My Playschool. Net

My Playschool.net

Have you always wanted to do some home-learning with your pre-schooler to build up your bonding with them or just simply to enrich their minds?  And you don't know where to start? 

Last week, Pauline contacted me and asked if she could feature one of my past home-learning post in her site.  I was so thrilled and honoured and never expected that anyone would be keen to read what I do with Kimi since my blog entries are more like a digital diary.  I was also worried if my post would measure up.

Well, if you guys know Pauline and Rachel, they are one of the best in home-learning.  In fact, I was so inspired by Pauline that led me down the home-learning path.  After a while, I came to know Rachel and she too, has some really fabulous ideas in home-learning and parenting.  For me, it is a boon as they are both Christian mummies and that is important to me.  Just like all Christian mums, we want our kids to be well-grounded in God's ways and to have Godly friends.

Back to My Playschool.  This is the brainchild of Pauline and Rachel and the site is breaming with useful home-learning articles, teaching ideas, resources, workshops, other home-learning blogs, etc, etc.  Basically, it is armed with everything you need to know and all the right tools to get you started on your home-learning journey.  Yes, everything is there in that site, unbelievable? Yes!

Home-learning is relatively new in Singapore and at times, resources can be limited and we have to make our own.  Sometimes, we don't even know where to start.  Has that ever happended to you before? Yes?  Now, you know where you can head on to - My Playschool - for the best in home-learning resources and networking! 

By the way, here's my feature .... Learning The Letter D.  You know, when I looked at this past post, I felt so nostalgic - both sad and happy.  Happy that we had so much fun learning and sad that time just flew by like that.  Looking at Kimi then, he was just a little baby!  Goodness! He has grown so MUCH!!!  Oh, how I miss his baby face, stubby fingers and round tummy! :)

Ok, enough.  Quick get to My Playschool now! :)

Hama Fun!

I just realised that I had forgotten to blog about these wonderful beads - Hama Beads.  These can be bought at Growing Fun.  We made this in January and Kimi had lots of fun with it.

You can use the stencil and follow the colour or just create your own.  Iron on it and it becomes a rigid display!  Excellent for training fine motor.

 Kimi, concentrating intensely 

 The finished whale

Butterfly Farm & Waterplay Again

It was a last minute decision to go to Oh's Farm to look at the butterflies as I had been telling Kimi that we will visit it again during the June hols with his little friends.

But ever since, he has been nagging me to bring him and with a fever running, I really wasn't keen to go. But after a nice big breakfast I made for the kids (my niece, Sarah stayed for the night), they were raring to go. Popped a panadol and away we went.

First stop, Oh's Farm (somehow, the farm do not look as good as it is depicted in this blog. Maybe no effort was made to maintain it?) to look at the butterflies but the kids were more keen to get their caterpillar kits. :)

After the visit to the park, I love to bring the kids to cool off at Sembawang Shopping Centre's Waterplay Park.  Such a nice sweet & cool way to end the outing. :)

Sarah & Kimi at entrance of the Butterfly Lodge

An interesting caterpillar we spotted!

Sarah's favourite butterfly!

What a beautiful sight with all the colourful butterflies fluttering around

Kimi was so happy when I managed to 'catch' a butterfly for him!

Jumping for joy at the water park

Kimi's favourite apparatus there - he's imagining that he's shooting down all the enemy ships and planes! Ha!

At home and quickly examining the kit.  We bought 2 kits.  1 of the kit had an normal sized and an ultra tiny caterpillar as there weren't any left. 

Update : The normal sized caterpillar pupated the next day!

Kimi happy to hold his caterpillar while Sarah was too frightened to even go too near it.

Fun with Tongs & Poms

Another game we played to past time as well as re-inforce Kimi's fine motorskills. We played this last year in Oct (28/10/2009). It is a simple game but effective to exercise those fine motor skills.

All the materials are bought from Daiso. You can experiment with different mediums to transfer as well as different utensils like chopsticks, etc.

Place some pom-poms in a container and let child transfer to another using these wooden tongs. Look how happy Kimi is just playing this simple game? :)

Easy-peasy for him..

Then he started getting cheeky and asked if he could eat the poms poms

After he as done with it, I upped the challenge and gave him a smaller tong/pincer

Under The Sea

Remember our trip to the beach to collect shells and sand? Here's Kimi's homework from SM.

We had to paint the seahorse. So, instead of just colouring it, I wanted Kimi to use more of his fine motor skills as well as touch and feel a variety of texture for this craft. This craft was done over a few days. :)

The ideas for the overall craft/materials are from me but it was still very much child-directed. For example, Kimi would choose the colour of the pearl paper while I cut it and he pasted it himself according to the shape(s).

