Learning journey - Jan 2012 Chinese New Year Theme

A quick update on my learning journey in January 2012. We did not do a particular theme but instead we are influence by the festive air and decided to do a CNY theme instead.

Let's see what activity I have for the CNY theme.


We are supposed to cover Body Part in this month. Hence, we are learning that too. Together with my other flash card but no picture card this month :(.


Let's see what I enjoyed and what's not..

Sound shaker. I kind of like shaking it. Shaking up and shaking down. Mommy tried to shake one of the shaker under a blanket and get me to guess which one she shaked but I didn't understand the game at all and not responding to her game.

Hanging ornaments. I am supposed to hang the ornaments on the tree provided but I didn't want to do that. I was admiring and looking at the ornaments one by one and decided to wear it on my wrist instead.

Later I decided it was more fun pouring the fish ornament from bowl to bowl.

Inserting coins. Yes, I like it and I inserted all the coins inside the coin box.

Then later I poured it all out and decided it was more fun putting the coins in the bowl and pouring it over and over again. Mommy tried teaching me sorting the different sizes of coins and I was just managed to sort the biggest size. I didn't want to do that for other 2 sizes.

Sensory box. I took out the flower and said "flower". I was looking at the flowers and the cards placed inside the sensory box. I like it so so only. But I like the flower though.

Later, I matched the actual flower to the flower I found in one of the ang pow packets inside the sensory box. I told mommy, "same..same."

And do I look pretty with the flowers on my head?

I then went over to the world map and said "ding dong" and point at Russia. We have no country and world language learning this month.

I played with the bunny puppet and tried to put the flowers on bunny's ears too.

I then read the book about parts of the body and I know quite a lot about it. I can point to the parts like

- eye, ear ,mounth, nose, head, hand, hair, eyebrow, cheek, lips, teeth, tongue, fingers, fingernails, leg, toes, knee, buttock, button (belly button).

I get confused with
-chin to cheek
-elbow
-knee
-ankle

I also studied my alphabet "B" to ball and the sound of "B".

Finally, mommy helped to decorate the tree and we brought it down and we pasted kor kor's handmade CNY card from school on the wall...and hence, this is our CNY corner. We love it very much. Nice?


Wishing everyone "Gong Xi Fat Chai"!!

Week 3,4 & 5 - Transportation Week

Yes, our second theme is "Transportation". We extented this theme to 3 weeks or maybe even more because we are a bit slack in learning in this month due to the coming festive season mood and holidays. It has an on and off learning and mommy tried to stretch it longer, so that I can pick up more.

Look at the materials mommy has prepared for me. The country that I am learning is "DR of the Congo" and the world language is "French".



The montessori activities that I have been doing.



Toys related to cars, trains, aeroplanes, trucks and tractors, boats are all displayed in my open shelves play area for my access.


I also play Thomas train set. Another game related to transportation theme is I sat in an empty box and kor kor pushes me around. It was fun fun fun and kor kor was so tired pushing me around and mommy has to be push me till she gave up too.


Mommy also prepared a sand box for us and she dump in some construction vehicles as part of the learning opportunity.


Kor kor also benefited from this theme as he enjoyed playing the toys with me and he learnt a few new words too.

What I have learnt in this theme..

New words - aeroplane, ambulance, police car, truck, boat.
Words that I already know - car, train, bicycle, motorbike.
Words need to emphasise - helicopter, ship, bus, tractor, lorry, van.

We will be taking a short break before the next theme get started in 2012. Mommy has been busy with the festive celebration and has yet to prepare the materials for me. So, stay tuned for my next learning theme.

Learning journey - Week 1 & 2 Fruits

It is a theme based learning. We started our first lesson with the theme - Fruits, for the first 2 weeks. Every 2 weeks, mommy will change the theme.

What do we cover in our approx 1 hour learning corner?

1. Montessori Activity.
2. Flash cards - picture cards, word cards, chinese word cards.
3. Sensory box - learning opposites
4. A few selected books
5. Shichida activities
6. tracing alphabets
7. drawing & colouring
8. Countries & World Language (follow TW lesson)
9. Matching with real objects.
10. Play - sing song, movement, mirror...puppets..

Seems a lot, right but each activity only takes a short time, except the montessori, sensory box or drawing activities...Overall, I spend around 1 hour to complete all the activities above. I have short attention span, so I move over to next activity very fast. Certain days, I skip some activities too. I love the montessori activity the MOST and will attack this first when I walk into the room.

Let's see what I did for the theme "fruits"..The photos below taken in 3 separate days.

Day 1
--------
Sorting pom-poms and puppet show time for eye exercise. I love the bunny and try to catch and hug it.


Sensory box - Learning "inside" & "outside" by using toy apple & orange.
Drawing & scribbling..

Day 2
-------
Sorting and picking up pom-poms using tongs.

Scoping & pouring water..

Cleaning up - Wiping the floor after pouring the water..

Puppets show time for eye exercise..using props like apple & orange..

Senses time - experiencing real fruits by seeing, touching, smelling and tasting it. I get to eat and taste the fruits at the end of the class. I also did matching of the real fruits to the pictures cards mommy persented to me.


Mirror play - showing all kind of expressions.

Tasting grapes..

Day 3
-------
Sorting out pom poms using ladle. Puppet showing time presenting pom poms.

Reading out the TW material.

Learning Greece..


Recognising Greece flag. Locating where Greece is and looking at the map of Greece

At the same time, mommy plays Greece national anthem, counting 1-10 in Greek, saying A-Z in Greek, common greetings in Greek, a few Greek children songs, Greek traditional songs, Greek traditional music in the background for my exposure.

