HomeSchool - Shapes and Colour, 'Colorama'

We've had this game at home for more than a year now. We've played with it randomly in the past, but I don't T got the hang of it. We took it out again this week and tried again. Seems that she now understands how the game is played and even attempted to cheat by trying to manipulate dice to help her win.

Its a good game to teach young children about colours and shapes and helps me to add another fun lesson on our homeschool curriculum rather than just rely on flashcards.

HomeSchool - Concept of time and routine

One of the goals in T's homeschool curriculum for age 3 yrs, is to introduce her to the concept of time and have her maintain her own routine. I doubt I am able to get her to be able to tell the time on the clock at this young age, but I think she should at least be able to recognise the difference between morning, noon and night and what her responsibilities are during these different times of the day.

So I draw up this graphical time-table for her and posted it up for her in our home. She seemed to be very attracted to the idea and enjoyed looking at her photos on it. We went through the schedule together and she was able to tell me from the photos what she was suppose to be doing at the allocated time

Example : I told her that she is suppose to wake up every morning at 7 o'clock and pointed out the clock to her, then I asked her, so after you wake up what should you do? and pointed at the photo, she tells me go pee pee. I reply 'yes, go pee pee and poo poo, brush, teeth and wash face. and then what do you do?' and I point to the next photo. she says ' eating'. and I continue, yes, and after eating breakfast, what do you do? and she says 'go to school'

So we went through the whole the whole schedule until repeated a few times, after which , she can now recite the routine without being prompted.

I think its good to have the child's routine visible to them. I feel it really helps them to establish the ability to self care and instill some discipline. It's only been less than a week that I put this time-table up, and it already saved me a few arguements with T about night time shower and bedtime. I just tell her and when tried to escape from her night time shower. 'Its eight o'clock now, and mummy finished playing with you. What are you suppose to be doing now.' She walks over to look at her notice board and come back to tell me meekly 'shower and read story books'. Battle won, no arguement.

I intentionally used the graphic of the analog clock so that it can help to give her the concept of how to use the clock to tell the time and slowly as she learns to read the numerals and understands how long hand and short hand works, she may tell the time for herself.

Once again, pink was also picked intentionally, as this is still her favorite colour for now and perhaps can keep her interest in this time-table longer.

HomeSchool Activities for the past weeks

Finally the 1st Trimester is over and I am feeling more 'normal' now. We tried to get our homeschooling back on track. Here are some of the activities that we have done over the past weeks.

Sorting beads by colour.

The same set of coloured beads can be played in several ways. In this game, I made the first colour sequence and T has to repeat the same sequence using the remaining beads.

We continued practising finger dexterity with this threading toy. I noticed her fine motor skills are pretty good for her age and she does enjoy this threading game. I made her a necklace and she made me one too. We wore it around the house for the afternoon.

We tried to practise some writing skills with this set of Kumon cards. We did succeed in 'writing' all the alphabets. However, personally, I don't fancy these cards that much for the following reasons :
1. the marker included is too fine/thin for a 2.5 yr old proper handling
2. some of the picture for the alphabet were too confusing / difficult.
3. the cards didn't show clearly the proper directions have the stokes the alphabet should be written in.
I think I shall soon be making my own cards.

HomeSchool - cut and paste shapes

As a continuation of her newly learnt skill of using the scissors, I printed out some cut and paste activity from the web. We cut up the shapes together, and she will apply glue and paste them onto the worksheets. She has no problem to match the correct shapes. She is able to name correctly most of the shapes. ( I am a proud mummy when she says "trapezoid"). But we will have to work harder on naming the colours.

I have a video clip of her doing this activity, but will have to resize it before I can load it up here.

HomeSchool - Shapes & Colours

We got this book from Popular. Its great as it does the following :

• teaches shapes
• teaches colour
• trains spatial skills

Here's T putting circles on the drawing card. I think this is also a good introduction about following dotted lines. In future I can print dotted lines pictures for her to draw on.