Stenciling fun on the doodle board

Alicia has been doodling on this board for many months now but it's only a couple of months back that I found this stencil that came along with the board while I was rummaging through the drawer. :P 

It totally slipped my mind to take photos of her writing the alphabets and I finally did so a few days back!

Here she is, my little busy bee!

I bought this doodling board for only $20+ at John Little at Marina Square when she was very young. It comes with this stencil as well as some colouring pages. Before she started working on the stenciling, she was doodling on it with the pen and the different-shaped stamps.

If you notice, at the top of the board, there are four panels and a little worm (Slimey), and you can actually turn that in a circular motion and the images in the four panels will change accordingly. That's fascinating for younger tots and a great way to practise fine motor skills for the older tots. :)

All in all, it's a great learning tool for pre-school kids and a great way to introduce to the tot how to write the alphabets and numbers. Even better if your child is a fan of Sesame Street characters like Alicia :)

Anyway, Alicia knows her alphabets already so I'd just sit back and watch her practise writing and listen to her name her alphabets and numbers... I simply love to see her concentrating real hard on an activity :)

Bee-themed lapbook

Alicia has been watching the Bee Movie and she's naturally hyped up about bees so I decided perhaps we could put together a bee-themed lapbook. :)

Since she's only 2 years old, I decided that it should be kept pretty simple, with activities she would love to participate in but yet with some parts which could still be useful for teaching when she is a bit older and more mature.

As she's fond of colouring, colouring pages are a must. :P I extracted the colouring pages from the DVD, printed them and let her doodle away. She's quite into mono-tone colouring recently so sometimes a piece of drawing could really just consist of one colour. Sometimes she looks at her own colouring and exclaims that the picture is 'gross!' Sigh. I wonder what she's up to....

Anyway, here's the cover of the lapbook:

I always like to use her work to decorate the coverpage. I know this isn't the nicest piece of artwork you've seen in your life, but hey, she's 2 and she's my kid, so it gets on the cover :P

She takes great pride in her work!:

A quick glance of the interior:

Items on the left of the lapbook:

I put together a small hexagonal minibook filled with simple facts about bees. 

A simple life cycle sheet is included instead of a life cycle activity as I think she may be too young for that. 

A picture of the bee anatomy is included, not because I want her to learn all the parts of the bee but I think it's important that she gets to see the actual bee rather than the cartoon version which she's so exposed to. :) This could be useful when she grows older. Of course, she can identify simple things like wings and legs and she can tell that the bee's black and yellow. She's 2. :)

On the right of the lapbook:

Colouring pages at the top layer:

Beneath the colouring pages, there are two other activities.

Here's the first:

Simple matching of picture to word with a little bit of help from the shape. I chose not to print out the pictures with the words in grayscale because I think that would be too obvious and I think she can handle the challenge of simply matching the picture to the word with that little bit of hint given.

Here she is, fiddling with this activity, and completing the puzzle was peanuts to her... Didn't even need to pause to think: just grab the piece and stick it on! I was quite impressed :P

 

 

The last activity: number-word matching game (featuring numbers 1-12) (picture can't be disclosed, unfortunately) -

She loves this little activity and we're currently still working on her word-number recognition. :)

And that's it! A simple lapbook for a 2-year-old! :)