Fun Class - J for Jack-in-the-box!

This was the second lesson for letter "J".
As my parents in law came to visit us from Malaysia and they had occupied the study room, we had the lesson in my bedroom and Chloe had got to do her work on the floor without table and chair.
We started the lesson after singing the greeting song.
We listened to the phonics sound of "J" and the phonics song, that went like this:
"Jams and Jellies, j, j, j.... j is the sound of J!"
(If you are not familiar with the phonics sound of A-Z, you may click here)
In the first lesson on letter "J", she had done a paper with the pictures of object starting with "J"; in this lesson, she labeled the pictures with the words.

She would spell the words before labeling the pictures one by one.
The craft work for this lesson was "Jack-in-the-box", which she had done previously in her weekend enrichment class with Zoophonics, she thus had a better idea of who is this "Jack", ha!
The materials were as follow:

You will need an empty tissue paper box, cut the bottom and top with a cross cut.
For younger toddler, you may want to paste the picture of Jack on the paper bag and let the child do the colouring only.

The finished product would look like this:

Chloe playing with her "Jack-in-the-box" happily:

The closing song was "Jack-in-the-box", as it is a mp3 file, I cannot give the link here. The lyrics of the song went like this:
"Jack in the box
Jumps out like this
He makes me laugh
When he wraggle his head
I gently press him down again
Saying Jack in the box
You must go to bed"

Chloe gave me a kiss and hug to end the lesson.
It was not a smooth lesson, as my husband was busy talking to my in-law, my boy was wondering around in the room and disturbing his sister during the lesson. It is really not an easy task for those mummies looking after 2 kids or more by themselves.

(My boy, the little monster that disturbed us during the lesson)

Lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Revise letter J by showing kid the alphabet
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of J
4) Kid labels pictures of object starting with letter J, spell and read the word before labeling.
5) Prompting
6) Craft work on "Jack-in-the-box"
7) Summary
8) Closing song

Development age: 2 years 8 mths
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

Fun Class - J for Jelly!

We started the lesson with Greeting Song.
We were learning letter J in this lesson. She traced the capital and small letter J on an A4 paper.

We listened to the phonics song of "J", which went like this:
"Jams and Jellies, j, j, j.... j is the sound of J!"
She picked the pictures of objects starting with "J" out from a bag, and named the objects one by one before pasting on the A4 paper.
(You may get the pictures from this link here)

(this paper will be used in the next lesson where she'll label the picture)
I prompted her on the spelling of "jelly".

Stress the sound of each letter and let the child spell out the word and read the word.
We coloured the phonics sheet together, the nicely coloured pictures at the top of course were done by me, and the scribbles below were her marvelous product!

I did not interfere in her choosing of the colours, but I did tell her not to colour out of the outlines of the drawing.
As the topic for this lesson is "jelly", I bought a few cups of jelly for her and I had prepared an empty jelly cup for the artwork.
I taught her how to paint the base of the jelly cup and print it on the paper. She had fun on it and she even put her thumbprint on it.

After the jelly cup painting, we sang the closing song of "Jelly on the plate", we had fun dancing around with the song.
The lyrics of the song:
Jelly on the plate, Jelly on the plate
Wibble wobble, wibble wobble
Jelly on the plate
Sweeties in the Jar, Sweeties in the Jar
Shake and rattle, shake and rattle
Sweeties in the jar
Sausage in the pan, sausage in the pan
Sizzle sauzzle, sizzle sauzzle
Sausage in the pan
Jelly on the plate, Jelly on the plate
Wibble wobble, wibble wobble
Jelly on the plate

Chloe gave me a kiss to end the lesson :)

The lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce letter J, kid traces capital and small letter J
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of J
4) Kid takes pictures of object starting with letter J, names and pastes the pictures on an A4 paper.
5) Prompting
6) Colour the phonics sheet
7) Jelly cup printing
8) Summary
9) Closing song

Development age: 2 years 8 mths
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

Fun Class - I for Indian!

This was the second lesson for letter 'I'.
We started the lesson after singing greeting song.
In this lesson, my girl learned 'I' for 'Indian'.
We listened to the phonics sound of 'I', followed by phonics song , that went like this:
"Itchy insects i, i, i, i is the sound of I!"
(If you are not familiar with the phonics sound of A-Z, you may click here)
She had done a paper with pictures of objects starting with letter 'I' in the previous lesson, she labeled the pictures in this second lesson of 'I'.

