Thursday, October 10, 2013

Spanish vowels crafts project

Here is our Spanish version of the letter crafts.

Spanish vowels crafts project

For this project you will need a couple of days. It’s better if you make a letter each day..like a week project!

Pinky liked it a lot! I am thinking about setting up a Spanish binder to keep all our future Spanish learning projects. Will see…

Spanish vowel letters craft pattern

These are the pattern we used (click over each letter to follow the link to the 4shared website where I stored them). I have hand drawn everything and then cut over construction paper. For some we got creative and used felt, cotton and feathers. Sorry, but each vowel part is written in Spanish, just follow the next pictures in order to get an idea.

Letter A is for:

Angel- angel

Abeja- bee

Iphone photos 081

 

Letter E is for:

Edificio- building

Elefante- elephant

Spanish vowel E letter craft

 

Letter I is for:

Iguana- Iguana

Isla- island

Spanish vowel I letter craft

Letter O is for:

Oso- bear

Oveja- sheep

Spanish vowel o letter craft

 

Letter U is for:

Unicornio- unicorn

Urraca- Magpie

Spanish vowel u letter craft

I hope you and your kiddoes have fun learning Spanish!

 

Friday, October 4, 2013

Chapter books for preschoolers: Charlotte’s web

A few months ago, we finished reading our first chapter book ever!!! It was Charlotte’s web by E.B. White and Illustrated by Garth Williams.

Charlotte's web Montessori-inspired activities

Her past Montessori class was reading the book, so she got back home very excited wanting to get it at the book store. I didn’t know about this book before (shame on me….or shame on my old Puerto Rican traditional school system). It was great to read the book together every night and finally watch the movies. We found two movies: one an animation, and another with persons. This helped us to compared the movies and the book. This seems an activity for older kids but I got amazed by all the details a young kid can remember.

Charlotte's web Montessori-inspired activities

Then we added a few hands-on-activities or Montessori-inspired lessons to go with our beloved book.

Characters spelling activity

Charlotte's web Montessori-inspired activitiesCharlotte's web Montessori-inspired activities

Charlotte's web Montessori-inspired activitiesCharlotte's web Montessori-inspired activities

Charlotte's web Montessori-inspired activities

Charlotte’s web small world

(She played with these for ages….sometimes reciting parts from the book or movie and others just using her imagination. Great way to bring a book to life!)

Charlotte's web Montessori-inspired activities

Characters:

Pigs: Wilbur and Uncle

Spiders: Charlotte and daughters (Joy, Aranea and Nelly)

Rat: Templeton

Girl with eggs basket: Fern Arable

Boy with fish: Avery Arable

Woman and man next to boy: Mr. and Mrs. Arable

Man with calf: Lurvy

Geese and Gander

Sheep (not pictured) and lamb

Horse and colt

Cow and flies

Man driving the tractor: Mr. Zuckerman

Woman next to tractor: Mrs. Zuckerman

 

Origami farm

(From Michael’s but I recently saw it at the Dollar Tree Store)

Charlotte's web Montessori-inspired activities

 

Books to complement

(These books are from our own home library)

Charlotte's web and books to complement

Books about The farm.

 

Charlotte's web and books to complement

Books about farm animals.

 

Charlotte's web and books to complement

Books about spiders.

 

Charlotte's web and books to complement

Books about pigs.

 

We did a few more activities that will share later on!

Have a great weekend!!

Linking to:

The-Weekly-Kids-Co-Op-150px-Button[1]

Monday, September 30, 2013

Our 5 favorite Spanish vowels videos on YouTube

On Monday, we are having fun watching and singing our favorite Spanish vowels videos!

Spanish vowels videosSpanish vowels videos

This is the way Pinky learns; smiling!

Love that little face!

  • Las vocales
    Video Educativo de las Vocales from El elegido mano de piedra

 

  • With this video you can learn each vowel sound.
    Las vocales from Cantando aprendo a hablar

         

        • This video shows examples for each vowel
          Las vocales nino de papel

         

        • La marcha de las vocales. I love this song!
          La marcha de las vocales

         

        • This song has English captions.
          Video Las vocales from OnlinefreeSpanish

         

        • This is a special one: With the vowels you can praise Jesus!
          Las vocales: Canto Nino

         

        Have a fun Monday singing the Spanish vowels!!!

         

        Linking to:

        Montessori MondayCreative Kids Culture Blog Hop

        Thursday, September 26, 2013

        Our body anatomy lessons (4-5 years old)

        During our summer vacation, we got the tiny opportunity to learn a bit about our body. Pinky has been asking to do activities about this topic for quite a time now. However, it seems that something always got in our way.

         

        Not wanting to keep it longer, here are a few things we did.

        My little princess world

         

        First, we put this skeleton puzzle together. I am not sure where’s from because I bought it at Goodwill a couple of years ago.

