Lets Learn Letters: Letter K

Try some silly Letter K chants.

We barely even needed to touch K this week. Being the first letter of her name it was pretty much a given that she knew K and it's sound.

Write letter K's in a salt tray. Try sand, rice or whatever you have on hand.

No idea what's going on here. Blogger turned this image and I can't see how to fix it. You get the idea!

Roll some play dough letter K's on this printable playdough mat.

Download Play Dough Math here.

Decorate K's With Kidney Beans.

Have fun with funny Letter K Rhymes.

This was fun and a little challenging. I used the kites on the play dough as a template to trace and cut out the individual triangular shapes that make up the kite. I had K manipulate the shapes into their correct positions to form the kites. Lots of flipping and turning going on here.

We then glued them onto a sheet of paper and cut that out to complete the kite. I suggested that she use string for the 'rope' and glue it under the koala's hands, but she chose to simply draw straight onto the page and decorated with glitter ribbons to finish off.

Download Keen Koala's Flying Kites here.

I am trying out Box.net for my file sharing, with these new files. If you have any issues downloading them please let me know.

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Bambino Academy: Flower Arranging

Children of all ages love this simple activity and you can make it really easy for toddlers to do.

Next time you are the lucky beneficiary of flowers be sure to keep the tray and the flower foam. (you could also just go and buy some, most 'cheapy' stores sell this)

As you can see, ours is nearing the end of its life span, it has been well used. Having this makes flower arranging very simple.

I purchased three bunches of different flowers from the $2 shop, pulled them all apart (leaving the stems in tact) and B pushes them into the flower foam.

Simple, fun and looks fabulous when they are done.

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Art Class: Painted Toilet Paper Trees

Yes that's right, Toilet Paper Painted Trees!

Don't these just look absolutely fabulous. The kids completed these as part of our Home School Networks Art Class and the best part about them is that most children can successfully do this art activity.

These were completed over a period of two weeks. The first week they painted their background area, keeping in mind that they would be building a tree on top of the painting. K chose an afternoon sunset and B decided to do a night sky.

Once the paint was dry they used some pva on a brush (or their finger) and drew a tree shape (trunk and branches) with the pva. This would make the adhering of the toilet paper easier.

Then they dipped a few wads of toilet paper into watered down pva, kind of like paper mache but with toilet paper, and proceeded to build their trees on top of the now dry pva painted tree.

These were left for a week to ensure that the toilet paper was thoroughly dry. The following week they painted the trunk and branches, added tissue paper amd/or cellophane leaves and used oil pastels to finish off the background image.

Three classes in total completed these and to see them altogether was fantastic, it definitely inspired us to consider an art show for the kids, that's for sure.

This simeple, but very effective idea really lends itself to many varied options. Just imagine the textured creations you and your children could come up with!

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Lets Learn Letters: Letter M

Try Some Silly Letter M Sound Chants.

As we cover a letter we stick this laminated sound chant cards to K's desk as a reminder for the letters. We go over each sound chant daily. She loves doing these completely on her own and is the first thing we have ever tried like this that she does, enjoys and WANTS to do on her own!!!


Download for this is coming soon, I promise.

Write letter M's in a salt tray. Try sand, rice or whatever you have on hand.

We love the salt tray, it is perfect for practising and any mistakes are quickly erased.

Roll some play dough letter M's on this printable playdough mat.

Download available for the Playdough Mat.

Decorate M's With Macaroni and Money.

Both of these were a little tricky to stay glued on. Macorni keeps falling off and we had to use sticky tape for the money. They both look really great though.

Have fun with funny Letter M Rhymes.

K painted her background night sky and the moon, mixed shades of grey. (I squirted out some black and white and only just mixed them to give that dappled look. More black for the sky and more white for the moon). K glued on the monkeys, the rhyme and the star stickers.

Her rhyme alphabet book is coming together nicely with these additions.

Download for the Merry Monkeys on the Moon available.

Please note I am no longer uploading files to Scribd as they are trying to charge people for their archives currently and I dislike 4Shared, so until I can find an alternative, if you would like a file, please just email me. There's a link in my sidebar. Just give me a few days to respond. Thanks for your understanding. :-)

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Cake Decorating For Kids

As part of our Home School Network activities this term some of the children were able to particpate in some beginners cake decorating with one of our very lovely Grandmothers. This class was an absolute hit and they are definitely wanting to do some more.

