In our class this week...

 

 

I have decided to pursue copywork as part of my homeschool curriculum. There are too many benefits of copywork to give it up though its boring. You can read more about copywork here. But to each his own. Before you jump in, i suggest you take a second to think if it suits your child's learning style. I don't think every child will benefit from this style of learning. For sonshine, i think he needs this type of drilling to help highlight the sentence structure, punctuation marks, capital letters etc.

 

 

I gave him a simple book to copy. The key thing i was looking for was minimal punctuation marks (just commas and periods) and repetitive sentences (hoping that he can magically learn the spelling of the words he wrote several times over). Pelangi books are right up my alley for this purpose.

 

On a separate note, we had quite a frustrating time doing this on one of the days. I had him re-write some letters because it was not written accurately (he wrote '0' like a '6'). I ended up scolding and caning him. Not because of his error but his 'i can't do it' mentality which made him cry in despair. I didn't like that he cried over such a small matter (not the first time) and told him that it is okay if he doesn't know or needs more time but its not okay to cry and give up! 

Do you have days like these? I do! So, don't ever think its all bed of roses for us. Just keeping it real.

 

 

He did some Maths on calculating money. I had him do this since he was taught this in school last week.

 

 

He continuously surprise me with his ability to understand and solve mathematical questions. For instance, a question he encountered was  "Jim had 3 five-dollar notes. He bought something and left $3. What did he buy?" I was certain he needed help and was just about to explain to him when he said 'car' (see diagram above).

 

 

As for the girl, she did some sensory play. Squeezing sponge and spilling water all over herself and the floor. She even used a towel to wipe herself and the floor with each spillage. It was very amusing to watch to say the least.

 

 

She enjoyed this scooping activity. Actually, she is able to handle the utensils and self feed very well. Now when we are out eating, she would insist to feed herself and i am proud to say she is getting quite professional!

 

 

I secretly think she loves the scooping activity because she loves the beads. She poured them in a tray and decided that it was more fun to step on it.

 

 

Oh, how about 'bathing' in it?

'Homeschool' for babydoll

Here are some mini activities the girl has been entertained with. Mainly to exercise her eye-hand coordination & fine motor skills.

Transferring clips into an empty milk bottle. The mouth of the bottle is rather small which is makes it tricky. So babydoll had to tilt each clip upright in order to slot them in. She surprised me with this one, she did it with much ease.

I slit a tiny 'coin' slot on an empty carton box and gave the girl some toy coins to insert them into the box. Again, i thought this might be a little challenging for her age but i was proven wrong again. It was too easy for her that she got a little bored with this activity very soon after.

She was more delighted to find the coins in the box and would much rather i let her play with the box opened!

I was busy playing Monopoly with the boy & didn't pay much attention to her. I left her with a box of sweets and when i checked on her, she somehow managed to find another box & decided to transfer the sweets from box to box! This kept her entertained for quite a bit! It once again tells me that sometimes we really don't need to prepare loads & loads of activities for the toddler- they are curious enough to create their own, meaningful ones too!

AH! The milk bottle again! This time it made it's appearance with colorful poms poms!

Little sister hard at work, transferring each pom pom into the milk bottle.

I LOVE the Ikea stacking cups! I bought it for sonshine and took them out again for the girl. It is such a cheap & simple toy; even the boy is intrigued by it- still! (Ok, this has nothing to do with the sheep...it is there for visual pleasure).

I stacked the cups up and let babydoll push them down. She also helped me stacked the cups- great for her eye-hand coordination & fine motor skills!

All in all, i am delightfully surprise by her (fine & gross) motor skills. She is definitely way, way much, much, faster than her brother was. I remember i was pretty frustrated watching him do fine motor skills related activities- thank God that's all over!

Practical life, practical ways

One of the advantage of not having a helper at home is that you would naturally (or more like forced by circumstances) train your child to acquire self help skills as quickly as possible.

Before babydoll, i used to (i am very ashamed to say) do everything for sonshine. From putting on his socks, school shoes, shirt, carrying his school bag etc and even taking them off for him. But now with the baby, i couldn't nanny the boy any longer. Hence, i started to take every opportunity to teach the boy how to put on his shirt and then how to take it off, and now button/unbutton his own shirt. I don't know about your child but sonshine isn't very good at practical skills (which is also why i didn't introduce this earlier as i felt it would dent his confidence). It took alot of encouragement and time to get his ego going. I am glad we persisted. So now, the boy goes to the toilet on his own, washes his own hands, put on/take off his own clothes, take off his shoes & socks and put them in the shoe cabinet, carries his own school bag, helps himself with his milk & snack from the refrigerator (we prepare it for him the night before), even climbing up and down the car (LOL!) etc.

