Little Thew Thew Tot School

ABC & Chinese words

2011-05-23T16:28:00.000-07:00

Berries teacher wrote "please revise" on his worksheet, which made me guilty because I did not revise.

Therefore I asked hubby to help him to revise. Initially they had great fun and he started to recall about half of his words. However as time passed, Matthew became distracted and did not want to learn while daddy became fierce and punishing.

Matthew started to reject revising the chinese words. While making him revise yesterday, I told him that I would not punish him. He continued to play with his car and an idea came to him. Why not let him play with his car and revise the chinese words at the same time?

It worked. I made his cars go through the words and made them recognise the words by parking on the card. He had lots of fun and was very happy.

As for ABC, I decided I would go through all the phonics sound even though he knew most of them using abc twiggles as my resource. Then I would make him do the assessment book for the related letter.

After which we would move onto "learn to read" and phonics method used by "tamarind".

This method would integrate all my ideas and resources while saving time to focus on teaching him. Afterall, the reason why I would always start and stop was because I could not integrate everything into a wholesome plan.

But now here it is.

Marine Life

2011-02-21T06:33:00.000-08:00

We watched a play at Esplanade, The Magic Ocean. Meant for children between 2 to 4 years old, Matthew thoroughly enjoyed himself. I also bumped into my JC friend who was the performer for the play.

After watching the play, we went to Sentosa for a short swim at the beach as it was raining. Followed by a visit to the Underwater world. What a day.

The next day, Little M dreamt about the starfish on his car bed pillow. LOL.

It was followed up by his painting of rainbow, starfish(using his finger tips) and water.

Then he played with his marine animal figurines.

Books that we read

湯母去沙灘

Dr Seuss - One fish, Two fish, blue fish, red fish

Valentine's Day 2011

2011-02-21T06:28:00.001-08:00

For Valentine's Day

We did a heart shaped sun catcher and read the following books.

1	B23606709K	If kisses were colors	01/03/2011
2	B23607895G	Panda's Valentine's Day	01/03/2011
3	B20380766J	I'll always love you	01/03/2011
4	B23531576J	Daddy loves me	01/03/2011

Mummy got these! Papa confessed that after he ordered the roses, then he remembered that Mummy's favourite flowers were tulips. Mummy was still delighted with Papa's gesture

25 Jan 2011 - 1st day of school all by himself at Berries

2011-01-25T07:36:00.000-08:00

After hearing from dear pal Jo that Berries is taking in students born in 2008, I called up and emailed various branches, Orchard, West Coast, Pandan Valley and Bukit Batok to check the slots available.

My preferred slots on weekends were packed and I could only put Little M on the waiting list. Finally found a Tuesday evening 7.30pm slot at Bukit Batok and I could bring Little M to his class except once every 2 months when I have my NC meeting.

Prior to going to school, I bought him a toy car as a present for 1st day of school and gave him a brave boy sweet. I told him that he would be brave after eating that sweet. When we reached the school, he walked away, pulled my hand towards the other direction and kept saying that he wanted to go home. I carried him into the classroom and he settled down soon after. Even when I left the room without saying goodbye, he was ok.

His class came out of the room twice. Once to go toilet break and the second time to go to the other room to watch a cartoon. They put their hands on one another's shoulder and walked in a single file. He was smiling when he walked past me.

Another milestone. My little M at school. Achieved without any tears.

Hooked on Phonics

2011-01-04T06:11:00.000-08:00

I ordered this on 16 Dec and it arrived on 30 Dec, just in time for New Year.

Very eager to start this program so I popped in the disc for him once I reached home.

I certainly hope that he would pick up Phonics slowly from this system.

http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Read-Kindergarten-Complete-Exclusive/dp/160499178X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294150462&sr=8-1

Christmas Theme

2010-12-31T16:50:00.000-08:00

A recap on Christmas Theme

We did the following

1. Pre-writing of Christmas theme cards

2. Clipping clothes peg to the numbers

3. Jigsaw of Christmas Tree

4. Counting Candy Canes

All downloaded from Confession of a homeschooler

Here are some pictures.

