Learning about Springtime

It is supposed to be spring here and yet, at times, it looks like winter! Yet, we have started our nature studies and it's a slow progress as, for one, plants are slow growing, bugs are barely appearing and what am I to show the kids??? This is what we have achieved so far: 

First of all, we learn about the difference between "plants" and "animal" and the children used the worksheet below to summarise our discussions a circle time: they had to cut out the pictures and classify them. 

Next, we planted runner bean seeds. Kids were so excited!! We waited for a good sunny morning to do a bit gardening and waited for nature's little miracles!  Unfortunately, only half of the seeds turned into a plant!! It was a bit disappointed for some of the kids. So, we are working on another little gardening project to make it up! The idea of the glass jars was to show the children how the roots appear first under the ground!! 

And then we also made paper little flowers just for fun! 

As the children lhad earnt that some bugs hibernate during winter and come back to life in spring, they took it upon themselves to try to wake them up one morning! But first, they had to find some! and my clever bunch knew exactly where to look!!

This brought us to talk about food.... bugs are food for birds!!!! And we started observing the ones who keep flying in our garden. We are using a book called "First Book of garden Birds". This is a beautifully illustrated book depicting birds in details with very simple and useful information about each species!

 

 

 I love these spontaneous studies as I call them. The children choose what they want to learn and create their own little curriculum. One child described the bids' claws as "feet" and this prompted us to talk about the different parts of the body of a bird. The children learnt about using the appropriate words and I gathered our learning into a little booklet as you can see below.

This is the template the children used to create their own booklet.

These are the children's booklets ready to be filled and coloured.

 

 

This led us to use our hand to draw different types of birds. Imagination is great: great blue tits, sparrow, peacocks, turkeys etc... Cute, aren't they?

 

More about nature and gardening.. so keep in touch!

 

The Trinomial Cube .. A success!

After our Easter Break, I introduced the  Trinomial cube to our classroom. The kids were ery curious and it was a hit! The Trinomial cube  is a Montessori -designed material that teaches early math skills and help him create connections that will lead him to easier understanding of math concepts.  To see how we use the cube, please click right here and this will give you a step by step demonstration of the activity on YouTube. I have added below photographs of the wok in progress these past few days with the Trinomial cube.

 

 

 

As we part for our Easter break...

Needless to say that this week was filled with excitment as Easter is nearly at our door. The children were full of beans, a bit noisier than usual and I have to say that they were finding it hard to concentrate on anything at all. This is why I more or less drop all on-going lessons and concentrated on fun arts and crafts.

 

First, we painted chicks with a potatoe (this surely intrigued the children at first).

 

 

Then we repeated the activity we did last year: we used colourful buttons to fill in the template  of an easter egg:

 

 

Finally, we made our Easter baskets. First I drew the templates of bunnies on card paper. I got the kids to use their fingertips to dot the template. I then added the goggly eyes and drew the bunnies' whiskers and noses. The rest was up to me. It took me nearly 2 hours to make the baskets (using card paper) and stapple the dotted templates to the front of the basket. The basket also needed a handle and a bunny wouldn't be a bunny without its fluffy tail. So I simply glued a cotton wool at the back of the basket. And all I had left to do was to fill the basket with pastel shredded paper and chocolate eggs (without forgetting a few chicks!).
 

 

 

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

Paddy's day!

Here are a few photos summarising what we did to celebrate St Patrick's Day:

 

 

paper snakes

 

transferring activities

 

patterned paper and button were used to make these adorable shamrocks

 

krispie buns with a twist

 

Mother's day

I know, I know.. I should have posted this weeks ago but I got caught up. Mother's Day was on March 10th and this is what we did with the children

 

First, using wooden beads and plain pasta, the children made a cute neckalce for their mams.

 

 

I had gathered tuna tins and got the children to clip wooden pegs all around. They added a few gemstones on the top of each peg. I had bought a cute fabric ribbon at Home Focus which said "Made with Love" and I decided to use it as a finish touch. I am disappointed as I didn't get a better picture of the end result but I can tell you that the kids were extrememly proud of their little "pot" as they called them. They used it to hold the necklace they had made when they offered it to their mams!!

 

 

 

 

Hope you all like it!

 

More phonics

Remember this post this post last year regarding our pre-reading activities?   The children were practising their sounds by using a box containing items representing words starting with the sounds in question. 

We only went as far as the first box last year, as this was something new to our classroom. And yeh yeh... I am proud to announce that the children have moved on to our 2nd box this week. 

 As i explained before, it is important to understand that at that stage children do not need to know the name of the letters. They just need to know their phonic sound. Most of them will actually have assimilated both name and sound, but this is not  requirement. The children love these phonic boxes and this is such a great reward for me... Believe me: finding objects was not an easy task and it took me a good deal of time and patience! So seeing the box being so well used and so popular makes it all worth it!!