On Monday, we are having fun watching and singing our favorite Spanish 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:

Our presidential election mini-unit lasted just two days: the day before the election and the day of the election. I t was really a fun and easy unit!

For our first half go here.

About our second half activities, we did:

• Mr. President Pin punching activity

From here.

 

• Presidential candidates coloring

President Obama from here.

• USA Map coloring representing each state won by each candidate(Blue-Obama, Red-Romney, Purple-Pinky)

 

• Math- counting and graphing

This is such a great opportunity to name the states as you color them. About the map you can pick up the one with the names United States: Capitals or without United States (no labels).

 

• Flag’s song and coloring

Here is a flag printable.

 

• If I were President interview

 

• Presidential propaganda Poster

(Vote for me)

• Now I am ready to go and vote!

(Field trip: get ready to vote with mommy! And she is ready with her pretend Voting ID card)

This has been so much fun for us!

For more ideas, check out our Pinterest Board over here.

These are simple activities but help to introduce little kids into our democratic responsibility!

 

For quite a time now, we have been saving books, flashcards, postal cards, flags, money and everything we could add to our Continent Boxes. I am not doing any formal presentation with Pinky. From time to time she takes whatever box she wants that day and start discovering its treasures. We love to freely explore, talk and learn together.

Ooopsss! Talking about our post title, we added a flag recognition activity. Even that there are beautiful and perfect materials to buy, I did our own. Pinky will have pretty ones at her new school to use; therefore, we just need something related to have fun at home (mommy-daughter fun!). Well, I am intended to use them as a Pin Map lesson but that’s still in the process.

(Flag Stand World Map with Flags)

Mommy’s version!

What do we need?

• Flags printable: I had to do mine (color-coded) because I wanted to match the flags to some traditional clothes printables I already had (sorry, I can’t find the link) Mommy is always trying to get the most from one activity!
• I used bamboo forks, found at Target because of their flat shape and because I know they are going to resist better on Pinky’s hands
• Then, you better follow Montessori Print Shop tutorial (see link below!)
• Finally, enjoy!!!

 

If you are interested on this printable, here’s the link (PLEASE share it but DON’T sell it!!!!)

Folding and gluing the bamboo fork, add a piece of tape to secure the side. I didn’t laminated them but MPS shared the idea of using packing tape to preserve them.

Continent color-coded back with the name of the country.

The result!!!!

Isn’t it great???

 

 Here are some great links about Pin maps:

1. Early friendly mama: DIY Asia Pin maps
2. Montessori materials: Cultural/geography materials printables
3. The helpful garden: Parts of the Flag Nomenclature Cards and Little Booklet (FREE) and here is the link for all her great geography free printables .
4. The homeschool den: How to make a Europe pin map
5. Montessori Print Shop: World Continents - Pin Map Flags and Map (FREE), an amazing tutorial about how to Prepare Printable Geography Pin Maps and Flags, and Printable Montessori Geography Materials where you can order the flags for each continent.
6. Living Montessori Now: Montessori-Inspired Olympic Opening Ceremony Activities and Olympics Blog Hop (learning activities to implement this material)
7. Making Montessori Our: has such a generous list for making your continent boxes and flags.
8. 3 reader’s blog: Free Continent Pin Map Supplies
9. Video about how to do the presentation (it is for upper elementary but we could adapt it to the kids age/interest).

 

Linking to:

you will find new ideas for that unused material!

Here’s the story: At the time I was “homeschooling” Pinky, I got so excited about all the amazing things I found at the dollar spot at Target or Dollar Tree. Oh My!!!! I was like a kid in a toy store.

However, sometimes things got accumulated in my already crowded closet and got forgotten with time. For my surprise, Pinky was not interested in that theme anymore….for example the ABCs. Hello! there’re too many things to do with the ABCs that you can get tired of it, as: recognizing upper/lowercase letters, match it, sing it, jump it, skip it, recite it, color it, paint it, cut it or whatever “innovative strange” idea a mommy’s brain could come up with it.

Yes, there’s too much to do with the ABCs…..So, trying to get my hand into my closet, this is what I found:

ABCS upper/lowercase letters matching puzzles from Target.

I know, repetition is good for kids but I really get bored and Pinky, too!

Therefore, before getting rid of these (Mommy’s sentimental issues) here’s what we came up with: Big girls' ABCs puzzles memory game………very grown up!

Don’t you see how happy and excited she gets whenever she finds a match, and then she uses her tiny fingers to put the pieces together, line them up carefully, and use a lot of concentration during the task. Don’t you love multi-task activities???

When the game was finished, we decided to kind of measure who won the game.: the tallest column won (almost as taller as Pinky)……of course Mommy won!!! lol……

No no no…..Pinky won, she is getting really good at those games….and are helping her to stay focus for a long period of time…even when she is not concentrated in the game: I don’t know how she does it to match the cards so easily…

That’s how I follow my child interest into board games to re-use old materials!

Teaching kids about emotions is one of the most important tools we can offer as parents, and one of the hardest. Emotions are needed to grow up as mature human beings, which will help to build a better community and world.

But, how can we teach them what are they feeling at a certain situation? How can we select the perfect words to explain it? Are they really coping with us?

I think the best way is by role modeling and using child-like games, activities, songs, books and imagination.

With Pinky, we tried to name her emotions at the moment she’s having them. For example, if she is trying to cut a paper with scissors and is getting “frustrated” we tell her: Is Pinky getting “frustrated”? I know is kind of “frustrating” learning how to use the scissors but you can keep trying! Later on we talk again about the experience she just had.

Other times when we are reading books, we look at the pictures and I ask her how she thinks the character is feeling. As the kid gets older you can add questions as why do she thinks the character is feeling like that, how would she react? Usually she points to aspects of the picture like an smile, tears, red cheeks, etc. or she retell things that we read in the story.  

We also have games/activities:

• Sorting different emotion pictures. You can print them out searching on Google pictures, clipart (I got the circle faces at Chilcare.com. The other ones, sorry but I can’t remember where I got them), or even better, make an album with your own kid’s emotion photos since he/she was a baby. Then, you can talk about how he/she grown up but his/her emotions still the same.

• Mommy/baby pretending game with her dollies (this game is also great for imagination and a way to check is she is getting the information when she tells me that the baby is crying because got a bobo and she kisses her to make her feel better).
• Our emotional carrot: it’s an activity I had on my mind for a quiet time already. I got a carrot inflatable toy at the dollar store (It was at Easter time) and draw different types of eyes and mouths to represent the emotions on a cereal box. Added velcro on the carrot and the cardboard. For younger kids you can add small emotions pictures for reference. You can make up stories and have her to put together the emotional face, have her to discover by herself or just as a tool for those tantrums moments when you will need to explain visually how are they feeling.

  

• Use your camera as a learning tool: have a fun time with your kid making up emotions and having a picture taken. I wrote a post about this activity here.  

Emotions are important, don’t try to suppress them. It’s the worst way of dealing with them. This can make kids feel that expressing emotions is prohibited, which will lead to stress and emotional breakdown. You can read more here.

Take care and Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Linking to: