beautiful in person rather than in books!

                  

The zoo has mini-conservatories as well.  They have this house that preserves the furs of lions and tigers.  My son had a great time ‘feeling’ their furs.  

         

And they have displays of some animal skulls.  Here they have the skulls of zebra, giraffe, chimpanzee, crocodile etc.

And of course, what made my son even more happier is encountering a human skeleton!! He loves it to bits!

 

Then before we headed home, we passed by the “Farm” area... and here kids are allowed to feed the farm animals.  Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the cow milking session.  My son would have like participating on it :)  Oh well, maybe next time.

 

I don’t usually share or talk about our trips because I wanted to keep it private.  But some readers have asked me if there are some things that we also do aside from homeschool activities. 

Of course we do have a lot of fun things whenever the weather permits!! Whenever it’s safe to go outside (am talking about the weather), we definitely go out and play some ball, or go to playgrounds, or somewhere else other than the 4 corners of our house LOL.  We travel as well too. 

Anyway, will share about it soon.

Happy Thursday everyone!

3D Shapes

We had a short vacation last week thus the absence of homeschool activities. We had so much fun exploring the beautiful sites of the north, visited the zoo and a lot more.  Will share it here soon!

Anyway, Mavi and I made some models for our 3D shapes lesson.  But it seems that the little guy was more interested in making cards for his friends and applying glitter glues on it.

              

                

We waited for it to dry up. And here they are...

Too bad I couldn’t make a sphere!  As you can see, my son wrote letters on it LOL.  We sorted out the printables that I got from Montessori Printshop.

Using these models, I’m happy that he can now distinguish 3d shapes with the plain ones.  And it is surprising that he memorizes the name of all the models that we created!

 

Source:  Patterns for the 3D models are all from Paper Models of Polyhedra

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Planets and the Solar System

Saw this book from the library and I thought my son would like it.

 

And he did!  The book got lots of interesting images of the planets and is loaded of information which are very easy for an almost 4 yr old to understand.  I also love that each planet were discussed and has trivia on each one.

                        

Later we made planets using paints.   As we paint each planet, we first refer to the book, discuss the color and try mixing the paints so we can come up with the exact color as presented in the book. And this is how they look like as we wait for them to dry up.

Once they’re cooked, I cut them up so we can glue them on a black cardstock.  They look absolutely perfect!

My son started cutting the orange paper for his Sun.

Then we glue them on the cardstock.  We talk about the order  of the planets in the solar system as we glue them.  Here it seen that he is adding glitters on our space. 

 

Then we waited again for them to dry so we can start playing with it using our Safari Space Toob.

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AUGUST PLANS

Here are some of the few things we needed to do before the September.  My son will start school next month and is enrolled in a Montessori class.  Though he will be in school in the morning,  we still have the afternoon to do home “school” if he asks for it (he doesn’t watch TV), or when we can’t play outside because of bad weather. 

LANGUAGE.  We’re still in Montessori blue series... currently finishing the secret words, then will be doing some sentence strips and last would be the word list.  I hope we can finish this by end of August so we can start with the green series by September.

MATH.  I’m using worksheets as a guide. But I used Montessori-Inspired Math activities first then once he can grasp the idea I supplement it using worksheets. 

SCIENCE.  This really depends on what I could find from the library and mostly the subject depends on the season.

GEOGRAPHY.  We’ll be doing North America this month and hope to finish the rest of the continents by the end of the year.

RELIGION.  This is something I have yet to add in our curriculum.  Currently, we’re just reading Bible stories for children. I am not worrying about this since Mavi will be enrolled in a Catholic school next year.

I am currently working on our curriculum/schedule for September.  Since he’ll be in school for at least 3.5hrs, I wouldn’t want to load him with so much work here at home, he can play as long as he wants but in case he gets tired of playing and wanted to do something else.... then perhaps we can do some home “schooling”.

More of Insect Activities

I discovered these rubber-made insect toys on a Euro store and bought it right away for our insect study.  My boy was so ecstatic seeing these and played sorting using a tweezer.

 

It was a perfect practical life activity for an insect study :) It include flies, ants, spiders, worms etc.

Then he also worked on the 3 part card for the parts of an insect.  We’ve been doing this activity frequently that he finally understands the difference between hind legs and forelegs.

It’s also helps to have a miniature when working on a nomenclature card.

He’s so used in working with this that he can finish it in less than 3 minutes.   

 

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