Archive for the ‘
Freebies ’ Category
Friday, May 17th, 2013
While my older kids were learning a lot about the location of the specific countries of Africa, my preschooler was working on world geography again. I thought I’d share some of the activities ED has been doing the past week or two.
As always, we started out by singing the continent song. It’s to the tune of Frère Jacques:
While we sing the song, the kids always point to the continents on a Montessori world map. (What makes it Montessori is the specific colors used for each continent.)
Then, they place the continent label onto the correct spots on the world map. If the child needs it, there’s a control map so she can compare the labels with the words on the map.
I made this pin map years ago and we have used it so, so much. But when I went to link to the website where I got our map, the link no longer worked. 
So… it’s not perfect, but I made a Montessori world map that you can download for free.
There are two to choose from… one has country borders, the other doesn’t. Also I included the continent song so you can print it out if you want it.
Click here to download the free Montessori World Pin Map Packet:
Early next week, I’ll share a couple more of her geography activities and another set of free Montessori printables.
Wednesday, May 8th, 2013
The past couple of days I shared all of our hands on activities in our study of the esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines… everything from recreating the muscle movement along the esophagus to making fake vomit and measuring out the length of our digestive tract. Here are the worksheets I made for my kids to go along with all of those activities.
I actually did a lot of those hands-on activities before we worked on these sheets… I just slipped information in as we did activities so that when we went over the sheets, most of the information was already familiar to them.
A good overall review sheet for the kids was the first page. They checked off the digestive system part (such as the esophagus) and colored that same part in on their page.
The next day, we measured out the digestive tract. As they cut a piece of yarn, they colored that portion the same color on their sheet.
The next couple of days, we went over more detailed information about the digestive system. We’ll obviously have to come back to this in a few years when we rotate back to this material again. As you can see, there wasn’t a whole lot of writing so my daughter (7) was just fine with them.
The last thing they did was this matching page which gave a brief description of each part of the digestive system and the organs associated with it (it’s on page 3 of the packet):
Here’s a glimpse of the digestive system packet pages if you are interested in downloading them. This packet is actually 9 pages long, but the answer sheets are not shown below:
Digestive System Packet — Stomach, Intestines, Digestive Organs
We didn’t get to this activity yet (we were going to do it yesterday, but got carried away with our activities in our Africa Unit), but since this is my last post about the digestive system I thought I’d mention these cute human body stickers I bought at Oriental Trading. It was $8.00 for a pack of 12. The body is on an 11×17 piece of paper and the stickers are quite big. I thought the set was pretty cute, though a little on the pricey side. Still, we did a set last year and will do another this year… so over the course of 4 years I guess it’s not so bad:
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Other posts in our study of the Digestive System: This was the last post of our unit. We’ve now officially finished our human body unit for this year! Here were some of the activities and worksheets we worked on as we studied the digestive system the past month or so:
- Digestive System: It All Starts in the Mouth: We spent time looking at the important role the mouth has in digestion. We did some fun, hands-on activities related to teeth and chewing. We also filled out a few pages for our science notebooks. You can click on the link above for the first free download about the digestive system –the mouth/teeth — and you’ll see some of our hands-on activities.
- Choking, An Important Lesson for the Kids - This was a lesson about swallowing, the epiglottis and performing abdominal thrusts. We made our own (movable) epiglottis with the printout to show how food is prevented from entering the windpipe:
I hope someone finds this useful! ~Liesl
Wednesday, May 1st, 2013
We’re coming down to the end of the school year and I wanted to make sure we reviewed a lot of the new comma rules we went over this year. I made this sheet for my son and thought I’d share it with anyone else who might be interested. As always they are free to download.
We read over the rules together, then he had to figure out which rule applied to each sentence and had to add in the appropriate comma/s.
By the way, I included the answers as well, but they are not shown in the collage below.
Download the Comma Rules and Practice sheets:
I just thought I’d add that for our family, we spend three days on this. We went over the rules each day and then did 6 or 7 sentences… that way we were really reinforcing the rules. On the first day, I wrote examples for DD on the back of the paper as we went over the rules and she added the commas. She actually referred to the examples of the rules more than the rules themselves as she worked on the rest of it the next few days.
Related Posts: You can find other free grammar worksheets under the language arts category in the right sidebar. We did everything from synonyms and antonyms, to homophones to the use of apostrophes, quotation marks and underlining over the course of this year.
Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
As many of you know, we have been studying Africa this year in our homeschool. As we finished up our studies of West Africa, we spent about a week learning about the Transatlantic Slave Trade and about slavery in general. My kids had not yet studied this in history.
We read a number of books… most of them had an incredible impact on the kids. You’ll need to read these and decide for yourself if they are appropriate for your own children.
From Slave Ship to Freedom Road by Julius Lester — incredible paintings, thought provoking text.
Now Let Me Fly: The Story of a Slave Family by Dolores Johnson wonderful story that traces a family from Africa to slavery in the USA and forced separation.