Then when I suggested using bubble wrap to stamp for the seaweed, he surprised me by saying he wanted to use his fingers to paint the seaweed instead!

Kimi also said he wanted to stamp 1 part of the seahorse which he did. I gave him a few material choices and he decided which he prefered for the different seahorse sections. Lastly, he chose and arranged the shells on the seabed himself and even gave the craft a name - "Under The Sea".

I was impressed at how much he had progressed since we last did some craft and am encouraged to do more challenging ones with him. I enjoy doing crafts like this where we have an exchange of ideas - far more interesting than just me inputting. :)

As usual he enjoyed the sand art best and even took some sand and threw at me!! AIYO!!!! That's why I always PREFERRED to do sand art at the playground downstairs! But thought this was a small section .... welll... :)

The "naked' seahorse

First, Kimi painted the whole piece in a light wash of blue for the sea
Here, it's done!
Kimi concentrating on pouring the sand we took from the beach to spread it all over. I drew a dividing line for the seabed and used double side tape to cover it all over. Then I remove and let Kimi pour the sand over.

Kimi transferring the extra sand to the tray
Kimi showing me his favourite shell!
Tada! Our completed craft. I only took some pix of the process cos I had forgotten to take.. heehee! See the beautiful seaweed and palm print? All Kimi's idea! He also said he wanted the seahorse to have a blue face - ok, up to you darling. The yellow bits at the bottom are crepe paper which I made him tear and roll. To strenghthen the fine motor.

Seashells by the Beach

Kimi enjoys going to the beach and he has been bugging us ever since he started Pre-Nursery as his kindy is just a short distance away.

I had some ideas for craft so thought why not bring the little one for short walk before dinner? I told him we needed to pick shells and some sand...

It was a short walk but we had a wonderful time! The great thing about outdoors is that you get to learn as you have some fun too! Kimi picked and touched dead crabs (yikes!), saw crab holes, picked different kind of shells. It was all touchy-feely!

See how eager Kimi is? He brought his trusty bucket and a small friend, Ducky for company. :) Finally, at the beach! Look at his face! Beaming!
When I was growing up, I lived next to the sea and I could find loads of nice shells easily on the beach. It was rather sad that we walked the whole stretch to find only few shells. Clearly, pollution has rid alot of sealife. :( Here, Kimi found his first shell and he was esctactic.

Kimi, not giving up.... still looking for more shells The sea was nice and blue and I had wanted the 2 boys to take a pix. But Kimi was not co-operative as usual. See the little ducky by his side? He said he needed to put ducky nicely so it can take a pix too.
Finally managed to coax him to wave 'hi' albeit still not looking in the camera and very unwillingly...
See? When I asked him to show me what he picked? He pushed the bucket in my face, refusing to look in the cam. What's with taking pix that he dislikes so much? I pray that this stage will pass soon... it's been like that since he was 13 months!!
Some of the shells we picked

Russia Lapbook

As much as I can, I try to do pre and post activities with Kimi for the places we are going to visit and use that as a theme for some homelearning activities.

I find pre-learning especially useful as Kimi will then be able to put what he has learnt to something he can feel, see, touch, experience, etc, first hand. This makes learning easier and more interesting and more often than not, the post learning reinforces everything.

This is a lapbook we've done along the weeks since we were back as Kimi was sick for 10 days and we couldn't complete it. It's finally done and he has learn a fair bit too!

Kimi doing the counting and sequencing sheet which I made

Kimi thinking before answering which mode of transport to take in relation to the distance to the places. Eg to go to the zoo, we need to drive as it is very far and we only need to walk if we are going to the supermarket next door.

The cover - I printed out some travel shots and pasted on these 2 cute matryoshka dolls which I found at Daiso.

The first fold which featured the Russian flag, Russian on the map, simple facts about Russia, an activity which I made to explain to Kimi about distances and its relevant mode of transport, some Russian phrases and comparison of the Russian and our alphabets.
The 2nd fold - A flap chart showing the things found in Russia, a counting and sequencing game (Kimi loves sequencing game and am surprised that he can be so good at it too :) happy mom), Russian currency, a pocket of animal cards of animals found in Russia, some poems/rhymes and list of the books we read.

An overview of the lapbook

Home Learning - Russia, St. Basil's Cathedral Craft

Remember the many bottles we inherited from the large amounts we drank? I saved some of them to make this craft for our homelearning.

What you need :-

• A few bottles, 1 taller than the rest
• Some cords or ribbons
• Some gold paper, I use those cigarette box inserts (donated by my sis)
• Printed paper of the facade of St. Basil's Cathedral (you can used plain paper and colour in the exterior)
• Double sided tapes

The materials

I use double-sided tape on the body of the bottle so it makes sticking on the paper easier. Kimi rolling the paper onto the bottle.
And then using double-sided tape, I stick that alll round the top so Kimi can line up the cords wind it up nicely and easily. With glue, it will be very messy while with double-sided tape, you can remove and re-do and re-adjust. It's also easier for the kids. :)
Our neighbour, Kieran joined us much to Kimi's happiness!

