Activities to go with The Perfect Square by Michael Hall

The Perfect Square tells the story of a square who made the best of whatever happened to him and eventually found great contentment being the square that he was. A wonderful read for not just children, but adults as well, a reminder that no matter what happens to us, we make the best of the situation and find our own happiness as the square did eventually at the end of the story.

Now here's what we did for this interesting book - not as comprehensive as my other posts on literature-based learning though! :)

We tried to replicate the story to see if we could re-create the square in those ways in the book.

We did this activity over a few days as it requires quite a bit of time and stamina.

Using a piece of drawing block, I cut out 6 squares and got her to paint them in the colours the square appeared on the book.

We used water colours so that we could get a softer feel and blend of colours

For younger children, this would be a good time to teach colours apart from just doing the painting.

Completed squares in the process of drying

The squarish book and our paintings

Using the hole puncher for the first time

Arranging her shapes she cut out from her square to form the picture in the book

Done!

More fine motor skills involved - tearing the square into pieces

drawing in the details found in the book

Fill in the missing words with the stickers provided

Pasting in the missing words

Our completed version

Vocabulary

These are the words/ phrases I found that needed some explaining/ revision:

'shattered', 'babbled', 'torn into scraps' vs 'shredded in strips', 'ripped', 'crumpled', 'wrinkled', 'confining', 'rigid', 'cramped'


Extension activity:

Piet Mondrian-inspired art:

I pasted black tape on half a sheet of drawing block, set up the colours that Piet Mondrian used in his famous work, and got her to view examples of Piet Mondrian art on the tablet, leaving a sample next to her so that she could focus on her task.

Painting squares and rectangles

The completed piece of art which is now the cover of her A4-sized scrapbook where I stick the pictures and paintings she does in school and at home.

Other ideas that you can tap on after reading the book (for younger children):

• Days of the week - you can re-read The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle as well for reinforcement
• Colours 
• Shapes 
• Story sequencing - ask the child what happened to the square on the various days and what the square became as a result.

Hope you have fun!

My lil artist - Batik paintings

I'd meant to post this much earlier but the framing of the pictures took quite awhile and I was feeling under the weather recently so I hardly had energy to sit down at the comp to blog.

I bought a total of 6 batik painting kits for Alicia to work on (at first I bought only 2 to try out but she loved it so much so I bought 4 more).

The kit states that it's suitable for 3 years and above. Although I came across this much much earlier, I hesitated because I felt that she wasn't patient or dexterous enough for painting in such great detail. Eventually I decided to give it a shot and we were all very surprised at her ability to concentrate and also at her powers of observation (checking against the tiny picture for the suggested colour scheme). 

See that tiny pic at the top of her painting (shown below)? The kit comes with pics of the rest of the available batik kits so I cut out the relevant one and placed it near her as she painted so she would not be distracted. The kit also comes with a paintbrush and the paint needed for the activity so you will not need to prepare anything else for this activity except for a jar of water to rinse your brush.

Attempt #1

Attempt #2

Attempt #3

There are 3 more painting kits and I'm trying to space them out so that she gets a variety of art activities.

We have a column in the house that could not be hacked during the renovation and my hubby had given me the 'honourable task' of decorating it. I'm so happy to say that my 'problem' has been solved by Alicia! This is gonna be her batik painting wall!

Actually my budding artist has so many pieces of art work that I might just run out of walls to hang her work some day. And Alex hasn't even started on art yet! haha...

3 more paintings to go!

Disclosure: I did not receive any form of compensation for this post. All opinions expressed are 100% mine.

My little artist

Alicia came home with an assignment a few days back and she said she was to draw anything she wanted. I asked her what she wanted to draw and she said she wanted to draw a boat.

And this is the final product:

She did the drawing, the decorating and painting on her own!

And she just turned 4 in July! :P

What I did was to show her a picture of a simple boat (from her brother's singlet: pic below) and I got her to observe the lines and shapes to draw. After her boat was done then she added in the extra kiddy touches of the smiling sun and the clouds. She worked with oil pastels and poster colour for this piece of work. :) And we added in the jewel stickers after everything was done.

