Week 1 Part 1 Learning - God's Creation and Letter A

Han did the God's creation module before so I had to make this one a little different this time. We started off with our daily Supermarket Learning Time in the morning, this time focusing on fresh produce such as fruits and  veggie. These are God's wonderful creation and yummy food for us too. I'm quite hesitant about teaching animals in the supermarket as the dead and supermarket packed poultry and fishes are not my idea of a true representation of what they are. So I'll leave that to zoo trips or books.

For our Learning Time today, we did some of these: (this is also the main flow of Han's Learning Time, with changeable activities)

1) Alphabet Cards

I usually start off with alphabet flashcards and we're currently using the ones from BabyBumblebee. Han is now reciting both the alphabet and the object herself as in "A for apple, B for banana." I'm very proud of her! It's a progression from last year when I would say "A is for?" and she would reply "Apple". I realised this is a good practise because recently she has started to alphabet name some things she would see around. Just today she pointed to my shirt which had the word "BAY" and she said "B for Barney, A for apple, Y for yacht" Amazing! We must keep on coaching our children because they really are learning all the time and surprises will definitely come! We end off with singing the alphabet song together. This year, we started off with Han singing the whole song herself and I'll just clap along!

2) English Readers

After alphabet cards, I follow on with English Readers. Han has completed the JOY Readers Level A last year. These are great readers! I bought them second hand as I think the first hand ones are too pricey. I'm still hunting for Levels B and C, so this year we start off with the Sunshine Books Early Emergent Level One. This series seems to be out of print now as I got them from a second hand bookshop. You may try the newer series of Sunshine Classics. I feel readers are very good for Han as it contains simple words and simple short stories. The short story length of the readers ensure minimal straying of attention.

Since this is the week of the Letter A, we read through the A book of the Sunshine Books Alphabet Pack. I got this at a secondhand bookshop too. The book focuses on words beginning with A.

3) Chinese Readers

We're still using the Novum Pre School Chinese Readers. You can get these easily at Popular bookshops.Excellent and attractive illustrations and simple stories.

Our curriculum is such that we stick to the same readers for one week so that Han can be familiar with the stories and words. This is also hinging on the fact that toddlers love repetition and certain amount of it does help them to learn. Depending on the child, I think this is not a hard and fast rule. Some would prefer a new reader everyday!

4) Thematic Story: God's Creation

We then read a story of God's creation from the Flip and Tab Bible. Among all the resources we have, I felt this one has the best illustration for the story. Han was taught our thematic sentence for this week. "God made everything." We then run through the animals in the book and reiterate the fact that God created each and everyone of them.

5) We did an animal puzzle and fruits threading for God created all animals and yummy fruits too!

6) One of Han's favourite puzzles is the Melissa and Doug Animals Mini Puzzle Pack. I think it's age appropriate and it allows experience of success which I feel is very important for a toddler to continue to want to keep on attempting and learning. God created animals!
 
 7) Animal Sticker Fun!

I bought this at a Malacca Popular bookshop and it only costs less than S$3. It's a sticker book with large pictures and the child is supposed to spot certain things in the picture and be awarded stickers of those items when they correctly identify where they are found. They then place the stickers on the book. We did a picture identifying animals and it was fun! Han needed some guidance on finding some animals as they were pretty small.

8) Fingerpainting

We ended off today's Learning Time having a blast with finger painting. I printed out a reproducible God's creation handout from Teaching Children Memory Verses (Ages 2 & 3). I placed some Crayola Washable Fingerpaints on a paint palette and allowed her to free paint the handout. I was very tempted to coach her that red has got to be for apples and green for trees (I started off with some demonstration for her and this explains why part of the picture seems to be coloured by an adult), but decided against it and allowed her to express her own creative. After she completed the handout, we had super duper fun just fingerpainting on a blank paper until she has to be dragged off to wash her hands as Learning Time ended for the day!


Overheard a certain cute little girl talking to herself, somewhere along the rest of the day...

"Who made Barney? God.."