I can finally say he's self help skills have went up a notch. I feel great that all i have to do is to give instructions and not be the one who acts on it! LOL. Perhaps his life skills are not as great as the kid next door but i'm still very proud of his acheivements. Well done my boy!

Play with babydoll

Play with a tub of animal figurines. We call this 'Animal Kingdom'!

Practising her pincer grasp

My own version of Montessori 'Egg in a cup' activity. I happen to have a wooden communion cup (bought from Israel) and i just used one of my Montessori volumeric solids to act as an 'egg'.

Somehow, none of these could keep her occupied for long. There are too many distractions, too many things in the house to hold, touch, smell, eat, destroy!

Pincer grasp

Babydoll is now 9 months. Oh how i love this stage!

She's so adorable, so fun, so responsive! She's well aware of her surroundings and responsive to what we say. Now, whenever we say 'LIGHTS!' or 'FAN!" she would tilt her head up and look for the lights or our ceiling fan. She would instantly turn her head toward the door whenever i yell to the kids ' PAPA IS HOME!' (oh how we all love to hear that!).

The other day i showed & taught her 2 toys, a fish and sausage. I held them on each hand and asked her where's the fish- she immediately reached out for the said toy!

I am doing flashcards with her and still finding our rhythm. Babydoll, unlike her brother, can't really sit and look at the cards. I tried to test her but she isn't responding as well as her brother. It makes me think that sonshine is a visual learner while babydoll learns better by hearing (based on my play with her i shared above).

That aside, here is an activity i recently introduced to her

I took out our Montessori knobbed cylinder not for her to do but for her to practise her pincer grasp. Babydoll loves to pick up her Gerber snack puffs and put in her mouth too!

Babydoll discovering that using her mouth to remove is WAAAY faster! LOL!

It's Valentine's!

Here are some Valentine's activities i managed to squeez in this week. Bear in mind i didn't do all the activities in one go, we do 5minutes here, 10 minutes there. With 2 kids, it's impossible to do anything for a period of time!

Bible verse that Sonshine is learning this month. I made it for Christmas but we never got to it! Since it's all about love, Febuary is equally apt to learn this verse!

I got this awesome idea from 2 teaching mommies blog on a fun way to get the kid to memorise verses. I wanted to download straight from their site but have been unsuccessful, so i made my own. The verse is broken into parts and sonshine has to put them in order.

Heart shape felt button activity! Sonshine isn't great with fine motor skills and tend to give up easily. As expected, he kept whining 'i cannot!' while doing this. But with some pushing- (yes pushing i was quite annoyed with his whining and was impatient and insistent -but don't follow me), he managed to suceed! He unbutton each hearts and button them back on. I am so proud of him!

And our recent crave- Mosiac! We make Mosiac heart magnet!

The finished work. I would prefer it to be much neater but i reframed myself from telling the boy how and what to do. I wanted to give him freedom to decide. But it was really tough biting my lips!

Incidentally, we borrowed this book without any planning it to coincide with Valentine's- i guess that God working in our homeschooling! Sonshine loves this book, and for me, it is a timely reminder about His love for me. :)

More chopsticks activity

Here's more practise on using his pincer grasp. This time N had to transfer the marbles using the chopsticks. It wasn't easy because the marbles are slippery and because its round, it tends to roll all over the place, making it hard to grip. However, N did awesome!

This week...

I've finally picked up my inspiration and energy enough to prepare these activities!

Still on the topic of frogs, i printed pictures of frog species we've been learning. N will be matching the frogs to the pictures.

I was inspired when i saw this on Karmeleon Kronicles and created a smiliar activity. You can hop over to her site to learn how to play this activity. :)

N is becoming a pro in transferring the cotton balls using his chopsticks. I decided to up the challenge by having him transfer these cute erasers. He'll also be sorting them as he goes along. 

This is my other attempt to brush up N's handwriting.

I took out the letter 'c' from my DIY sandpaper letters so that N can practise his fingering on it first. I figured 'c' is the easiest of the lot! I wanted N to finger the letter on a tray of sand/flour as per the Montessori activity but realised...i could go high tech on this one! I could use the iphone instead- on the Doodle Buddy application. After N watch me finger the letter 'c', i got him to practise on the application. He got his strokes correct although he used his thumb instead of finger. I decided to let it pass as my objective now is to get him to learn the proper way of writing the alphabets.

Practical Life: Chopsticks

Ok, now i am concern.

At 3 years old, N is still no where near using a pencil, not even mindless scribbling. If ever he uses a pen/pencil, he would use minimal strength and very faint lines appear on the paper. He can't draw a circle on his own either. Neither can he or (more accurately, will he) use a scissors. I won't be surprise if a 18month old kid can do better. Sigh.

That said, i think he's problem is lack of interest in using a pencil and scissors since he has no issue with his pincer grasp and other fine motor skills. Neither the teacher or i could get him interested in using these tools. He gets absolutely bored!

So this is my attempt to make him interested and also to strengthen his muscles for holding a pencil and scissors.

Transferring cotton balls with chopsticks!

This is no ordinary chopstick, its a TRAINING chopstick. Very easy to use even for a toddler, surprisingly. Of course, i HAD to get him a Thomas design because i NEED to get his interest- which i succeeded by the way!

But i was worried about presenting this activitiy to him because i knew if i didn't get him at the first touch -that was it. This will go the drain just like the pencil and scissors. My worries were unfounded! He loves it and did awesome Phew! We'll practise more and hopefully its a start to more pencil holding!

A bit of this and that

We have been experiencing 3 weeks of drought in terms of our homeschool hour. It was interrupted by family trips and visits from relatives. But it was all good!

This week, we can finally resume although i think i may be losing steam- im running out of ideas!

Once again, i depend on my old pals- puzzles! This is a set on What animals eat. This week, N is learning that Panda eats bamboo shoots, Caterpillar- leaves, frogs- insects and Snake eats mice & eggs.

Last week, we read on a book about the sounds different animal makes. As a follow up, i created this activity to revise what we read from the book. I wrote the different sounds and had N match to the correct animal, i.e. Owl hoots, frog croaks etc.

Since we read that lion roars, i decided to teach N how to spell 'lion'.

Practising his pincer grasp. N had to remove the cloths pegs from the namecard and clip them back on again.

Another revision. I wanted to check if N still remembers the name of the different shapes. Well, he mixed parallelogram and trapezium up but everything else he got it right.

Scoop your own

This week, its all about practical life activities. Since N is so profficient in his scooping activities, i decided to get him to scoop his own porridge into his bowl!

Of Seeds and toothpicks

Today we did a little bit of practical life activities. Here is N using his toy tweezers to pick Cherry seeds and transferring it to a cup.

This is an activity to train the hand-eye coordination- putting toothpicks through the straw hole of an empty packet drink. I realised it also refines the pincer grasp because the child is required to pick up the toothpicks using his fingers.

N is learning about occupations in his Mandarin classes. So i decided to go along and made this activity. Today we learn the names of different proffessions in Mandarin.

Drawing a duck and the letter M

More writing activities!

 Connecting the dots. This was his first time doing this, it was really priceless seeing his expression on seeing the finished picture!

Writing the letter M.

Practical Life

This week we are focusing on practical life skills.

Pouring marbles from bowl to bowl

Using tongs to transfer marbles. And i later asked N to transfer the marbles back to the original bowl using his fingers while counting.

I printed this from here. N had to determine the number of cows on each card and place the cotton balls on the numeral using tongs. He loves this so do i! Its killing 2 birds with one stone, he practises his pincer grasp AND counting. WOOHOO! 

Color apples

Here's the end result of our coloring. I reminded N to color within the lines. He read out each sentences and colored the apples accordingly. He did great if i can say so myself! *beam*

It's all about buttons & coloring!

I am kind of shy posting this activity because of how poorly i made this material. I love to see pretty things but i don't have the patience to make pretty things. As long as the material is good enough to bring across the key lesson to N, i give in to sub standards. Anyway, this week we'll be trying our hands on opening & closing press buttons! I cut out various shapes using felt cloth and sewed the press buttons to them. I let N do a dry run (right after i made them)...hmm, he gave up half way! :( Im going to try again!

I printed this from here. Its a coloring printable cum a reading book. I plan to have N read the sentences aloud to me & color the apples accordingly.