Alphabet of the week: Letter B for body

This week is for letter B. For Body! We had a really fun week and my boys are exposed to a topic that is very new and interesting to them. Initially, I am a bit worried that they will not be interested in biology at such an early age, but I am wrong. And I am so glad that the materials I prepared are put to good use this week.

 

As usual we did our work on letter B curriculum from thisreadingmama.com. And I wont be going into details for them.

First, I brought out all the books on human body to them, and introduced this new topic to them.

 

 

 

Our favorite book of all is by scholastic My Body book. It is the prefect first book to introduce this unit as the texts are simple and concise. Images are attractive to the kids and they enjoyed it very much.

 

 

Aidan and his ugly face and his favourite book.

 

 

Next, I pulled out 2 pcs of parchment paper and taped them together into a huge piece and invited Allen to lie on it as Aidan and I traced him onto the paper. This pc was then taped to the wall for later lesson use.

 

Next, we worked on our body 3parts card which I downloaded from http://everystarisdifferent.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-world-around-me-all-about-me.html.

Her blog have many free unit studies resources, do check her out!

 

 

Next we had a discussion of the many different hair colors people have and practiced our colors again at the same time.

 

 

Next is the sequencing of life stages.

 

 

A little exercise game. They have to take turns to choose the numeral cards and action cards and do the action that many times. I used our Chinese numeral cards for this. Nasty and cunning mummy...

 

And we had a fun time singing and dancing to the song: Head and shoulders, knees and toes.

 

 

We are fortunate enough to own lots of the leapfrog educational leap reader materials. And we used the set of human body to reinforce what we have learnt. Mostly on the digestive systems as that is what big brother Aidan is interested in since we read My Body book from scholastic. Child led learning hor, mai siao siao.

 

 

Body parts self correcting puzzles by learning journey.

 

We watched the magic school bus episode on digestive system on youtube. The boys first time watching magic school bus shows and they loved it.

 

 

Next we build our body map. The organs images are downloaded from confessionsofahomeschooler blog. The boys have to color in the images first then we taped them to our body.

 

Allen trying to put the large intestine at the head -.-"

 

 

And finally a cut and paste worksheet I got from the internet. Forgot to save the link down, so sorry...

 

For numbers practice, Allen used the flashcards and learnt counting and sequencing to 20.

 

 

And we worked on the counting puzzles from learning journey as well. We snatched up many sets from ROSS at $5 each during the Christmas sale last year.

 

And we also revised on our at and an family words using Melissa and doug wooden alphabets pcs.

 

We did many more activities but I did not have any nice shots of them. A very fun week indeed and it makes me miss my work back in Singapore. (I am a nurse:)

 

Ok. gtg... thanks for stopping by.

XOXO

Ashley

 

 

DIY montessori maths beads

After seeing the colorful and interesting Montessori maths beads online, I got very inspired to DIY my own set. This Montessori method of using beads to represent quantities is a great way to teach young children maths, as they makes it interesting and more concrete.

I just finished my bead stairs and is using them to introduce the numbers 1 to 100 to both of my boys currently. There are many other ways to use them and the boys like to play with them a lot.

Materials needed:

 

Beads of course! In 10 different colors to represent the different numbers: RED, GREEN, PINK, YELLOW, BLUE, PURPLE, WHITE, BROWN, NAVY and GOLD. Traditional Montessori materials requires wooden beads, but I couldn't find them at a reasonable budget  thus I just improvised and opted for the cheaper plastic beads option. I purchased Darice plastic faceted 8mm beads. each pack have 480beads and I got 1 of each colors and 2 of the golden sun colors. Cost 42usd excluding shipping fee. I got them from consumer crafts.com or you can get them from amazon.

Next up is the beading wires, I got them from walmart craft section, a total 3 of them at 2.50usd each. cost: 8.20usd after tax.

 

And of course, the tools. A basic round nose plier and wirecutter will do.

 

Making the bead bars:

 

You need to make a eye loop using the round nose pliers and bead it accordingly, leave a small length for another loop and cut the wire. I kind of went into a factory mode by cutting all the wires for the particular length 30pcs in one go, thus the making process went quite fast. Its' really easy and my boys were nosy around when I was making them as they can't wait to get their little hands on them.

 

The beads I brought were more than enough and I had tons of the leftover beads which I turned them into mini bead bars set for my niece. I am planning to make more of the golden 10 bars to be able to introduce the value of up to 1 thousand for my 5 yr old.

 

 

And lastly, I went to get this organizer box for storage from Michaels, with a 50% coupon of course. Sadly there wasn't enough compartments thus I got to merge the 1s with 2s and 3s with 4s. Or you can pop by ROSS to get their make up organizer tray which have more compartments but I had this box already so I gave it a miss.

 



 

 

So in total I spent around 55usd and made a set of Montessori bead bars for my kids, a mini set for my niece and still have tons of leftover beads in the colors of 1 to 9.

 

 

In comparison to this amazon set pricing, with less than 20usd more I got a bigger set of Montessori math beads bars and many many 10 golden bead bars. What do you think? Is it worth the effort and pricing to diy or to just purchase the authentic set?

 

Thanks for stopping by:

XOXO

Ashley