HAND AND FEET PRINTS

This is a very fun activity for children, but so messy!!! So you must be prepared to control your stress level! Even with due precautions your floor and clothes will get a bit dirty.

Get your self a big paper roll, the one usually used for display boards at meetings and similar. Roll it out on your hall floor. If you have carpeted floor is best to cover it with naylon. Stick the corners to the floor with sallotape.
Prepare a few large plastic container-lids with hand paint. Also prepare some containers to put some regular paint, get out a brush, sponges of different shapes, stickers and any art and craft materials you come about.

Give your child a nice size apron!!!!

Now let your child explore witht he different types of paint and the different ways he can use them. Encourage him to use his feet and walk all the way to the end of the paper and look at his feet-prints. He can use his hands, paint with a brush, and sponge paint. You may also need to change the paper when he gets too busy.










This can be a nice piece of art to hung on your wall :)

WORLD PROJECT

This is a huge project I have in mind. It will take time and effort to make but it will teach M. so many things about the world, its geography, people, cultures, animals and other things.
I got the inspiration from a world puzzle I saw in a Montessori classroom, which brought my memories back of when I used to work on it as a young child.
It is so difficult to find a world puzzle or is so expensive, so I thought I could make one using a very cheap poster of the world.
I bought two posters from the 99p shop.

MATERIALS:

2 world posters
utility knife
a thick card board the same size as the posters
glue


1. Start by laying one of the posters over the card-board
2. Keeping the poster firmly still, cut around the borders of every continent, making sure that the utility knife is also cutting through the card board.
3. you should obtain the cut out continents, their exact shape in card board, a world map without continents and a cardboard with empty continents shapes.
4. glue the cut out continents to their card board shapes, and put aside
5. glue the world poster without continents to the card-board, making sure that they perfectly match
6. glue the second poster to the cardboard so that its continents are visiable through the cardboard cut out continents shapes.
7. colour the back of each continents piece with the Montessori world colours (Africa: green; Europe: red; Asia: yellow; Australia: brown; North America: orange; South America: pink)
8. to make the puzzle last longer you could laminate the continents pieces or use sallotape instead.





Once the child is quite confident in putting together the puzzle and can recognize the continents, you can start witht the second part of the project.

ANIMAL WORLD PROJECT

Get lots of pictures of animals living or originated from differnt continents. Stick them on same size card boards.
Colour the back of the card boards with the right colours of the continent the animal belongs (for example tiger:yellow, zebra:green). Some animals can be found in different continents like the wolf or the owl, these while have more then one colour at the back.
At first show your child all the animals, tell him what they are.
Then place each animal on the right continent.
Eventually your child will be able to place all the animals on their right continent. The colours at the back are a control measure where your child will instantly know if he has placed the right animals on the right continent by turning them around and look at their colours.





Next I am planning to do the same thing with pictures of mothers and babies from differnt cultures, then with food and landmarks.

CLASSIFICATION CARDS

This is a game that promotes language development and enriches the child's vocabulary.
It take some time to make it at home from scratch, but once is done it will last for ages.
You have to choose five or six different environments in your head and find and cut out photos of objects that belong to that environment from magazines,cheap books, news papers, catalogues (say for example "garden" and "flowers, pots, swing, watering can etc"). You should find between ten and 15 of these objects and also find a picture that identifies the environment you chose or simply draw one.
Cut same size card boards for all your objects and environments.
Glue your pictures on them.
Laminate all your cards.
Find a box where to store them.


Choose objects that your child can say well and other that he doesn't or doesn't have in his vocabulary.
Show each and every picture to the child saying clearly what it is, make him repeat it after you.
Then you can start playing by laying out in a row all the environments; by picking a card from the objects pile, the child has to recognise what it is and where it belongs, then he has to put it down under the card with the right environment on.

SINK AND FLOAT

This is a fun scientific experiment about one of water "magic abilities"!
You will need a sink or large container full of water, a few household objects of different materials and sizes (piece of paper, a key, a small plastic toy, a stick, a nut, a ring etc)
Invite your child to drop in the water one object and observe if it sinks or floats and explain why. Next ask your child to guess if the next object will sink or float, drop it in the water and observe.

Next you can try to make a boat using different materials. First of all paper, then by using a plastic plate as base, a wine bottle lid, a shell etc. Observe some of them sink, and other float.


Here is M. trying sink or float with some rubber toys, a small stone and a boat made with a plastic plate and a sailing.