Thursday, December 29, 2011
Easy Phonics: When Two Vowels Go Walking
Easy as it is.
When 2 vowels appear in a word, the first one do the talking (i.e. the first vowel has a long sound and the second vowel is silent.
More practices here
Also see the Silent E rules.
Easy Phonics - Silent E
Silent E does not make a sound in a word, but it has the magic of turning the vowel long (i.e. make the vowel to say its own name).
Example, "cut" after added silent e becomes "cute". In this case, the "u" is pronounced as its name.
The video above has demonstrated interestingly how silent e works.
Other rules of silent e include:
1. Silent e makes the vowel long. (As explained above)
2. Words may not end in v so we add a silent e.
Example have, give
3. The silent e makes the c say /s/.
Example dance
4. The silent e makes the g say /j/.
Example large
5. Every syllable must have at least one vowel.
Example ap ple
(Other syllables that follow this rule: ble, cle, dle, gle, ple, tle)
6. When s is not doubled after two vowels or a consonant, add a silent e.
Example house
7. No reason silent e.
Example come
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Fun Class: L for Leaf
We went out for a walk before the lesson, and collected some leaves to be used for the lesson.
We started the lesson by singing the greeting song. Her daddy sit in for the lesson and with his help, I was able to record down the prompting, finally.
I prompted her to spell the word "leaf", and she was obedient to let her daddy record it:
(Do note that in this word, LEAF, E and A are vowels, when 2 vowels appear together, the first one make the long sound and the second one is silent, thus A should have no sound here, but as Chloe is not taught about this rule yet, I had sound the A when I prompted her)
This was the second lesson for letter "L", we listened to the phonics sound and song for letter "L" again:
"Lovely lollipop, l, l, l.... l is the sound of L!"
(If you are not familiar with the phonics sound of A-Z, you may click here)
In the first lesson on letter "L", she traced the letter and pasted the pictures of object spelled after "L". In this lesson, she labeled the pictures. She would spell and read the words before pasting them on the pictures.
I did not print the words beforehand, I wrote it on stickers. I thought it would be the same but it was not, she get too excited to see the stickers and she was a bit out of control, phew..... I shall stick back to print the words on a piece of paper and cut them out one by one.
The craft work was leaf printing. The materials were as follow, including the leaves we collected on our walk.
We began by painting a leaf. She chose the colour and paint it by herself. Brush painting is always her favourite colouring material.
After coloured the leaf, she pressed it on a piece of paper.
You may get a few different shapes of leaves and use different colours for each printing, the finished work would look like this:
The second craft work was to colour the leaf pictures, the pictures were cut out and pasted on fingers for rhyme singing.
The rhyme went like this:
"3 little leaves so bright and gay
was dancing about on a tree one day
The wind came blowing through the town
Woo.....wooo
1 little leaf came tumbling down
2 little leaves, 1 little leave..... no more leaf came tumbling down"
My husband commented the rhyme sound similar to the rhymes I've cited to her in my previous lessons, but it doesn't matter to me as long as she finds them interesting :)
There was no song for this lesson.
Lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Revise letter L by showing kid the alphabet
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of L
4) Kid labels pictures of object starting with letter L, spell and read the word before labeling.
5) Prompting
6) Leaf printing
7) Colour cut-out leaves and sing the rhyme
8) Summary
Development age: 2 years 9 mths
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)
I attended my phonics lesson for mummies here.
List of my fun classes:
1) A for Ant
2) A for Apple
3) B for Bubbles and Bear
4) C for Crocodile
5) C for Cake
6) D for Duck and Dog
7) E for Egg and Elephant
8) F for Frog
9) F for Fish
10) G for Goat
11) H for Horse
12) H for House
13) I for Insect
14) I for Indian
15) J for Jelly
16) J for Jack-in-the-box
17) K for Kettle
18) K for Kangaroo
19) L for lollipop
We started the lesson by singing the greeting song. Her daddy sit in for the lesson and with his help, I was able to record down the prompting, finally.
I prompted her to spell the word "leaf", and she was obedient to let her daddy record it:
(Do note that in this word, LEAF, E and A are vowels, when 2 vowels appear together, the first one make the long sound and the second one is silent, thus A should have no sound here, but as Chloe is not taught about this rule yet, I had sound the A when I prompted her)
This was the second lesson for letter "L", we listened to the phonics sound and song for letter "L" again:
"Lovely lollipop, l, l, l.... l is the sound of L!"
(If you are not familiar with the phonics sound of A-Z, you may click here)
In the first lesson on letter "L", she traced the letter and pasted the pictures of object spelled after "L". In this lesson, she labeled the pictures. She would spell and read the words before pasting them on the pictures.
I did not print the words beforehand, I wrote it on stickers. I thought it would be the same but it was not, she get too excited to see the stickers and she was a bit out of control, phew..... I shall stick back to print the words on a piece of paper and cut them out one by one.
The craft work was leaf printing. The materials were as follow, including the leaves we collected on our walk.
We began by painting a leaf. She chose the colour and paint it by herself. Brush painting is always her favourite colouring material.
After coloured the leaf, she pressed it on a piece of paper.
You may get a few different shapes of leaves and use different colours for each printing, the finished work would look like this:
The second craft work was to colour the leaf pictures, the pictures were cut out and pasted on fingers for rhyme singing.
The rhyme went like this:
"3 little leaves so bright and gay
was dancing about on a tree one day
The wind came blowing through the town
Woo.....wooo
1 little leaf came tumbling down
2 little leaves, 1 little leave..... no more leaf came tumbling down"
My husband commented the rhyme sound similar to the rhymes I've cited to her in my previous lessons, but it doesn't matter to me as long as she finds them interesting :)
There was no song for this lesson.
Lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Revise letter L by showing kid the alphabet
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of L
4) Kid labels pictures of object starting with letter L, spell and read the word before labeling.
5) Prompting
6) Leaf printing
7) Colour cut-out leaves and sing the rhyme
8) Summary
Development age: 2 years 9 mths
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)
I attended my phonics lesson for mummies here.
List of my fun classes:
1) A for Ant
2) A for Apple
3) B for Bubbles and Bear
4) C for Crocodile
5) C for Cake
6) D for Duck and Dog
7) E for Egg and Elephant
8) F for Frog
9) F for Fish
10) G for Goat
11) H for Horse
12) H for House
13) I for Insect
14) I for Indian
15) J for Jelly
16) J for Jack-in-the-box
17) K for Kettle
18) K for Kangaroo
19) L for lollipop
Fun Class: L for lollipop
Chloe had just recovered from fever. She requested for the fun class the day before but I told her that she need to rest as she was sick. We had the fun class the next day and she told me she was no longer sick.
She sang the greeting song and we started the lesson.
This was the first lesson on letter "L", she traced the letter on a paper.
We listened to the phonics sound of "L" and the phonics song, that went like this:
"Lovely lollipop, l, l, l.... l is the sound of L!"
(If you are not familiar with the phonics sound of A-Z, you may click here)
She picked the pictures of object spelled after L from an envelop, and pasted them on the paper.
I would enhance it by asking her "L for?" and she would answer me by referring to the pictures, example "L for Lion".
She coloured the phonics sheet of lollipops:
She was a little impatient nowadays and tend not to complete her drawing, but I would insist her to finish the colouring if not I would cancel the lesson (it works every time I threaten to cancel her fun class, ha!).
She and her colouring:
I prompted her to spell the word "lollipop", here is the video of her spelling the word but I missed the first part on prompting, if you would like to see a complete video, click here.
The craft work was doing five sticks of lollipops, the materials were:
She coloured the "lollipop" before pasting it on the straw:
We played with the "lollipops" and do the rhyme together:
The rhyme went like this:
"5 sticky lollipops fixed on stick
Take a sticky lollipop and lick, lick, lick
(continue with) 4 sticky lollipops.....3....2....1
No sticky lollipop fixed on stick
no sticky lollipop to lick, lick, lick"
She kissed me to end the lesson.
The lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce letter L, kid traces capital and small letter L
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of L
4) Kid takes pictures of object starting with letter L, names and pastes the pictures on an A4 paper.
5) Prompting
6) Colour the phonics sheet
7) Craft work on "Lollipop"
8) Summary
9) Sing the rhyme
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)
I attended my phonics lesson for mummies here.
List of my fun classes:
1) A for Ant
2) A for Apple
3) B for Bubbles and Bear
4) C for Crocodile
5) C for Cake
6) D for Duck and Dog
7) E for Egg and Elephant
8) F for Frog
9) F for Fish
10) G for Goat
11) H for Horse
12) H for House
13) I for Insect
14) I for Indian
15) J for Jelly
16) J for Jack-in-the-box
17) K for Kettle
18) K for Kangaroo
She sang the greeting song and we started the lesson.
This was the first lesson on letter "L", she traced the letter on a paper.
We listened to the phonics sound of "L" and the phonics song, that went like this:
"Lovely lollipop, l, l, l.... l is the sound of L!"
(If you are not familiar with the phonics sound of A-Z, you may click here)
She picked the pictures of object spelled after L from an envelop, and pasted them on the paper.
I would enhance it by asking her "L for?" and she would answer me by referring to the pictures, example "L for Lion".
She coloured the phonics sheet of lollipops:
She was a little impatient nowadays and tend not to complete her drawing, but I would insist her to finish the colouring if not I would cancel the lesson (it works every time I threaten to cancel her fun class, ha!).
She and her colouring:
I prompted her to spell the word "lollipop", here is the video of her spelling the word but I missed the first part on prompting, if you would like to see a complete video, click here.
The craft work was doing five sticks of lollipops, the materials were:
She coloured the "lollipop" before pasting it on the straw:
We played with the "lollipops" and do the rhyme together:
The rhyme went like this:
"5 sticky lollipops fixed on stick
Take a sticky lollipop and lick, lick, lick
(continue with) 4 sticky lollipops.....3....2....1
No sticky lollipop fixed on stick
no sticky lollipop to lick, lick, lick"
She kissed me to end the lesson.
The lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce letter L, kid traces capital and small letter L
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of L
4) Kid takes pictures of object starting with letter L, names and pastes the pictures on an A4 paper.
5) Prompting
6) Colour the phonics sheet
7) Craft work on "Lollipop"
8) Summary
9) Sing the rhyme
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)
I attended my phonics lesson for mummies here.
List of my fun classes:
1) A for Ant
2) A for Apple
3) B for Bubbles and Bear
4) C for Crocodile
5) C for Cake
6) D for Duck and Dog
7) E for Egg and Elephant
8) F for Frog
9) F for Fish
10) G for Goat
11) H for Horse
12) H for House
13) I for Insect
14) I for Indian
15) J for Jelly
16) J for Jack-in-the-box
17) K for Kettle
18) K for Kangaroo
Fun Class - K for Kangaroo
Chloe was very excited when I accepted her request to have Fun Class (yes, she's always the one initiates it and not me). She happily sang the Greeting Song and even a few versions in "Good afternoon", "Good evening" and a "Happy Birthday" song (don't ask me why did she sing this song......).
This was the second lesson for letter "K", we listened to the phonics song once again:
"Kings and Kangaroos, k, k, k.... k is the sound of K!"
(If you are not familiar with the phonics sound of A-Z, you may click here)
In the first lesson on letter "K", she traced the letter and pasted the pictures of object spelled after "K". In this lesson, she labeled the pictures. She would spell and read the words before pasting them on the pictures.
I prompted her to spell the word "Kangaroo".
She spelled the word in this video:
I managed to record a complete video on prompting in the lesson of "L for Leaf", click here to view.
The craft work was a rocking kangaroo by using the paper plate, she coloured the kangaroo before pasting it on the half folded paper plate.
