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.

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.

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

Characters spelling activity

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!)

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)

 

Books to complement

(These books are from our own home library)

Books about The farm.

 

Books about farm animals.

 

Books about spiders.

 

Books about pigs.

 

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

Have a great weekend!!

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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!!!

 

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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.

 

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.

Meet your bones!

 

So cute together!

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!!!

 

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.

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

 

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.

Isn’t that so cute?

 

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

 

Finally, we read lots of books!

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.

 

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!

 

 

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

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!

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

 

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!

 

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. 

 

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!!

 

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

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

 

Letter I is for:

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

 

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

 

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?

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Thanks to Pinterest, I got excited about making some wonderful and beautiful Bento lunches for Pinky. Well, that didn’t go well! One day she came back from school….I asked her why she didn’t eat her lunch….and then she said it! Mommy I don’t like when you do faces and stuff with my food.

Oh no!!!! I thought she would love it!!!….  

Well, the thing is that I wanted to do small things for her to remember how much I love her and think about her….

Then, I decided to make a few drawing on afternoon snack paper bag…..just a few!

The thing is that afternoon she came back home with such a huge smile……She definitely L.O.V.E   I.T!!!

Ever since then, I am getting crazy having fun making sweet designs on her paper bag.

The result: no more boring brown paper bags for snack and a huge smile on Pinky’s face when she comes back home!

BTW, the teachers love it, too!

 

Some of the paper bags in the pictures are wrinkle because she brought them home because she loved them. THE biggest photo are the bags for this week!

Here are a few other ideas over the internet which I am going to try for sure! Sorry, no more Bento at this house!

1. Printed paper bags- here from Perfectly Imperfect. Cute!
2. I am thinking about doing something fun like this for Halloween using construction paper cut out or Stickers from the Dollar store. Here.
3. For Christmas time; drawing Christmas lights….so cute. from Red ted art.
4. For Thanksgiving…I can do this turkey! 

 

What else can I do for making lunch/snack time fun? Ideas,please!

 

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