Your Baby Can Read DVD

Chloe has been watching this DVD since she was 5 months old, she reduced watching it after turning one year old. The reason of me introducing this series of DVD to her was to make her sit still while I was feeding her, as it catches her attention. Frankly, she did not sign the words like what Aleka did in the DVD, but still I believe she had picked up those basic words, but not showing she knows.
After she turned one year old, I let her expose to other DVDs which were more fun to her. And recently I started letting my 9 month son to watch this YBCR DVD and my girl got the chance to revisit it.
First of all, this is really a good DVD for babies. When I　first watched the DVD, I was thinking can the babies pick up those words as the words were flashing on the screen very quickly, but after letting both my kids watched it, the answer is yes. When Chloe watched it as a baby, she knew what's the next word or picture coming after seeing the word. Now my son, after watching the DVD for a few times, he will hold his arms up when he sees and hears "arms up". Another benefit of this DVD to me is, it can make my son sit down and have his porridge while watching it!
Now, Chloe is 2.5 years old, this DVD no longer captures her attention like what it did when she was a baby. However, when she watches the DVD with her brother, she tends to spell out the words and read the word, she is no longer in the memorizing stage but into the spelling stage.

Fun Class: G for Goat!

This was the second lesson of letter "G", the first lesson was on "grapes". I normally give her 2 lessons on a letter and one lesson per week.
After Greeting Song, I let her label the pictures on letter "G". I let her take the pictures from a bag and paste on the letter paper in the first lesson, and let her label the pictures in second lesson.

She would spell out the word and pronounce it before pasting the label.
I let her listen to phonics song on letter "G", as I had downloaded all the phonics songs into my IPhone, she had been listening to the songs and quite familiar with the songs.
I told her we are learning G for Goat that day, and prompted her for the word:

The arts craft for this lesson was a puppet story on the 3 billy goats, a pretty fun story for her. First, she coloured the puppets of billy goats and troll (a new word she learned).

For younger toddler, do not expect them to colour all the items nicely themselves, some help would be needed and I would help her to touch up the colouring.

Note: do buy those crayons which are soft and easy to colour, as young toddlers are still learning the hands grasping skill, they would not like those hard crayons or colour pencil. I bought my crayons from Daiso at $2 only.
Here is the finished product:

After the puppets were done, I used it to tell her the story of "3 Billy Goats and a Troll", the story given by Jann was a bit too long, I did not follow it but tell my own story. Generally it was about the 3 goats trying to cross the bridge where the stroll was living under. Put a little exaggerated expression while telling the story and you should get a very good result :)
As usual, we sang the closing song, and Chloe gave me a hug and said "thank you mummy!" to end the lesson.

The lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce phonics of G, sing phonics song of G
3) Let the kids label the pictures of objects starting with G done in previous lesson
4) Prompting
5) Tell the kid today we're learning G for Goat
6) Art craft on the goats and troll puppet
7) Summary
8) Closing song

Zoo-phonics, from Zoo Toddler to Zoo Kid

Chloe joined Zoo Toddler class of Zoo-phonics since April this year. See my verdict on Zoo-phonics here.
Zoo Toddler is an one hour enrichment class once a week, which she attended every Saturday. Last month, the admin of Zoo-phonics asked if we would like to upgrade Chloe to Zoo Kids programme, which is also an one hour enrichment class once a week but without parent assistance, which means she'll have to attend the class herself. As Chloe is not attending nursery school yet, we take this chance to train up her independence.
She seems to like the class and willing to go to school every Saturday morning, but she is still crying before entering the class even after the 3rd lesson. I'm not too worry about this as the teacher told me she has been adapting well in the class, and she has been showing me smiley face whenever I fetch her back home. One thing I like Zoo-phonics Serangoon Branch very much is that they're very professional and I can really entrust them with my girl.
Last week, she brought back a revision book from the school, I must said this class is more academic than her previous toddler class, where she was just singing songs and having fun in the class. Here are a few pages from the book:




The teacher did told me that Chloe was not participating in class, a lot of her works were assisted by the teacher, but I'm not worry about it, I think she's progressing well.

