Bird Adaptations

This week, we explored all about birds - feathers, beaks and claws adaptation of birds. I explained how adaptations help an organism to survive. 

We started with feathers. We identified down feathers and flight feathers from our feather collections.

To explain how birds have different types of beaks and the kind of food they eat, I used

1.     Straw to represent the beak of humming bird

2.     Scissor to represent the beak of eagle

3.     Pliers to represent the beak of parrot

4.     Tooth pick to represent the beak of kingfisher

5.     Spoon to represent the beak of a duck ( I don’t have a slotted spoon)

6.     Coffee filter to represent the beak of pelican

I made these cards to go with it. You can download it here.

We also talked about the shapes of claws and how birds have different foot according to their habitat and food habits.

Note: Please let me know, if there are any mistakes in the nomenclature cards.

Human Body: The Internal Organs

Children love to learn anything when they have a realistic model. This week, I want to share our activities on Human Anatomy.

I wanted to make a four part Nomenclature cards to go with the ‘squishy human body model’.  I downloaded the three part cards from here, and make the definition cards separately. My little one matched the picture and name, placed the corresponding organ, and read the information card.

The model is really good.  My little one enjoyed taking the organs out and reassembling it.

If you want, you can download my definition cards here.

Observational Drawing for Children

My daughter is good at drawing cartoon images.  But, realistic drawing is her recent obsession.  We watched several videos on realistic drawing. It didn’t help her much. I read the article of Dr.Marvin Bartel – ‘Teaching Observation Drawing to Young Children’ recently.  He has written the importance of observation art, how to teach kids to practice drawing effectively, and to help them draw more realistically. 

In observational drawing, children observe the color, shapes, pattern and shadows of the object, and draw what they see.  They notice the details and practice drawing.  This observation skill will surely help them improving concentration and seeing things in different perspectives.

Here are some art works of my little one.

Rowing our Favourite Story: The Milk Moustache

It has been years since we did any Five in a row activity. you have to do activities on literature, art, math, science and social studies one per day.  This is called rowing a story. Recently, we read ‘The Milk Moustache’ and it has become one of the favorite books of my little one. It’s a very simple story by Chef.Vikas khanna.  Children of a village refuse to drink milk, and it upsets a cow named Kali.  Jassi, the local milk man’s daughter, and Kali’s best friend found a way to end this strike and made Kali happy again.

 

Math

 We buy milk from the milk man who comes around 7AM.  I asked my little one to watch his measuring cups, and how he measures with the three cups 500ml, 200ml and 100ml.  Then, we had a puzzle session like,

                  How will he measure 300ml?

              200ml+100ml

            How will he measure 700ml?

                500ml+200ml

                    How about 1l?

                2 cups of 500ml

4                 Let us assume that he has only two cups- the  500ml cup and the 200ml cup, how will he  measure 300ml?

                200ml+ ½ of it (I was expecting the grownup’s answer like 500ml – 200ml. :D)

She likes these puzzles very much and started asking her dad similar questions.

Language Work

 The author introduces the characters as Kali the cow, Rang the butterfly and Sur the nightingale, and it helped us to learn about common nouns and proper nouns.  My little one learnt that the proper nouns should be capitalized, and the common nouns are generally preceded by the article or article+adjective. We arranged this using the story characters and few cartoon characters.

Art

My little one drew this cow.

Science

My little one loves paneer.  So, we made some paneer (richotta cheese), and I told her the science behind the curdling process. She learnt that the protein in milk called casein curdles when the lemon juice is added in the hot boiling milk.

Social Studies

I told her about Mr. Verghese Kurien the father of the white revolution (1970) in India.

You can view our previous posts on FIAR here.

Plurals of nouns

My little one loves miniatures and I love collecting (or making) them.  These tiny objects are especially very useful in language study – Alphabet object trays for phonics study, introducing grammar and sentence analysis.  I used objects in introducing singular-plurals of nouns. Here are few glimpses of our work.

String Art for Kids

It is summer and kids need some indoor activities over the holidays.  We made a few string arts this weekend. We can create a lot of geometric designs with string art.  These are also best for skip counting and number patterns. These are great fine motor activities for hand eye coordination and to practice sewing/embroidery.

We started with a very simple spirelli design and continued with little more complex designs. I created these templates for my future use and you can download it here.

Method:

1. Grab the materials needed: Card stock, Yarn, big thick needle, pair of scissors and template.

2. Printout the template and place it on the card stock. Using the thick needle punch holes on the dots and number the dots as given in the template.

3. Now start threading through the holes as per the instruction.

4. Enjoy the beautiful designs which can be used to make greeting cards, wall decors, etc.

Survey, Tally and Graph

Kids can be taught about organizing data, analysis, and presentation through a simple survey activity. Children learn best when they move around and collect data. After collecting the data, they learn to present the data through a simple graph.  These hands on graphing practice will help them to read graphs and tables at more advanced levels later.

We did two surveys this week.  The first day, my daughter and I stood in our balcony and recorded the traffic data for 10 minutes. I helped my little one to draw the tally marks to 5 and also to draw the bar graph for her data. The first bar graph was not to scale as shown here. The main idea here is to show how the graph represents the data.

The next day, she was given with another project – Tree survey. She recorded the count of our backyard trees.

Then I gave her a graph sheet (hand drawn) and asked her to draw the bar graph.  We also had an analysis session like “10 more than, equal to, 5 less than, 2 more than,etc".

The First Grammar Lesson with Montessori Grammar Farm

We have been on grammar study and I am very much thrilled to share our first grammar activities.  Montessori grammar is the best way to introduce grammar to young kids as it is taught in sensorial way.  There are many Montessori grammar activities – The farm game-grammar symbols for introducing the parts of sentence and grammar boxes - grammar cards for practice and analysis.

It’s best to introduce grammar after 6 or when the child has become a fluent reader.  My little one is 7+ and she is good at reading and writing. So, this is the time to introduce grammar.  In the first grammar week – we studied about articles, adjectives, and noun.

 When I started making our grammar farm, my littleone was curious and started asking me what it is.  When I told her about the grammar farm, she wanted to see some images in google. (Whenever she heard about something new, she used to see the related images in google).  “Wow, these are all beautiful. Amma, ours should be equally good. Ok?”

We began with a play.  I started telling,

“Go to the kitchen.”

“Go to the hall. “

“Take a pencil.”

“Bring me a Plate.”

“Go and touch your Dad.”

My little one happily ran here and there to follow what I said.

When I said, “Bring me------.” 

                       “Touch ---.”

                      “Go to ------.”  

She was confused, laughed and started asking me ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘whom’.
            “So, I need to say the names of persons, objects and places.  Don’t I? In grammar, these names are              called nouns.”

Then, I arranged the grammar farm and asked her to name whatever she found in our farm.

Then I introduced the ‘article’ which will always be associated with the noun – ‘an’, ‘a’, or ‘the’.

“Use ‘a ‘or ‘an’ to choose one among many and ‘the’ when there is only one.”  (I purposefully replaced the tractor by a bullock cart)

Then, we added adjectives to give more details to the noun.

 “Which rooster you like?”

“This one.”

“Which rooster?”

“This yellow rooster – the big Rooster.”

“Good.  That is adjective. Let us add some details to the noun to identify them easily.”

We are going to continue our grammar work and I will share it soon.

Interactive Science Notebook

The interactive science notebook (ISN) is an essential tool in elementary in which a student can record what (s)he observes in the class (or in the nature walk). Interactive notebooks support drawing, writing, and creativity among young children. It also improves the organization skill. We began our ISN recently and here are some glimpses of how it looks.

I like her leaf shaped 'P' in 'Plants'