Beginning to Read?

2010-12-30T04:53:00.000-08:00

30 Dec 2010, Thursday

This morning, M was playing with his phone, which had coloured buttons and labels on them.
Then he started saying out the letters, y e l l o w ...Yellow.
Usually he would read from right to left but he did not this time round.
Has he started reading??

I purchased Hooked on Phonics Kindergarden from Amazon on 16 Dec and it has reached me on 30 Dec. So fast.
Should be starting him on this set soon.
I hope he can learn to read fast so that I can do less reading to him...kekekeke

Playschool milestones at 2 years old

2010-12-03T07:56:00.000-08:00

Playdough. When M was younger, he hated to get his hands dirty and refused to play with dough. Since he turned 2 and I bought him a breakfast playdough set, he has accepted playing with dough and did not mind the dirt.

Clothes Peg. He has learnt to clip the wooden clothes peg.

Sorting buttons. He has also learn to sort the buttons by colour and even by shapes.

F for Family

2010-11-16T17:45:00.000-08:00

Some do a dot art (M's language - art dot)

Family Tree

Music and Video

I found this sesame street podcast featuring alphabets as well as hooked on phonics on itunes. They are available for free.

Played this website of household sounds

http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/household.html

We looked at pictures of homes around the world

Books

Violet's house

Here comes the babies

We also played with Jigsaw "Are you my mother"

E for elephant

2010-10-10T10:44:00.000-07:00

Attempting to draw an elephant

Do a Dot elephant

Kite playdough

Capital E & small E matching. M did not really like this game.

Colouring by numbers. Left side done by M. Right side done by me.

Other E activities

Song: One elephant went out to play

Craft: Elephant toilet roll

Book: Shu Xiao Di series

Pre-writing E

D for Dogs

2010-08-21T14:04:00.001-07:00

D is for Dogs. Naughty M has been chasing Mico, my dog around with a broom stick recently. So I thought I better teach him how to be a responsible Dog owner together with the letter D.

Here's the lapbook. I simply love the picture of Matthew and Mico together with the heart.

Too busy for Tot School recently as I had been setting up this baby from Ikea above and clearing things from my study to give Little M as room of his own.

This is my tot school store area and trays.

This strider bike was meant to be his birthday present. But I could not resist telling him about it. Oh well he was quite excited when daddy fixed it up.

As bro and my birthday are pretty close (July and Aug), Little M went through 2 birthday cake cutting sessions and learnt to sing Happy Birthday. Now whenever he played his piano, he would say that he was playing Happy Birthday.

I thought that he did not know how to play with lego. But he surprised me with this formation. Of course with a little help from me. I was afraid that he would pinch his fingers and he did not have enough strength to push the lego bricks close together.

好媽媽生濄好老師

2010-06-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

I visit Tamarind's blog occasionally and thanks to her, I found this Chinese book with the above title. There is a bit of an error in the title of the book as my "Fan Ti" is very bad hence I do not know the correct word for the word "sheng".

My chinese sucked even when I was in school. I dreaded chinese language classes and exams. Nonetheless, I was amazed that I managed to get B3 for both O levels and AO level at the first attempt.

Currently I read, type and write chinese occasionally at work hence my chinese language has not all gone down the drain.

But but but.....I have never ever read a Chinese book in my whole life except for those necessary in my course of study, not even a Chinese novel. I decided to give it a shot and borrowed from the library.

I found myself smiling away when I read the paragraph about Christmas.

I have been wondering if I should tell him about Santa or I should just let him know the facts.

The author went to a great extent to create an imaginative and wonderful experience for every Christmas during her daughter's childhood. I thought if I were to do that, Matthew might feel deceived eventually. However, the author shared that her daughter totally enjoyed her Christmas during her childhood days. Even though she eventually knew that there was no Santa, she still loved Christmas.

This is a good book where the author shares about her daughter's growing up experiences. It made me realise that some of the things I had been doing were wrong. I have learnt so much from this book even though I am only at the beginning of the book.

