The night sky has always fascinated V. Obviously, it is magnificent to look at, always changing and mysterious. Montessori says, “The strength of imagination in a child under six is usually expended on toys and fairy tales, but surely we can give him real things to imagine about, so putting him in more accurate relationship with the environment.” So we never really told her sweet stories of the sun going to sleep and gave her the truth like it is. One of her first questions on space was about the moon. “

Where is the moon in the morning?”

The day and night conundrum! We explained that we can see the sun in the daytime and the moon, at night. But why? Her dad explained the whole rotation of the Earth concept. All we needed was a torch light and a ball in a dark room to understand this glorious magic of night and day.… Click to read the rest “Sun, moon and stars – child-led space unit”

Watching leaves of different colours, dancing in the wind, was V’s favourite activity as an infant. I still remember when, as a toddler, during one of our walks, she just picked a leaf from the ground, marveled at it and “gifted it to me.” To date, leaf-picking is one of her favourite outdoor activities. I have outlined how simple questions from her led us to detailed study in this unit.

Shapes, sizes and margins

During our earliest outdoors, after she could walk independently, I remember her running from one tree to another, exclaiming to me, “Amma, this is also a leaf!” Despite them being of different shapes and sizes, she still figured out they were leaves. We did a simple leaf match activity to draw our attention to the diversity in leaves. Once she is older and asks, we will try to match them all with trees / plant names too.… Click to read the rest “Leaf study unit- child-led lessons in botany”

The Usborne Animal atlas is one of the most read and analysed books at home. Once we had finished Antarctica, V moved on the kangaroos in Australia. I think, because they were mostly unfamiliar, they attracted her even more. And the fact that the island of Australia, looks like a “whale” in her own words.

ANIMAL STUDY

The more we read beautiful books on koalas and kangaroos, the more we took in about the wildlife of the country. The yellows and greens that were predominant in the illustrations spoke about the topography as well. While researching animals we found that Australia is home to both, marsupials ( pouched animals) as well as monotremes ( egg laying mammals).

V wanted to know why there are such a variety of animals here. And guess what! there is a reason for that too. It is an island, and isolated in a sense, from the rest of the world.… Click to read the rest “Animals of Australia- Kangaroos, koalas and kookaburras”