She would spell out the word before labeling the picture on the paper.
The craft work for this lesson was an Indian headband, the materials were as follow:

Chloe was very curious about the feathers and kept asking me what were that.
After the headband was done, she happily put it on:

She wore the headband and happily dance with the closing song "Ten Little Indian Boys"

Lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce letter "I"
3) Introduce phonics of I, sing phonics song of I
4) Label the pictures of objects starting with I
5) Prompting, spell out "Indian" and read the word
6) Craft
7) Colour the phonics sheet (optional)
8) Summary
9) Closing song

Development age: 2 years 7 mths
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

Jigsaw Puzzle, how much do you know your kid?!

Jigsaw puzzle is a very good game for children, for those who are not aware, the following are the benefits of letting your children playing jigsaw puzzle:
1) It requires the toddlers to think and develop different approaches to a single solution. It improves their problem solving skill in completing the puzzle.
2) Toddler learn cognitive skill like identifying different shapes, colours, alphabets or numbers from solving the puzzle.
3) While putting the right shape together, toddlers learn hand eye coordination.
4) Solving the puzzle require toddlers to pick up the puzzles, sort them, put them together and etc, thus it refines their motor skill.
5) The children get confidence upon completion of the puzzle.

I do know that there are many benefits of playing jigsaw puzzle, but one problem of it is that the puzzles will always scatter around the floor after the children playing it. It creates a job for me to keep the puzzles and it is a chaotic job to me. So, I've never bought any puzzle for my children.

Few months ago, a friend visited me and she bought a set of jigsaw puzzle for my girl. I thought it would be the start of my nightmare as my girl would probably throw the small pieces of puzzle everywhere in my house. I was reluctant to open the box when my girl requested it, but she's those kind of kid that you could never hide anything from her once she saw it.
Out of no choice I opened the box for her, amazingly she did not scatter the puzzles but was trying to put them together! In less than 15 minutes, she completed the puzzle!


She was around the age of 29 months when she first completed the 12 pieces puzzle, she can now complete this puzzle in a much shorter time. We should never underestimate our children, you will never know how fast they can pick up something new!

A recent video of her completing her Thomas puzzle:

Fun Class: I for Insects!

I told Chloe to sing the greeting song to start the lesson. She sang the "Good morning.....", I took the chance to explain to her the difference of day and night, and requested her to change the lyrics to "Good evening...."
I let her listen to the phonics of letter "I", she sang the phonics song together with me, which went like this:
"Itchy insects i, i, i, i is the sound of I!"
If you're not familiar with the phonics, you may refer to this youtube link.
I let her trace the capital and small letter "I".

After which I let her take out the pictures of objects starting with letter "I" from a bag and paste them on the paper. I then asked her "I for?" and she would answer me "Igloo!" and etc.

She coloured the phonics sheet of the insects. Last week, she told me "mummy, there's a bee!" I looked at the spot where she's pointing to, and found that it was a fly! So I took this opportunity to show her how does a fly looks like.

I prompted her on the spelling of "insect", she showed great improvement, and she finally got the concept of prompting. When I gave the sound of "i", she said "I", when I sound "n", she said "N", unlike previously she would just copy the phonics sound I told her and not telling me the name of the letter. When I prompted her "e", she said "A", I told her "e....elephant...e!" she then changed to "E", which was fine for me.

The art craft for this lesson was tap paint one side of the insect picture and fold it to duplicate the colour. It was fun for her as she likes painting and she found it interesting to see the colour duplicate at the other side of the paper.

The finished product:

We sang and dance with the closing songs "shoo fly" (the barney version) and "fly, fly, fly butterfly", after which Chloe gave me a kiss and hug to end the lesson :)

Lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce letter "I"
3) Introduce phonics of I, sing phonics song of I
4) Let the kid trace the letter I, and paste the pictures of objects starting with I
5) Prompting, spell out "Insect" and read the word
6) Craft
7) Colour the phonics sheet (optional)
8) Summary
9) Closing song

Development age: 2 years 7 mths
(every kid learns on their own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

Fun Class - H for House!

Start the lesson by singing Greeting Song. Your child should be very familiar with the procedure now.
After singing this song, your child should be settled down and looking forward to your introduction of what he is going to learn. While his attention is still on you, introduce letter "H". You may show him a freely card of letter H, or just show him an A4 paper printed with letter "H".