Random activities

2010-05-18T06:49:00.000-07:00

foot print in paint

Sand and water play with marine animals

Cars

2010-05-18T06:43:00.000-07:00

Theme: Cars and other vehicles

Maths - Parking cars to garage (1 to 4) both in Chinese and English

- Sorting cars by sizes (big, medium, small) English, Chinese

- Jigsaw for other modes of transport

- C is for Car

Things that we went through can be downloaded here.

http://www.4shared.com/file/daLOqP7p/cars1.html

Music - Wheels on the bus.

Dramatic play - at playground - being ambulance driver, police car driver

Art - Cars on sand and with paint and cleaning up after that.

Books - DK things that move

I spy little wheels

Bugs

2010-05-18T06:36:00.000-07:00

Bugs class

1. Counting butterflies - 1 to 10

2. Memory game ( shapes hidden behind butterflies)

3. Matching insects in a pair

4. Flashcard on insects

5. Cricket cards (1 to 5)

6. Spider alphabet book (A to D)

7. C for caterpillar magnet

8. Playing with insects plastic toys

Paying tribute to all the blogs and websites who I got my materials from

2010-04-23T02:05:00.001-07:00

Due to limitation of time spent blogging, I normally do not indicate where I got my materials from. Being a full time working mother, I would rather spend the limited time I have with my son and preparing materials.

With this note, I would like to pay tribute to all the wonderful people in my blog lists (see the left hand side of my blog) who share their wonderful materials or links to their resources.

They are where I look for ideas and download materials to teach my boy.

So a Great thanks to all these people.

Words Uttered at 19 months

2010-04-15T06:37:00.000-07:00

All relatives (Ah gong, Ah ma, uncle, auntie, ah yi, ah gu, peh peh, muhmuh, jie jie, gege, meimei, didi, shu shu except shen shen)

Colours - Blue, Purple

Happy, Dinner, Later, Car, Bee, Air plane, Baby, Dirty, next, Star, Tortoise, Moo, Pee , Poo

Others in Chinese - Egg, Tiger, 1,2, Ant, Carry

Blue activities

2010-04-15T05:13:00.000-07:00

Blue activities that we did

Do A Dot Art for letter B

Sorting items (Blue and Red)
Placing pebbles (blue, orange, green ) on coloured popsickle sticks

Painting blue sky with tempura paints, cotton wool as clouds and sticking some birds.

Playing with blue water in the shower

Scooping rice with 3 different types of scoop

Then scooping red and blue coloured water with the 3 same scoop.

Realise that blue and red = purple.

Singing Little Boy Blue song

Eating Blueberries

Shapes Blue man shapes on haystack

Blueberry pie

Sorting out thoughts for Tot School

2010-04-09T20:40:00.001-07:00

After 2 tot books, I was stuck for a while and did not know which theme I should continue.
Wanted to follow the book I have at home and the theme 'blue' but i lacked sufficient resources.

Went to the library looking for 'blue' books but ended up with books on bugs.
Thus my new topic would be bugs.

After pondering for a while, I decided.

Tot books should only be for specific ideas like my first 2 books "ants, caterpillar".
Activities can be of a general theme such as bugs.
That could be easier to work on.

The very Hungry Caterpillar Tot Book

2010-03-30T09:19:00.001-07:00

Egg carton caterpillar

Caterpillar Tot Book

Matthew loves the shapes, matching colours and fruits but dislikes the size (caterpillar & butterfly)

Ants Tot Book

2010-02-22T07:46:00.001-08:00

My first attempt at a Tot Book

Initially, I wanted to follow the book, creative resources for the pre-school, so that I could teach the alphabets sequentially at the same time.

As I started on the Ants tot book, I found that the activities would be a challenge for my little M.

Therefore the next tot book will be based on one of his favourite book, the very hungry caterpillar.

