Season's Greetings!

Oh yup, i'm late with my greetings! It's been a week of gatherings and...backaches! I've been nursing a bad back for 2 weeks now hence all sort of activities from homeschool to housework have to come to a halt. (BUt i still stubbornly went to our Christmas parties lol!)

Oh well! I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas nonetheless!

Blessed New Year too! Till next year!

A very mosaic Xmas

We made Christmas Star mosaic ornaments!

Another masterpiece by sonshine on the tree!

We also made mosaic Christmas tree magnet

Home made xmas tree ornaments

Materials used:

1) Cut out tree shape- i made my own using carton boxes & painted over it and cut out a xmas tree

2) glue

3) small cut out shapes

4) gold dust

We smeared glue on the trees, N decorated it with the small cut out shapes & sprinkled gold dust

When dry, i punched a hole on each tree, string them & hung them on our tree- together with the snowman craft he made in school.

Its placed at a rather obscure spot on the tree...'cause it ain't match my tree decor- as you can see! =P (POST NOTE: just in case you think we are hurting his pride by hiding his crafts, his ornaments are at the side of the tree-placed at his eye level, facing our main door. Which means each time we come home, the first things we see on the tree are his xmas ornaments. This picture was taken from our living area view :))

More Christmas activities

This was a treasure find at my mom's. My sister's leftover xmas decor from years back!

We used it for sorting!

Another worksheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler

Christmas wreath Tangrams printed from Pre-Kinders

The finished look

 

Christmas Tree tangram from Pre-Kinders as well.

The Missing Link

I always admired moms at Adventures of Bear and Mi Escuelita Montessori for their ability to homeschool despite having another infant/toddler to care for. I was wondering how come i could never do so until lightning hit me and i had a light bulb moment- the shelf.

Ever since i was pregnant, we took away our homeschool shelf to make way for babydoll's cot. We positioned it vertical (instead of horizontal) and placed books on it instead. From then on, it was difficult to do any homeschooling because, as i realised it now, we didn't have a proper place. I tried to do it over our coffee table but alas the boy was distracted.

I complained to my husband and my dear darling immediately re-shifted our shelf, i packed our toy room and now we have an activity room. It's a room where the kids play their toys AND homeschool activities. The toys are kept away when we have homeschool. Likewise, activities are in its proper places when the toys are out. I love it! It's like a mini classroom now. WOOT :)

We Paint!

Tis a season

We did the Montessori stamp game again this time with a Christmas twist!

I printed the Christmas tree printable (see photo) from Confessions of a Homeschooler (but i tweaked it). I wrote numbers & the answers to our sums on it. N had to work on the sums, find the answers on the worksheet and color the spot.

I made our own Christmas printables. On this worksheet, Sonshine had to circle the different Christmas symbol in each row.

And tracing, printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler  as well.

More Xmas activities to come!

Time-24 hour clock

I know not how but the boy can now read the 24 hour clock. I accidentally found out one day when he just blurted to me that 15:43 means 3:43. I can't quite figure out who taught him, he isn't very clear either. But, who cares! I just love it that he knows this since our clock in the living room is a 24-hr digital clock! WOOT!

Board games galore!

I love it that the boy is older and mature enough to play board games! I also love that my mom is a hoarder! She kept ALL my board games till this very day! ANd boy do i have every board games on the shelf, MONOPOLY, MASTERMIND, CLUEDO, BOGGLE, SCRABBLE and more and more... It's great because my son gets to play with it! :))

Anyway, besides Snakes & ladders, the boy and his papa has been playing LUDO every night. The boy just loves to compete with his daddy!

The other game we recently introduced him is UNO. The boy is wild over this!

I love board games because

1) It is interactive (versus ipad/iphone)!

2) Sharpens strategic thinking skills. THough, at this age, he may not quite know how bUT, he knows to imitate his parents. So, he's very quick to pick up our strategies and work it on us & sometimes beating us at our very own game!

3) Learning to read and act on the instructions. We've also been playing another game called Police Alert (not a popular board game hence relatively unknown). In this game, he had to pick up cards, read & follow instructions.