Ok.. time for some fine tuning!:)

Weekly Themes and Learning Categories for 2011

Rolling out the weekly Biblical themes for 2011:

1 – God’s Creation

2 – Noah’s Ark

3 – The Birth of Isaac

4 – Joseph’s Colourful Robe

5 – Moses and The Burning Bush

6 – Pharaoh Letting the People of God Go

7 – The Ten Commandments

8 – God Says, “Be Holy.”

9 – Giving To The Lord

10 – The Battle of Jericho

11 – Serving The Lord

12 – Gideon's Battle

13 – Ruth

14 – Hannah’s Prayer

15 – Samuel: Growing Up To Serve

16 – David and Goliath

17 – King David Praising God

18 – King Solomon Asking for Wisdom

19 – Elijah and The Ravens

20 – Elisha Feeding 100 Men

21 – God’s Forgiveness

22 – Stand Up and Praise the Lord!

23 – Job and His Friends Learn

24 – The Lord Is My Shepherd (Psalm 23)

25 – God’s Word Is A Lamp Unto My Feet

26 – Queen Esther

27 – Daniel Part 1

28 – Daniel in The Lions Den

30 – The Birth of Jesus

31 – God’s House

32 – Follow Jesus!

33 – God Cares for Me: Do Not Worry

34 – The Lord’s Prayer

35 – We Are The Lord’s Sheep

36 – I Can Believe, Have Faith!

37 – The Ten Lepers: Remembering to Give Thanks

38 – Well Done Good and Faithful Servant!

39 – God Is My Savior

40 – Jesus and The Children

41 – Jesus and His Triumphant Entry

43 – John 3:16

44 – Jesus Washing The Disciples’ Feet

45 – Telling The World About The Good News

46 – God Sends The Holy Spirit

47 – Sharing With God’s People

48 – Peter Heals A Crippled Beggar

49 – Helping Others Learn About The Bible

50 – Knock and The Door Will Be Opened

51 – Paul: A Changed Man

52 – Jesus Is Coming!

These themes are inspired by these two books:

The Beginner's Bible

This is the first Bible we bought for Han before she was born. She has been using this for her daily evening Bible reading and devotion too. In my opinion, this is a really good children's Bible! Comprehensive, superb illustrations, easy to read yet not missing out any truths. A definite recommend!

Teaching Children Memory Verses (Ages 2 & 3) 

Another amazing book which we bought at SKS Books Warehouse. Contains crafts suitable for 2 and 3 year olds teaching Bible truths and to encourage simple Bible memory verses. A good buy!

I think the teaching aid section at SKS is simply amazing! I do hope I can have a luxurious few hours there alone to source for more materials!

These learning categories will support the weekly themes and thus form the structure of Han's learning for this year.

- Reading: English (Daily)

- Reading: Chinese (Daily)

- Alphabets and Numbers (Daily)

- Penmanship (Daily)

- Bible (Daily)

- Puzzles (Daily)

- Montessori and Life Skills (Daily)

- Supermarket Learning Time (Daily)

- Worship and Music (Daily)

- Outdoor Play (Daily)

- Nature (Weekly)

- Art and Craft (Weekly)

- Math Montessori (Weekly)

- Science (Weekly)

You may want to add or subtract your own learning categories. Mine is the result of 6 months of trial run this year so although it may seem like a lot of categories, it's really not that much as these are evenly spread out throughout the day. They're not cramped into a short hour of learning. I really believe learning is a constant thing throughout the day and it has to be fun!

I'll try to blog the various activities! Meanwhile, I think it'll be great if you can first craft out a curriculum best suited for your child before diving into just doing lots of activities. It'll really help to organize and scaffold learning and at least for me, organized = happy :):):)

Have fun planning!

Gramps School of Art

Introducing Hume Park Kindergarden Art Pieces by Han and her cousin Ian.

The drawings are so beautifully done! What's more wonderful is they are all drawn with the loving guidance of E's mum during their playdate at my in law's place today.

Here's Han's piece.

Han was showing me the cute green skirt that the elephant is wearing. Somehow, drawings are all the more nicer and sweeter when they are drawn with the loving help of Gramps. Some say "A picture paints a thousand words." More than that, I think "A picture paints a thousand ounces of love." I love them!

Creation Week!

The theme for Han's Learning Time this week is the Biblical theme "Creation".

I did a couple of learning activities with her, in line with the passage in Genesis 1 which tells us about how God created the world. Firstly, there was no memory verse for her this week, but rather a memory statement, "God made everything.". Throughout the week, when I talked to her about the creations of God, I would teach her this statement. It's a simple 3 word statement, so I guess it rested pretty well on her. I would then proceed to ask, "Who made everything?" The answer is supposed to be "God." For the first few times, she said "Mummy!" or "Hannah!" It was really funny. Eventually she learned that the answer is "God." :)

We learned that God created the sky, moon, stars, clouds etc. So one of the art and craft activity that we did was a drawing-sticker craft. I drew the moon, stars, clouds and the 3 stick figures (representing our family). Han placed the star stickers by herself. This trained her fine motor skills a lot as the star stickers were pretty thin and small. A few months back, she could not have placed them so well, so I was very proud of her that she improved a lot in placing the stickers on. I topped off the activity by giving her Barney stickers to decorate her art piece. Needless to say, she was very happy!

When I went on to teach her how God created the flowers and plants too, we did 2 other activities. One was a simple flower arrangement activity. I got some bunches of fake flowers and a ash-tray with many holes from Daiso. You could also do this using a big salt shaker with many holes. This allows Han to practice her motor skills as she places the stalk of flowers into the holes and at the same time allows her to be creative in arranging her flowers.

 She asked me to take a picture of the finished product.

I wanted to show Han how plants grew. The fastest and fuss-free way was to germinate some beans. By the second day, they grew visibly. By the end of the week, they were so tall that they protruded out of the container. Han greets her precious bean plants good morning every day and she lovingly holds the container of plants sometimes to just look at them. I like the gentle way she handles the plants!

We also read some books on animals when I came to the part of how God created animals. Two of her all-time favourite books are Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See? (Eric Carle) and The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle). We also did a few animal puzzles. I am very happy to see Han enjoying puzzles more and more! I hope she can enjoy doing jigsaw puzzles next. For now, I really must flame up her interest in puzzles first.

When we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, I also incorporated these 2 puzzles for Han. Both items only cost me $6 in total. Han loved the magnetic puzzle very much and she did it repeatedly. She was also able to put in all the pieces well too for both puzzles! I thought the 2nd puzzle (below in picture) captured the life cycle of a butterfly very well. I got this for less than $2 at a clearance sale.

We also started on reading a Chinese book every day, using Novum chinese readers. I really like them as the books have bright and attractive pictures and the chinese words are large. I got them for $2 each at Giant sale.

 By the 3rd or 4th day, Han was conversing to us in Chinese sometimes. So I was very encouraged by that! I must persevere in teaching her Chinese!

We also managed to make a trip down to a fish farm with my parents on Friday and that topped off our week of learning about God's creation. Next week, our learning theme will still be on Creation, focusing more on the creation of man. Looking forward to more fun learning to come!

Fingerpainting!

This is Han's second attempt at fingerpainting and playing with the Crayola Fingerpaint that Aunt Viv bought for her. The first attempt some weeks back didn't go well as she didn't like the feel of the fingerpaint on her hands and she refused to play with them anymore.

This book, First Art: Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos , provides a lot of fantastic information about doing art with toddlers. It's a really useful book!

From the book, I learned it's good to provide a pail of water or wet cloth beside the toddler when you do fingerpainting. This is more for toddlers who don't like paint on their fingers. It worked perfectly well for Han this time as I will wipe her hands whenever she felt uncomfortable with the paint on her hands. After wiping, she will then happily proceed with more painting. The book also gives loads of interesting ideas for doing art with toddlers. A great resource!

Besides the fingers themselves, we worked with some small pretty flower sponges that I bought from Daiso. A packet of 8 sponges for only $2! They fitted perfectly well into her small hands. We also had star-shaped cookie cutters from Daiso, a box of different sized ones. I allowed her to play with primary colours, then went on to mix colours for her. (I also found out that the plastic containers, used to contain fruits that I bought from NTUC, served as a perfect container for the Crayola Fingerpaint jars. Another way to recycle materials!)

We had loads of fun! The end result which I proudly added onto our Art Wall! Looking forward to more fingerpainting to come!