The finished product looked like this:
We dance with the closing song of "The Animals went in Two by Two". The melody was the same as the "The ants go marching", we had fun marching around the study room.
She gave me a hug to end the lesson.
Lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Revise letter K by showing kid the alphabet
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of K
4) Kid labels pictures of object starting with letter K, spell and read the word before labeling.
5) Prompting
6) Craft work on "Kangaroo"
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)
I attended my phonics lesson for mummies here.
List of my fun classes:
1) A for Ant
2) A for Apple
3) B for Bubbles and Bear
4) C for Crocodile
5) C for Cake
6) D for Duck and Dog
7) E for Egg and Elephant
8) F for Frog
9) F for Fish
10) G for Goat
11) H for Horse
12) H for House
13) I for Insect
14) I for Indian
15) J for Jelly
16) J for Jack-in-the-box
17) K for Kettle
This was the second lesson for letter "K", we listened to the phonics song once again:
"Kings and Kangaroos, k, k, k.... k is the sound of K!"
(If you are not familiar with the phonics sound of A-Z, you may click here)
In the first lesson on letter "K", she traced the letter and pasted the pictures of object spelled after "K". In this lesson, she labeled the pictures. She would spell and read the words before pasting them on the pictures.
I prompted her to spell the word "Kangaroo".
She spelled the word in this video:
I managed to record a complete video on prompting in the lesson of "L for Leaf", click here to view.
The craft work was a rocking kangaroo by using the paper plate, she coloured the kangaroo before pasting it on the half folded paper plate.
The finished product looked like this:
We dance with the closing song of "The Animals went in Two by Two". The melody was the same as the "The ants go marching", we had fun marching around the study room.
She gave me a hug to end the lesson.
Lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Revise letter K by showing kid the alphabet
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of K
4) Kid labels pictures of object starting with letter K, spell and read the word before labeling.
5) Prompting
6) Craft work on "Kangaroo"
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)
I attended my phonics lesson for mummies here.
List of my fun classes:
1) A for Ant
2) A for Apple
3) B for Bubbles and Bear
4) C for Crocodile
5) C for Cake
6) D for Duck and Dog
7) E for Egg and Elephant
8) F for Frog
9) F for Fish
10) G for Goat
11) H for Horse
12) H for House
13) I for Insect
14) I for Indian
15) J for Jelly
16) J for Jack-in-the-box
17) K for Kettle
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Fun Class - K for Kettle
We started the lesson after singing the greeting song. I've uploaded a video of Chloe singing the greeting song, do check it out!
We listened to the phonics sound of "K" and the phonics song, that went like this:
"Kings and Kangaroos, k, k, k.... k is the sound of K!"
(If you are not familiar with the phonics sound of A-Z, you may click here)
She pointed at the words when we sang the phonics song.
After introducing letter K, she traced the letter on a paper.
She would then picked the pictures of object spelled after K from an envelop, and pasted them on the paper.
She would name the pictures before pasting on the paper, and I would ask her question "K for?" and she would answer me "K for kettle" and etc.
She coloured the phonics sheet with the picture of a "King" and "Kangaroo".
Nowadays she got the habit of scribbling, she told me she was writing "kangaroo", can you figure out what was she writing?
The craft work for this lesson would be pasting the aluminum foil on the picture of a kettle. The materials were:
I helped her put the glue and she pasted the aluminum on the paper by herself. I helped her touch up the work and it looked like this after completion:
I prompted her to spell the word "kettle"
The closing song for this lesson was "Polly Put the Kettle On". Here was the lyrics:
"Polly put the kettle on x3
We'll all have tea
Suki take it off again x3
They've all gone away"
Chloe said "Thank you" to me to end the lesson.
P.s. she likes to call me "Teacher mummy" nowadays, it all started when there was once she asked me "You Teacher Maria (her weekend enrichment class teacher)?" and I said "No", she then said "you teacher Mummy?" Ha, I'd since got another title from her.
The lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce letter K, kid traces capital and small letter K
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of K
4) Kid takes pictures of object starting with letter K, names and pastes the pictures on an A4 paper.
