Saturday, December 6, 2014

Land, Air, and Water. G is for Globe.

Montessori Inspired Land, Water, and Air Preschool Activities

For our letter of the week, we discovered hands-on what can be found and sorted through objects of the land, water, and air. The Runaway Bunny gave us lots of motivation for the activities. And playing with the globe always spikes curiosity and ever so cute! This post is part of our "Creative ABCs" series. You can find our previous letter of the week activity here: Frozen. No-glue musical reindeer.


The Runaway Bunny

"The Runaway Bunny" by Margaret Wise Brown visits a trout stream, climbs the mountain, plays in a hidden garden, flies with birds, sails, performs in the circus, and finally gets a carrot at home. My Firefly loves this book and "reads" it all by herself now.

Pictured below: some books we enjoyed for this theme.


Land, Water, and Air Sensory Table

All we had to learn:
1. We live on Earth
2. Our Earth is made up of land, water, and air.

The sensory bin was a success. The kids understood the concepts easily and were able to sort through the things with no problem. Their new developing sense of order of the universe around them is so exciting to watch!

Air: What can be there if we cannot see anything?

Kids knew that birds and planes fly up high somewhere there - where there is no land or water... But what can be there if they can't see anything? We had a couple of experiments:
  1. Blow on the hand. What do you feel?
  2. Wave in front of the face. We feel air moving, but still can't see it. Is it real?
  3. Use a fan on different settings (if kids are not scared of the sound; and under the supervision!). Now, that proves that there is air around, we just can't see it :)

We explored the sensory table without toys first.
 
Land: colored ice.
Water: aquarium rocks and decorative glass beads, plastic sea weeds we had on hand.
 
Then kids took turns to take a toy from the box and place it into the correct area of the small world. We discussed the things along the way. At the end Mommy couldn't help herself, but make a couple of "silly mistakes" which made the kids laugh - a good sign of understanding.

Globe Preschool Activities

I keep posting our letter of the week activities without explaining if we ever work on an actual letter. We do (thanks for your questions, dear readers!). My Firefly is currently 37 months. We work on the initial sound and letter, and clap and tap syllables of the word. We also use the given word in sentences during the activity. After that, we move to our reading curriculum and the review of sounds, rhyming, and letters.
 
At our first introduction to the globe, we found land and water on the globe, and waved again to see that air is still there - all around us. We talked about the globe as a model of Earth and made it rotating. We tried to find a place where we live on the globe - not very successful at a time.
 
My Firefly was very interested and seemed to understand. They grow so fast!
 

You can find our collection of the Letter of the Week books and activities here: Creative ABCs.

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