        The next activity was to write the bones names on index cards and match to the correct bone.

        My little princess world

        Meet your bones!

         

        My little princess world

        So cute together!

        My little princess world

        These are other puzzles we got to use. The brain is from Staples, and I think the others are from a dollar store. I know for sure they were $1 each!!! Winking smile

         

        Then, I made some organs using felt. I used an Anatomy book as a reference and draw the organs by sight.

        I used cheap felt (busted!) so I had to fold it in half and glue the sides together with a hot glue gun. As a result, the felted organs are stronger which I think is good if small and busy hands are the ones using them.

        My little princess world

        The stomach. As you can see, the felt sheet is folded in half.

         

        My little princess world

        Here they are!!!

        (Brain, lungs, heart, liver, gallbladder, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, spleen, kidneys, urinary bladder, small and long intestines)

         

        Another activity was to use doctor’s related stickers from Michaels to create art.

        My little princess world

        Isn’t that so cute?

         

        We also watched a few videos from YouTube and the Magic school bus on Netflix (The Human body).

        My little princess world

         

        Finally, we read lots of books!

        My little princess world

        These books are ours. I mostly got them for 0.39 cents up to $1 at a Thrifty store nearby.

        So far she just looked at the pictures and we read anything that called her attention at the moment.

        We read the magic school bus (Spanish) and then watched the movie on Netflix.

         

        My little princess world

        Finally, no unit can’t be completed without some dramatic play time or field trip.

        Actually, we have 3 physicians at home!

         

         

        Visit our Pinterest board: Anatomy for more amazing ideas!

         

        Airamty Anatomy Pinterest

         

        I believe it wasn’t a short unit after all!

        Wednesday, September 25, 2013

        Learning Spanish: Vowels (Montessori-inspired)

        Spanish Vowels

        Pinky is getting really good with her Spanish since my super duper idea of just letting her to play all day long with her “we just speak Spanish” little cousins. We spent two weeks last summer in Puerto Rico where she just: played!

        Puerto Rico's trip 274

        5 cute cousins sitting on a couch….there’s comes….

         

        No lessons, no frustrations, no mommy interventions……just free time to play with other Spanish speaking kids.

        Now that we are back home, she is speaking in English again!!! Arrrggg! Therefore, I am trying to start short lessons with her to keep practicing Spanish while we get to visit our family again.

        We are sharing today our first lesson as a follow up of this post about the Spanish Vowels.

        Montessori-inspired Spanish alphabet boxes

         

        box

        Since Pinky is reading pretty good in English, we are not using her Alphabet boxes anymore. Therefore, I decided to change them into Spanish Alphabet boxes just by changing the objects from their initial sound box in English into the initial sound name in Spanish. Easy!

         

        Iphone photos 203

        First, we looked around the house and inside our English alphabet boxes for objects that started with each vowels sound. Then we made a pile. 

         

        Iphone photos 207

        Later we matched the objects with their vowel initial sound.

        If you will like to try this activity with your kids, here is a better look of each one of the vowels and their objects.

        I bet you can find most of them right now at home!!

         

        Iphone photos 220

        Letter a is for:

        • ambulancia= ambulance
        • almohada= pillow
        • ave= bird
        • abeja= bee
        • arbol- tree
        • avion- airplane
        • aceituna= olive
        • arana= spider
        • azul= color blue
        • auto= car
        • alfombra= rug
        • anillo= ring
        • anaranjado= color orange
        • abanico= fan
        • arcoiris= rainbow
        • amarillo= color yellow
        • agua= water
        • ardilla= squirrel
        • angel= angel
        • alce= elk

        Iphone photos 225

        Letter e is for:

        • Elmo= Elmo
        • elefante= elephant
        • espejo= mirror
        • escalera= stairs (vowels)
        • elastico= elastic band
        • emparedado= sandwich
        • estrella= star
        • espada= sword
        • escoba= broom
        • escritorio= desk

         

        Iphone photos 226

        Letter I is for:

        • iman= magnet
        • iguana= iguana
        • insecto= insect
        • indio= indian
        • iglu= igloo

         

        Iphone photos 257

        Letter o is for:

        • Olivia= Olivia
        • oso= bear
        • oveja= sheep
        • orca= killer whale
        • octagono= octagon
        • ojos= eyes
        • olla= pot
        • ovalo= oval
        • ocho= number eight
        • orangutan= orangutan
        • oreja= ear
        • oruga= caterpillar

         

        Iphone photos 227

        Letter u is for:

        • unicornio= unicorn
        • uvas= grapes
        • uno= number one
        • uniciclo= unicycle
        • Urraca= magpie (not pictured)

         

        Do you have any hands-on-activity to learn a new language?

        Linking to:

        Montessori Monday

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