5) Prompting
6) Colour the phonics sheet
7) Craft work on "Kettle"
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)
I attended my phonics lesson for mummies here.
List of my fun classes:
1) A for Ant
2) A for Apple
3) B for Bubbles and Bear
4) C for Crocodile
5) C for Cake
6) D for Duck and Dog
7) E for Egg and Elephant
8) F for Frog
9) F for Fish
10) G for Goat
11) H for Horse
12) H for House
13) I for Insect
14) I for Indian
15) J for Jelly
16) J for Jack-in-the-box
17) K for Kettle
We listened to the phonics sound of "K" and the phonics song, that went like this:
"Kings and Kangaroos, k, k, k.... k is the sound of K!"
(If you are not familiar with the phonics sound of A-Z, you may click here)
She pointed at the words when we sang the phonics song.
After introducing letter K, she traced the letter on a paper.
She would then picked the pictures of object spelled after K from an envelop, and pasted them on the paper.
She would name the pictures before pasting on the paper, and I would ask her question "K for?" and she would answer me "K for kettle" and etc.
She coloured the phonics sheet with the picture of a "King" and "Kangaroo".
Nowadays she got the habit of scribbling, she told me she was writing "kangaroo", can you figure out what was she writing?
The craft work for this lesson would be pasting the aluminum foil on the picture of a kettle. The materials were:
I helped her put the glue and she pasted the aluminum on the paper by herself. I helped her touch up the work and it looked like this after completion:
I prompted her to spell the word "kettle"
The closing song for this lesson was "Polly Put the Kettle On". Here was the lyrics:
"Polly put the kettle on x3
We'll all have tea
Suki take it off again x3
They've all gone away"
Chloe said "Thank you" to me to end the lesson.
P.s. she likes to call me "Teacher mummy" nowadays, it all started when there was once she asked me "You Teacher Maria (her weekend enrichment class teacher)?" and I said "No", she then said "you teacher Mummy?" Ha, I'd since got another title from her.
The lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce letter K, kid traces capital and small letter K
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of K
4) Kid takes pictures of object starting with letter K, names and pastes the pictures on an A4 paper.
5) Prompting
6) Colour the phonics sheet
7) Craft work on "Kettle"
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)
I attended my phonics lesson for mummies here.
List of my fun classes:
1) A for Ant
2) A for Apple
3) B for Bubbles and Bear
4) C for Crocodile
5) C for Cake
6) D for Duck and Dog
7) E for Egg and Elephant
8) F for Frog
9) F for Fish
10) G for Goat
11) H for Horse
12) H for House
13) I for Insect
14) I for Indian
15) J for Jelly
16) J for Jack-in-the-box
17) K for Kettle
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Teaching your one year old toddler
What can an one year old learn? Well, I'm not an expert in this area but here are what I do with my one year old boy:
1) Talking to him
I guess many mothers know the benefits of talking to their babies or toddlers, but many are too lazy to practice it as they seldom get a response. I must admit that I need to put more efforts in this area too, and I have definitely neglected my boy since most of my time are with my elder daughter.
I listed this as the number one point as I find it the most important activity among all, and I have seen many of those speech advanced kids with talkative parent(s).
Many parents think that babies or young toddlers can not speak, thus can not learn, this mentality is very wrong. Babies or young toddlers can not speak, but they do learn, especially from the parents or whoever spends most of the time with them.
Do not be discouraged if your kid is not responding when you talk to him, he is most probably inputting the knowledge to his brain and he will speak to you when it is time.
What to talk to the baby or toddler? This was a problem to me when my girl was still a baby, as I was not a talkative person. So I talked to her on what we see on the way home, on the TV program, on the books or the toys she was playing, anything I could think of.
My girl is currently 2 years 8 months old, she is not very advance comparing to other kids, but she do chat with me, e.g. "mummy where (are) we going?", "Go there buy what?", "You want to go?", and etc, sometimes I feel that she has really grown up.
