Where Do Babies Come From: human anatomy and development

Everywhere, it seems, friends and family are having babies.  Pumpkin and Little Dude are visiting a brand new cousin in Denver, Colorado this week.  We've been so eagerly waiting for this little guy!

  As it should, seeing pregnant women and brand new babies have inspired many questions about human development.  I had to get prepared!  This is one of those topics that parents shy away from and I've had many parents ask how to begin the conversation.  

 In my view, human development and anatomy should be approached in a matter-of-fact way using the real names of parts.  Luckily, there are so many great resources out there to help!



Here are a few that I've found very helpful.



 One of the best resources out there is a book called Amazing You! by Dr. Gail Saltz.  It is a cheerful, well-written book for ages 3-6 that illustrates the anatomical differences between boys and girls and and explains pre-natal growth and birth.  It answers all of the questions of this age group honestly and in an appropriate way.  You can find this book at Montessori Services here.


These wonderful three-part-cards come from Little Schoolhouse in the Suburbs.  Click on the picture for the link to the Little Schoolhouse blog entry.  These were great for teaching anatomy and there is a printable that kids can color in to make their own set of cards.

My kids love to sequence the Prenatal development cards from Montessori Services.  Each month of my sister's pregnancy we would re-visit the cards and talk about how a baby grows inside a human.  What I especially liked about these cards was that it was appropriate for both my 6 and 4 year old.  Both could easily sequence the cards and found them interesting.  You can find the cards for sale by clicking  here  or on the picture below.

Praying Mantis Study Update

Guess what we found in our garden yesterday.  Although there's no way to be sure if this guy was one of the original we hatched last spring, we were thrilled to meet up with him.

Be sure that we did no harm to this little guy and that, after he crawled over my children for a little while, he was placed right back where we found him.

We talked about how the Mantids will be laying eggs soon and we will have to look for new egg cases once leaves fall off bushes!

Enjoy the pictures below.  I just love how fearless they are!

 If you are looking for a praying mantis unit, please look at my store on TPT.  There's also a Mantis Life Cycle freebee on there as well.

www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Finding-Montessori


Warmly,

Rosanna

Laura Ingalls Wilder Family Tree, Activities, and Quilt Craft

We've been using the Little House on the Prairie books this year as read-alouds and to help my kids to understand some differences between people living in the past and in our present times.

I've created a product (for free at the time of this posting) on Teachers Pay Teachers that I hope will be helpful to other teachers and homeschooling parents who are working on the same things. You can download it on TPT by clicking here.

The first few pages show the Ingalls/Wilder family tree with their photographs.  I included a blank family tree for kids to illustrate their own family.  My kids were curious about the "real" Laura, as so many books we read about children from the past are fiction.  It was helpful to them to look at Laura and her family to discover ways that people looked and behaved differently.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

For instance:  here is Laura's Picture as an adult below.  Does it surprise you?  Does her picture remind you of the Laura from the books?  Why is she not smiling?  Is her hair short or long?  What kind of clothes is she wearing?  Why is the picture not in color?  How fascinating it was for my children to just see the pictures of all the family.

Another page is of some common things from the past:  a spinning wheel, a covered wagon, a butter churn, a one room schoolhouse, and a log cabin.  We have been finding opportunities to see vintage and replica items of the past to get a better understanding of how far we have come.  (And we complain about how busy we are now!)  It felt important to me to compare these things to things today.  What of these do we use now?  Why did they need a spinning wheel?  Isn't mommy's mini-van like a covered wagon?

Also included in the download are some pages to help make a nine square quilt craft like these below.  There is a more difficult pattern for older kids, too.

Pumpkin Crafting

[ My Laura Ingalls Wilder Book Club friends, I'll be providing all of the materials to complete this craft at the next meeting.]
Preparation:  cut squares of paper 2" x 2" in different colors.  I used leftover paper from scrap-booking projects that were 12" x12".  I found it a handy size to cut as I use it all without having to waste unlike 8 1/2" x 11."  A little thing, I know, but it made me happy.

