Friday, April 27, 2012

Magnet Learning Station

This is our magnet learning station. It contains a magnet wand and a 
tackle box with items that are attracted to magnets and other materials that are not. 

Materials that I put in the tackle box:

- Wooden rings
- Cardboard square
- Stainless steal hook
- Key chain ring
- The circles that came with the wand
- Magnet
- Plastic caps
- Stickers
- Glass beads
- Paper clip
- Washer and bolt (can add screws)
- Paper
- Cotton balls
- Piece of sponge
- A penny
- Cloth pin




Then Umi can place the items that are attracted to the magnet wand on one basket and the ones that are not attracted on the other basket.

I am planning on making a magnet exploration bottle. But that is a subject for another post!




Saturday, April 14, 2012

Math FREE downloads!!!


  LIVABLE LEARNING - Preparing the Home and the Heart





Suzanne from Livable Learning is giving away LOTS of math downloads for free! This is what she wrote on her website:



Leap into GIVING!
 
Check back the FIRST WEEK of every month for new Specials! 
To honor the 2012 LEAP YEAR theme of LEAP INTO GIVING each month I will offer FREE items - both printables and sets of handmade Montessori items!

APRIL 2012
Hope4ME Printables released as FREE downloads:
Call me LEAP YEAR Leapin' CRAZY but I just release All MATH FACTS Materials as free downloads! I have been so inspired by all the support **across the world** to my new blog and to my Hope4ME printables pages. This gift's for YOU!

--






So you'll get:


Math Facts Printables - equation slips, tables cards and booklets, and all the charts. 
http://www.jmjpublishing.com/jmjsales.html







THANK YOU SUZANNE!!!!!

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Writing and Reading System

This is the reading and writing system I got together for Umi. It consists of little printable books from 
Primera Escuela. Below there is alphabet posters with poems that I bought here and I printed them in color card stock. It happened that I chose blue for the vowels and beige for the consonants. If I would do it again I would use the color of the sandpaper letters.

Sandpaper letters. I bought them in Montessori Concepts. I bought several materials from them. It is a long story but to cut it short for now, they were VERY nice to me. They even gave me free materials! I am planning to review them soon. 




Here you can see the book up close. The child has to match words since 
there wasn't any pictures on the square part of the book. To make this you need to 
print the letter sheet that has the little words with pictures that you need to cut for the books.
This books has a page for tracing!

I use this cards for his calendar. It is from Learning Resources but I can't seem to find it neither in 
amazon where I bought it and on their website.

The pages on this book have the letter in upper case  and pictures with animals and things
that start with that letter and underneath it has the word written and it is in lower case.


Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Outdoor Sensory Tub Activity

Materials:

- Jars and/or tupperware
- Colored cotton balls
- Shaving cream
-Ladle 
- Food coloring
- Turkey baster
- Water

Fill 3/4 of the jars with water and then add shaving cream to the top. Add water to the tub and food coloring on the shaving cream. I got this idea from Teacher Tom and I added my touches. He has a great blog.

Umi liked to squish the baster and also catch cotton balls with the ladle.




This was a fun activity. He learned:

- Color changes when they are mixed
- If you squish the cotton balls water comes out
- How to use the baster
- Pouring water from one jar to another
- Shaving cream makes the water slippery, soapy and foamy

You could add water beads! I will try that tomorrow!



Monday, April 9, 2012

Homeschool Room

This is our playroom or homeschool room. As you may see it is small and a bit crowded for my liking but it is what we have now. I am happy to have a room I can dedicate for Umi's montessori and homeschooling materials and for him to play.
This is his desk. Inside he has some activities. Next to it it is the music instruments. Inside the blue dresser are musical instruments like maracas, shakers, recorder and more. The bottom drawer has tapes and a walkman where he can listen to music and stories I recorded for him. On top of this dresser is his drum and underneath the record player.

This is our shelf unit that my husband built. 

This is the language shelf. On the left we have the Spellable game. It is great since it is in
English and Spanish, the only down side is that it is in uppercase...Inside of the blue tin box we have 
rhyming words cards that I printed and laminated. Next to it the sandpaper letters. Then Brain Quest cards. They are for a 5-6 years old but Umi (3 years old) can do them easily. 

This is what we are using for math right now. I have the spindle box but it seems that he still needs to learn the correlation between the numbers and quantity.

We left this space for seasonal activities like in this case Easter. When there isn't a especial holiday
I use it for sensory, geography or practical life.

This is where I store things like paints, papers, etc. My project with this is to
cover the glass doors with pictures.

I have all the maps, control maps, and other materials that soon will come out of hiding but as far as today this is what we have on the shelves.


Sunday, April 8, 2012

How to Color Eggs using Food Coloring

Materials:

- Eggs (I used brown ones)
- Water
- Vinegar
- 1/2 measuring cup
- 1 tablespoon
- Cups for placing the eggs in
- Food Coloring


20 drops of food coloring


I label them so he can lear to read the colors

Practical Life activity!

Eggs colored at last! 

I hope you all had a very happy Easter!!!

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Happy Easter Ideas!

Hello everyone!!! I wanted to wish you all a very happy Easter full of love, happiness and peace! Here are a few activities that I had for Umi. He is 3 years old (2012).

On the left there is a egg matching activity. In the center there is a bunny puzzle. The basket
on the right it has an egg puzzle. It seems a bit difficult for a 3 year old, but I thought of giving it a try. 
I got the egg puzzle at the Dollar Tree. It comes apart and it is a bit tricky. Behind there are 3 
cards a basket, an egg and a bunny for decoration and vocabulary.

Here is the sorting activity. You can also use this little erasers as a counters. Umi likes
to grab one bunny and feed him a carrot, then we count how many bunnies and how any carrots are there. I also got this erasers for the Dollar Tree store last year.

The cards on the left are sensory matching cards, they are made with
different materials from rough to smooth. And on the right is an egg color matching activity.


Easter mystery bag. I am going to decorate the eggs with different
textures. You can use sand, and glue. With a hot glue gun you can glue things on the eggs too.


He really liked his easter stamps.

This are great! I got them from the Dollar Tree store. They are for tracing different shapes. 
They are easy to use and they were only  1 dollar!


Sunday, April 1, 2012

Celery Experiment

We did a simple and easy experiment. All you need is a jar/glass, water, food coloring and a celery stick. Fill the glass half way with water, add the food coloring you want put the celery in and wait to see what happens!

  The celery absorbs the colored water. The celery that I used was an old one and it took several hours for it to absorb the colored water. I will try this experiment with a new celery next time. What brings it to the next level. Try this experiment using an older celery and a new one. Then you can see which one absorbs the water faster! If you are teaching the time to your child may be you can time it to see how long it took for the celery to absorb the water. Did it take seconds, minutes, or hours? I hope you enjoy this activity. My son had fun with it and I hope yours too!