HomeSchool - Lower case alphabet matching card

I recently made some purchases from www.thehomelibraryonline.com after reading some recommendations from the owner on her blog www.thedomusacademy.com She used 'Explode the code - wall chart activity' to introduce alphabets and phonics to her 3 yr old and I thought I would give it a try too.

The manual recommended to first let the child recognise the form of the letter before attempting to introduce the sound of the letter to them. This made sense. What's the point of learning F sounds like 'fer' and T sounds like 'ter' if they keep mixing up these letters anyways (Our T is mising up these 2 letter and a few others, but get say 20 of them correct mostly).

Anyways, after playing with the wall chart a few times, I found it cumbersome to have to take it out, hang it up, keep it afterwards. So I made a simple cardboard matching game myself and here's T playing with it. Pink is her current favorite colour, so I use pink to keep her attracted to her 'toy'.

Go ahead and make one for your toddler / pre-schooler too. Its a fun matching game and helps introduce pre writing / reading skills. To make the card more sturdy, you just have to laminate it.

I'll probably make another one for the upper case letters and also one for numbers 1 to 20 soon.

Achievement - Reading by own self

I feel very proud and comforted to know that I have successfully cultivated a reader. I hope T will maintain this love for books. We have been reading to her daily since she was born (OK, maybe not every single day, but 8 out of 10 is good enough for us). Her nightly routine goes like this. Evening shower at about 8:30pm, brush teeth, change into diapers and pyjamas and reading on the bed before lights out at 9pm. Nowadays, even if we don't sit and read with her, she will spontaneously go to her room and take out her book after she finish her shower. She sits by herself and starts 'reading' out loud to herself. Its really very cute to see this. She is not able to recognise any word yet, but she recalls the storyline of the familiar stories. If she pulls out a book that we have yet to read together, she will 'make up' her own story by looking at the pictures. I think the BFIAR program has played a part in why she seems more keen in reading at last few months as compared to the earlier 2 years. All the BFIAR storys are truly living books and the activities and animations that we do with each story cultivated her strong interest in each of them. The Green Pocketbook has been her favorite for 2 months and she has been asking for Caps for Sale everyday this month.

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 - Educational Programs - QiaoHu

A few months ago, daddy chanced upon this Taiwanese children program on the internet. We downloaded a few episodes and T enjoys watching it very much. There are many action songs (involving both parent and child) on this program and T and I will play along when to the music. Amazingly, T seems to have picked up quite a bit of mandarin from watching this show. I try to let her watch an episode every day (when she doesn't insist on watching Disney playhouse).

I have tried to set Sat & Sun as mandarin day, but find myself tuning to full English before lunch. Must make a note to work harder on this.

Word of comfort is that school teacher tells us that T is able to understand what mandarin teacher tells her at school. (Every Monday is Mandarin day in school)

HomeSchool - Flash Cards

During my confinement, I read the following Glenn Dorman books

- How to teach your baby to read

- How to teach your baby maths

- How to give your baby Encyclopedic Knowledge

I give up the idea on teaching math, cos it seems a little eerie to me to have a 'Rainman' type of child who can look into a box of matches and immediately tell me how many are in there.

We tried flashing english words for about a month and I gave up cos it required too much effort and discipline to keep a record of words done, flash sequence and rotation period, etc... It was also kind of cumbersome to find the time to pull the cards out and keep them 3 times a day.

Instead of using flash cards, I now display 5 new words every week. (Actually, I will put the english words + chinese translation, so should be 10 words total). These words with pictures are hanged up in our dining area. As and when we feel like it, I would just carry T up, point and read the words to her. At times she would repeat after me. On some days T would proactively walk up to this wall and call me over to read the words with her.

For me, it doesn't matter if she actually memorizes the word or not. What's important is to nuture in her a love for reading and learning.

I think now she can tell the difference between alphabetical words and chinese characters. Cos when we point to the different words, the tone of her gibbering definately sound different.

HomeMade Book - My Family

Feeling very inspired by T's interest in the "Excuse Me" book, I wanted to continue to encourage her interest and active participation in reading. I recall reading from Glenn Dorman's book about making simple books at home for the child to read. I felt that T's keen interest in the "Excuse Me" book was because she can actually clearly say some of the words in it. Therefore, I decided to make a simple book about our family members so she can participate by saying "Daddy", "Mommy", "Grandma", etc.... At the same time, she can also learn our names. Here's what a page of it looks like ....