Our theme this month is dinosaurs! Truth be told, James is neither here nor there when it comes to dinos, but I thought we'd give it a go anyway. We finished up our farm theme at the end of last week, so tomorrow is our first day with the dinosaurs.
Oh, btw, how many of you knew that the beloved Brontosaurus has been declared "scientifically redundant" and now has a slightly different appearance and goes by the new name, Apatosaurus?! I'm sure I'm the last to know about this. Sheesh, first Pluto is stripped of its planet status (I know, I know, it's a dwarf planet now... but still) and now I hear about the Bronto losing its place in the dino world. How will my inner child reconcile this information? Was my entire elementary education flawed?! :DOk, moving on...
Practical Life
Washing a Dinosaur. I think James will get a kick out of this, especially because it involves a cute little scrub brush.
Scooping Dinosaur Eggs. Ok, so this looks a bit like an Easter activity. You just have to imagine these are
dinosaur eggs. :)
Folding. There are 2 sets of 3 different sized pieces of dinosaur material in this basket. James will fold them and match them by size.
Pin Poking. These sheets are from
Montessori Print Shop. James will use the jumbo thumbtack to poke tiny holes all around the images thus separating the image from the background. We did this last fall and it was a favorite.
We'll also continue our Grace & Courtesy
lessons in table manners.
Sensorial
Dinosaur Sensory Tub. What has made this tub a hit is the fact that it has water in it. Kids + water = guaranteed fun.
Mystery Bag. Inside the dinosaur bag are two sets of the same dinosaur. There's another set in the basket, which James will lay out on the mat and use as a guide for what he's feeling from inside the bag. There's no peeking with this activity - James has to really tune in to his sense of touch to determine which dinosaur he's feeling
before he pulls it out of the bag. Of course this can be done with any number of objects and can be as simple or as complicated as you like. This activity is fun with toddlers and is great for teaching basic shapes.
Binomal Cube. This is a traditional Montessori material and you can read more about it
here. I purchased our cube from
Kid Advance.
Still on our shelves: Knobbed and Knobbless Cylinders, and The Pink Tower.
Language
Dinosaur Bingo. I made this myself using clip art from abcteach. I'd share it as a PDF, but I believe the images are copyrighted.
Worksheets & Activity Book. Skills involved: dot-to-dot
(by letters), tracing, and reading/following basic directions. I printed the sheets off from
KidsSoup and
abcteach.
Spelling. Same idea as
last month only this time I'm using
these magnetic numbers.
Books. I was astonished to find only
3 dinosaur books at our library. THREE. Which is just as well, I suppose, since we're only allowed to check out four at a time. The rest are from the local thrift shop.
Not sure if I'll do a poetry basket for this month as I cannot for the life of me find a decent poem about dinosaurs. Guess dinos aren't very poetical. :)
Reading. As if by magic, James can read just about anything now and very rarely has to sound anything out. In just a couple of months he went from sounding out basic three and four letter words to flat-out
reading words with 5+ letters without hesitation. I couldn't tell you how this happened, it just did and I know I had very little to do with it. I guess something just sort of "clicked" with him. Anyway, because I'm still wary of how
well he actually knows some of the reading "rules", I want to continue forward with the last bit of the green series. I also purchased some basic readers. I found
this series at a local shop
(Kit-N-Caboodle, for my fellow islanders). The stories aren't award winning by any means, but they get the job done and most importantly James LOVES reading them.
Still on our shelves: Green Sandpaper Phonograms and
The Grammar Farm.
Math
Measuring Dinosaurs. We did
a similar activity in December when we measured strips of ribbon. James enjoys measuring things
(seriously, anything with numbers - he loves it). He'll need to write his results on the index cards.
Understanding More & Less. Still working on this concept. It's interesting, James definitely understands what's more than something else, but when you ask him which is less, he freezes up. I thought maybe the use of the sections in the ice tray would help him to visualize the concept a bit better. He'll need to place the little ball next to the correct answer.
Addition with "Dinosaurs Bones". Aka popsicle sticks. :) Pretty straight-forward, for example I will lay out a set of 3 bones and a set of 5 bones and place the '+' sign in between them and the '=' sign after them and ask James to add them together and show me the sum with another set of bones from the cup.
