Raising Our Successful Children, Singapore Mom Blog: Good Night, Little Rainbow Fish

Mummy's Hippo School for 3 Year Old.

Week 1: Good Night Little Rainbow Fish

My lil Faith is not longer that little. She is turning 3 years old soon. Thus, I am starting a more structured home -learning "curriculum" for her.

For the first week, we are doing Literature Based Learning starting with the book, 'Good Night, Little Rainbow Fish'.

I chose this book because it emphasizes the close relationship between a mother and child as the mother reassures her child that she will always be around for him and will always keep him safe. Moreover, this book provides an excellent platform to jump onto the topic of under the sea.

By the way, Faith loves this book so much that I read it more than 10 times everyday for one whole week.

Activity 1: Art and Craft of the Main Character - the Rainbow Fish

As usual, I went to the art cupboard, brought out some random materials ( buttons, sequins, sticker pearls, crepe paper, glitter glue, aluminium foil, googlies eyes) and with a printed copy of the rainbow fish, I asked her to decorate the fish.

Faith knew almost exactly what to do and I did little to assist her.

However, I did guide her to use different materials to decorate the different scales.

Faith's completed little rainbow fish.

Activity 2: Learning different parts of a fish.

Activating Schema
After the art and craft activity 1, I asked Faith to identify the parts of a fish that she knows and I simply used a marker to write it down.

Constructing Knowledge
After her first round of identifying the parts, I taught her the rest of the parts of a fish that she didn't know.

Testing
To ensure learning, Faith was given a worksheet to label the parts of the rainbow fish.

Activity 3: Comprehension
What were the creatures that the little rainbow fish was afraid of?

In this comprehension activity, Faith needed to pick out the creatures that the little rainbow fish was afraid of from the set of stickers. Once she knew her task, she went immediately to get her book and started referring to it. After picking out the stickers, she was given the worksheet to paste her stickers on.

Activity 4: Imagination and Vocabulary Input
What other sea creatures could Little Rainbow Fish have met?

Faith was asked to close her eyes and imagine herself under water. I asked her to name me the creatures that she saw and told her that these were some of the sea creatures that the little rainbow fish could have met.

Since I have a set of under the sea colour pages, I cut out those sea creatures that she named and got her to colour them. After colouring, Faith created this under the sea picture.

After pasting the sea creatures, I wrote down their names in both English and Mandarin. My next step is to teach her to read these words.

Activity 5: Writing Task - 2, 3 and 4 letter words

3 years old is a good time to start getting the child to write. So I prepared these 2, 3 and 4 letter words that appeared in the book and held Faith's hand to write these words. Faith was only able to write 2 words per day. Anything beyond 2 words, she will start complaining about her hand being painful from writing. So, I'm taking the writing part really really slow.

Activity 6: Reading

I just happened to have this 'poster' on seals on my wall and since she identified seals in activity 4, I took the chance to teach her to read the words on the 'poster'.

Activity 7: 3D Turtle Art
I bought this craft kit from Popular and we spent some time putting the 3D turtle together. This time, I gave Faith the chance to build it on her own. I only assisted her in slotting in the parts as it was quite difficult to slot.

Faith is very proud of her 3D Turtle.

The craft kit includes these activities.

Activity 8: Drawing Symmetrically

I created these 3 symmetrical drawing using basic shapes in powerpoint. I demonstrated the activity by holding Faith's hand to do the symmetrical drawing of the fish.

She insisted that she must draw some details for the fish.

Faith tried her own drawing of the Jellyfish. Really not bad for a first timer.

The crab was a bit more challenging for her as there were more shapes to draw. It took her a few attempts to get this.

Activity 9: Under the Sea Wood Puzzle
This was a game that we played - Mummy called out the name of the creature and Faith will fish for it. I did this in both English and Mandarin to ensure that she learnt the names ( especially in Mandarin). I took this picture of the internet as I forgot to take picture when I did this activity with Faith. :)

Activity 10: Making a 'Fish Bowl'

With a blue paper plate and a sheet of clear plastic, we made this 'fish bowl'. We drew some fish on the paper plate and some on the clear plastic sheet. This fish bowl is actually functional in a sense that it can hold notes and letters. Now, it has become a 'mailbox' for Faith as her siblings can write her notes and drop it into her fishbowl.

Activity 11: Re-telling the Story

The final activity Faith did was to re-tell the story of the Little Rainbow Fish to the family. Of course she can't read. But as she flips the page, she tries her best to tell the story. Surprisingly, she did use key phrases on each page when she re told the story. So repetition is really important.

Other books I used to explore the topic of under the sea.

After reading the Little Rainbow Fish book, Faith got very interested in Sharks. So I dug out this Shark Sticker book and she learnt about different kind of sharks and sea creatures. This book is good for reading on more information on each of the different sharks and sea creatures.

Under the Sea Animal World Sticker Book introduces the different sea creatures by making the child find and paste the animal sticker to its name.

Ocean Life is a big book for a more in depth reading of sea creatures.

All these activities were done over a week and we really took our time for each activity.
To me, the most important thing is for the child to enjoy the learning process and to instill the idea that learning is fun.

Other Literature Based Learning

Click here to see activities on 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'.