They made dogs and cats the first week.

Can you believe B's dog and yes they did this themselves.

He is beginning his work on the cat in this one.

This is K's cat, unfortunately by the time I got around to taking a photo the paper had started coming away.

The second week they decorated biscuits and turned them into pretty bonnets,

And Pirates.

Dad got these for Father's Day, it was perfect timing.

We are hoping to do this again before the year's out and even the mummies might have turn at it as well.

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Montessori Inspired Activities Galore

If you've been reading my blog for awhile now you probably already know that I have been slowly compiling a collection of Montessori Inspired Activities over at Tagfoot.

And if you weren't aware, well you certainly are now! I thought I'd just quickly remind you about my tagfoot page, whilst it doesn't have thousands of links to ideas, it does have over 200 ideas all categorised as best I could. In fact I was quite surprised to see that I had that many ideas added. I've been plugging away slowly and never really took the time to take much notice of how many things I added.

Just click on the wideget below and it will take you to my tagfoot page. On the right hand side of the page you will see a yellow box with all of my tags. Scroll through until you find a category you are looking for and click on it. Then to the left, everything under that category will come up.

Get this widget!

This has been such a handy tool to have and I generally jump over there first when I am looking for something. I keep a small version of the above widget in my blogroll, under Montessori, if you ever want to come back and check it some time.

I will continue to add ideas and activities to tagfoot as I stumble across on the web.

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Lets Learn Letters: Letter B

Try some silly letter B sound chants.

I do plan on making these for each letter, they're fun and simple to say. I'm unable to share them yet though as they are all nowhere near finished.

Write letter B's in a salt tray. Try sand, rice or whatever else you have on hand.

Have fun with funny Letter B rhymes.

I printed the funny rhyme and the large banana's clip art and K used our tie dyed paper towel to make little balancing butterflies.

Download the banana's rhyme page here.

Roll some playdough letter B's on this printable playdough mat.

Download the playdough mat here.

Decorate some B's with buttons and bows.

Most of all have fun with the Letter B.

Please let me know if you use and show any of these activities on your blog. 

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Bambino Academy: Busy Toddlers During School Time Part 2

Keeping toddlers busy during school time can be challenging.

This is a continuation from my post a couple of weeks.

Today I am sharing a few more ways I keep C entertained and challenged at the same time (if he isn't challenged at just the right level boredom quickly sets in) so I am basically free to spend time with the others when they need me.

A sheet of stickers is always great value (at least for the toddler, not for the purse when they go through them at the rate of a sheet every 5 or so minutes). For a bit of interest choose stickers with a variety of textures, these are the puffy, pop out ones.

For toddlers that still find stickers fiddly, peel off the entire backing sheet, leaving just the stickers behind. This will allow them to remove the stickers much easier. Have a container of coloured pencils nearby so they can continue to decorate their creation.

Shape sorters are generally a good indpendent activity, this one is just above C at the moment and he did tire of it, telling me, "Too hard mummy, too hard!" He did sit at this activity for quite a while though.

Playdough is always a sure fire way to keep little hands busy. Every now and then I roll a tray of snakes and give him a butter knife and let him cut away. This is great practice and will lead him nicely to more advanced practical life knife skills.

I find that as long as I rotate my activities and he gets to do some kind of cutting, gluing or playdough type work everyday he is generally happy to run off to the play room and play quietly with his cars after finishing 3 or 4 activities I have prepared for him.

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The Craft Club: Paper Towel Tie Dye

I think the best thing about this oh so simple little activity is that everyone can join in. If you can hold a felt pen and make some colour appear on a page then you can do this.

Now granted it isn't really tie dye at all, but it does give a similar effect.

All you need is paper towel, felt pens and a spray bottle filled with water.

Draw your design on the paper towel. We used a few layers in prepartion for the towel getting very wet.

When you are happy with your design, grab the water bottle and spray away.

And watch the magic happen. The colours spreading, joining, forming new colours.

Wait for them to dry and admire your handiwork.

We also did a few with simple colour blotches that are destined to be used for something else.

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