Showing posts with label Free. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free. Show all posts

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Artistic gift idea

This upcoming week, Pinky’s school will be celebrating Teacher appreciation week. Therefore, every child have to make their teachers an art-related gift. Since, I am having such a busy time with our moving plans, I totally forgot about the project. We just had the night before to come up with an idea to have Pinky in the mood to make something artistic for 3 of her teachers. Well, mommy got really inspired with such short time and Pinky got excited about how fun was her gift. LOL….Mommy power!!!

Here is our project:

  • I encouraged her to dress up…..very easy task since Pinky LOVES to dress-up.

iphone photo 206

  • She laid down on the floor making different postures while I was up high on a chair taking her photos. This one was kind of hard since she was moving all over the place…..I think because it is the first time we take photos just laying down.

iphone photo 189iphone photo 193

iphone photo 202

iphone photo 197iphone photo 195

  • Printed the ones I liked the most or inspired me the most!

iphone photo 203

  • Cut the photo and glue on paper.
  • Let her run her imagination with markers, pencil, stickers, felt, and everything on her way.
  • Outcome: 3 artistic, personalized and cute projects in just less than an hour with a very happy and excited girl telling her mommy: “This is really super fun, mommy!”

iphone photo 208

For her PA teacher….he is really tall! lol

iphone photo 211

For one of her Primary class teacher.

iphone photo 210

For another of her primary class teacher.

  • I am thinking these could make such a great Father’s day gift and a summer art activity, as well.

 

Woohooo!!!

 

Now, were are my best friends: scissor, tape, and marker????

 

Also, I am hooked with Instagram, so if you would like to follow us, here is ours: Airamty.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Continent Box: Antarctica/Arctic

Here is our second continent box: Antarctica plus the Arctic, just in time to wish you a Happy World Penguin Day. I have decided to include activities about the Arctic and tundra in general in this box because of lack of space available at home. However, this creates a great opportunity to talk with Pinky about the North and South pole and their differences/similarities between them.

Photo: Our continent Box plus a green bin where I keep the books available. After we finish the Continent unit, everything goes inside the big bin. The lower photo is another sensory box with white felt, packing peanuts, white flower petals, scrap paper and aquarium marbles and rocks (for the penguins to build their nests). The photo on the right is our version of the Scrimshaw (ivory soap carvings).

 

For this box, we took advantage of the snowy Winter days and the snow just to re-create a mini-world. If you doesn’t have the snow factor advantage, you could recreate a sensory box with ice…or shaving cream….or white/blue play-doh….There are many available options all over the Internet!

Let’s see what did we learn with the Antarctica continent box:

Books

iphone photo 296iphone photo 096

iphone photo 095iphone photo 094

iphone photo 343

We explored books about: Atlas, The world, Arctic (Balto, Inuits, canada, alaska, iceland, etc), penguins. We LOVE books in this house!!! In the last photo, Pinky is playing after we read the Magic tree house chapter book: Polar bears past bedtime.

Sensory Box with Ice and Snow

iphone photo 277iphone photo 279

iphone photo 145

Pinky played with different sensory box set-ups using water, snow, ice, scrap paper, packing peanuts, etc.

3 part cards

iphone photo 317

Parts of a Polar bear.

iphone photo 318

Parts of a penguin

photo

Arctic animals….cards-objects matching activity….on the back of the card we have some information about the animals.

Clothing

iphone photo 298iphone photo 300

Antarctica scientist clothing and Frosty the snowman clothing…..both need lots of clothes!!! lol

Inuits- Balto story and movie time

photo

We don’t usually watch t.v.; however, comparing a book and it’s movie was such an interesting activity. She amazed me!!

Penguins!!!

photo

Puzzle from Dollar tree store!

 

iphone photo 327iphone photo 328iphone photo 325iphone photo 326

Hold your egg like a Penguin! Too funny and hard!!! lol Excellent for the snow storm lockdown…

 

photo

photo (1)

7 Penguins of Antarctica craft. Idea from Montessori Tidbits (link below)

 

Check out these great sites for more activities to include in your Antarctica or Arctic unit study:

  1. Living Montessori Now: Montessori-Inspired Arctic and Antarctic Unit
  2. Joy of Kindergarten: Getting My Penguins In a Row
  3. Parent, teach, play: Penguins – Play & Learning!
  4. Trillium Montessori: Antarctica: Overview, Antarctica: Penguins (free Penguins and Their Chicks printable), and Antarctica: Whales (How Long is a Whale? free printable cards)
  5. Jojoebi: Penguins 3 part cards free
  6. Kingdom of the three princesses: Our Continent Boxes – Antarctica (lots of resources/links about transportation, food chain, clothing, etc.)
  7. Mondorfment: Mondorfment Continent Swap Hop and Giveaway (free life cycle of the Emperor Penguin)
  8. Montessori Tidbits: Penguins of Antarctica craft (from here comes the 7 penguins of Antarctica craft idea)
  9. Scholastic: Lesson 2: The Extreme Antarctic 
  10. Counting Coconuts: Our Continent Bags - Antarctica
  11. Discovery days and Montessori Moments: Antarctica Box!
  12. Montessori MOMents: Antarctica Cultural Exchange Package
  13. What did we do all day?: Continent Boxes: Antarctica
  14. The Pinay Homeschooler: Continent: Antarctica Unit, Arctic Animals Control Cards (FREE PRINTABLE)
  15. Little things: Very Last First Time (Arctic unit)
  16. New bee homeschooler: Serie of great post about the Arctic.
  17. Learn, create, love: { Arctic Animal Crafts }

 

Visit our Pinterest Board: Continent Box: Antarctica, Arctic, for more amazing ideas!

image

Thanks for visiting!!!

Linking to:

Montessori Mondayfun activities to do with your kids

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Continent box: Africa (flags, art and links)

I think this is going to be our last post about our Africa continent box! It has been such a wonderful experience, not only for Pinky but for her mommy, too! Also, the fact that daddy went to South Africa makes our learning much more interesting. I will try to make this a not so long post but I don’t promise anything! So, make sure to grab a cup of coffee or tea and get ready to be inspired (I hope so!!! lol)

African flags

Marlee 4.4 031

Our map of Africa, printed from here with the countries’ flags (link below for the flags). The flags attach to the countries with magnets. I don’t pretend that Pinky learns the flags for each country now. We just talk about the different flags, colors and designs, and maybe get to identify the one from South Africa and Egypt. So far, she knows the flags from USA, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Haiti.

I wrote numbers behind each flag and on each country on the map so we could match them by numbers. The size of the map is four 8x11 size pages; however, I think a bigger size would do it better since there are some small countries on the west that the flags doesn’t fix so well, as you can see. This is a fun activity to get kids interested about the different flags and their countries. Additionally, we have flashcards bought at Target (dollar section) inside the box in an envelope.

 

Egyptian mask

Africa lessons 001

This is such an awesome activity!

Africa lessons 003Africa lessons 004Africa lessons 005Africa lessons 007Africa lessons 004Africa lessons 005Africa lessons 053

This was a mommy-daughter craft since it is complex for Pinky to do it by herself. However, we had such a great time making it together! The outcome was BEAUTIFUL! It really looks as we bought it from a very expensive souvenirs store. (jaja!) Here is the link if you want to try it with your kids. Instead of newspaper, tissue paper and glue, we used dried gypsum paper we bought at AC Moore craft store. Pinky loved to wet the paper (she mostly played with the water jaja) and gave it to me to cover the mask. To hold the mask in position to the cardstock I used tape and then my hot glue gun to make sure it stayed in position (you know, Pinky will be using it to play around). We had to let it dry for a night and the next day she painted everything with the gold paint and I made the lines with the blue paint (TEAM WORK!….well she really got tired of painting the mask plus mommy wanted to paint it perfectly lol).

What do you think???? Isn’t it great???

Africa lessons 054

The finished product was kind of heavy and big for Pinky’s head. We are keeping it as an art exhibition on our Continents bookshelf.

 

Coloring art

This is an easy and fast activity. I printed animals prints on white cardstock with an animal picture. She colored the prints and then glue the animals pictures on top of their prints. Here we talked about the animals skin differences: stripes, patches, spots. I think it will look great in a frame! I have the links saved in my Pinterest Board (link BELOW!).

