Raising Our Successful Children, Singapore Mom Blog: Literature Based Learning

Showing posts with label Literature Based Learning. Show all posts

Wednesday, 23 September 2015

Literature Based Learning - Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse

Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse

When we saw this book at a bookshop", I was attracted to it and when I flipped through the book, I fell in love with it immediately. The illustrations are really beautiful and the moral of this story is something I want my children to learn - " Be Thankful For Who You Are" and " Be Contented With What You Have". So immediately, I knew I found another book for our Literature Based Learning, another book with a good moral for the kids.

Character Study:

For this book, I decided that it is going to be a more art and craft based learning. So, we made Alexander, the mouse and Willy, the wind-up mouse.

We reused toilet rolls, painted it grey and added the details to make it into a mouse. Really easy.

We cut the toilet roll into this shape and use white glue to stick the sharp end together.

One of the things that caught my eye about the book was the beautiful background. Hence, we did a flower sponge painting on a piece of yellow paper.

This is the final product of the mouse and the background.

Making the Lizard.

I printed out a picture of a lizard and cut out the shape. I put the outline on top of another piece of paper and squeeze some poster colour on it and allowed Faith to use sponge to spread out the paint.

Once the paint is spread out, we remove the piece with the outline and got the shape of the lizard.

We added a big googlies eye to complete our lizard.

I used the characters that we created to talk to the children about each character. I asked them questions like - " Are they happy with what they have?" and " What kind of character are they?". After listening to this story, the children learnt to be contented with who they are and be thankful for who they are because the lives of others may seems true and perfect, but may not necessarily be true.

I used this opportunity to educate the older children about cyber space as well. With social media platforms like facebook, it is easy to be deceived just by looking at the photos people post. Hence, what we see maybe very different from what is going on from reality. Hence, we should just be happy with what we have and with our lives, instead of envying people all the time.

The kids love to role play with the characters. Faith uses the character figures to re-tell the story.

I simply love her story telling and how she simplifies the story. From her story telling, I get to know how much she actually understands from the book.

After the art and craft session, character study and story telling, we moved on to more academic activities.

For number recognition and counting, we did 2 dot to dot activity. Faith loves counting and joining those dots. It helps her to practise her hand-eye coordination and this trains her hand muscle as well.

I also printed out a worksheet for word recognition and to practice writing.

Download the worksheets for Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse here.

Other Literature Based Learning Books:

The Ant and the Dove (Aesop's Fable)

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

World Wonders and Famous Landmarks around the World

Good Night, Little Rainbow Fish

Pink! Look under letter P to find the activities for this book.

Monday, 21 September 2015

Literature Based Learning: The Ant and the Dove ( Aesop’s Fables)

Literature Based Learning

The Ant and the Dove ( Aesop’s Fables)

Suggested activities

English: Recognizing and Practice writing the words “Ant” and “Dove”.
Maths: Dot to dot, recognizing numbers.
English Literature: Character Study
Character Education: Do to others as you wish them to do to you. How have you helped others in need?
Science: fun facts about ants / parts of an ant
Motor Skill: Colouring
A short cartoon version of “The Ant and the Dove”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWkJLuSb5u8

Download the worksheets here.

English

Objective: Recognizing and Practice writing the words “Ant” and “Dove”.

Maths: Dot to dot

Objective: Recognizing numbers

English Literature: Character Study

Character Education: Do to others as you wish them to do to you. How have you help others in need?

Objective: To recognize good behavior.

Science:

Objective: To learn the different parts of an ant.

Objective: To learn some fun facts about Ants.

Motor Skill: Colouring

Download the worksheets here and have fun learning.

Thursday, 23 April 2015

Alphabets and Phonics for my 3 year old [G - P]

In term 2, we are revising letters A to F and learning letters G to P. In fact, this is the second round of learning alphabets and phonics. Faith have done a round of recognizing letters and their sound last year. But this year, she is learning more vocabulary for each alphabet.

Here are some of the activities we have done for each letter.

Letter G

Learning new vocabulary and the sound of letter G.

Learning the shape of letter G and our button craft giraffe.

Faith was asked to point out words starting with letter G from the newspaper.

Faith identified these G words from the 'Today' newspaper.

Colouring small letter g.

Letter H

Activities for letter H.

Making a Hippopotamus: Sponge painting

Letter I

I for ice-cream. Painting and colouring ice-cream.

Letter J

For sensory play, Faith made the planet- Jupiter out of play dough.

I use this chance for Faith to explore colour mixture and taught her about different shades of brown.

Rolling it out.

Using the different shades to make Jupiter.

Just practicing rolling.

Letter K

Letter L

Creating a ladybug.

Making an attractive lollipop.

Tracing the leaves.

Letter M

Letter N

Creating our very own "The Starry Night" with oil pastels.

Faith learns more about "The Starry Night" by Vincent van Gogh.

Letter O

O for Octopus. An octopus made of plastic plate and some straws.

Tracing activity.

Tracing.

Tracing, then learning to 'copy' the drawing.

Not bad for her first attempt at 'copying' the images.

Letter P

Literature Based Learning

This book was a gift by my lovely friend , Jacqueline.

Activity 1: Identifying words in the book that starts with letter P.

Faith seems to like identifying words and she is getting faster and more accurate.

Activity 2: Identifying some animals that are pink.

I'm actually quite surprised that she could come out with pig and pink dolphin. I added the naked mole- rat for her.

Activity 3: How am I different?

I wanted her to think about how different she is from the others. She gave me quite a few physical difference about herself and others, However, I chose to focus on her personality rather than appearance and she could only come out with 2.

Activity 4: Learning about acceptance.

The moral of the story is that family and real friends will accept you for who you are. Hence, I spent some time talking to her about how much we love her and about our unconditional love.

Activity 5: Learnt about the sequence of events.

This is the first time I'm introducing the sequence of events to her. I printed out some of the main events of the story and got Faith to sequence them according. She has to narrate the story while pasting the pictures into the boxes. She seems to enjoy this activity a lot.