Update on 29 Nov 2011:
Chloe has adapted well in the Zoo Kid class. She likes the teacher and school very much that she'll wake up early every Saturday and the moment she wakes up she'll request to go to school.
Chloe will be promoted to Inny Inchworm Class next year January. This class is for those 4 years old kids but Chloe will only be 3 years old in March 2012. She'll be trained to write alphabets and numbers in the class. I shall update on her progress after she attended the lesson next year.

Update in 2012:
Chloe did not join Inny Inchworm Class as I've withdrawn her after she started nursery school at Carpe Diem. 

Origami promotes creativity in toddlers

Origami means "folding paper" in Japanese, it is an ancient Japanese art of folding the paper. When I was young, I did not know that folding paper into an object had this beautiful name called "origami", all I did know was I enjoyed playing with the papers.
My mum is good in Origami. She is the one that teaches me how to fold boat, aeroplane, frog, crane, ball and etc. I remember playing the paper boat on small pond near my house, it was really fun.
I believe Origami can promote creativity, imagine folding a crane from just a piece of paper, isn't it fun? I also think that Origami can enhance the bonding between parents and children, just like how my mum did with me.
Last Sunday I did Origami with my daughter. I can see that she was amazed at what I was doing. She kept asking me, "mummy, what (are) you doing?". When I fold the paper, she was staring at my paper, I told her that I was folding a bird. After I had done, I showed her the paper crane, and moved its wings so that it looked like flying, my girl was trilled at it.
After a while, she took another piece of red paper, crushed it and threw it up, she told me "mummy, Chloe made bird", haha!
The "bird" (crush) made by Chloe

You can get this type of origami paper from Daiso at $2 per pack. See my post on Daiso here if you're interested.

Some Origami diagrams:
Frog

Crane

Pigeon

For more diagrams click here.

Why toddlers need to maintain their first teeth?

By theory everyone knows that we need to keep our teeth healthy, but I’m very sure many parents do not place importance on maintaining their toddlers’ first teeth, and I doubt parents really brush their toddlers’ teeth when their toddlers are one year plus, which is suggested by the expert.
Kids will lose all their first teeth anyway! I was once among those who think this way, until I heard a radio program on the importance of dental hygiene for toddlers.
Yes, baby first teeth will drop and be replaced by the permanent teeth, but mind you, the permanent teeth only grow out when the kids are around 6 years old. I’m sure no one likes to be called “bo geh” (toothless) in his or her childhood, and this will not only affect the appearance of the kid, but also the digestion of food when the kid eats. Moreover, these primary teeth hold the right spaces for the permanent teeth. Children with tooth decay problems will also suffer from emotional distress, and have the higher tendency of related gum diseases.
One interesting point highlighted by the dentist in the radio program was that, children need to brush their teeth with fluoride toothpaste, he said, only fluoride gives protection to the enamel of the teeth. This is contrary to what we read or heard, children below four cannot use fluoride toothpaste as they tend to swallow the toothpaste instead of rinse it away. If a child swallow too much of fluoride, it can cause the child with a tooth condition called fluorosis. According to Wikipedia, “fluorosis appears as tiny white streaks or specks that are often unnoticeable. The spots and stains left by fluorosis are permanent. They may darken over time.” This is the reason why, most of the toothpastes used by kids are fluoride-free. But the dentist had his argument over it, he said so far, only fluoride was medically proven to protect the tooth enamel from decay, and when brushing teeth, the moderate usage of toothpaste will not result in excessive consumption that could lead to fluorosis.
So what is my take? Well, the dentist is right that only fluoride is medically proven to protect tooth from decay, but it is also right that kids like to swallow toothpaste instead of spitting it. I do want my kids to have good dental hygiene but I also do not want her to get fluorosis especially our water supplies are already with fluoride. So, I will let my girl use the fluoride-free toothpaste till the time she knows how to rinse her mouth.
Getting the concept right doesn’t mean you can now start to do the right thing. Majority of the toddlers especially those below three refuse to brush their teeth, or let others touch their teeth. You probably need to spend more time on getting them to brush teeth than deciding on fluoride or fluoride-free toothpaste. For me, I let my girl used the toothbrush without toothpaste initially, she was not interested in it. I then bought a toothbrush with Spongebob design, and the Orajel training toothpaste with fruity favourite and Thomas train packaging. The miracle works and she now likes to brush her teeth. You might want to try it out.

