Sand Art - 19/07/2010

Bought this sand art kit by Alex from Borders as there was a promotion. Though Krissa has never done this form of art before, it seemed pretty easy according to the instructions and true enough it was simple for K to manage on her own yet challenging at the same time as she has to patiently peel off the stickers with care. K was extremely happy with her finished piece and asked for more :)

Eager K!

K working hard

An extremely happy and proud K

K Progresses In Reading - 11/08/2010

I am really happy that K is progressing well in reading and loving it! I have started her on the Ladybird Level Keyword Readers (Peter and Jane series). She has finished level 1 and will start level 2 tomorrow. As K progresses each day, I can see her confidence level rise and clearly she is happy that she is able to read the whole page/book on her own. However, although K likes to read, her concentration span is very short. On average, she can only sit through 3 to 4 pages at one go. I would let her continue with the readers whenever the opportunity rises e.g. during her daily poo-poo time...hahaha!!! Rule of the thumb: Stop before your child wants to stop. See how applicable Glenn Doman's teachings are?

Apart from the Ladybird readers, we read other books too but of course, these books are filled with vocabularies strange to K. Unlike the readers which she would "snatch" to read on her own, K would patiently wait for me to read each sentence and then repeats after me. If the vocabularies appear again in the book, there is a good chance that she is able to recognise and read them aloud!

Krissa Starts To Read! - 13/04/2010

Krissa & her cards

K searching for the right cards

K reading

K reading but in a tired mode already

I had bought a set of sight words dvd after Shymz told me that her girl, Celeste, enjoyed the dvds and was able to recognise the words! At first, I was quite reluctant to show them to K because in my opinion, the dvds were boring! However, for some unknown reasons, children loved them. Anyhow, I played the dvd and after a while into the show, the magic happened......all was silent, the word "horse" appeared on the screen and before the narrator could mouth the word, Krissa said "horse"!! I was dumbfounded, stared at her in disbelief and asked her to repeat the word again to confirm what I had heard some few seconds ago. Yipppeeee....both hubs and I were sooooo happy!!

Although these video clips were taken a few days later on 13th April 2010 when K was about 2yrs 8mths, I have no doubt she was able to read even way earlier than we have discovered.

Shakers Fun! - 06/11/2009

K having a great time with her creations!

Our materials to decorate the containers.

The green beans and paper clips will each go into a container.

A butterfly glued onto the cover of one of the containers.

K first decorated the yellow wrapper with dot markers,
then glued the surface with sequinns.


K puts the paper clips into the first shaker

The beginning of the second shaker

Yes, darling?

Glueing of the poms poms

Filling the second shaker with green beans

Shaker fun!

The finished products!

We were told to make at least one shaker and bring it for lesson at Mandeville on Saturday. I managed to dig up two containers at home, so we made two! Both K and me had great fun doing it and apart from decorating the containers, her fine motor skills were reinforced by having to transfer the green beans from the plate into one of the containers and to pincer grip the small sequinns to glue them onto the container. She was able to call out aloud the crayon colours which she wanted on her containers and correctly took them from the crayon tray. We are still on butterfly, so I glued a butterfly onto the cover of one of the containers. It proved to be a hit with K! Finally, when we were done, K had a fun time playing with her new creations!!!

Our 2nd Caterpillar Kit - 28/10/2009

Our newly hatched butterfly takes to the skies.

May it stay safe from all her predators.

Life cycle of a butterfly

Having learnt our lesson, we dashed for home after we had bought the kit and immersed the plant in clean water immediately. We had better luck this time :) K liked the caterpillars and would request us to show her the caterpillars every so often. She would say hi and goodbye to them. This real kit was very useful for she was able to associate the caterpillars and chrysalis with the real illustrations in the Busy, Busy Butterfly book. It was a real pity that K did not see the butterfly. Hmmm.....a 3rd kit, maybe?

Back Log - Final Instalment For Allie Alligator

I don't know why I have failed to blog this entry....my memory is indeed failing me. I have to ask my mother-in-law to make me more gingko barley with beancurd skin dessert to boost my memory...hahahha!!!