Print quilt pattern pages and locate glue sticks.

For a more detailed "quilt," you can cut paper squares 1/2" x 1/2" and print out the paper with smaller squares.

Or... skip the paper all together and just use colored pencils or crayons.

Before handing out glue sticks,  have the kids experiment with patterns and colors.  They can arrange the squares how they'd like, then glue them in place.

While kids are putting together designs (or before) show them a real quilt or pictures of quilts.  Talk about how Laura & Mary made nine patch quilt squares out of scraps of cloth from the time they could hold a needle.  Explain how all the squares would then be sewn together with a backing to make a blanket for the family.

There are many sites online that show images of nine patch quilts.  Quilting In America has a page on the nine patch design and variations.

A simple google search can help you find images of quilts like some of these below:

quilt picture from skalabara.com

quilt picture from imperamagna.blogspot.com

quilt picture from imperamagna.blogspot.com

Do we know how to sew?  When we need a new blanket for our family, what do we do?  Do we make it ourselves or buy one?  Why wouldn't people of Laura's time use new cloth for a blanket?

I hope this description helps you plan your own activities!

Enjoy,

Rosanna

Monster Math

I hate having students memorize math facts.  I hated having to memorize math facts.  Let's face it, though, committing the basic facts to memory helps so much further down the road when one needs to do more difficult math.

This Halloween season, I decided to put together a little math game to help Pumpkin and Little Dude memorize some of their facts.  I found the best graphics of monsters - some of the best graphic artists are on etsy - and made up a story to make the game fun.  

You can find it on Teachers Pay Teachers by clicking the link here.  It's called "Don't Scare the Monster" and it features adorable monsters and delicious looking cupcakes.  

Pumpkin the Teacher

While sitting in our new "forest," the kids imagined they were traveling through the monster's forest to get to a wonderful bakery on the other side  They won cupcakes to win the game but had to be careful not to wake up the monsters.  [Blame the concept on my having spent four years living in Germany, which tends to inspire stories of forests and sweets.]  

What a great way to have both Pumpkin and Little Dude playing together.  Pumpkin, who is working on her fluency with addition, showed Little Dude the concept of "counting up" on your fingers to get an answer.  He was tickled to work with Pumpkin, who is the expert on addition.  

If stuck, they were able to use the addition control card, which is the typical Montessori control chart.  Students use their fingers to trace where the addends meet to locate the sum.

A friendly monster

Sitting in our "forest"

Little Dude Wins a Cupcake!

Pumpkin's Cupcake

Little Dude won the first cupcake! But Pumpkin wasn't far behind.  They loved their cupcakes and were surprised to make friends with some of the sweet monsters along the way.  It was a wonderful morning spent learning while playing.

Control Chart in Foreground

Learning About the Weather

We have been learning about the weather over the last couple of weeks and the kids have been loving it.  There's no better way to learn about the weather than to be in it!

Little Dude eats snack and makes observations

Pumpkin needs sunglasses on this perfectly clear day.

We used all of the tools we could to learn how to read thermometers, rain gauges, and make observations.

fog on an early morning walk

Dew on a spider's web is a sign of good weather ahead!

A favorite project

By the end of one week, we had a lot of data!

The kids made a "weather station" by recycling a plastic bottle and using parts of a bought kit.  (They gathered pebbles to weight the bottle down.) They loved to see how the weather vane and anemometer worked.  Talking about wind speed and direction inspired us to look for flags, wind socks, and to make and fly kites.

We watched videos of different types of weather online on the  Discovery Channel.  Lightning, tornados and hurricanes were a big hit.

We followed the progression of Tropical Storm Karen online at The Weather Channel and The National Hurricane Center.

I created a weather unit for the kids including three part cards of types of weather, data recording sheets, a weather mini-book, and a thermometer memory game for them to make and play.  You can find it here on my store on TPT.