Projects

No tot school updates today, though we’ve done a lot of stuff last week.  It’s just that I am currently preoccupied with a lot of chores to be done.  Plus, I’m currently planning / brainstorming on some Montessori materials that I wish to make.

With limited resources (and budget too!), I’ve a list of things to be done this week.  I hope to finish each project by Friday because next week I need to resume to work (techie stuff).

NUMBER RODS

     I can accomplish this in a day.  Since I can’t find wooden rods around here, I plan to use larger red and blue beads instead.  For all I know whether you use a wooden rod or not, as long as you introduce or teach the same the same concept as Montessori, it is still accepted.  So before I made my bead stairs (colored) and golden beads... this basic rods or beads should be done first.

SPINDLE BOX

    I’ve seen variations of spindle box, and I’m torn between using a tissue roll or plastic trays for the box.  For the spindle, I plan to use straws or popsicle sticks at first, then maybe when my son is old enough I can give him sticks to use as the “loose” material.  It’s quite scary to give him sticks at his age... the way I see it, it’s not that safe.  So if I am still undecided by Wednesday, I might pass on this project at first for this month.  If I decided on plastic trays, I might end up making this on April as I have to save for the boxes.

INSETS

    I am so excited on making my own insets.  Saw a blue and red poster board at Popular and it’s perfect for this kind of project.  My only issue here are the brads to use and the kind of “cutting” I needed so I can pull this project off (neatly).  I can see that Mavi would love love this thing.  There are a lot of brads available, but I am looking for something that’s safe for Mavi.  Something that’s sturdy, doesn’t come off easily and I hope to find a non-metal brad.  So once I have all  my materials needed I guess there won’t be a problem.  My goal here is to have at least the 3 sets done:  triangle, circle and square.

Well these are some of the things I can do before the month ends.  I still have a lots of things on my mind... such as the color chips, tessellations, more sensorial materials... but I wanna go slow and smooth since I also got some personal stuff to do.

Baby steps for me as of the moment.  Baby steps.

Oil Pastel Art

Inspired by this work.

Mavi and I are exploring the wonders of oil pastels.

To start with, we made an abstract art, using contact paper, oil pastels and a paper towel.

 

1.  First, cut positive and negative shapes out of contact paper.

2.  Stick them all over the drawing paper.

3.  Using bright shades of pastels, we color the inside of the negative shapes and the edges of the positive shapes.

4.  Using a paper towel, rub the oil pastels to get it to blend (or blend with other colors)

5. (optional) Remove the contact paper if you are using a canvas.

Here's my happy happy little boy, so proud of our work!

Tracing lines

Mavi is fond of tracing my drawing nowadays.  So I was thinking if maybe I could get him to trace straight lines, diagonal lines and curved lines as well.  I remember that we used to do this in primary school for writing practice.

So here’s a few photos taken during our pre-writing sessions.  He wanted to use different colors of Pip Squeaks per line hehe.

 

I got this printable worksheets from Kids Learning Station.  They’ve got a bunch of worksheets for homeschooling.

Enjoy!

The CVC words

Mavi is 30 months old.

Last week we worked with his Egg CVC words.  I got the idea/link from here. 

In this activity, I added a little twist, combined the idea of see and spell and learning cvc words.  First we worked with the pink eggs.  I introduced to him the three eggs with the web, men and cat into it.  Then I made him match the words with the picture.  He did pretty well with the “cat” since he can identify the “cat” word already.  With men and web, I have to teach him how to read it through sounding the letters.

The night before, I cut out pieces of construction paper to match with our CVC egg colors (pink, yellow and blue).  Then I traced the cvc words using the magnetic letters of Melissa and Dough.  My purpose here is for him to identify the letters and match the magnetic letters to the ones written on the cvc eggs and on the construction paper.

So here it is, first I took the web word.  I showed him that “web” word written on the paper and that’s the same word written on the egg.  Now he looked for the letters that made up the “web” word.  We did the same thing for the words “cat” and “men”.

 

He loved this activity so much that he also did the the yellow cvc eggs. 

I was very happy that he enjoyed this activity.  Though he had already passed that stage of being obsessed with letters... he was still very eager to learn how to read and still loves playing his magnetic letters.

We will be working with this for quite a while since he love this so much.  My next plan is to introduce the pink scheme of Montessori for reading practice.