Our unit study on States of Matter

 In our science unit, we are learning about states of matter this month.  First, we learnt about how matters are classified as solid, liquid and gas.  After a small explanation, examples and this video I asked my little one to help me to make a states of matter tray. My little one collected objects as samples for the three states.  While collecting the samples, she was repeatedly complaining that most of the matters were in solid states and liquid states and she hardly found matters in gaseous states.  She brought the shampoo bottle, hair oil and her body lotion for liquid states. She asked me to pour some milk and cooking oil to keep it in the tray.

 First, I asked her to blow a balloon to keep under the heading ‘gas’. Then, we decided to keep a ‘bubble’.

Next, we demonstrated how the matters change their states according to temperature. I kept some coconut oil and water in the freezer to show how the matters freeze at low temperatures. Then, we took the frozen ice and coconut oil, chocolate and some wax and put it in the gas top to show how they melt when the temperature increases. We also boiled a little water to show the evaporation.

Our third demonstration is the ‘rain in the jar’ what we already did during our weather unit study.  It’s a cool experiment that incorporates all the three states.

But, still I haven’t yet introduced the word ‘molecules’  and l thought of explaining it in phase II.

Indoor Treasure Hunt

My child played her first treasure hunt today. I remembered our college days; During our hostel day celebrations, hundreds of our hostel mates and friends ran here and there in search of the treasure. Precious moments…

When I was left alone with my kid, the daunting problem was to engage her.  In those situations, she herself would be asking for a scavenger hunt.  This time I tried a treasure hunt, an indoor treasure hunt, a simple treasure hunt.

Being the first time and my little one is an early reader I made the clues as simple as possible. After hiding the remaining clues in the respective places, I gave the first clue which leads to the second clue. Here are our clues…..

1. sit in the red chair
2. under the pillow
3. Printer
4. Dining table
5. Wash your hands
6. Watch TV
7. It is freezing
8. open the laptop
9. Pencil Box
10. see under the big yellow toy

I couldn’t take many photos as she was in a hurry finding clues, running here and there with a little tension (!!!!) and a big smile.  It’s heaven watching it.

A teepee, pallankuzhi and some multiplications

This post is not about ‘How not to make a Teepee’.  I know that it’s a poorly made teepee. But, my little one enjoyed the hot sunny day sitting in the teepee in our backyard.  She learnt some mathematics with our traditional game ‘Pallanguzhi(Pallankuli)’. 

Pallankuli is a traditional south Indian board game with 14 pits and 70 cowry shells or tamarind seeds.  If you are new to ‘Pallanguli’ visit  or watch this video.

I used our pallanguli board for teaching multiplication. Initially, I used the board to demonstrate about ‘groups of 2’, ‘groups of 3’ etc. Then, I introduce her how second multiplication table to be formed.  She put 2 cowry shells in the first pit and wrote one ‘2’ is ‘2’ (1X2=2). Then she put 2 shells in the second pit,counted and wrote two ‘2’s are ‘4’ (2X2=4) and continued.  Soon she herself learnt that by adding the multiplicand to the previous answer, the next answer can be found.

Of course, it’s similar to using Montessori gold beads. But, I think this method helps counting easier and also helps improving fine motor skills. If you do not have pallankuli, use ice trays.

Lady's Finger Printing

Making art work using lady’s finger printing is not new.  But, it is one of the interesting works for any child. Here is some of what we did with lady’s finger.  Along with lady’s finger, we used curry leaves and Neem leaves for making the plants.

Let's Play an Election Game

'One of the Important Characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask question'

                                                                                                                  -Dr.A.P.J.Abdul Kalam

When I and my husband were talking about the recent by election of Tamilnadu, my curious little one started shooting me with her questions – ‘What is Election? What is voting?’

I explained her about our election system and then I thought of creating an election feel via a game – ‘An election game.’

I tried to implement the important features of an election: candidates, ballot sheets and box, standing in line, election Ink, voting, counting and announcement.

Here are our Candidates – Tom and Jerry.

Wait in the line for your turn.

‘Let me put the election ink’

A simple ballot sheet (As we don’t have a printer in our village house)

My little one asked her grandparents to cast their votes too. Her friends asked their mothers to do so.  They laughed and happily participated. At the end, They themselves separated the ballot sheets and counted.  

“Jerry Won. ooooh”

Teaching Ordinal Numbers

Lost week we did activities on ordinal numbers. I didn’t need much time to teach what ordinal numbers are. It took only a minute.  But, we did lot of activities (actually I tried to integrate the concept in our day to day activities) which my little one enjoyed a lot.

In our usual play time in the terrace, my child was playing with the cloth clips. I asked her to tell the color of the 4^th  clip, to interchange the 2^nd and 4^th clip and also asked her to find the 7^th  clip from left and the 2^nd clip from the right.

I also applied the same technique, when my child was busy seeing our family album.  She enjoyed finding people when I was telling 2^nd from left, 4^th from right and so on.

When she was playing with her friend, I gave them 10 chances each and they started counting it as first chance, 2^nd chance and so on.

Then, we collected few objects and I asked her to put the objects in the cup as per the instructions.  She read the instruction on her own and finished the task.            

         

Our Curriculum and Plan for the Year 2015-16

Hi. I am back after a really lo……ng summer break.   My little one is 5 ½ years now and just entered in to primary class 1. During the summer break (of course at the end of the break), I searched and did lots of research on selecting a curriculum for grade 1 to follow this year 2015-16.  It’s obviously a tough job to choose a particular curriculum.  There are no fellow homeschoolers nearby to talk with.  So, I decided to create my own curriculum. I referred the Primary curriculum of various countries like international schools of Paris, Singapore, Bahamas and our CBSE and ICSE. Finally created our curriculum for Mathematics, Science, and Social Science. The Curriculum for language teaching (both English and Tamil) are yet to be created.

   

I am a poor planner.  Most of the time, we will be deviating from the plan .  My child may not be interested in the topic at that time or the time/situation may not permit the particular activity or my child may ask a question about what she finds something interesting in which we will continue with. 

So, instead of a year planner or a week planner I thought of making a topic/theme planner. I have decided to create lesson plans. I wanted to plan the way I am going to teaching the particular topic-whether it is by telling a story, making a model or giving a demonstration or via showing a video or through reading a book.  I also want to plan the list of requirements, things to be collected, to be made or to be bought.

If you are interested in viewing my curriculum and plan, you can download the pdf of the same here.

Grade 1  -Science

Grade 1 - Mathematics

Grade 1 - Social Studies

Planner

So, my dear fellow homeschoolers please go through my curriculum and tell me your suggestions.  What is your curriculum and plan? I am dying to read it.  Please give the link. Thanks in advance.

Play with Clay

Playing with clay is children’s all time favourite and Clay play has therapeutic quality in settle child's anxiety. It is a well known play for sensory development and fine motor skill .we used to play with the unprocessed clay taken from our farm land.  This time I wanted to have a smooth clay without dirt and sand and I followed this water extraction method.

1.       Take a transparent container and mix the soil with water thoroughly without any lumps. Shake the container and keep it undisturbed for at least an hour.

2.  Now you can see three layers in the container –Clear Water on the top, light clay in the middle and heavy sediments in the bottom.

   3.       Carefully Filter the water and the clay using a big coffee filter.  Repeat the process 3 or 4 times and finally filter the clay water using a cloth.

      
4. Hang the clay bag undisturbed for a day and when the water content is completely drained your clay is ready to be used.

5.       Look at the dark color of the clay. This clay is not only used for pottery but can be used as the excellent face mask, body mask and hair mask.

We used hand building technique to make these bowls. See the steps given in lakeside pottery.