It feels like it's been a long time since I have put together one of these posts. I think before I start, I should give you a little update on our homeschooling:
Big Buddy turned five in August. Since he is a young five, we have debated a lot on whether to "red shirt" him and wait until next year to officially start kindergarten, or to start this year. Like most children he has areas where he excels and areas where he struggles. Since the path is not an obvious one, we've decided to take full advantage of the flexibility homeschooling offers and continue to play it by ear. That being said, we are not calling what we do this year kindergarten. Instead we are just continuing to move forward on skills like math and reading while digging deeper into subjects that spark excitement. In addition to our theme units, Big Buddy and I are also working our way through The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading and Singapore Math.
Mini Man turned three in August. When Big Buddy was his age, the only school work we did was reading good books and discussing our surroundings. I do not really think official school work is necessary at his age, but he (and Little Lady) like to do whatever Big Buddy is doing, so some of the activities below were created with him in mind. The activities are available for the children to work with all day but during school time I often assign them specific tasks.
We took a trip to Virginia this past summer which sparked a lot of discussion about oceans and sea life. The boys are still very much infatuated, so this was a perfect unit to kick off our school year. Without further ado, our ocean activities:
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| sensory bin with water beads and safari toob sea animals skills practiced: science knowledge, fine motor, sensory |
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| tweezing work with silicone trays and blue pom poms skills practiced: fine motor, one to one correspondence |
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| manual pencil sharpening skills practiced: fine motor |
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| sorting tray: sea animals skills practiced: classifying, fine motor *a tray for mini man but little lady surprised me the other day by sorting the beads by color. |
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| patterning with pipe cleaners and sea animals skills practiced: patterning, fine motor *these beads were purchased from discount school supply |
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| addition tray with sea animals skills practiced: numeral recognition, counting, addition* for this activity big buddy first draws a number card and then places the corresponding number of dolphins in the first tray. he then does the same thing for the whales. lastly, he adds up the whales and dolphins, taking the correct number of each animal and choosing the corresponding numeral. |
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| counting sea animals skills practiced: counting, numeral recognition, one-to-one corresponding *this is one of the activities created specifically for mini man - he likes to do math with his brother |
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| sea life puzzles skills practiced: spatial reasoning, fine motor, problem solving |
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| pattern puzzles via prekinders skills practiced: spatial reasoning, fine motor, shapes |
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| parts of a whale shark nomenclature cards via montessori helper skills practiced: scientific knowledge, identification, vocabulary |
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| classifying sea animal or other skills practiced: scientific knowledge, classifying, magnets are from a melissa and doug puzzle book |
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| phonetic picture cards via montessori for everyone skills practiced: phonics, sorting *cards via |
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| sea life nomenclature cards and figurine matching skills practiced: one-to-one correspondence, scientific knowledge, comparing, vocabulary *these are cards we made, feel free to print them off here |
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| dot markers and sea life stencils skills practiced: fine motor, creativity *stencils are from michael's |
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| various sea life worksheets via homeschool creations, 2 teaching mommies, & 1+1+1=1 skills practiced: fine motor, letters, numbers, etc |
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| observation corner: shells, fish x-rays, magnifying glasses skills practiced: comparing, describing, observing *x-rays are from discount school supply |
A big portion of the learning that happens during our theme units is through books. I love to read and it's a passion I'm determined to pass on to my children, so I sometimes can be a little over zealous in the number of books I borrow from our library. In this unit two books have risen as clear favorites:
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| eric carle's illustrations are of course wonderful. The tale is sweet and it's a great introduction to lots of lesser known sea life |
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| the photos in this book are stunning. it offers a compressive look at the worlds oceans and is filled with tons of information. Since it's broken up in two to three page segments, it's very easy to share with young children |
sting rays.
P.S. Check out our homeschool page for more theme units and educational ideas.
You are amazing Rachel!! Every time I stop by I am just in awe of the amount of work and creativity you put into homeschooling your kids. You are such an inspiration to me!!
ReplyDeleteOooooh, I like this. Thanks for sharing! Here from the HHH :)
ReplyDeleteWonderful..will pin and share. I don't have small kids myself but this makes me wish I did!
ReplyDeleteLove the activities with the sea animal beads. I bought a pack out of a bin of pop beads a couple of months back, then realized after I got home with them that they weren't pop beads. You've given me some ideas for putting them to good use. :-)
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Lovely ocean activities! I am starting up a shop called Linda's Montessori Shop. selling all my 3,000 used books from 30 years of teaching Montessori, and later all my Montessori materials. It's not open yet, but I have over 300 books on right now. If you sign up for e-mail messages (on the front page) i can let you know when we are launching! I thought that my Shop might be especially useful for Montessori Homeschoolers such as yourself. Thank you! Hope to see you there! http://www.LindasMontessori.com
ReplyDelete