BFIAR - Caps For Sale

Now that my MS has improved alot, we made an effort to continue with our BFIAR homeschool program. I must admit BFIAR is a great program to start off with for little children younger than 4. There is nothing academic about it (unless you intentionally make it so). There's plenty of fun activities recommended in the manual and loads more that you can find from the web. Once again, just be very observant and sensitive to the needs of your child and add a bit of creativity to customise the activities to make the learning experience one that your child will love.

Once again, we used the resources from HomeSchoolShare site and printed out this find the item sheet. It's a little like "Where's Wally". T has to find all the items listed at the side of the sheet on the colour picture and circle them out. Surprising, she did very well and found all of them quickly. I noticed she enjoyed this activity and must make it a point to self make some more activities similar to this one.

We did some colouring activity here where she various medium of art. First with crayon, then with water colour. She doing the watch colouring, she started off nicely painting each cap a different colour. But somehow towards the end to decided to get abstract and started to splash colours randomly all across the the page.

Here we did some maths counting activity. On an earlier occasion, I attempted to introduce T to counting and numbering using this . It was too difficult for her to relate the quantity in the picture to the number dots. Somehow 3 bears and got nothing to do with 3 black dots, so why should they be the same? (this is what I decipher from her expression). So I gave it some thought and used Caps for Sale story to re-introduce sequencial counting to her. While reading the story, we were already counting the caps and monkeys in the book, so monkeys and caps are something very close to her heart now. I made out our own worksheets for her to match the correct number of caps to the monkeys. I made it a point that the 'lenght' of the the monkeys and caps were the same so that she increament of number is visual to her and this game is self correcting. (Eg. 1 monkey = same lenght as 1 cap, 5 monkeys = same length as 5 caps. If she matches a wrong number of caps to monkeys, she will have a cap with no monkey or a monkey with no cap). After a few rounds of me explaining and helping her along, she can now easily match correctly up to number 5. So knowing that she can now count accurately and not just blindly recite the numbers (which she does very well), we moved on to do something a little more difficult. The second worksheet (from HomeSchoolShare) requires the child to count and write to number. Since T has yet to learn the numerals and I don't intend to teach her that yet, I adapted it and asked to to draw the same number of circles as the monkeys she counted (similar concept - 1 monkey - 1 drawn circle, 4 monkeys = 4 drawn circles). With the laid foundation, she understood it easily and enjoyed drawing the matching number of circles.

Here we made a paper plate monkey mask and had a good 30 minutes of fun just chasing each other around the house. As you can see here, T is wearing a red cap pretending to be a monkey and I was the peddlar who had to run after her shouting "Give Me Back My Caps".

Some other activities that we did included :

- stacking a whole lot of caps on our heads and walking around the house shouting "Caps for Sale, fifty cents a cap".

- doing another print out worksheet which matched action verbs to the correct picture (Sitting, Jumping, etc... action words mentioned in the story). When learning the words (actually T knew all the words already), we played out each action exaggerately.

- T pretending to sleep and I hid the caps around the house and she has to find the caps around the house.

There are still alot of other activities that can be done with this story such as :

- making monkey bread

- introducing the concept of money

- learning about different domination of money

- learning about different types of monkeys

- learning about different types of hats and their uses....

there's so much so much that I am not able to list all here right now.

For now, I think we (or me) have had enough of this story for now. We shall try to move on to another story (target to do 1 story every 2 weeks) and maybe revisit this this one when T is older.

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.

BFIAR - The Big Green Pocketbook

I think we are almost done with Jesse Bear and had to choose a second book to start. The second book in the manual was The Little Rabbit, but the story itself didn't interest me very much. I must admit that I do find it a little straining to try to be discipline and keep up the BFIAR homeschool work. In order to maintain my motivation, I needed a story that is more fun to read and play along. Therefore, I choose The Big Green Pocketbook. This story is about a little girl's day out with her mummy. T and I go out quite often. This is something that we can relate to and talk about. The girl in the story doesn't have a name, so I named her T. We enjoyed reading the book together and talked alot about her journey, all the places she visited and T was very interactive during our nightly reading sessions. I think I made the right choice to continue with this book as No. 2.

It so happened by coincident that we spotted a really cute handmade handbag in a little back alley shop on Lamma Island. I couldn't resist getting it for her. I hope her liking for this bag will last and it will be one that you can use for months (hopefully years) to come. So here is her own 'pocketbook', she happily carried it for the whole Lamma trip (as you would notice in the photos) and manage to store a few souveniours in her bag (just like the little girl in the story). We let her keep her boat ticket in the bag and I shall keep this ticket to include in her lapbook. We even visited a costume jewelry shop and she walked out with a little beaded ring (girl in story had a keychain).

BFIAR - Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear

The BFIAR manual arrived. Actually the difference between express and normal shipping is only 1 week, but cost more than 2 times the price. Hmp... I shall make a note to be less impatient in the future.

The BFIAR manual is not a curriculum, it gives alot of ideas of activities that one can do with a child when reading the recommended books with them. Although the manual does not specify the order of the books to follow, it had Jesse Bear activities first, so I thought I shall follow suit.

Once again I printed all the online resources from "HomeSchool Share" and did some with T. When reading the story, T was entralled by the butterfly. We made a trip to the park, but didn't find any butterflies to catch (do butterflies come out in winter?). I hope I will be able to find time this weekend to make a butterfly craft with her. On the page where daddy bear comes home, T attempts to hug and kiss the picture too. This is what she does when her daddy comes home from work. From this, I start to understand why these books are called living books.

Here's a pic of T being introduced to the letter B.
There are alot more activities that we haven't found time to do yet, as now after my office, travel time is much longer, and thus time at home is shorter. If anyone has ideas on how to be more efficient, pls feel free to drop a line.

BFIAR - My books have arrived

The BFIAR books from Amazon arrived!! Had to pay double for the express shipment, but it is worth it to have these books before Christmas. We opened up the box immediately and T and I sat down to flip through each one of them. I asked her if she like her Christmas present and she said yes. I stayed up on Sat night to read all the books. My favorite is "If Jesus came to my home". I also realised that some in the BFIAR list are out of print and extremely expensive, I think I will skip those few titles for now. Now I shall have to wait patiently for the teachers manual to arrive for a different supplier.

We also continued with our activities for "Goodnight Moon" by reading rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle" and colouring.

BFIAR - Goodnight Moon, Activity 1

We started on our first BFIAR book this evening with our "Goodnight Moon". We read the book together then went around the house looking for items mentioned in the book, such as telephone, red balloon (we did have balloon, so we used a red ball instead), mittens, toy house. When we reached the toy house, T got distracted and ended up playing with the toy house.

I will have to research on the internet for activities before my books from Amazon arrives. In the meantime, ideas from experienced BFIARers welcomed

Googled during lunch hour for "Goodnight Moon" activities and found THIS. I've printed everything on this book and can't wait to start. :-)

HomeSchool - Five in a Row program

I have just purchased little T's Christmas present from Amazon. Feeling inspired after reading MamaHomeSchool's blog entry on BFIAR program and reading up on the site, I felt a motivation that this program is something that both T & I would enjoy. Unfortunately, they can no longer ship internationally from the FIAR site, so I resorted to purchasing their recommended selection from Amazon. However, the gift is not just the set of books, but more importantly the time that mummy will spend with T to execute the activities recommended for each of the book.