This was what I'd shown my girl in the previous lesson and I let her trace the letter.
Let your kid listen to the phonics song of letter "H", that goes like this:
"Hare and hunter h h h, Hare and hunter h h h, h is the sound of H!"
In the previous lesson, I let my girl take out the pictures of items start with letter H from a bag and paste them one by one on the A4 paper mentioned above. For this second lesson, I let her label the pictures. She would spell out the words before pasting them on the pictures.

While your kid can still focus, prompt him on the word "house". You should voice out the phonics of each letter and let the kid say the letters. You may prompt the letters one by one and let the kid spell out the word and read the word. For my girl, I did not prompt her for the first few lessons, but as she is able to capture the concept now and I started prompting her in my previous 2 lessons.
E.g. of how prompting works:
You say "heh", kid says "H"
You say "O", kid says "O"
You say "woo", kid says "U"
You say "ssss", kid says "S"
You say "end with....", kid says "E" (E is silent sound here)
You say "spell the word", kid says "H.O.U.S.E."
You say "read the word", kid reads the word "house".


The craft for this lesson is to cut out papers in a few different shapes and paste the shapes into a house. In this craft the kid learns the different shapes and colours. For younger toddler you may prepare the cut outs as follow:

Let the kid paste the different shapes to make a picture of house.

For me I added in some drawings like "sun", "flower" and we had fun scribble on it.
We had fun dancing around with the closing song of "Hokey Pokey".
As usual, my girl gave me a kiss and ended the lesson :)

The lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce letter "H"
3) Introduce phonics of H, sing phonics song of H
4) Let the kid label the pictures of objects starting with H
5) Prompting, spell out "house" and read the word
6) Craft
7) Colour the phonics sheet (optional)
8) Summary
9) Closing song

Development age: 2 years 7 mths
(every kid learns on their own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

Language Assessment at Infant Language Centre of NUS

I saw the request for toddlers to participate in a research on infant language development on Motherhood Forum and I signed Chloe up for that. The purpose of the research is to understand how babies learn their first words. In particular, this study is on bilingualism in children.
As transportation is fully covered (if you drive, they pay for your parking at NUS; if you take a cab, they pay for your cab fare by using your cab receipt on arrival x2), I do not mind bringing Chloe there for some fun.
When we were there, Chloe was asked to sit on my lap and listen to a set of words accompanied by pictures. We were video recorded and Chloe was monitored on her eyes movement as in the pictures that she looked at in response to the words. After watching the set of words and pictures in English and Chinese, I was asked to fill out a questionnaire on Chloe's language history which took me about 10 to 15 minutes.

At the end of the session, Chloe was given an assessment of her vocabulary development using standardized assessment instrument, she was asked to point to the picture after hearing the words in English and Chinese. The results was emailed to me after 2 weeks. Part of the analysis says this:


I was not surprised by the results, and it was never my intention to assess whether she's better in English or Chinese. However, this assessment has highlighted a few problems to me. No doubt she had demonstrated that she knows quite many English words, but her vocabulary is not strong. I think this problem lies on us, as we seldom read or show pictorial dictionary to her, and the worst is, when we speaks to her, we tend to say "this and that" instead of name the object. Besides, I presume she's speaking Chinese with babysitter but I overlook that in Singapore we speak Chinese by mixing English in between especially when we say the common names. E.g., when the researcher asked her about 巴士 (Ba1 Shi4 i.e. bas), she was unable to answer this question and I'd never thought that she does not know this simple word since I have been pointing her to the buses whenever we see one. This has triggered me to ensure that we speak better language to her and speak pure English or Chinese (this will be quite hard, imagine you got to say one sentence fully in Chinese without English term) to her. Our initial arrangement for her is that, I'll speak English to her while my husband will speak Chinese to her, but recently she had been speaking English to us more often and she starts to express her thoughts in English sentences, I guess my husband is not doing a good job and need to put in more efforts then, haha!
If your toddler is around 31 months old and you're interested to volunteer for the research, you may refer to the following for more details:
You may contact Ms. Calista Chan by email (psycjc@nus.edu.sg) or by phone at 6601 1718. Visit them at http://blog.nus.edu.sg/babytalk.
You'll be paid $20 for your contribution.