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

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

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

3 part cards

Parts of a Polar bear.

Parts of a penguin

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

Clothing

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

Inuits- Balto story and movie time

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

Penguins!!!

Puzzle from Dollar tree store!

 

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

 

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!

Thanks for visiting!!!

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Pinky has never been so interested about blocks or Legos. I bought these very happy and excited a long time ago dreaming about all the things we were gonna build together. However, the blocks have been sitting on a corner and just played 2-3 times a YEAR!!

Trying to get into consideration her interests, I found a great use for them: we built community buildings (CVS, Macys, Toys R’us, Target, Stop & Shop). Ok, OK!!!! I know this is nothing new…..blocks are for that……but in our case they are permanently stuck together, with tape. Otherwise, she would re-storage them as soon as they had fallen apart. We need to work into Patience!

After we built our new stores (much cheaper than the beautiful and perfect ones from Lakeshore Learning Store, which we would love to have), we settle up a small community with all her miniature dollies, houses and other stuffs over our IKEA rug. It was totally worth it and, finally, she is using her blocks! Maybe, someday, we would decide to glue the blocks together and paint the whole building for something more real…..or maybe she would decide to really use her blocks in other ways?

 

 

My little princess world!

Here is another activity we came up with along time ago, Pinky was almost 3 years old, for her to use her Legos. I didn’t realize it will turn out so popular! lol

Aaaahhhh!!!! She looks so chubby! Time really flies!

My little princess is very aware of her surroundings and the beautiful mix of cultures in this planet. Most of the time when there is a holiday celebration, she comes home after school asking for more. Well, are those request the ones that makes my life happy and easy. Why???

• My daughter trust me
• Special mother-daughter bonding time
• She LOVES to learn….(real value of education)
• I don’t have to get crazy looking for possible themes to teach her about.

As you would see, I am trying to incorporate more hands-on-activities (dictionary, kids encyclopedias, chapter books, museums, trips, etc.) and less printable units. I think this will help her to learn while creating real memories and experiences and to focus/concentrate for longer periods of time. (Ok, I am not a teacher, just a mommy who loves to learn new things with her precious daughter.)

Here is what we learned about St. Patrick’s day:

Field trip: Boston’s big parade

What was I thinking? It was kind of strange to be walking between a bunch of college students……I felt sooooo old!!!! At least I remembered  those amazing times back in college. She took her baby daughter with us (so a great mommy already!!!) and dressed-up in GREEN, of course! Sadly, we had to walk for so long; therefore, when we got to the point that everyone was walking towards (I didn’t have any idea where we were lol), the parade was gone….we got there 15 minutes late….lol…..maybe we’ll try next year!

 

Where is Ireland in the world????

We read our Atlas books and found Ireland on the map. I printed an Ireland map for her to color and paste small pictures related to Ireland like: Vikings, St. Patrick, a leprechaun, flag, etc. (If you want to make this activity, just open a blank page in Microsoft Word, Google pictures either to color or colored ones and just copy and paste them on your blank page…you can re-sized them at your convenience). The red colored map is for her to see that Ireland (green) is part of Europe (Montessori-colored: red)

 

Book: Leprechaun in late winter from the magic tree house

The magic tree house books are our favorite ones right now! A little of fantasy with real facts. The booklet is from their website. There are more activities about the book in my Pinterest board, below!

This book comes with some stickers, which mommy made into magnets manipulative for some imaginative play (before Pinky take them lol). I added a boy, girl and woman with Ireland’s traditional clothes and St. Patrick’s picture. I found these picture using Google.

 

Sensorial/Craft

Re-using/recycling those wires that hold new dolls inside the box (Pinky’s grandma had send her a beautiful Cabbage patch doll from Puerto Rico days before). We made a few bracelets and a clover. Good activity to practice concentration, patience, patterns, counting, fine motor practice, colors and be good to our environment).

 

Math

From necklaces (Dollar tree):

To: count by ten with gold coins (Now we don’t have to expend lots of money in Montessori beads. I know they aren’t beautiful but get the job done, though.)

 

I have lots of more ideas that wanted to try in my Pinterest board but I always have a problem with the holidays: The past on so fast!!!! So, I am always LATE celebrating and let’s not talk about blogging it! lol

Well, maybe next year!!!

 

 

Are you like us; always celebrating late?

I think I am a little late posting activities Winter-related but, around here, it’s still COLD!!!

Well,  this lazy mama explored things that animals do in winter with Pinky a few weeks (or months) ago.

I’d make a coloring booklet about activities we (humans) do in winter a long time ago, maybe when Pinky was 2 and a half years old, and never had the opportunity to finish it. So, now, this was a great addition to our mini-unit and a great mommy-daughter activity on those snowy and cold days. The coloring pages are about: making snow angels, snow tasting, baking, reading a book, snow fights, making a snowman, skiing, caroling, sledding, etc. Yeah! we finally used the homemade coloring book!!!

We read a few books from the library but the best one was What do animals do in winter? by Melvin Berger and Gilda Berger, illustrated  by Susan J. Harrison.

Then, we looked for our animals figurines in order to sort them. As I was reading, Pinky sorted the animals.

Just short, easy and free!!!

 

Useful links:

1. Hibernation & Animals in Winter! from Good books for kids. Amazing list of books about Animals in Winter.
2. What do animals do in Winter? from Ms. Crowley’s class blog. They sorted animals pictures by what animals do in winter: Hibernate, Adapt and migrate and made a beautiful and easy art project.
3. Animals in the Winter - Links for Montessori Unit Study, has a great recompilation of different activities by sub-themes like: How do animals prepare for winter?, Why do birds fly south in the winter? and Where do the insects go in the winter?, etc.
4. Animals in Winter from Trillium Montessori. Easy, fast and meaningful activities to complete your readings. Love it!
5. A great substitution for the plastic animals but, still a good manipulative, are the animals picture cards available at MPS: Animals in Winter.

Pinterest

 

Now we are more than ready for S.P.R.I.N.G!!!!

What do animals do in Spring????

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Disclaimer: These links are activities I think are great to add for further learning. I am sharing them because I feel they are useful for someone and I am NOT receiving anything in exchange….just my opinion!