Africa lessons 014Africa lessons 016

Africa lessons 018

DIY Necklaces

This was such a fun activity that Daddy joined us after he came from work. I think we loved the relaxing moment caused by lacing the beads and just having a nice conversation about our day.

photophoto

photophoto

Nice jewelry!

 

The goodies from Daddy’s trip to South Africa

Well, daddy loves to buy! Jajaja

Marlee 4.4 039Marlee 4.4 032Marlee 4.4 033Marlee 4.4 034Marlee 4.4 035Marlee 4.4 037Marlee 4.4 038

 

If you are interested about putting together a Continent Box for Africa, below are some awesome ideas from other bloggers. We were so lucky that Daddy had the opportunity to visit Africa last November. Also our Asia box (Daddy had a trip to China) and North America box (I’m from Puerto Rico, Daddy’s from Haiti, we lived in Dominican Republic and now USA, so we have a few souvenirs from those countries, plus Daddy had a trip to Cuba, and we went to Canada for the holidays vacation) are very well covered, too! However, the Europe, Australia and South America boxes need LOTS of help!!! For these boxes, I keep looking at Goodwill, Craiglist, garage sales or friends generosity Laughing out loud. Sometimes I am lucky and find things at different local stores, like a flute from Peru! Just keep your eyes open, be patient, creative and have fun!

 

My Pinterest board: Continent Box: Africa. It has a recompilation of different activities around the web. We tried some and saved other for future studies.

image

Continent boxes: Check them and get inspired!

  1. Our very own Continent box- visit our post here and here for more activities to include to your Africa Continent study plus a FREEBIE (we are sharing our own Animals cards, Elephant 3 part cards and instruments cards for your enjoyment and PERSONAL use! There are NOT perfect but help with the job!
  2. We don’t need no education –she used green mini folders to save the cards, Love it!
  3. Homeschool in the hills –many great printables to add with links!
  4. Living Montessori Now- great post summarizing different continent boxes with lots of links. If you want to know more about Montessori and get inspired, make sure you follow Deb’s post!
  5. Noor Janan Homeschool – love the World felt map! Check her link: Africa: is not a country. It has lots of resources about Africa.
  6. A bohemian education –beautiful way to decorate your box on the outside.
  7. What did we do all day? she added photos from their Daddy’s trip to Africa. This reminds me about doing the same….great keepsake!
  8. Discovery days and Montessori moments –saved the cards inside mini green folders.
  9. Just thinking –love the ideas of swatches of fabric for matching.
  10. La Paz home learning –she decorated each one of the boxes. The final outcome have so much personality: beautiful!
  11. Like a bird –pictures of each one of the boxes.
  12. Counting coconuts –beautiful and well organized Continent bag!

 

Printables:

  1. Expedition Earth: Discovering God’s Animals from Confession of a Homeschooler (free)
  2. Free printable Africa bingo cards- I used the flags for our Flag map above. Fold in the middle so the flag is on the front and the name of the country on the back. Then add a magnet in between and tape around the corners. You won’t be able to see the magnet which gonna be inside the mini-flag. We can use the flags for our map or for a Bingo game!
  3. South African money worksheets- maybe for older kids?
  4. Africa map –here’s the web-site I used to print our Africa map to use with the flags. I used 4 papers but maybe one a bit bigger would be better!
  5. Nuttin’ but preschool has a free Africa lesson plan with lots of ideas to try.
  6. Ancient Egypt and Unit lapbook from Homeschool share (free)
  7. Visit the Homeschool den if you want to expand your Africa learning into Egypt. There are several post about the theme. She also made Egyptian masks and there are a few printable links.
  8. Montessori Print Shop- if you don’t have the time to make your cards, here you can buy them. Their materials are wonderful! They have Flamingo 3-part cards for free.

 

Uff! Kind of a LONG post!!! Sorry about that!

Did you make a Continent Box????

Let us know!

We’ll love to check it out!

Linking to:

Montessori Monday

Template by:
Free Blog Templates