In this week's news....

These were what we have been doing for the past week:

 

 Grammar:

 

                

 

For the past few weeks, we have been working on Personal Pronouns i.e 'I vs you', 'We vs they', 'He, she, it, vs we/they' and 'am vs are', 'is vs are'.  

 

                

 

I also threw in another exercise on how & when to use 'who'. Actually, i don't really teach him, i just make him do! LOL.

 

Maths:

 

                       

 

We did some Word Problems. An example of the questions we have been focusing on is "Lisa has 10 eggs. Eliza has 2 less/more eggs than Lisa. How many eggs does Eliza have?"

 

 (I usually toggle between Kumon grade 1-3, the difference is not the type of questions asked but usually is doing the operation within the ones, tens or hundreds unit. I don't need him to practise his operations (i.e add/subtract) so i usually let him do grade 1 or 2 just to expose him to the type of questions. I don't want him to spend too much time on adding/subtracting.)

 

On a separate note, I saw the following word problem on another blog & on a whim, i asked him to solve it:

 

Jars A and B have 12 cookies each. There are 14 fewer cookies in jar C than jars A and B together.

a) How many cookies are there in jar A and jar B altogether?

b) How many cookies are there in jar C?

 

He did this quite mentally, just by reading it off from my ipad. Without telling me the answer for a), he straight away told me '10!'. Well, okay, son. Now i know you know.

 

Mandarin:

 

                     

 

I made him practise writing using the newly bought assessment book i bought. The words he learnt to write were '他，也'.  

"Mess"-merize

 

We had a bit of spare time before her nap today, so i decided to give her some sensory play- with paint!

 

 

 

I poured some (washable-of course) paint on a tray and gave her a paint brush.

 

 

She was cautious at first, just doodling with the brush. But the moment i threw an ice, yes ice, in the tray, her fingers dived right in for the colored ice.

 

 

And then she got really friendly with Mr paint, while mummy was cringing and trying very, very, very hard not to be bothered by the mounting mess.

 

 

And then she got so chummy with Mr Paint, she decides to smear her arms with it. Meanwhile, mummy's face became more crumpled as she stifles a "aaaAAAAaaaahhhhh...noOOooooOOooooOOoo!!" 

 

 

 

Really enjoyed herself all at the expense of mummy. At least this mom had the wisdom to do this while big brother was at school. Otherwise she would end up with twice the mess!

 

And then doll decides to walk around the house with her newly painted blue arms. That's when mom said 'Show's over honey!'.

 

Curtain closed!

Dough thing

 

It's playdough time!

 

Besides the usual squishing and squeezing, these were other ways we played with the dough.

 

 

Babydoll inserts each chip onto the dough (eye-hand coordination).

 

Trying to slice the dough. She managed to make a mess...

 

 

And pounding the dough with a toy hammer (with some squeaky noise)!

It's a fine job

I've been randomly giving the doll some fine motor skills & eye-hand coordination related activities. Actually, i don't think she needs any practice.

 

 

This is my favourite activity because its cost nothing! Sonshine couldn't do this till much later but doll does it with ease. She dropped coins after coins like a pro.

 

 

Stacking shape rings.

 

 

Plucking out cloths peg. I say plucking out because she hasn't quite get the pincer grasp skill to do this effectively yet.

 

 

This is another of my favourites. Scooping cotton balls with a spoon. Again, doll surprise me with this one. She did it well. Is it a girl thing? The boy was very slow in his fine motor skills....

 

 

And lastly, slicing fruit toys with a toy knife.

 

 

 

Spelling- The caterpillar

 

 

Our spelling lessons have taken on a very sleepy spell.

 

We haven't been doing spelling of late (but that's because i only have 10-15 minutes a day & there are so many other topics i want to cover).

 

The last spelling sonshine did was on the poem he learnt (yah, we are still at it).

I made him learn all the new words.

 

After that, i made him write the entire poem without me dictating it or spelling any words for him. At the same time, he practised his handwriting. Killing 2 birds with 1 stone i say!

Workbooks

 

This is gonna be a boring post. But, oh well.

 

Here are the workbooks that i heavily rely on daily. I do have more but these are the ones i use more often. Most, or maybe all of them can be purchased at Popular bookstore.

 

 

I have mentioned earlier, sonshine's grammar is not that great. So i purchased a couple of workbooks that focus particularly on Grammar.

 

 

I use the above books as my teaching guide. I needed some structure on my lessons but don't have time to plan so i depend on these books.

 

 

For mandarin, i am slacking alot, it doesn't help that i keep falling back on the enrichment class. But then, i know i can't entirely depend on them; some revision is still required. So, i am considering to pull him out.

 

Anyway, i've been working on his Chinese writing. Getting him to write common words and gradually into sentences.

 

I'm also gonna work on his spoken Mandarin with my very broken Mandarin. I've ordered this book to kick start. I use this book (which i borrowed from the library) to role play with sonshine what are the basics thing to say in Mandarin.

 

 

 

As for Maths. I am not starting any new topics for him because i realised he is at around Primary 2 level. If i want to start a new topic, it means i've to cross over to Primary 3 level which i am quite reluctant. So i used the above books as a revision. Also to spot check to see if he still has his mojo going- so far so good. One of the areas i am focusing on is, Word problems. I use Kumon workbooks for this.

 

 

 

OH! We did dabble in a new topic recently though; substracting in 3 digits. i.e borrowing from the hundreds column. I used my beloved Montessori kit to teach him.

 

 

I prepared some of my own worksheets for him to do without the Montessori aids.

 

So there. These are a few of my favourite workbooks. :)