Our completed craft! Yay!! Kimi loves it and is soooo protective of it, not allowing Kieran to bring his piece home. In the end I sneak it to him. :)

Geoboard Fun

I'd never expect to be away from blogging for so long, Wow!

Lots of things had and are happening and we've been really busy now that Kimi staying at home. I'll talk about that in the next posts (I've got so many to back-date!).

We've also just returned from a nice holiday and I'll share that when we are more settled.

I just did this today and Kimi enjoys it! I found this great idea from here. It is not only easy to make (I spent about 20 mins, including drawing out the grid) and cheap too.

This is great for road trips or for whatever distractions you need to throw at them. I've made mine with a white background cos I like things that look 'cleaner'.

Besides learning shapes, I was thinking about making scenes/pictures like a house, tree, sun, etc. Anything. There's quite a bit you can do with this.

I'd recommend that you get those hair bands without any metal connectors so it won't snap and hurt little fingers. I'm going to change mine.

I got all my stuff from Daiso (It's now just next to my home! Yay!). If you like the dark contrast, you can get the black wall coverings. The clear push-pins were out of stock so I just used the colourful ones.

So, you keen to get started? Here's what you need:-

• 1 board
• Some push pins
• Covering with adhesive
• Ruler, pencil and plain paper or graph paper
• A small hammer
• Some hair bands

How?

1. I bought the board that has a bevelled edge and ready for making signs so I don't need to sand and all.
2. Then I drew up my grid. I used a 5cm x 5cm spacing (you can use bigger or smaller).
3. After which I cut the wall paper to fit the board and stick on it.
4. With the grid on top of the pasted on wallpaper, I used the push pin to make a hole-marking.
5. After all the markings been done, I remove the grid and hammer in the push pins.
6. Once that is done, your geoboard is ready!

Board, wall coverings with self-adhesive backing, push pins and hair bands (these were the only ones left). I got everything from Daiso.

Little helper busy with hammering. You can let your little one help you but pls be very careful. This is good for hand/eye co-ordination.
The completed geoboard

Making shapes!

Kimi busy playing. He told papa that he was making a hexagon! Haha!

Kimi giving a thumbs up to his new home-made toy! Yay!

Budding Architect

Don't you think that is such a beautiful structure? Well, I do. See how Kimi co-ordinated the pitch roofs to its respectively colour? I'm seeing Kimi displaying more and more traits like these - attention to details and colour co-ordination.

He's quite a perfectionist like me. I worry about that cos I don't want him to BE like me. I'd rather he be more flexible than a stubborn old cow like me. :( But architects have to be meticulous ya? Lol!

Farms and all things F

Continuing from last week, we visited a goat and frog farm. The goat farm was by the way as we were in the area but was very disappointed as we couldn't even get near the goats. We had to look from really AFAR! That's cos the AVA is afraid of transmission of diseases with the close contact - what a shame.

Kimi had more fun at the frog farm although he was a little frightened by the croaking of the mature frogs!

In the end, instead of visiting a vegetable farm or flower nursery as planned, I detoured to Sungei Buloh instead and we had such a wonderful time sniffing out the flora and fauna!

As it was nearing Kimi's nap time, we had to leave rather soon. But most importantly, Kimi didn't have his bug repellant on and I tell you, the mozzies there are like monsters! So, pls if you are going there, pls pls douse yourself and the kids with repellant!

Can't wait to visit again as Kimi really enjoyed the birds, insects and 'animals' we see there! I love bringing Kimi on such outings cos he gets to learn so much in such a short time and in a fun way too! :)

That weekend, I brought Kimi to a flute mini concert at the Esplanade. It was a free musical display of the ancient Japanese flute - Shakuhachi. What beautiful sounds! I was totally mesmerised! Kimi rather enjoyed it too. He sat through 15mins which I feel is an awesome time for such a young tot!

The goats from afar and the milking machine!

Frog Farm - Kimi could visualise the entire life cycle of a frog here. He also made a new friend. :)

Kimi on the boardwalk at Sungei Buloh - running away from mozzies!Unwilling to take a pix here...Kimi taking in the sights of the exhibits of the creatures found in Sungei BulohLearning about the different kinds of bird nestsThen we spotted a sunbathing monitor lizard. It was 'strolling' just at our feet!And some happy, hopping squirrelsKimi bird-watching. It's so serene I can just sleep there!

Waiting patiently for it to start - before it does, Kimi looks through his favourite PlayMobil catalogue

Looking on intently