Mommy tried not to take too many photos as everytime she took out the camera, I was attracted to it and will leave the activity that I am playing. Mommy needs to focus on me too.

New words that I picked up in this theme - Kiwi, grapes, lemon, grapefruit..
We will continue learning more about fruits and mommy will continue letting me feel and taste different type of fruits, though we are going to conclude our "fruit" theme soon..

So, our next theme will be....stay tune...

My learning corner

Since mommy discovered my learning ability, she decided to set up a learning corner for me to enhance my learning journey. She was "WISHING & WISHING" that we can have an extra room to turn into a learning & play room for me..unfortunately our place is limited. She has to make do with whatever empty space we have and turned it into a "tiny" learning corner for me.

She wanted a quiet area, so that I can concentrate and focus while I am learning. So, she decided to make use of the guest room as a learning room for me. She lined up a row of learning activities at the side and will guide me through each activity. I will post more of the learning activities in my next post. Here I am showing you my first setup of the learning corner. In fact, now mommy has added more things in the learning corner and will post it up once she has time to take the picture.

THe pictures below showed the learning activities that she has prepared for me for the first and second week, theme - "Fruits".

Starting Tweedle Wink..

@ 1 year 8 months 1 week and 2 days old..by mommy..

Call me a kiasu mom..yes, we enrolled Isabel to Twiddle Wink last week. It has never come to my mind that I needed to send Isabel to any enrichment centres/ schools at such an early age.

When Darren was at this age, I "homeschooled" him by teaching him myself and brought him to playgroups. I didn't see the reason why I needed to send him "outside" to learn while the mommy here can do a little bit teaching here and there for him..(I am not a teacher by profession and I was doing it trial and error..more for my own fun learning togethter with him..) It was until I conceived Isabel and have no energy to continue the "teaching" part and he was already 3.5 years old, only then we decided to send him to nursery.

But Isabel is totally differnt. First of all, I don't have the luxury to spend so much time with her. Sad to say that I hardly spend any "quality time" with her. Everyday to me is rushing and rushing, just to handle their basic needs, for 2 kids. Honestly I feel bad, but I really couldn't bring out the energy, motivation and time.

Surprisingly, despite the very little "teaching" time I have for her, she is learning fast...on her own, especially this 2 months. Probably due to her improvement in speech development (or maybe ipad), she mastered A-Z, 1-10, major body parts (even eyebrow), colours, shapes, animals + pets and other day to day items on her own. I am amazed...all of us are amazed...

Only then, I realised that if I don't continue tapping on this potential of hers, it will be a waste. She is really like a sponge. She is absorbing information every minute and she is learning fast. I don't want to waste this golden opportunity of hers to learn more things, important skills and lifelong skills.

Then, right brain training came to my mind. Surveyed a few and Shichida needs 6-9 months waiting period. I don't want to waste this 6-9 monts of hers, so we chose Twiddle Wink. We attended their workshop and there and then, we signed her up.

It is expensive...very expensive I think..but this is something that we can provide her at this age as this is the golden period for her to train her right brain. Once she reached 6-7years old, no matter how rich you are also, the effect will not be as good as now. This is the best time for right brain training.

It was a "stressful" decision. Of course hubby strongly supported this decision. It was me, that wonders..is it worth it? However, we never know if we don't try it out. I don't have the skills and materials to do it myself, I also don't have the knowledge to do it too. So, we have to let other people earn the money lor. Anyway, it was a good mother daughter bonding time too.

So, Isabel attended her first lesson this week and I was proud to say that she is responding well to it. Luckily we brought her there last week and she has already familiarised with the environment. So, she has no fear when we first reached there. She even called the teacher "jia jia". Hahaha...so cute of her...

Though I still need to always attract her attention back to the teacher and tv, it was not that bad after all. She will do some of the activities, then started to roam around again. She especially likes the animal stickers on the wall and kept saying "elephant, jifaff (girrafe), jibra (zebra)". She also likes the barney outside the play area. She tried many times going to the door and wanted to go out and look for the Barney.

Overall, we still manage to get her attention when needed and one thing good about her (mommy feels proud of her) is she is willing to give back the "item" and help put back into the box after the activity is finished. She will not want to hold it on and refuse to give back.

She is definitely very happy there. She has fun exploring the place. Though I felt very tired after the session, it is worth it. Firstly, that 1 hour is a very productive bonding time for us; secondly, it gives me motivation to spend more time teaching Isabel at home. (I am setting up a learning area for Isabel in the guest room). I am learning too and I intend to teach Darren using the same information too.

Well, hope that this program will benefit Isabel and make the money well spent. I still think it is really expensive..

Structured Play

Everyday, I will spend about 30mins to an hour in mommy's room for structured play. Mommy keep a few educational toys in her room and I only get to play that together with mommy during that time. It was a perfect setup as I really enjoy it only once or twice a day. I will play it properly and finished it before moving on to the next one. I love the puzzles most and I have 2 set of puzzles there.

Here are some of the toys that I played in mommy's room.


When comes to playing with Mr.Potato, I always like to put the spectacles or hat on my own head instead. Look at me...nice???

Sensory Box

Today mommy brought out the sensory box that she has prepared for me last week for kor kor and myself to play.



It was a cooling evening and kor kor has no bau bei. So, we played for a good 30mins on this until mommy stopped me coz it already past my bathing time. So, we stopped and kor kor helped me to keep everything. Thank you kor kor!!



I like playing with it..scoping it and trying to shake it left and right. I even tried to throw the stones outside but mommy scolded me and make sure I picked it up and put it back again. I also fight with kor kor some of the spoons and cups too. But kor kor is always very kind to give in to me.

Finally I decided to sit myself inside the box. I think this is more fun!!