Today, we are making St. Patrick's Day-inspired DIY ☘️Shamrock puzzle with a 🔟math twist. What you will need: recycled 🍡ice pop/popsicle sticks (or buy wooden craft sticks here), a shamrock cutout (we are using this glittered one), a green Sharpie, a craft knife, and a glue gun. Arrange craft sticks... Read more →
Today, Adrian is making a completely new craft: creating pictures, one sticker at a time, while using a Paint by Sticker Kids book (buy here). The illustrated templates are printed on perforated card stock, and there are ten pages of stickers to fill in and create the artwork. The fun,... Read more →
Please meet our EMOTIONS/FEELINGS puppet friends! Many people use the words “emotions” and “feelings” interchangeably. However, although highly related, the meaning of emotions and feelings is distinct. An emotion is a conspicuous physical bodily response to a common change, while a feeling is a mental reaction to an emotion that... Read more →
Puzzles are an excellent tool for enhancing your child’s cognitive and mental development, by stimulating intellectual abilities such as critical reasoning through fine-motor manipulation. I encourage Adrian to complete at least one puzzle a day (at his level: 48-60 pieces does not take him⏳ long). Julia, on the other hand,... Read more →
We are continuing our BODY Anatomy Unit Study by exploring how the amazing body mechanism works. It can be hard for a child to conceptualize what goes on the inside when most of the process remains unseen while taking place on a very small scale. So I try to make... Read more →
How mysterious is the inside of the body! Children are simply fascinated to learn all about our body-machine that works day and night, without any rest, performing tasks no computer is capable of performing. Our eyelids blink reflexively, our lungs are constantly expanding and contracting, delivering fresh oxygen throughout our... Read more →
There is something fascinating, captivating and intriguing about the Universe! Although Cosmos appears empty and dark, it sparkles with thousands of mysterious glittering lights. Also, while purportedly having an infinite nature, the universe keeps expanding! It holds billions of galaxies, each containing millions of stars, and although the space between... Read more →
Adrian really enjoys Color Code puzzle (buy here), which is a logic game, featuring patterned see-through stackable colorful tiles. Color Code is a unique game where a child layers these see-through tiles to create different multi-colored shapes as shown in the included challenge booklet. The booklet offers challenges from one... Read more →
Children are excited to begin our 🐸 Frog Unit Study. Frogs are amphibians (meaning "two-lives"). Toads, newts, salamanders and caecilians (blind worms) are also members of the amphibian group. "Two-lives" means that frogs begin their lives in the water as eggs and then tadpoles, and when they are fully developed,... Read more →
We love our feathered friends, and we love celebrating Bird Holidays to learn more about them and to advance bird conservation. Here are few Bird Holidays to note and put on your calendar: National Bird Day is celebrated in the United States annually on January 5. International Bird Day is... Read more →
Did you know that only birds have feathers? That is what makes a bird different from other animals. Feathers, such as soft down keeps the birds warm, while wing feathers allow flight and tail feathers are used for steering. The color of the feathers can be used to hide the... Read more →
This Wooden Tangram Puzzle (buy similar here) is an ancient Chinese brain game known to prime children's brains for math. A child will have fun grasping mathematical concepts such as congruency, symmetry, area, perimeter and geometry, while learning geometrical shapes such as a triangle and a square and its sides... Read more →
Vincent Van Gogh was born on March 30th, 1853 in Holland, and died in France in 1890. Van Gogh was one of the most tragic 🎨 artists who had ever lived. He was not very happy as evident by his never smiling self-portraits since nothing ever seemed to go right... Read more →
In continuing with our Geography 🌎 Theory 📖 Curriculum Lesson on 🗺 Mapping (read a post here), today, we are putting theory into practice by assembling some of our favorite interactive map puzzles. We are also using miniature replicas of U.S. monuments (buy here) to add a 3-D to our... Read more →
Today, March 21st, we are celebrating the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, who was born in 🇩🇪 Germany in 1685. Johann Sebastian Bach would have been 332 years old today! During his lifetime, Johann Sebastian Bach was known more as a great harpsichord player and notable organist, rather than a... Read more →
Once Adrian turned three years old, puzzles have been captivating him, offering countless hours of mindful concentration, while developing his physical, cognitive, and emotional skills. In the process of solving a puzzle, he is also developing fine and gross motor skills and hand-eye coordination. He learns to think logically: for... Read more →
Puzzles are an excellent tool to enhance your child’s cognitive as well as mental development, by stimulating intellectual/mental abilities such as thinking, reasoning and understanding through fine-motor manipulation. As a child looks at various pieces and figures out where they fit, s/he is developing effective problem solving skills since a... Read more →
Adrian is obsessed with transportation, firetrucks 🚒 in particular, so this Fire Truck Jumbo Jigsaw Floor Puzzle (buy here) is a big hit! The puzzle features beautiful original artwork, extending four feet long once assembled. For Adrian (at 40 months) colorful 24 extra-thick cardboard pieces presented little challenge, and Adrian... Read more →
Happy 🎂Birthday Dr. Seuss! Today, we are celebrating Dr. Seuss’ 🎉 Birthday by reading his books and assembling Green Eggs and Ham puzzle! "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go," said Dr. Seuss. Although no longer... Read more →
Today, we are continuing our art-unit study "Introducing The World's Greatest Artists 🎨 Series." Among the greatest of the Impressionists, French painter Oscar-Claude Monet (born November 14, 1840 -1926) was the artist whose painting Impression: Sunrise (1872) gave the Impressionist art movement its name. Monet brought painting out-of-doors so that... Read more →