Poinsettia, Free Downloads and More Holiday Works

I added a small unit on "Poinsettia" on D's shelves.  I placed a live Poinsettia plant and the following tray on our culture shelves.

The tray holds "Parts of the Poinsettia" 3-part cards and a small booklet that D can read by herself.  The booklet is my test to see if she would be ready for the Classified Definition work.

You can download both the 3-part cards as well as the booklet here. If you end up using these cards, you will have to color in the parts and the booklet is meant to be printed back-to-back. 

I created this tray so, she could also make her own booklet.  The tray contains 4 Poinsettia pictures and blank labels.  The basket contains stuff she can create and color her booklet with.

You can download the page to make the booklet here.

I had to help her punch holes and create a label for the book.  But she was able to complete the rest by herself.  Here is her finished booklet and an page from inside.

We followed this culture work with the reading of "The Legend of the Poinsettia", to understand the significance of Poinsettia and Christmas.

Here are a few more new trays on D's shelves.  D is free to choose any work from M's shelves, so these are just a couple of new trays for her.

Shape Tracing and Pin Punching those out

Some Christmas themed Sticker Work

This post is linked to Montessori Monday.

Valentines Day Celebration

We had a simple valentine's day celebration at home.  We made pink indian ice-cream and froze it in a heart shaped tray.  It turned out delicious!  I forgot to take pictures, but you can find a variation here.  We did not make it as fancy, my recipe is quite simple.  Just one can of Sweetened Condensed milk and half a teaspoon of rose essence mixed with half a cup of whole milk.  I mixed everything in a blender with some cardamom seeds.  We then froze it and once done, gobbled it all up!

We read quite a few valentine themed books that we had.  A new but sweet one is "Snow Valentines".  This book was perfect with all the snow we had here!

Gong Xi Fa Cai! (Congratulations and be prosperous!)

Happy Chinese New Year!  Here are some pictures from our celebration today.  We are going to end the day by carrying out dinner from our all time favorite Chinese restaurant as it is horribly cold here in the mid-west.

We collected a few Chinese items at Vancouver during our recent vacation there.  I had bought them originally for the geography box, but they came in handy today.

We started the day making Cherry blossom tree for good luck! I did not have pink tissue paper, so we just used pink construction paper, it turned out ok though!



Then we made some red paper lanterns.


We talked about the festival itself, lunar cycle, the year of the rabbit and about the color Red in the culture. We talked about China and that led to the talking about Pandas and D wanted to draw one.  She did with simple instructions from me.  D wanted to wear Red and we picked a red outfit for M too!  We then set all our goodies on D's red table, prayed and meditated for a great new year!



Here is our Buddha...


I told her about the Red envelope tradition and gave her the envelope with a couple of dollars!  It is interesting to note that the amount you give should be even, odd is considered bad luck and never number 8!


We got this box and small trinket while at Vancouver. No idea what the trinket signifies.


For more information on the customs and traditions check out this link.