2) Reading books
We visited library almost once a week, as library is conveniently situated at shopping centre which we will go for our dinner every weekend.
My girl does not really like reading books, but my boy can pay more attention to books. I borrow many baby books like those 'touch' books, flap books or pictorial books for him.
I guess boys have more curiosity and like to explore around. Sometimes I see him touching the books, flipping the pages or opening the flaps. There was once he pointed at a banana and said "nana", or saw a dog and said "whoaf", and the most funny part is he said "mum mum" when he saw food.
If your kid likes book, give him more!
3) Playing toys
There are many good toys around that you can let your kid plays. I believe strongly young kids learn from playing and not from formal learning environment. They have short focus span, do not expect them to pay attention for more than 15 minutes!
This is why I introduce my fun class to my girl, while learning an alphabet, I mix the lesson with craft work, song, dance, and colouring, you may refer to here for my fun classes.
Other good educational toys would be jigsaw puzzle, ABC magnets or games, big blocks, shapes sorting, musical toys and etc.
4) Flashing cards
Flash cards are definitely beneficial to your kids, but a lazy mother like me would do it lesser. Research has shown that kids can pick up many words (even thousands!) if you repeatedly flashing a group of cards to your kid. I do not doubt that kids have excellent memory on repetitive learning, but this is something which I do not enjoy doing, I thus do it lesser.
If you have the time and would like to improve your kid's memory, go ahead and do it! However do enjoy the process and do not emphasize on the outcome, as it takes time for the kid to show you the result, at least after he can speak :)
5) Watching DVD
Watching TV might not be a good idea, but if you control the time your kid spend on TV, educational DVD can be a good choice. I have let my kids watched Leap Frog series (my girl picked up ABC there), Your Baby Can Read, and Wordworld.
They do pick up new things from TV, but I try to reduce the time they spend on TV, as many young kids are wearing thick glasses nowadays, and I definitely do not wish my kids to be part of them.
6) Don't forget outdoor!
Learning is not restricted to just books, don't forget to bring your kid to outdoor!
There are many places your kid can have fun, places like Zoo, farms, beach, swimming pool are great for the kids to explore! Even if you're bringing your kid to shopping, don't forget to check the directory as many shopping centres has outdoor playground and water play, which include NEX at Serangoon, IMM at Jurong East, Shembawang Shopping Centre at Sembawang and North point at Yishun.
7) Singing or dancing
Many kids like listening to music and dancing, I have not seen any kid that does not like it. My girl would dance whenever she heard music when she was just few months old, I thought my boy would be different, but he is not.
My boy likes music too, he will also sing and dance when he hears the music, just like his sister:
My girl also picks up words from the nursery songs, now I let her listen to Chinese nursery songs and she can now sing "三轮车" and "我的朋友在哪里？"
8) Anything
When I say anything it is really anything. Anything can be a learning material to your kid. It can be something that they see everyday, e.g. my girl would use the TV remote control as her handphone and pretend talking to someone, she plays the coins in her piggy bank and learns 10, 20, 50 cents while my boy will put the pen cover on his finger and play around with it, he also craws in and out the carton box which I made it into a house.
Besides the list above, there are also many things you can do with your kid, e.g. scribble on the drawing board, craft works like origami, playing balloon and etc. Whatever they do, they will learn something, and believe me, anything can be interesting to them, it needs not burn a hole in your pocket :)
1) Talking to him
I guess many mothers know the benefits of talking to their babies or toddlers, but many are too lazy to practice it as they seldom get a response. I must admit that I need to put more efforts in this area too, and I have definitely neglected my boy since most of my time are with my elder daughter.
I listed this as the number one point as I find it the most important activity among all, and I have seen many of those speech advanced kids with talkative parent(s).
Many parents think that babies or young toddlers can not speak, thus can not learn, this mentality is very wrong. Babies or young toddlers can not speak, but they do learn, especially from the parents or whoever spends most of the time with them.
Do not be discouraged if your kid is not responding when you talk to him, he is most probably inputting the knowledge to his brain and he will speak to you when it is time.
What to talk to the baby or toddler? This was a problem to me when my girl was still a baby, as I was not a talkative person. So I talked to her on what we see on the way home, on the TV program, on the books or the toys she was playing, anything I could think of.
My girl is currently 2 years 8 months old, she is not very advance comparing to other kids, but she do chat with me, e.g. "mummy where (are) we going?", "Go there buy what?", "You want to go?", and etc, sometimes I feel that she has really grown up.
2) Reading books
We visited library almost once a week, as library is conveniently situated at shopping centre which we will go for our dinner every weekend.
My girl does not really like reading books, but my boy can pay more attention to books. I borrow many baby books like those 'touch' books, flap books or pictorial books for him.
I guess boys have more curiosity and like to explore around. Sometimes I see him touching the books, flipping the pages or opening the flaps. There was once he pointed at a banana and said "nana", or saw a dog and said "whoaf", and the most funny part is he said "mum mum" when he saw food.
If your kid likes book, give him more!
3) Playing toys
There are many good toys around that you can let your kid plays. I believe strongly young kids learn from playing and not from formal learning environment. They have short focus span, do not expect them to pay attention for more than 15 minutes!
This is why I introduce my fun class to my girl, while learning an alphabet, I mix the lesson with craft work, song, dance, and colouring, you may refer to here for my fun classes.
Other good educational toys would be jigsaw puzzle, ABC magnets or games, big blocks, shapes sorting, musical toys and etc.
4) Flashing cards
Flash cards are definitely beneficial to your kids, but a lazy mother like me would do it lesser. Research has shown that kids can pick up many words (even thousands!) if you repeatedly flashing a group of cards to your kid. I do not doubt that kids have excellent memory on repetitive learning, but this is something which I do not enjoy doing, I thus do it lesser.
If you have the time and would like to improve your kid's memory, go ahead and do it! However do enjoy the process and do not emphasize on the outcome, as it takes time for the kid to show you the result, at least after he can speak :)
5) Watching DVD
Watching TV might not be a good idea, but if you control the time your kid spend on TV, educational DVD can be a good choice. I have let my kids watched Leap Frog series (my girl picked up ABC there), Your Baby Can Read, and Wordworld.
They do pick up new things from TV, but I try to reduce the time they spend on TV, as many young kids are wearing thick glasses nowadays, and I definitely do not wish my kids to be part of them.
6) Don't forget outdoor!
Learning is not restricted to just books, don't forget to bring your kid to outdoor!
There are many places your kid can have fun, places like Zoo, farms, beach, swimming pool are great for the kids to explore! Even if you're bringing your kid to shopping, don't forget to check the directory as many shopping centres has outdoor playground and water play, which include NEX at Serangoon, IMM at Jurong East, Shembawang Shopping Centre at Sembawang and North point at Yishun.
7) Singing or dancing
Many kids like listening to music and dancing, I have not seen any kid that does not like it. My girl would dance whenever she heard music when she was just few months old, I thought my boy would be different, but he is not.
My boy likes music too, he will also sing and dance when he hears the music, just like his sister:
My girl also picks up words from the nursery songs, now I let her listen to Chinese nursery songs and she can now sing "三轮车" and "我的朋友在哪里？"
8) Anything
When I say anything it is really anything. Anything can be a learning material to your kid. It can be something that they see everyday, e.g. my girl would use the TV remote control as her handphone and pretend talking to someone, she plays the coins in her piggy bank and learns 10, 20, 50 cents while my boy will put the pen cover on his finger and play around with it, he also craws in and out the carton box which I made it into a house.
Besides the list above, there are also many things you can do with your kid, e.g. scribble on the drawing board, craft works like origami, playing balloon and etc. Whatever they do, they will learn something, and believe me, anything can be interesting to them, it needs not burn a hole in your pocket :)
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
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)
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)
Monday, December 5, 2011
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)
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)
Friday, November 25, 2011
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)
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:
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:
Friday, November 4, 2011
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)
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)
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