Raising Our Successful Children, Singapore Mom Blog

Monday, 26 January 2015

Theme: About Myself

Theme: About Myself

First, know yourself, then about the people and the world around you.

We spent 2 full weeks on this theme - About Myself and it all started because I caught Faith looking at the mirror and saying " My name is Faith. I am 3 years old. I am a girl." So I decided to work on this theme with her. We spent such a long time on this theme because I believe that knowing yourself is very important.

Activity 1: Writing 'About Myself'

Faith was asked to introduce herself and I held her hand to write down what she said ( I had to help her to rephrase the sentence " I like Yoda").

Activity 2: My Body - Labeling the different body parts

With a piece of Mahjong Paper, I drew a little girl and we started labeling the different body parts.

The main objective of this activity is word recognition.
Identifying the body parts was easy for her, but I wanted her to recognize the words like "this", "is" and all the words of the different body parts.

Activity 3: 我的身体 - Labeling in Mandarin

Faith learnt her body parts in mandarin through this book. Some of the flashcards are from this book.
She can now read this simple mandarin book.

Faith learnt the different body parts in mandarin as well and she had to identify the body parts in mandarin and paste the flash card as close to the body part as possible.

To ensure that she knows what those Chinese characters means, I made her stick the visual pictures next to the words.

Word Recognition
我，的，脸，眼睛，耳朵，鼻子，口，嘴巴，下巴，手，脚，眉毛。

To attract her to the wall, I pasted her photograph of her.

Activity 4: Learning about my Skeleton

Faith found this book and insisted she wants to learn about skeleton. She was curious but afraid of skeleton at the same time.

Bought this really useful learning aid many years ago during a 'toys r us' sale. This learning aid have help me teach all my 3 children and now, it's the youngest girl's turn to use to it.

Firstly, Faith had to "fix the puzzle" of this skeleton. As she is building, I'll teach her the different names of the bones. Of course, I use the 'human skeleton' poster which is included in the kit to input the different names.

The kit also included X-ray films. So Faith had a chance to play with these films.

Faith discovered that she can see these x-ray films better against light.

We also learnt about '10 Good Food for Your Bones' (included in the kit). Took this chance to teach her about a healthy diet too.

Faith pretending to sleep.

Activity 5: Labeling important parts of the skeleton

Seriously, how important is it to know all the names of the different bones of our skeleton? Funny that it's not important at all. So I decided to only reinforce the important parts of the skeleton using this paste and colour activity.

Activity 6: Reading The Story of Creation from 'My First Bible Stories'.

Faith suddenly asked me one day, " Mummy, where did I come from?"
Instead of answering her question, I told her " Let's read this book and find out where did you come from."

It is a simple 3 page story.

After reading this story, I asked her "So where did you come from?"
Without any hesitation, she answered " from God".
I was surprised at the way she answered my question with great confidence.
I asked her again" How did you know?"
She said : " Because God made man and woman and all the animals."

Activity 6: Introducing the Internal Organs

Through this guided, simple paste and label activity, Faith got introduced to the different internal organs, how they look like and where they are roughly positioned in our body.

Activity 7: My 5 Senses

Introducing the 5 Senses through the book 'See, hear, Touch, Taste, Smell'.

Made this simple worksheet.

I asked Faith to close her eyes and listen to what she can hear. As, she speaks, I draw out and write down what she said.

I asked Faith to look around and to tell me what she can see.

For taste, I asked her to name me some food that are sweet, sour, bitter and spicy.

For touch, I brought her around to feel the did different items and ask her how they felt like.

For smell, I simply ask her what can she smell everyday.

Activity 8: Reading - Learning Verbs

This book, 'I am' is a simple book to teach verbs.

Activity 9: Making our own book, "I Can"

After reading the book 'I am', I suddenly had this inspiration to make a book "I can". I ask Faith to complete the sentence "I Can....". After she came up with 15 sentence, I wrote the sentences into a book and I search of photographs of her and we made the book "I Can"..

Faith enthusiastically pasting her own photos onto the book.

Presenting our product - "I Can". I took some construction paper and stapled them together and we got our book.

All the products of our activities are put up on Faith's Wall.

Activity 10: My Family

We recycled the family member figures that we created from our Christmas Family Tree activity and we rearranged into a proper family tree. In this activity, Faith is taught to see the relationship between her and the rest of the family members. She is also taught the proper mandarin terms for the appropriate people. She has been address both grandmothers and grandfathers as "ah ma" and "ah gong". So now, she knows that her father's mother should be addressed as '奶奶'。

Hope you got some ideas from our activities.

Other topics that you might be interested in.

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Friday, 16 January 2015

From their Point of View #1: Parents Quarreling over Money

In this series of ‘From Their Point of View’, I’ll be sharing with you some real stories that teenagers have shared with me. I will try to re-tell their stories and parenting from their point of view. These stories really help me to reflect as a parent and I hope through stories, we can learn more about how our parenting actually affects our children.

From Their Point of View #1

“My parents quarrel every single time we go out for a meal. At the end of the meal, one of my parents will make an excuse to leave the table so that the other party will have no choice but to pay. It became worse as time passes. Very soon, the both of them would be shouting at each other over who should pay for the meal and why the other party should pay, in the restaurant itself. I feel so embarrassed. I don’t know what to do when that happens. I just feel like digging a hole and hiding. Eventually, I hated going out with my parents. I try to find excuses not go out with them. Sometimes, it makes me think about what kind of family I have and I feel so helpless when that happens.”

Please feel free to leave comments or any reflections on the above situation.

How would you advice to resolve the situation?

Sunday, 11 January 2015

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'.

World Wonders and Famous Landmarks around the World