Skip Counting. Like reading, James just sort of 'gets' skip counting. I started with counting by 2's and the next thing I knew he was counting by 5's and 10's all on his own. This activity is just to reinforce the concept visually. James will use these tiles
(from our Hundred Board) and put them in numerical order by 5's up to 100.
Worksheets. Skills involved: dot-to-dot
(by numbers), quantity matching, determining differences, and addition. Printed off from KidsSoup and abcteach.
Still on our shelves: Ladybug Math,
Telling Time, and Sandpaper Numerals.
Science & Culture
Studying Africa, Tray 1: Places. As I've mentioned before, I've opted to remove certain aspects of
our continent bags and put them on trays instead of just plopping the entire bag on the shelf. James
(like most kids, I think) is more interested in an activity if he can
see what it is. By putting a few items on a tray not only can he see what's available, he's also not bombarded with the full extent of materials inside of our continent bags.
Studying Africa, Tray 2: Animals. I must give a shout out to my good friend, Ann, who very sweetly gave us that beaded lizard, which is from South Africa. Not pictured, but also on these shelves are a few African flags. I always display the flags of whichever continent we're studying.
Dinosaur Cards. These are from
Montessori Print Shop and they are great! I love the information cards - they have just the right amount of data on them. I only wish a few of the more common dinosaurs
(Stegosaurus, Pterodactyl, Dimetrodon, Plesiosaurus, Brontosaurus - er, I mean Apatosaurus) were included in the sets.
Matching & "Feeding" Dinosaurs. This is a two part activity: James will match up the plastic dinosaurs to those on the cards and then use the information section to determine if they were plant eaters or meat eaters. The little bucket in the above photo has some leaves and little squares of red felt
(i.e. meat) that James can "feed" to the appropriate dinosaur.
Build-a-Dino. Just like it sounds - the skeleton comes in a handful of pieces and you simply put it all together. Another local find
(Daisy & Mac).
Excavating Dinosaurs. This photo is from a couple of summers ago
when we did this same project. We'll be doing it again next week - it's a great outdoor activity for summer!
Art & MusicComposer of the Month: J.S. Bach. I often get asked what exactly we do with our COM. Right now I'm keeping it really simple - I download that composer's music onto my iPod and we listen to those songs during our schooltime for the entire month. I also print out a photo of the composer. At some point we'll likely spend more time learning
about the composer and the style of music, but for now it's just not something James is interested in.
Circle Time Songs. You can get the PDF
here.
Buddha Board. I love this thing! I wrote a short post about it
here. It's been a long while since we've used this and I think James will be really happy to see it again.
Coloring Pages. KidsSoup has a great dino set.
Scissor Practice. These strips are a bit different than usual - I used stickers, as I usually do, but this time I drew various kinds of lines in between the stickers. James is used to cutting straight across, so I think this will provide a bit of a challenge for him.
Stamping. I found this great Melissa & Doug set locally
(People's) and I know it's going to be a hit with James.
Later this month we're going to try to
make some dinosaur eggs. Fun!
Happy June, everyone!
I made this tic tac toe board on Word (you can find the download link on my Free Printables Page) and I found a variety of things to use as the game pieces. Game piece options are endless (think legos, mini erasers, coins, die cuts, toys, etc.) and changing up them up keeps the game interesting.
In addition to the flat marbles, we also used these fruit manipulatives. You've seen us use them in the past and they really are just the most versatile things - aside from game pieces you can use them for counting, sorting, mystery bags, poetry baskets, practical life work, etc. I bought them at a garage sale here on the island, but you can find them at Lakeshore Learning.
Another fun learning tool we've been working with are these jumbo cardboard numbers. I've had these for quite some time and I can't be sure where they came from - I *think* Michael's Crafts? Anyway, these too are quite versatile in that you can use them in art projects, counting activities, math games, or even as classroom decorations!
Here's what I'm offering: one set of jumbo numbers (0-9) and 20 fruit manipulatives - 5 of 4 different styles (apples, bananas, oranges, and grapes). Basket NOT included.