Back to the Ants tot book, we did the following

1) Sang some ants song (The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah) which he liked

2) Fingerpaint ants though it did not look very much like one

3) Colouring ants (Red, Black and Brown)

4) Counting ants (1,2,3)

5) Showing him ants and ants farm (via a website online as I did not know where to find an ant nest)

6) Showing him parts of an ant

7) showing him ant lifecycle

I do not know how much he learnt from it or if he learnt anything at all.

But I will keep working on tot books and tot trays as he can try to learn something out of it and keep himself occupied at the same time.

Felt Board

2010-01-22T07:37:00.001-08:00

Did this with the aim of teaching Matthew how to dress up.

Sandpaper + felt + stickers from Daiso

Words uttered so far - 16 months

2010-01-21T23:21:00.000-08:00

Papa

Mama

Ah Ma - Grandma

Gong

Uncle

Baby

Apple

Bathe

Sticky business

2010-01-21T23:15:00.001-08:00

Collage paper + different kind of grains/beans, coloured sand, cloth scrapes.

Blocks and stacking

2009-12-07T08:26:00.000-08:00

At 14 months, Matthew has began to know how to stack blocks and cubes.

11 Nov - Fun with Tots (Narrative Reading)

2009-11-13T11:14:00.000-08:00

Sent a compliment to NLB for this session. Very well worth my $2 and leave taken.

On 11 Nov, I brought my toddler to the Bukit Merah Library for the programme Fun with Tots.
I was a bit apprehensive about bringing my young son for this kind of class as toddlers are usually very active.
Kudos to our wonderful librarian, Ms Chan WanTing (I hope I got her name correctly) for giving us a warm welcome upon arrival, making us feel at ease.
Her session was also very engaging and I certainly brought home some knowledge about reading to my son.
Please express my appreciation to her.
My son and I enjoyed ourselves that evening and would certainly be going for further sessions.
I would also like to express my appreciation to NLB for coming up with this wonderful series for toddlers.

Rubbery dough

2009-11-13T11:12:00.000-08:00

Made from some corn flour, water, salt over the stove.

Matthew did not want to play with it at all.

I accidently left it on the floor and Mico started eating.

Luckily I discovered it early enough to stop her from getting salt poisoning again.

Baking Bread with Matthew

2009-11-09T15:57:00.000-08:00

Recipe from aunty yochana blog but I halved the quantity and did not follow full set of instructions cos was busy trying to cook lunch for Matthew and cleaning him up.

My first time making bread
250g bread flour
45g castor sugar
5g milk powder
2.5g salt
half packet of instant yeast
1/2 egg
100 g cold water
35g butter

add all ingredients together except for butter and beat for 10 mins
add butter and continue to beat for 5 min
rest dough for 45 mins
Put in oven for 10-15 mins at 190c

First time baking bread. At first I thought it was going to fail as the dough was so soft. Din expect it to be such a nice bread.

Matthew did not really quite like the experience of making bread and getting himself covered with flour. We should try again another day.

Food colouring art

2009-11-09T15:43:00.000-08:00

Food Colouring + corn starch = Goop
Food colouring in ice

Watercolour

2009-10-26T09:52:00.001-07:00

Chalk with water

2009-10-10T06:34:00.000-07:00

Chalk with water.

Supposed to draw with chalk that has been dipped in water.

Ended up playing with chalk and water.

Liquid Starch

2009-10-10T06:33:00.001-07:00

Liquid starch with tempura paint.

He did not seem to enjoy it and was afraid to get his hands dirty.

Anyway my liquid starch was not well done.

Will try this again sometime.

Commencement of Art Lessons. Food colouring

2009-09-28T06:23:00.000-07:00

Matthew's 1st art lesson started on 26 Sept 2009. Started with food colouring on an ice cube tray and using brush to draw on paper while seated on his little chair and desk.

What's most important in art classes is the process and not the output.

Nevertheless, this is the output.

Making Pop up - Lapbooks purposes

2009-09-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

The Pop-Up Book: Step-by-Step Instructions for Creating Over 100 Original Paper Projects (Paperback