The Old African by Julius Lester a very haunting tale that expresses the horrors of slavery.
The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano Adapted By Ann Cameron — This is the true story of an African boy who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. The descriptions of the middle passage and of slavery are powerful. We read this aloud in our homeschool and it is one of the most powerful books we’ve read together!
Story of the Civil War Coloring Book by Peter Copeland
Story of the Underground Railroad by Peter Copeland
It took us nearly a week to read The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of Olaudah Equiano, but it was well worth it. This autobiography was incredibly powerful and had images that we talked about in great depth. Equiano truly had an amazing life.
I also made some notebooking pages for the kids to add to their history notebooks. I left blanks for them to fill in their own text, though I included a bit more information if anyone else is interested.
We used these pages at the end of our unit. I gave the pack to the kids and had them write about what they learned. I was pretty impressed with what they came up with.
You can download these Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery Pages here:
I hope someone else finds these useful! If you use these, I’d love to hear from you either here or at my Homeschool Den Facebook Page. Over at my Facebook page I keep a running log of all my posts if you’re interested at seeing some posts you may have missed.
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You might be interested in these related posts:
Friday, April 26th, 2013
The last few weeks I’ve been trying to put together some posts for those who are interested in doing some preschool activities at home with their kids. Today, I thought I’d highlight a few things I did with my kids for math in the 2 1/2-3 1/2 age range.
Here are some activities I did with ED when she was 2 1/2. She was just learning to count up to 4 objects at the time. You could do this with any theme — flowers, ladybugs, trucks or whatever your tot is interested in:
One-to-one correspondence, counting out objects:
For this activity I made lots of black strips with numbers and crayon-drawn snowflakes. ED really enjoyed using the snowflake stamp to punch out the snowflakes from the strip. I told her she could also glue snowflakes onto the strip, but she wasn’t interested.
For the last activity I glued very small homemade snowflakes onto Popsicle sticks. I covered a cereal box with aluminium foil and contact paper and stuck on numbers (again from our mailbox set). Then I used a knife to put slits next to the number. ED LOVED this activity! She did it over and over. After a while I held up 4 (and 2 and 3, etc) snowflake sticks and asked her how many there were. She was correct each time!
Simple counting with any object on hand:
Number recognition with Fly Swatter Math!
I called out a number, she swatted the number as fast as she could!
Clothes Pin Counting Cards like these Dinosaur Egg Counting Cards from Making Learning Fun. The child puts a clothes pin on the correct answer.
Numbers and stickers:
Math Links:
Counting (you could do this with number recognition):
This counting Pete the Cat button counting activity was so cute, it’s also worth a mention!
ED loved this button activity and did it independently several times while I worked with the others. It was made by Heidi and she offers it free over at Heidisongs Resources:
You’ll find lots of other very cute Pete the Cat resources at this post about our Pete the Cat unit and More Pete the Cat Resources.
Grid Games:
I’ve used lots of the math grids made by Karen over at PreKinders.com. We took turns rolling a die and covering a square with that number of tokens.
Here’s a link to the squirrel grid game you see below or here’s another link to a cute puppy grid game. She has a good selection of themes and printable to choose from. Be sure to check out her website.
Here are some counting kitty pages I made for ED a year or so ago:
ED has been asking for her own independent work while the older kids are working on their studies. This is an activity she has no problem completing on her own… if not a bit on the easy side. She practices writing the number as well as filling in the bar graph.
I drew the kitty myself using a computer drawing pad Hubby got me for my birthday.
Click here to download the Counting Kitties Activity Sheets (there’s a total of 9 pages):
Teen Numbers:
Here is an activity I made for ED when she was ready to tackle the teen numbers.
When ED is counting, she often skips some of the numbers after 13. I am using a homemade version of the Montessori seguin board (download the packet I made here). It’s a board with lots of 10s in a row. The child then places a digit over the zero to make 11, 12, 13, etc.
1) First ED counted the number of animals on the cards I made.
2) Then she pulled out the same number of beads-one golden bead bar (10) + single beads. I made a big deal about the group of 10 beads being called her special ‘golden beads.’ She promptly fell in love with them!
3) Next she chose the proper digit and placed it in the ones column to make it “one ten and one” (for 11), “one ten and two” (for 12) and so forth.
If you’re interested in the printout packet I made of the seguin materials you can download them here.
You can also buy a proper wooden seguin board (such as this (from Alison’s Montessori) or this teens and tens board from Kid Advance), but I never used them enough with my older two to warrant the price.
Other resources:
I got a great question about how to learn more about Montessori method of introducing the teens and tens to your 3-6 year old.
There is a series of videos at ehow that shows a teacher using the seguin board and Montessori beads. Teen Board-Montessori video In the sidebar you’ll find related articles and links.
Another fabulous resource is the online Montessori album (teacher’s manual for ages 3-6) at moteaco.com. There you’ll find a whole series of lessons on how to introduce the teens and tens to your preschooler.
Other Posts in This Series:
