How to Introduce Space and Planets to Toddlers

Vito can finally identify the sun, moon and earth, and can’t stop saying the word space whenever he sees a rocket ship!  With engaging activities, you can definitely expose your kids to the of concept space and planets, and I assure you they’ll get hooked! 

Tot School: Letter ‘Rr’

Vito is 28 months old.

Vito is currently in his sensitive years and I am taking advantage of this period as he’s really into ALL our activities, positioning himself in his table asking for something to “play”.  So this week, we started with letter R. Why letter R and not A? Well, I decided to follow the RAMFBITG method of introducing letter sounds to Vito. To know why, read about it here.

Collection of Easter Activities

How do you observe the Lenten season? I was raised in a Catholic family and growing up, I participated in a lot of church and community activities tied to the observance of Lent.  The activties has helped me understand the meaning of Lent and the celebration of life on Easter. 

 

Last year we observed the Lenten season with some religion study, identifying their traditions and practices to understand their faith.  I find it important that we must introduce our kids to the different religions of the world not just ours, to be able to appreciate and respect everyone’s belief. 

 

The Rainbow Clouds Craft

I saw this beautiful rainbow craft a few weeks ago in Pinterest and I totally forgot the main site, so please if you own this craft leave a message and I’ll include the credits. 

I’ve been introducing Vito to the spring season using our Spring Season Picture Cards, books and outdoor activities.  Today, I’m sharing the rainbow clouds the boys made last week.  The weather was terrible at that time  and we couldn’t explore our yard so I made use of their free time doing crafts at home.  So I tried to scan through Pinterest in search of simple crafts that BOTH of my kids could work on, and this is one of them!

Crafts projects allow children to exercise their fine motor skills, improve manual dexterity and understanding of visual-spatial relationships.  They provide opportunities to use their imagination as well.  Just be vigilant when using small items and sharp objects like scissors.

Sensorial Play Kinetic Sand & Geometric Shapes

Vito and Mavi are loving our Kinetic Sand!  In all honesty, I’m hesitant to purchase the sand because of its price.  Growing up in my homeland, sand was free and I could play with it day and night with my mother not shedding a single cent.  So the thought of Kinetic Sand costing more than my monthly college allowance is just crazy.  When it went on sale (70% off!), I knew I just have to get one because I wanted my kids to enjoy sand all year round just the way I played with it.  It was worth-it!

 

Montessori Books for Older Children: The Universe Story Trilogy

It’s time for another 12 Months of Montessori Series and today I am sharing Mavi’s favourite book series.  We have been using these books for years now.  The books are all about the cosmic history to the evolution of man.  The stories are accompanied by stunning images and time-line to follow.  Everything in these books are just too magical and enlightening for him!

About the books:

There are three books in the series and each tells a certain period in time.  Here are the details of the books which you can purchase from Amazon:

• BORN WITH A BANG.  Story of the universe from the Big Bang to the formation of the sun and solar system.
• FROM LAVA TO LIFE.  Story of Earth from the appearance of the first life forms to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
• MAMMALS WHO MORPH.  The story of the first mammals to the story of humans.

When I asked Mavi how we’re going to showcase his books in today’s post, he suggested that we should make some kind of “interpretation”, similar to a museum but only in a series of activities.    So I scanned and laminated  his favourite parts in each book so we can do our “interpretation” of the story.

BORN WITH A BANG:  how the universe was formed.  Seen here, we replicated the bursting of lights in the universe forming into galaxies, stars and planets via the milk/soap/food coloring science activity.  This was performed by Mavi and Vito.  The mixing and contrast of colours looked like the big bang!

Our Spring Season Picture Cards

Spring is just around the corner and I’ve been thinking about the activities that the boys and I can do. I was very much inspired by Deb’s post on Spring Season Cards, so I borrowed the idea of printing pictures that relates to spring and we will be using them for the follwing:

• introducing the season of spring to Vito
• creating stories using the picture cards
• inspiration for crafts
• inspiration for outdoor activities
• St. Patrick and Easter activities
• farm animals and their babies
• animal life cycles