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.

Fun face Collages

We had lot of fun this week end.  We made fun face collages using magazine cuttings.

I cut the parts of face like eyes, ear and nose from magazine pictures and started making fun collages by sticking the face parts in a paper.

This art costs nothing. All you need is some old magazines , glue and imagination. It’s time to play and laugh with your kids.

At the end of each work we laughed a lot and my hubby who was sitting before the system saw all the fun we had and joined with us.

For toddlers, it will be a fun activity to learn the parts of face and for older kids it will be a creative art work. 

Featured in: http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.net/2015/01/tot-school-gathering-place-week-107/

chromatography for kids

We played color mixing game a long before and here is our color separation experiment.  Chromatography is a process of separating color pigments and it will help us to show how primary colors are mixed together to make the secondary colors.

                        The experiment is very simple. Take a filter paper and draw something in the middle using sketch pens or non permanent markers.  Put few drops of water in the middle and wait for some time.  When the water moves in the filter paper due to capillary action, it separates the color pigments.  Black and brown colors are the best for this experiment.  You can repeat the experiment with different colors and different brands of sketches.

Our Literacy Centre

Blending Letters

My little one learnt her phonics easily.  But, she suffered a little while blending the sounds to form a word.  Then, I found this ‘magic words’ trick to blend sounds. I wrote words using wax in white papers and the words cannot be seen initially.  Then I heated the papers against candle light one letter at a time.  Whenever the letter appears, my little one will tell the sound and continue blending them as the letters appear one by one. Instead of showing a full word, this trick really did a magic.

Reading practice is one of our daily routine and it will not continue for more than ten minutes.   But, those ten minutes will be in a way my little one likes it.  Moreover, finding ways to encourage phonics learning without worksheets is really challenging that too in a minimum budget.

Picture matching

It is very simple to play.  I cut pictures from old books; wrote words in a paper. I gave the paper and a bowlful of pictures to my little one.  She has to read the word, found the picture from the bowl and paste it under the word.

Missing letter puzzle:

Here is our missing letter- find the route puzzle.  My little one has to identify the correct way for the girl to reach her home.  At each point she has to identify the missing letter and choose the path accordingly.

Quill pen for writing practice

I asked her to write few words to identify her spelling skill. We used a quill pen for her writing practice. She took a pigeon’s feather from our feather collection and dipped it in the ink to write words.

Our First Geography Lesson - Continents in a Tray

We planned to start our Geography lessons in a Montessori sensible way and I created this continents tray as a first step.  To show my little one what are continents, I filled a tray with blue water to represent the oceans and made 7 sand spots to represent the continents.

Then we placed the map of  each continent.  

We also sang the continentsong.

My little one and her friend tried to put the continents map in the correct places. Though they could not do it perfectly, they enjoyed it.  They identified Asia by spotting India, identified Australia and Antarctica by the unique shapes.  My little one identified Africa by spotting Madagascar -‘This is ‘penguins of Madagascar’(Her favorite cartoon serial.)  See Africa and Madagascar looks like India and Srilanka’

Then, they started making hurricanes and started their sensory play.