Here is what we have been doing in our new home….not just unpacking! It was a fun unit with lots of great activities to do. Oh yeah, sometimes mommy gets a little bit excited and wants to try everything she finds online or imagine. However, after almost 2 weeks with the same theme we just have to save for the next round! (We don’t do “school” everyday….we HAVE to play and go shopping...lol!)

Language:

Our Homemade- Parts of a bird puzzle- made of felt! I draw the bird on cardstock paper and Pinky colored each part. I just saved them (you can see the horse puzzle for our on-going farm theme) on a folder. Cheap and take less space! You can print out them at Montessori N' Such for free! (I was so lazy that preferred to draw them myself and don't have to connect the printer)

3 part cards- Parts of a bird (Sorry, I don’t remember from where are these!)

Update (Feb 2012): These cards are from Montessori Helper.

Plus these great activity (from Learning center world) where I read the statement and she just have to listen carefully in order to pick up the correct answer. I tried to turned into kind of Montessori by letting Pinky to use paper clips. (It was a little challenging at the beginning but she got it! And mommy got her proudly face on a pic!)

English/Spanish bird matching cards- I found these beautiful birds at a dollar store a few months ago (4/$1.00) and couldn’t help myself. So, I prepared these cards for a matching activity. Ok, it wasn’t a hit with Pinky! Also, she didn’t pay to much attention to them as a free play toy as she does with her farm or wild animals. (Maybe, those moments when she sees a real bird and shout: shoo, shoo birdie, go away!!! are saying something,,,lol) Maybe later??

Our homemade Beginning sound boxes are still an A plus!

Alphabet puzzle- practicing phonics. She loves to play “I spy”. We play saying: I spy a letter that says (letter sound)…and then she puts it on its place.

Sensorial-

Building a nest on the playground with pine tree leaves. The pinecone is mama bird and the rocks are her eggs. She had lots of fun! I love her concentration, plus the real birdies may have a new home!!

Tonging-

Egg carton and flamingoes from our Hawaii unit! Actually, Montessori Print Shop has a freebie of Flamingo 3-Part cards…I am saving them for our next round!

Tangrams-

Building an egg plus six different birds. It’s from Mathsticks.com! You need to open a free account.

Math-

We practiced some shapes pasting them on our book plus we counted birdies. Shape books from Time for tots. The bird counting cards are from the Birds unit from 1+1+1=1 and/or Homeschool creations.

Pre-writing-

Pinky’s getting better at making lines and after that, erasing them! Love those little hands at work!

Mix and Match Patterns with Plastic Eggs-

I don’t have any pic of this activity but I found it at Fun & Engaging Activities for Toddlers. I just grabbed 5 eggs from our Easter unit, mixed them, draw ovals on some index cards and colored. Easy!

We did more activities but I don’t have pictures since we were having too much fun. We did some lacing, more puzzles, lots of real practical life and pool, water park and playground fun!

Furthermore, if you are interested about some matching birds activities printables here are some great ones:

- Sunflower schoolhouse- Match the birds cards

- Sunflower schoolhouse- Bird color matching

- Montessori Print Shop- Free bird match up and memory game

Linking to:

Take care and have a great week or month? (Ops, I am sooo lazy to post! lol)

I have been so lazy busy on these months that I have lots of activities without posting since St. Patrick’s (ufff!!!). I am not going to post about them right now, maybe next year…lol…So far, we got bored reviewed some old activities…..

Math

Language

Sensorial

Blessings!

Linking to:

 

As I promised, here is a more detailed post about our language boxes.

I divided each box by groups:

• Box #1- Letters SMAT
• Box #2-Letters BEFG
• Box #3-Letters DNIR
• Box #4-Letters HCOP
• Box #5-Letters JLQUW
• Box #6-Letters YKVXZ

Why am I introducing the letters in this order?

I think you can read an EXCELLENT post about this question here at Living Montessori now. As you will see there are different orders, I did mine following a Curriculum sheet I had (which I can’t find anymore). Also I took into consideration that my daughter’s name starts with letter M….this was our first letter! Here is another post from My Montessori Journey about the order.

For the boxes labels, I used this one by My Montessori Journey! (Changed it a little bit)

What’s inside the boxes? (Mine are 6 re-usable baby wipes boxes)

• Sandpaper letters- I made ours. Here’s the post about that. I just put the one we’ll be using for each box.
• Picture cards- I have been looking so hard for the source from which I got our pictures but sorry I can’t find it! However, here are some from My Montessori Journey, and from Montessori Materials. Here at The Joy of Learning you can find an useful list of words plus a detailed way of how you can do the activity. I had to make some vowels picture cards which you can find here. What I did is put them on snack Ziploc bags, so I have 4 bags, each with a set of pictures plus their beginning sound letter. We talk about the pictures, put them on line, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, etc…and sing…This last one is our favorite one! In this website, Mrs. Jones Room, they have different songs that you can sing for each letter but we love the song for short letter A with the tune of London Bridge (we use it for every letter, simple for my toddler!). Furthermore, we mix all the picture cards and Pinky tell me what’s the picture, what’s the beginning sound and classify it under the corresponding letter; it seems like a lot but she does it very good and we stop as soon as she starts to lose interest. 

Here is Pinky singing her beginning sound song (Soooo cute!)  

 
• Our sound books- This idea is from My Montessori Journey and I found some free books from Kidzone, I just needed to make the ones for the vowels.        

• Objects- We had just 3 objects for each letter, plus a magnetic upper and lowercase letter, all in 4 different Ziploc snack bags. Our objects are small toys we had already around the house. I just put 3 in each bag following my daughter: I want to keep her interested enough to don’t get bored….she’s just 32 months old and get distracted easily!) I added the words on pieces of index cards. I read the words for her pointing to the letters and let her matched with the object. Also she just love to play with them.                                              

How long are we planning to stay with each box?

I am planning to stay for two weeks with each box. Pinky knows already all her letters (upper/lower) and their sounds (sometimes mix them) but I don’t want her to lose interest. I still have to do some research about this; what do you think? Any advice for mommy???

Also we are doing other pre-reading activities like matching upper and lowercase letters, opposites cards, go-together cards, rhyming cards, sequence cards. (Posting about them later!). And we are playing our SMAT sound BINGO…..I did this one for Pinky….great tool at the beginning but after daddy was using it with her……she doesn’t want it anymore….maybe daddy was a little bit hard with little princess??? I am waiting a bit to introduce it again later.

Also, thanks Lori from Montessori MOMents (Amazing blog!!!) for letting me know about an Object boxes Worksheet she did for her son about these same letters: SMAT. It is so great! I am adding it to our package. Sorry Lori, I cut it so it can fix nicely on our box. Thanks!! Also check her felt mat (great!)

If you find any “horror” on my pintables, let me know….mommy is still learning English…The images are from searching Google, so if you see any that has copyright, let me know and I take it out. I did those for Pinky and thought to share them with you.

Blessings!