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!

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 :)

Activities to go with The Wind Blew by Pat Hutchins

*Backdated post: the activities were conducted at about the time of chinese new year*

Alicia loved this story about the wind which blew so many things away. Before you turn the page to find out what the wind blows off next, you should be able to guess what the wind would take next on its adventure by looking around the page for new characters/items (prediction skills).

Here are some of the activities we did in relation to this book:

(i) Painting a 'kite'

Basically, I just got her to do her usual painting one day and I cut out a kite shape later with a craft scissors, drew in the lines, punched a hole and threaded the yarn through. Though it's not a real kite, she loved it and kept pretending to fly her kite:

(ii) Making a mobile/ sequencing activity


I printed out the items that the wind blew away in the book from here (pg 24 of the document; there are other suggested activities in that pdf doc), pasted them on a cereal box and cut them out individually for Alicia to colour.

After the colouring's done, you can do sequencing (of the story) with your tot using those little cards before you actually make the mobile I made, shown below:

Just get a pair of disposable chopsticks, tape it down, forming a cross. Punch a hole in each card , thread some yarn through and string them onto the chopsticks. Because there are quite a few items, you'd need to have more than one item hanging from each point of the chopsticks (see how I attached them together in the above pics). Lastly, thread more yarn through the X, tie a tight knot and hang it up at the window! :)

(iii) Science: Light vs. heavy

We got a small fan - be careful of those little fingers! - and some random light and heavy items for her for this simple experiment to see what the wind can/ cannot blow away.

There she is with the two-dollar note!:

(iv) Just having fun with a windmill 

Find a windy day to just let your tot have fun with the windmill - see how fast it's spinning!

Testing the wind strength from a greater distance from the window:

(v) Fly a kite - a real one

If you can, fly a real kite with your tot! We didn't manage to but we brought her to see people fly kites though! :)

(vi) Cotton ball race

Saw this activity at Activity Mom some time back. Simply get a straw, trim it so it's shorter and easier to handle, then have a cotton ball race with your tot! :)

Have fun!