Learning the Letter A (Part I)

Recently I've been working on making some materials to teach Alicia the alphabets, starting with the letter A. So far, I haven't finished going through the materials yet and she's already familiar with the letter and can recognise it and point it out and say it clearly on her own. In fact, she could say it the first time I went through the alphabet A with her. But I feel it's always good to do lots of repetition with a young child like Alicia so I'm still going to go through the rest of the materials. :) I thought of most of these activities on my own, bearing in mind what she loves to do most at the moment... must cater to my little "student's" learning needs. Haha. :D How can I possibly miss teaching? Keke. I'm teaching EVERY DAY, 'working' overtime all the time! :) Just that this 'student' of mine now is MUCH MUCH younger than the JC students... haha. :D And did I mention that it's so much more rewarding, enriching and fulfilling to teach my little one? whahahaha....

Anyway, these activities were carried out over a few days... it's not possible to cram so many things into a day! Space out the activities as young children learn well with repetition. For me, learning at such a young age must definitely be through FUN and exploration! That's why my activities centre around the various senses, and music and reading are absolutely crucial in their learning process.

First I wrote some As for her on a piece of paper (both upper and lower case) in different colours. Then we pasted As I cut out from magazines and stuck them on the same piece of paper together with her.

This is before we stuck the As from the magazine on...

Then I went on to the Alligator Puzzle with her but she wasn't interested in it at first. She's reacting to it a bit more now though she's not really piecing them together yet. She can identify the parts of the alligator though - head, body and legs. :D This puzzle's meant for 18-24mths and the progressive puzzle's available here.

And after that, I let her play with the Apple Tree I prepared for her. I came up with this activity as I believe she'd love the feeling of playing with the velcro and I was right - she LOVES this! But she loves pulling the apples off the tree rather than sticking them back on... :) She loves this apple tree so much she brings it around with her in the house sometimes!

Yay! I finally finished sticking all the apples on the tree mummy!

*Hop over to Simply Mommie's Precious Handmades to view this learning aid and other interesting learning aids! :)*

For literature, we read the book, The World of Ants, and she was fascinated by the MANY ants in the book. Sometimes some non-fiction's good for young children too! There's no need to just stick to fiction... hehe. But you can always read The Ant and the Dove or The Ant and the Grasshopper with your kid too.

I also exposed the Build-A-Letter resource to her but I think she's not so into it yet. Well, maybe when she's a bit older or maybe she just needs a bit more practice. At least she's flipping through the file and playing with the pieces here and there now and then. I guess that's a start.

Hmm, what's this?

Let's check out the rest of the file!

Hee... see my letter A?

Another activity I did with her was with her sticker book. She loves stickers so I thought that this would surely catch her attention - and it certainly did! I drew the alphabet (upper and lower case) on her sticker book and her task is to stick the stickers to form the alphabet. I chose to do this using a sticker book because she's not so precise in her sticking skills yet so the sticker book would provide room for correction - and she definitely needed it! Hehe...

I'm done with the BIG A... now on to the LITTLE one...

Now to add the finishing touches... paste the stickers of letter A!

Music Appreciation

I read from a blog recently that for music appreciation, it is recommended that a young child starts to listen to a composer's music continuously for half an hour for a period of four months before changing to another composer's music. So I started Alicia on Handel's Water Music since 2/2/10 and she simply loves it... she sways to the music and gets all hyped up during the grand parts. :)







Besides letting her listen to classical music, I actually prepared these keyboard cards much much earlier - at about the time I sent her for the trial class at Staccato, but I just laminated them with my spanking new laminating machine... hehe. :) I've got another set of note recognition cards that aren't ready yet. I'll get that done soon... but there's no real hurry. Heh.

*If you'd like to purchase this set of teaching materials, please drop me an email at simplymommie@gmail.com or leave me a msg at the Chatterbox! :)

Egg Shelling

Today Alicia tried to shell her hard-boiled egg on her own for lunch. And she went about her task very seriously... and every time a piece of the shell didn't land in the bowl, she'd stop and pick it up and put it into the bowl before continuing to shell the rest of the egg. :D

Here are some photos of her shelling the egg and a video too!

JG Mandarin PlayClub (12/2/10)

We were the first to arrive for the 11.30am class today! The English and Mandarin PlayClub teachers were all awaiting the students as they expected that the turnout would be bad today. For the longest time, we thought that Alicia might be the only child for the day! And the teachers were discussing that mabbe they'd have a Bilingual class! :D Anyway, in the end, we had a grand total of 5 students in our Mandarin class and so there was very individualised attention today. GREAT! Hehehe.

Alicia seemed to enjoy herself more today and was more relaxed. She even played with the glue during art time and I allowed her to do so... afterall, she needs to wash her hands after art anyway... so no harm letting her have a little tactile exploration. :D But she took it a bit far and put her hand in her mouth while on the way to the toilet! Fortunately, it's non-toxic.

Here's the CNY art:

Today's snack was quite special: buffet-style. The teachers laid out the food JG prepared as well as the new year goodies the mummies brought along for the day on the table and we helped the children take what we felt was suitable for them and the kids will take the plate back to the table on their own (with a little help of coz). So since new year goodies are all heaty, I only allowed alicia to eat the JG food. Haha. Ok, and half a small kueh...

Chinese Word Cards

During Mandarin PlayClub, the teachers will go through with the students individually the Chinese words for the week (and those already covered in past weeks) using the prepared word cards. I observed that those 2 years and above were all more or less able to repeat after the teacher for some of the words they have covered in the past five weeks (including the Indian boy who's in the class too! - impressive!). Well, technically, she did learn these words too at Bilingual PlayClub since JG has the same theme across the classes, there wasn't such time and attention set aside for each student in the Bilingual PlayClub since the class is much bigger. Since Alicia has missed half of the term already with this class, and she doesn't have much exposure to Chinese words, I decided to reinforce them with her every morning when it's Speak-Mandarin-time-with-Mummy. :D

And so, I got to work immediately after I put her to nap that day after lesson, and by the time she woke, the word cards were ready! :)

Well, I don't use these like flashcards in the sense of flashing them at her at a quick pace. Rather, on the contrary, it's to slowly read those words to her and get her to understand them. That's what is done at JG anyway.

Here's a pic of my cards!:

Hop over to Simply Mommie's Precious Handmades to view other interesting learning aids! :)

JG Mandarin PlayClub (10/2/10)

Alicia went for her first Mandarin PlayClub session on 10/2. She looked a little lost at first but fortunately there was a familiar Chinese teacher so she was quite alright after a short while. I guess it's also because it's the first PURE chinese lesson she had so far and the main Chinese teacher's accent is much stronger than the ones she was exposed to during the Bilingual PlayClub.

Snack time's different from the Bilingual Class too since for small classes, the children are expected to queue up for their snacks and take the plate of food back to the table where they will sit and eat on their own. So it's the first time Alicia's doing that... hehe.


Since it's Chinese New Year, they made CNY-related craft: