Our humble balcony...

Here's another reason why i so appreciate my balcony! N gets to have his sand play without going out in the heat! Daddy-O had a pot of unwanted soil so he let N have a little sand play in our humble balcony. My little one was so intrigued and happy! He was so focus, peaceful and quiet during the whole time that one would have forgotten that he is there! He gets to play with water AND bubbles all in this tiny space! It must be his favourite part of the house!

New Beginings II

I have a failing memory, i cannot remember where i printed these from. I AM SO SORRY! These are rhyming cards. I used them to go through the similar sound words with N. Although he did this puzzle really well, i wasn't sure if it was because he could read the words or if he really could HEAR the sounds of each word. THese cards were perfect as there are no words printed on them. N had no issues matching the cards. Its strange how he can differentiate the sounds but cannot articulate them well. 

We will be learning about the various parts of a bicycle.

 

For the life of me, i also cannot recall where i pluck this idea from (i saw this way way back so i didn't keep in mind where i saw it). BUT i know its one for the Montessori mama (maybe from Adventures of Bear). I traced out shapes of square and triangle using ice cream sticks. Using the sticks, we counted how many sides each shape has. 

 

Here is a printable tangrams from Pre kinders.com. I was suppose to print one in color and the other in black/white. Not wanting to waste my printer ink again, i decided to color them myself!

We are continuing our series on the alphabet puzzle i bought. This week's letters are W,Q,X,Y, P & C

Keeping up with the weather and the days of the week!

I always wanted to teach N the concept of time and days but didn't know how. I saw a sample at Mama Bliss and decided to do a smiliar one. I printed out the days of the weeks, pictures and word labels on the weather and day & night time. Also, prior to this, we have been singing this song and that's how N learnt the sequence of the days in the week. 

So each morning (and night) i will ask N what's today's day and how's the weather like. I have him paste the correct labels on my master board. :) He also learns that he has school on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And that he goes to church on Sundays.

New Beginings!

So, i have been dilligently making and planing new activites for N.We can finally resume our homeschool hour! This week, we will be doing/learning:

Sensorial activity.

Scooping cotton balls into an ice cube tray using a rounded spoon.

 

The things used by various proffessionals.

I used my old flashcards (on occupations) and printed out the respective instruments they used in the course of their work. I got N to match the instrument to the correct person.

At the same time, i got N to match the word cards to the pictures.

Numbering.

I saw this one Activity Mom blog but it originated from here. I didn't want to print it out in color (my printer runs of ink really fast) so i decided to DIY. I used colored papers and bought number stickers to make this. To play this, i used the number chips from the 100 board (montessori) and put it in a bag. I got N to draw out  one chip and placed it at the correct spot on my DIY board. Unfortuantely, he wasn't having fun with this, we had to stop. :(

National Costumes.

Since N is interested and has mastered the different countries & the world map, i decided to take a step further. I printed these out from a book and taught N to recognise the different national costumes and where they are from.

Color sorting.

Here's N sorting the chips by colors. I reckon this activity was too simple for him that after a second or 2, he asked to keep it away.

Pouring water.

N can pour water from bottle to a cup fairly well now. But he don't seem to know when to stop when the cup is full. He tends to overfill a cup. So i took out 3 cups, fill the bottle with just enough water for the 3 cups and had N pour the water into them. You know how he did by seeing the spilt water in the tray. He needs more practise!

I printed a booklet from here and at the end of the book there's a mini excercise to play.  Today, we are practising words from the 'at' family. N had to choose a letter that makes the correct word that decribes the picture. He did really well i must say.

Coloring & Pencil grip

N's chinese teacher said that his pencil grip still needs alot of practising (although i received a conflicting report from his main teacher) so she advised me to do alot more coloring with him at home. She said coloring activity is more to let the child practise his pencil grip not much of the coloring.

Well, N doesn't enjoy coloring and he used to draw a line or 2 on the paper and that was it. So i was unsure how to create an interest in him. Nonetheless, i whipped out his thomas coloring book one day and we had a blast, much to my surprise! I think N was really encouraged when i kept praising him and because of that he kept on scribbling. Im awfully glad to see more lines and color on the page! Well done!

Random Stuff

I have not been doing any work lately mainly because this mama is uninspired. Moreover, i felt that N was doing good work in school so i didn't want to 'overwork' him (although school's only 3 times a week). However, seeing how N keeps searching for things to do from our shelf (but only to find old stuff still there), i decided to start again which made me all inspired!

Meanwhile, i have been doing random stuff with him here and there.

We are still learning about the animal babies. I am aiming to complete all the puzzles in the box.

 

Also, just to revise, i printed out a table of baby 'xxx' and had N match the labels (which i made for the above puzzles). I delibrately did not read it out for N so i knew he could read independently and understood what he was reading. He could match the words perfectly. Well done for remembering my boy!

I saw this at Mi Escuelita Montessori blog and knew i had to do it with N. N got really bored with his pink tower and brown stairs that he has NEVER attempted to take them out. But he was truly pleased and happy doing this. I thought this was an excellent activity as N got to learn about sequencing.