Home Schooling (Allie Alligator) - 13/09/2009

Some of my teaching materials
K hard at work
Sensorial activity using sense of sight, touch, smell and taste:

1) Colours, texture and scent of the apples.

2) Parts of the apple: stem, skin, core, seed and flesh.

3) Tasted the apples - K preferred the green apple!

K's completed works:
- Correctly identified apple and pasted it on the worksheet.
- Decorated the foamed apple with sequinns.
- Apple tree fingerprint art: trunk with the side of K's hand,
leaves with K's index finger and apples with her pinky finger.
- Exercises using Kumon's Let's Sticker & Paste.
- Pasted stickers according to their shapes.
- Correctly picked out orange crayon and coloured the pumpkin.
- Traced the numeral "2": sure needs alot of practising.

This is the 3rd instalment for this theme. We had missed an entire week due to my crazy schedule. Anyhow, better be late than never, right? We learnt about apple and K definitely enjoyed the lesson as she got to touch and taste the fruits. I had also managed to dig up some books on apple from the National Library. In addition, I also found some picture books on alligator and ant....books which I did not managed to borrow from the library when we did those themes.

Homeschooling (Allie Alligator) - 26/08/2009

Some of my teaching materials
Printable book from the internet
Krissa hard at work (with a little nudging from Mummy!)
Krissa's completed works:
- Used pink crayon to colour the ribbon.
- Traced number 1.
- Ant craft using egg carton and pipe cleaners.
- Correctly identified picture of ant and pasted it on the worksheet.

- Exercises from Kumon's Let's Sticker & Paste.

Continuing with the phonetic sound of "A", we learnt about the ant!

Homeschooling (Allie Alligator) - 24/08/2009

My teaching materials:

- Introduction to the alligator, its life cycle and pictures of baby alligators.

- Worksheet with the pictures of the 4 topics which K will be learning.

- An egg showcasing a baby alligator when opened. - A DIY book with cliparts from the internet.
K working hard on her given tasks. She is truly a Daddy's girl; with each
piece of completed work, she would bring it to show Daddy.
K's completed works:
- Correctly identified alligator and pasted it on the worksheet.
- Alligator craft using toilet roll.
- Traced vertical lines to prepare her for numeral "1".
- Grouped stickers according to their colours and pasted them according
to their silhouette printed on the book.
- Picked out the right colour crayon and coloured the apple.
- Exercises using Kumon's Let's Sticker & Paste

For the longest time, flashcards, reading and art & craft was all I did with Krissa at home. Hence, I thought it is now necessary for me to do more for K and to feed her with as much information as I possibly could for I have witnessed and is ecstatic over her rate of learning. I truly believe that the brain of kids at this young age is like a sponge; they really can absorb all inputs so fast! Never mind if your child does not look/stare at the flashcard, just a glance will do! Take for example in K's weekly playschool, there is a short Zoophonics segment and for don't know what reason, K would always throw tantrums, lie on the floor and hide her face with her hands. No amount of coaxing would have her join in the singing and actions. I have never sing or do those actions in her presence too. However, one fine day while we were reading a book on elephant, she suddenly pronounce the "e" sound and did the action! I took a step further by starting with the first animal i.e. "Allie Alligator" and true enough, she was able to pronounce "a" sound and did the correct action too!

The tricky part about this whole homeschooling thing is I can't decide on the theme to present to Krissa. I am an advocate of Glenn Doman's teachings and after consulting another like-minded mummy, I have decided not to adopt the commonly used alphabet theme to introduce the alphabets to K at this stage for she maybe confused because all these while, K has been taught to recognise whole words instead of alphabets. Finally, I decided to use the animals of Zoophonics which she is familiar with to kickstart and from there, teach her another couple of things which starts with the same sound e.g. we started with alligator(Allie Alligator) today, then we will move on to apple, anteater and ant for the next 1 to 2 weeks.

In addition to the "topic-of-the-day", I have also integrated some exercises to build up her gross/fine motor skills and math (colour/shapes/sizes etc). I am really grateful to the presence of the internet and those kind souls out there who have generously uploaded their teaching materials for all to use. It sure makes my life alot easier:)