After her fabulous performance at observation and demonstrating the ability to translate what she sees to paper (and her bugging me to sign her up for art class), I've decided to enrol her for art lessons at HeART Studio (read my review here) and we're starting tomorrow! :)

Linking up with:

Rainbow icecubes

We made colourful icecubes yday by mixing diff coloured water. After mixing blue and red, blue and yellow, I decided to show her how adding more blue to a blue+yellow combi changes the shade with each scoop she scooped into her container (and I poured out the result into the icecube tray).

Making the different shades was fun but as usual, after awhile, everything ended up the same colour... Haha. Free water play after tt!

Activities to go with The very hungry caterpillar by Eric Carle

It's been quite awhile since I've found time and energy to blog... this is such an overdue post!

The good thing though is that The very hungry caterpillar is a classic so it's never too late to share what we did for the reading of this story.

I made this learning aid from here:

There are a couple of missing pieces though but it still works rather fine.

I got her to match the pieces to what she could see on the pages to practise counting:

and instead of a 'story stick' (which is how the learning aid is supposed to be made), I gave her a piece of yarn for her to thread the pieces together, following the sequence of the story:

And so it's killing two birds with one stone: getting her to practise fine motor skills as well as learning to sequence according to the story line. She did really well with the sequencing after awhile such that by the time she watched the performance put up by Act 3 in mid July, she could tell exactly what was coming up next :)

After threading all the cards, just tie a ribbon and she gets a necklace - which made the vain little one very happy. This activity can be done over and over again - something that your preschooler would request to do!

And we chose a day to make egg carton caterpillars:

My girl loves all things small and cute so instead of making 3 long caterpillars, we had 5 short ones. 

Painting the egg carton was quite a highlight as it was a new experience.

After the paint has dried, just draw and cut out eyes for the caterpillars (or use googly eyes), draw a smile, pierce two holes at the top of the caterpillars' heads (to be done by an adult) and poke the pipe cleaners in.

Do you notice that there's one female caterpillar? :) 

Hint: the one with the eyelashes

We made a symmetrical painting by first folding a piece of drawing block in half then squeezing paint randomly on it. Once that is done, press the drawing block together and you will get a symmetrical painting. After you have done the first fold, you can unfold it and press the other side of the drawing block together and repeat the process. :)

After the paint has dried, draw a butterfly and cut it out:

We did this counting activity which you can download here:

Alicia wasn't very interested in this activity compared to the rest of the activities but you can always give it a shot. 

Another activity that might interest your preschooler would be these two dot-to-dot printables which you can download here.

We took the chance to revise the Days of the Week using the learning aid my mum made for her earlier (I made the Mandarin version):

Have fun!

Activities to go with The mixed-up chameleon by Eric Carle

The mixed-up chameleon is a colourful and playful story about how a chameleon wishes to be someone else only to find out that what's best for him is really to just be himself. 

We also didn't do many activities for this story as I was trying to minimise the preparation of activities. I don't really have the time and energy to make extensive learning aids for her, and since the new baby will be arriving in about 3 months time, I have decided that we will maximise learning opportunities with minimal preparation on my part - I imagine that I should be busier with the arrival of the new baby! That said, I have implemented a more proper structure for our homeschooling recently (will share that in a later post) to make things more organised for both her learning and my planning.

(i) Colour revision

Well, it's a colourful book like I said and the chameleon on the cover is just begging you to name the colours you see! Alicia enjoyed naming the colours, even without my prompting... naming the colours in Mandarin is the difficult part for her as she refuses to answer my questions in Mandarin... *sigh*

(ii) Catch a 'fly'

adapted from here (you can find other activities from the link but those may require a lot more preparation on your part. Some of the activities are also too simple for Alicia already so I only picked what I thought would work best for us)

You need:

• a party blower (see pic below)
• a small piece of velcro (the hard side)
• small pieces of felt (to simulate the fly)

The chameleon in the story loves to eat flies but I was too lazy to make a fly manipulative so I just gave her whatever small piece of felt I had on hand for this activity. It's probably quite difficult for a child to imagine how the long tongue of the chameleon works, so I think this is an interesting activity to illustrate how the chameleon catches the fly with its tongue (though it is not really exactly the same).