Fun Class - F for Fish

Finally, I have time to carry out the second lesson of letter F. When you have more than 1 kid, it is really quite difficult to sit down and let one of the kids concentrate on his or her study. Well, I finally made used of the 1 hour before cooking the lunch on Sunday, whereby my hubby can help taking care of the little boy.

After greeting song, I take out the Letter F paper with pasted pictures done in previous lesson, and let Chloe paste the word of each pictures on it.

Chloe will spell out each word and read each word. I find this method good, and I'll continue doing this for her future lesson, i.e. one lesson on getting the pictures out from a bag and paste on the letter paper, the second lesson on labeling the picture.

After the letter F pictures chart, I let her listen to the phonics song of F, and told her we are going to learn F for fish today.

She coloured the picture of a fish with paint. After painting, we did prompting for the word "fish". She is still not familiar with prompting, but is ok, I just want to introduce her the idea of prompting slowly.
The handicraft for this lesson was very interesting, it was a fishing game. All you need will be a chopstick which you can get from those hawker stalls, a string, a magnet bar where you probably can cut from those free gift usually sent by post (if you really can't find then you can buy from the stationery shop), some paper clips and self drawing of fish.

I let Chloe colour the fishes with crayon.

After colouring, just clip the paper clip on it. Let the child count the fishes, which enhances their mathematics at the same time.

Tie the string to the chopstick, and tie the magnet at the other end of the string, and the fishing rope is done. Chloe likes to play this game:

I believe the adults will find it interesting too, I was eager to try it out after she had done :)


We sang the closing song of Once I Caught a Fish Alive, and Chloe gave me a hug and said "thank you mummy!"

The lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce phonics of F, sing phonics song of F
3) Let the kids label the pictures of objects start with F done in previous lesson
4) Prompting
5) Tell the kid today we're learning F for Fish
6) Art craft on the Fish
7) Summary
8) Closing song

Fun Class: F for Frog

Chloe: Mummy, Fun Class?
Me: Em....
Chloe: F for Frog ah?
Me:......

My girl will ask me whether there will be Fun Class for her every time I fetch her home from babysitter's house. And she can always guess what I'll be teaching her next, amazing......

We started the lesson with "Greeting Song" (click here for the song), I showed her letter F printed on A4 paper, let her trace the letter. She's very familiar with the procedure by now, she would immediately trace the letter without me telling her. I then let her listen to the phonics song of F, and let her take out pictures of item start with letter F from a bag. The pictures consisted of "frog, fish, fork, flower, french fries". I let her paste the pictures on the Letter F A4 paper.


She purposely showed me a black face when i took out my camera, below picture showed the true mischievous her....


Whenever she took out one picture from the bag, I would ask her what is that and she would answer me before pasting the picture on the letter F paper. I used this method for lesson A, I then stopped using it for the subsequent lessons, but I still prefer this method as it was fun to her and she did pick up words from here, so I introduced back this method in this letter F lesson.

I told her we were going to learn F for frog. I prompted her to spell "frog". I wanted to take down the video of the prompting, but she was not cooperating, I would try to record it in future, but generally prompting is about pronouncing the phonics of the letters in a word and let the kid spells the word. For younger kid, you will have to prompt letter by letter.

I let her do the handicraft of frog, for which she pasted the crepe paper on the body of a picture of frog.

She had little patience on the pasting, so I had got to help her with it.


I then let her paint the head of the frog, which was something she likes to do, so no problem with it. After finished painting, let it dry, and cut a small hole on the mouth of the frog, and put through a blower, which acted like the tongue of the frog.


Chloe really likes this frog craft, for the first time she played this for at least 15 minutes! The result was of course the blower got damaged, but she was still playing it till I promised to buy her another blower to replace it.

We sang the closing song "Mr frog".

She ended the lesson by giving me a hug and saying "thank you" to me.

The lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce phonics of F, sing phonics song of F
3) Let the kids see pictures of objects start with F
4) Prompting
5) Tell the kid today we're learning F for Frog
6) Art craft on the Frog
7) Summary
8) Closing song