Hello everyone!
I will continue sharing some of our Home School Summer Activities which come in hand these days perfectly, when days are longer and same goes with time. So here's what we actually did this last week in order to keep my 3.5 yrs old boy active and off screens.
Other than being just a regular homeschooling post, this is my entry for the contest hosted my 
In case you don't know about it, it's a challenge in Home Edders community or Cross Culture community, where you'll have to submit an entry with one or more educational games/activities you do at home with your child, during the summer vacation, for the sake of learning and for getting time off of the screens.
Read more about it here. It's still plenty of time, till 14th August, but don't forget time flies fast!
Also, maybe 
Moving on, here's what we did last week:
SUNFLOWER THEME 🌻
Short description
I think these activities are for children with ages between 2.5 and 6,7, depending on the child and his level of development.
I did all these activities with my son Caleb, who's 3yrs and 7mo old. I guided him, as it's understandable but he did all the work and my biggest interest was to teach him more about Sunflower, just for the sake of learning.
I will describe every activity down below so feel free to put any questions, in case you have some for me. You can try all these activities without the books that we have. That's optional. Instead you can print some info for you that you want to pass on to the child and that's it.
COLORING 🌻
We started our week coloring.
But to make it more challenging (though it was not for my son :D) I printed 2 sunflower coloring sheets.
First, color by Odds/Evens.
Is it Even or Odd?
Use red for Even and Yellow for Odd.
I mean Numbers. Odds (1,3,5,7,9) and Even Numbers (0,2,4,6,8). My son learned these by himself. I had to search and translate first time he said Odd and Even, cause I didn't know what he talk about. He learned it from his favorite TV Show, NUMBER BLOCKS. Crazyyyyy!
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Color by Number
And second, we colored by having in sight what color represent which number.
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SHAPES 🌻
I have an account on Twinkle Platform from which I download often many sheets and materials to work with Caleb. This Sunflower made out of Shapes was brilliant! I loved it very much, maybe it was my favorite from all.
It involves SHAPE Recognition & Fine Motor Skills by handling the glue and by putting the paper shapes on the worksheet.
You can color this Sunflower and than cut it yourself if you dont have a printer. You can always improvize.
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You can ask here the following which is a real BOOST in learning: 🌻
- What geometric figure do the petals represent?
- What shape are the leaves?
- How many triangles do we have? How many ovals?
- When is Sunflower blooming?
- What colors does Sunflower have?
- What other Summer Flower do you know?
etc etc etc
FINE MOTOR SKILLS 🌻
We did three activities in this area of Motos Skills, Dexterity, Hand Eye Coordination, learning new infos during these activities. That's why we had the books on the table, to every step. That was my main focus, to provide him new informations the moment I considered it would have been useful and to make sense for the child.
First, he had to grab with his little hands the sunflower seeds and then introduce them in a piece of polystyrene.
You can use a peace of old polystyrene if you have or if not, you can use playdough. I saw this idea only after making this one. But I think playdough instead of polystyrene would be much effective and easier. Still, whatever you have its fine.
If you want to take this to another level , which is not hard but its FUN, after making this, let your child use Gator Grabber (grab and sort objects tool) to remove all seeds. I mean this, the orange one.
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Fine motor skills and thats it. Thats the objective of this activity.
Second activity was to create a Sunflower 🌻 using fusilli pasta.
He liked it a lot! You only need pastas, glue, paper and carioca. But you can tell that by seeing my photos.
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And third activity to work on those fine motor skills was to grab the little sunflower seeds and glue them on paper.
To make it more challenging, I told him to use the grabber I just mentioned above. He did until he didnt anymore. He founds it to hard and he gave up but older children have the patience and the skills to get it through the end. Still, it's a good exercise to develope princer grasp.
You don't need much. In fact any of these activities doesnt really require a lot of stuff, don't you think?
You need glue and sunflower seeds.
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Sunflower Pixel game
This game is also a good option if you want to develop fine motor skill, hand eye coordination, colors learning and many more. I used it to create a sunflower if we were on that, this week!
It is beautiful!
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ARTS 🌻
In short, three methods here:
Fork Using Method
Finger Painting
Recycled Toiler Paper Roll - Sunflower Petals
We used Acrylic Paint and that's it. You do the petal from recycled cardboard and also you need to draw the outline of a sunflower on paper. Thats all you need for these activities.
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This is how they turned out. What do you think? My son loved the most the third method, with cardboard petal thing. We did two of those. 💛🌻
What's your favorite?
SUNFLOWER LIFE CYCLE 🌻
Now this subject is where we talked the most and learned new things. We have this book Little Sunflower and its one of the favorites. Its very helpful and the book its written like a cute story but it presents real aspects from nature, like the cycle of a sunflower.
We did 2 activities on the topic, to make sure he understands how things are. Well, thats 2 without the book itself that after reading 50 times in one year, I think he got it haha.
First is this.
We had a representation of Sunflower Life Cycle and he had to associate the images in the right order, by drawing lines.
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Second is this one.
He had to put in order the paper squares representing life cycle of a sunflower. I tried to let him do it and he did it! I tried to make sure he doesnt really looks up in the books or the previous worksheet he did, and he did just great! Now I know he knows!
Still, if you look closely, on the squares is written the number of the phase like 1,2....6. He had to associate it with the dots on the other paper. So a bit of MATH was included as well. Well, for him this is nothing. He looks at one pictures with more than 10 dots and in only 1 sec he will tell how many are there so I know he focused on the phases, not the numbers. But its really a good activity for the theme.
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If you wonder what we talked about here, these are just a few to mention.
Sunflower is a type of plant with flowers and seeds.
What's happening in the first phase? Seeds and germination.
The seed is planted in the ground in the spring. The seeds have a thick shell. They can have black and white stripes or be completely black. They start to sprout after 1-2 weeks.
The seedling develops and some leaves grow on the stem. The root develops in the ground.
The plant grows taller and stronger, heading towards the sun. The bud forms after 30 days and the flower opens.
after 90 days the flower reaches maturity.
The petals of the flower begin to wither and the plant dies. The seeds on the flower also fall. Some seeds are fixed in the ground and start a new life cycle.
Then I asked him again like a recap:
Name one of the colors sunflower have
What is the seed planted in?
When is it planted?
What color are the seeds?
What grows underground?
etc.
OTHERS 🌻
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What do plants need?
This is one of the topics I mentioned about. He had to give me right answers by circling those elements plants need in order to survive.
Air
Sun
Water
Soil with nutrients
We look, we observe, we touch, we feel, we learn!
(this is the key to learning!)
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Parts of a Sunflower 🌻
He had to show me those on this paper but we also had one ral sunflower so we used them both. Working with real nature elements in these kind of activities has a huge importance.
Easy Math
Books
WE took our information on the theme from the books we had. This beautiful book is called Little Sunflower and it's an USBORNE book. I truly recommend it!
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OK GUYS! I'm done! I KNOW!
It's a very long post! I thought to maybe write 2 posts on the theme but I liked it this way. It's not easy to write such long posts with so much photos but it's all worthed! I hope its useful for you, thats the reason I wrote it in the first place!
I hope you get inspired and do some similar activities like the ones we did. Maybe you can have this pattern and do it with other nature elements like a rose, a tree, a legume or a fruit, an animal etc...
I'm only sharing with you these 2-3 more photos we took on our land.
After all these activities and info, where's the perfect place to learn and experiment, other than outside???
So we went outside and fully enjoyed ourselves with the view, the sunflowers and their natural environment and the experience of seeing and feeling what a SUNFLOWER really IS!
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Thank you for reading, everyone!
Missdeli