(iii) Make your own colourful chameleon

ok, I got this idea from somewhere but I can't remember where exactly... can't seem to find the link.

Anyway, you need:

• colourful plastic dividers (I recycled the old ones which were lying around waiting for an opportunity to be recycled)
• transparencies (the type used for Overhead projectors in the past) - trace the pics of the chameleon from Eric Carle's book
• marker
• scissors

happily playing with the cut up colourful dividers - her first encounter with them

Place the transparencies of the pictures of the chameleon around the house and get your preschooler to find them:

Can you see it? :P

Alicia loved to place the transparencies on different surfaces and kept asking me each time, "Mummy, where's the chameleon?"

To make your colourful chameleon, just randomly place the dividers on a flat surface and place the transparency of the pic of the chameleon on top.

It's a different chameleon every time and it can be done over and over again! :)

(iv) Writing practice


Discuss what the chameleon wanted to be in the story with your preschooler and ask her what she wants to be.

The little ardent swimmer that Alicia is, she naturally chose the fish. :)

As she is still unable to draw a proper fish, I drew a simple one for her. We then wrote a simple sentence about it. (I wrote the sentence for her, and she used a marker to trace the words for writing practice). We had to split this activity up into two sessions (conducted on different days) as she was unwilling to finish the sentence in one sitting.

(v) Art and craft fish + shape matching + writing practice (Mandarin)

Cut out some shapes to form a picture (I chose a fish since it tied in nicely with the above activity). 

Trace the exact shapes onto a sheet of paper to form the picture.

Get the child to place the shapes correctly on the paper first before sticking.

Get your preschooler to stick the shapes on.

Write the word you want your preschooler to trace and let her use a marker to write the word. Guide your child to write in the correct sequence of strokes if writing the chinese word. Name the strokes in Mandarin as you guide your child and get her to say the word when it's completed. 

*You can always adapt this activity to make your child practise writing in English or other languages.

Activities to go with Little Cloud by Eric Carle

Before I brought Alicia to watch Act 3's performance of Eric Carle's stories - Little Cloud, The Mixed-up Chameleon and The very hungry caterpillar - I decided to go through the books and some extension activities with her. It was after all, her first time attending a theatre performance. I thought it would be good to prep her a bit and arouse her interest so that she would enjoy the performance thoroughly.

As I've not been particularly creative of late and have been searching for simple, fuss-free activities to do with her, we really didn't do very much for this book but after the activities, she showed much keener interest in reading (and re-reading) Little Cloud over and over again... so much so that she could even remember some lines! :)

If you don't have much time on your hands and wanna do some activities with your child, you can try these! :)

(i) cloud observation

This is the simplest activity of all! Just pick a beautiful day where you have fluffy white clouds in the brilliant blue sky and have a conversation with your preschooler about what she sees! 

Pick another day when it's about to rain and discuss how the clouds and the sky look different.

(ii) cotton ball clouds

You need: 

• a piece of blue construction paper, 
• fluffy white cotton balls and 
• glue

Have the child dab glue all over the construction paper:

... and stick the cotton balls on!!! :) 

Demonstrate how to pull apart the cotton ball slightly to stretch it and make the cloud look fluffy and have your child follow suit.

and it's done! :)

(iii) Painting clouds with bubble wrap


You need:

• drawing paper
• blue and white paint
• paint brush
• (big) bubble wrap (you can use small ones too but I think the big bubbles look better as clouds)
• sponge (to create some 'texture' in the blue sky - optional)

Get your child to paint a piece of drawing paper blue:

Dab the wet paint with a dry sponge (optional step):

Paint the bubble wrap white and press onto the blue 'sky':

You can see she had much fun painting with the bubble wrap from the big white patch of white!

If your child's painting of the cloud(s) has a semblance of any shape or animal, you can get her to write a sentence about it (for older kids). 

Other activities that you may wanna try (which I didn't have time for):

• shaving cream clouds
• cloud matching activity: cut out some shapes of 'clouds' (make a matching set), mix up the clouds and get your child to pair up the clouds that look the same :)