I wanted to be sure N knows his phonics (ok yes, im back at this again, never mind what i said about phonics earlier!). So i took out some pictures and alphabets & had N to match. Unfortunately, he didn't do well with this. Well...we'll have to keep doing this!

Visiting the world over

Finally, N asked to do fit his flag puzzles. We did it once but he found it too challenging. This time, we had an easier time because i sort out the puzzles first and used the guideline for N to follow. N gets to revised his knowledge on the world flags.

The next thing we did was to sort the animals by the continents. From reading an Atlas book, N knows very well the Australian and South American animals. BUt he still needs help with the others. Oh well practise makes it perfect!

Playdough fun!

How do we have lots of fun with our Playdough?

We use our egg puzzles to do letter stamping on playdough! I got this idea from Pre kinders.com which is an absolutely fabulous website!

We also made animal tracks on playdough. I might have gotten this idea from surfing the other Montessori blogs...and im sorry i really forgot who.

We pretended the animals were stuck and narrated parts from this book that we are reading now titled One Duck Stuck by repeating the catchy phrase 'Help help, who can help? We can We can!' N & i had loads of fun with this. It was very endearing to see N chanting away with me. :) N loves this book very much.

Again, from Pre kinders website, i had the idea of using the parts from Mr Potato Head toy and stuck it into our playdough. N was very amused!

But N's favourite of all was when we made tyre tracks using N's vehicle toys. Again, this idea was adapted from Pre kinders website. He was completely fascinated with the tyre tracks and was upset when i had to clear it away. Another day baby!

The Power of iphone

The other day, we attended a wedding dinner. In order, to keep him entertained and seated, i shoved the iphone to him. He, unfortunately, played with it the whole night. Anyway, his favourite game is the world flags application (he is particulary interested in world flags and world map).

The game goes like this; 20 world flags are randomly displayed on the screen. The player is to select the flag that matches with the country that appears at the bottom of the screen. N has learnt about 70+ country names and its respective flags, before he turned 2. So he was able to play this game independently.

However,  there were some flags (like African flags) that i have never taught him before. That night, as i watched him play, i discovered that he has learnt to recognise flags like Gabon, Suriname, Seychelles, Somalia, and many others that i couldn't keep track of (and never knew existed)- all through playing with the iphone. The daddy thinks N is getting close to beating his score! The moral of the story? Be very careful and selective of what you download on your iphone!

Promoted, again?

It's been 1 week of a new (mandarin) curriculum for the boy, and the chinese teacher's feedback was that N is doing well. In fact, she has suggested that we up his mandarin lessons to another level, Nursery 2 (currently he is being taught Nursery 1 curriculum, meant for 3/4 years old, i think?). 'Gwak'

The mandarin teacher 'complained' that N is learning too fast and to keep up with him, its best to introduce the next level to him. This week, N's older classmate (about 5 year old) has returned from her holidays, and both of them are attending the chinese lesson together. It seems, N is ahead of her and can read some of the words that she cannot. I also learnt that the teacher is teaching N 'tang shi' (chinese poetry)!

The good thing is that N is now learning more from the teacher than me. At the playgroup level, the teacher was teaching him words that he already knows. So i wasn't blown away when she raved about how he could read the words. I wondered if she taught him new words, would he be able to learn too? But, with this new curriculum he has learnt new words, that is beyond me. I have lost track of the words he knows. So, now i am absolutely convinced that N can learn from otherss too, not just from me. And as i have told the teacher, i am leaving all the mandarin teaching into her capable hands! Im washing my hands off (because, really mandarin is not my forte!).

5 is more and 2 is less

I have been practising the concept of more and less with N using my DIY kit. He knows the meaning of more and less so i raised the bar a little higher by getting him to understand why '5' is more than '2' and why '2' is less than '5'. As i blogged earlier, i used the above stickers to teach him that. One night, i drew this activity out from our shelf and layed out just the number cards (without the stickers), and casually asked him which number is more ('8' or '2'). He was able to tell me that 8 is more than 2 and 2 is less than 8. To make sure he really understood, i made it a wee bit more challenging by taking out numbers '8' & '7' and i asked him again. This time...he also answered rightly! Hooray! My son has pass! Now on the next stage...

Rhyming Words

I have read about the importance of teaching the child about ryhming words and how it would help in their reading (and even speech). So as always, i had big plans to make my own rhyming cards but never got to it because of the word 'procrastinate'. Luckily, i found this box of puzzles! Exactly what i need (im begining to rely on such puzzles!)

The concept of the game is to have the child find the matching piece that sounds the same as in 'ball' matches with 'hall'. The good thing about this puzzle is that the pieces are self correcting. I briefly taught N that 'mouse' rhymes with 'house' and 'boat' rhymes with 'goat' etc using the cover of the box. But i really didn't know how well he actually understood. Well, it seems he understood it perfectly. He managed to match most of the pieces correctly & the second time we did it, he got all correct. I wanted to take our time to do the puzzles, but my 'hungry' son took them all out because he was really eager to do them. So, after 2 plays, i think we're more or less done with this box.  :(