Lesson 7: Our 3 weeks on trees!!!

That’s long time right??? kee kee, finally, rounded up today!

Theme : Trees

High Frequency Words : from, with, at, are

Numbers : 5 – five

Maths : Tree shapes 

Aim

Ethan doesn’t fancy such theme, so my only aim is to get him interested… In the midst of it, it will be a bonus to introduce seasons, shapes of trees and conservation.

Best classroom

What can beat the great outdoor right?  A few of our impromptu lessons on this were held outside… MacRitchie, Lower, Upper Pierce, Zoo and even just near our estates are all great places for this topic… I’m really thankful that our government did lots of measures to make the great outdoor more accessible.

Seasons - The Season of Arnold’s Apple tree by Gail Gibbon

This is a great book to introduce seasons.  And what makes it even better is an online lesson plan that makes it so convenient . (btw, don’t buy, its available in the library, that’s what I did, borrow)

For the craft, I did some modification, and here’s what we got…

  

Hmmm, the blossoms, green and red apples are not very obvious… anyway…

I use lots of glitter glue.  For the blossoms in Spring, we have silver and gold glitter, green for green apples in Summer, red glitter for the red apples in Autumn… And for the snow in winter… none other than liquid paper!!! And the best part is… Ethan enjoyed the glitter and the liquid paper tremendously…

When the child enjoys, I’m sure they will appreciate the craft better, and remember the facts better…

Shapes, Conservation, etc…

This website on tree is a great place…  The best part, its on PC, so could definitely catch Ethan’s attention…

So much more…

I prepared soooo much more stuffs, but didn’t have chances to finish withing the 3 weeks!!! (:P, plain lazy)… Nevermind, target met, let’s move on, I’m tired of the same topic…

Lesson 6: Bugs and Creepy Crawlies

Theme : Bugs and Creepy Crawlies

High Frequency Words : it, is, get

Alpha : ‘S s’

Numbers : 4 – Four

Maths : Big, Bigger, Biggest, Tall, Taller, Tallest, etc, Symmetrical

Chinese :

Bible : Creation – God Made My Feet

What is mentioned here is only a highlight of what we did, if you have like a copy of the actual lesson plan, feel free to email me privately at delci215@yahoo.com

For Ethan, this is actually quite a challenging topic ‘cos he hated crawlies.  However, I was surprise that except for the fact that he still didn’t dare touch the plastic bugs, he managed the lesson well.

And this topic is not complete without actually going out to try catch or at least observe some bugs around our estate.

We managed to catch a broken wing butterfly… hmmm, this is our 2nd ‘nearly gone’ buttterfly that we have caught… Was also delighted to see a spiderweb which is being nicely spinned…

Insects and Bugs – Their differences

Wanted to differentiate between insects and bugs.

We use finger print to make an artwork of ant hill… Made 3 prints side by side, added the 3 pairs of legs, antannae, and voila, an ant is done.  Repeat to make lots of ants… but i made a mistake… The legs supposed to be coming out from the ‘thorax’, but each pair of our ant’s legs came out from each body parts Anyway, highlighted that to Ethan.

Metamorphosis – From the butterfly lifecycle, and symmetrical

Wanted to show the butterfly life cycle - ‘Metamorphosis’.

“Caterpillar munching leaves”

Day 1, used pom poms to make the caterpillar.  Also painted the toilet paper roll for the pupa stage. 

Day 2, for the butterfly, folded construction paper into half, cut out the shape of butterfly’s wings, opened up, painted 1 side of the wing, fold again, and voila, a symmetrical butterfly wing (erm, not quite symmetrical, but somewhere there!) The cutting helped Ethan to practise cutting curves, which he is quite weak at.

Completed “Butterflies” (and their caterpillars)

Day 3, to make the butterfly more beautiful, add glitter glue. When dried, stuck the wings to the painted toilet roll, finally, added antennae.

Ethan had fun flying his butterfly too!

Big Bigger Biggest

‘The Best Bug Parade’ by Stuart J. Murphy is a great book to teach this concept.  After reading the book, we used our plastic insect as props for the story.

Also have the toy baby, Ethan and me to demo the concept of short, shorter, shortest.  Not forgetting our plants, tall, taller, tallest.

Played a simple game where the hands widened or narrowed depending on what ‘Simon says’…

Reading

Teaching Reading now is becoming easier and easier cos Ethan kind of got the idea of blending sounds.  In addition to Reading A to Z, we also supplemented with Ladybird’s Peter and Jane series.  I’m surprise that he is now able to recognise the words by sight pretty well.  Actually had problem asking him to stop reading .

Numeral

For the last few weeks, when I introduce the word form of the numbers, I didn’t really focus on getting Ethan to recognise the words.  This week, I make use of the HF’s strategies to get Ethan to recognise 3 numeral words, and it turned out to be a fun time for him.  Will continue with the rest of the numbers over the next few weeks.

Baking

We baked scone for 1 of the breakfasts.  And blur me, forgot to add the raisins.  We put them on top of the scones instead, and got some help from Zoe.

 End result:

Kee kee, Ethan loves our home-baked scones, cos it comes in shapes other than round!  And my favorite is the star.

Target Met?

I would say yes.  On and off, when we come across a bug, I would ask Ethan if this is an insect, and he could usually give the correct answer.

I’m also please with our Reading and Maths progress.

But for Bible study, sigh, suppose to do so today… But had a bad night yesterday and was too grouchy and tired… Hope to continue on either Fri or next Monday.

Since the main theme was on Food, for bible lesson, I thought teaching on words from our mouth would be appropriate.

(Note the the idea is originally from http://www.daniellesplace.com/)

Using Puppet

We first made the “Big Mouth Monster”.  As we progressed through the teaching, I made used of the crocodile puppet.  And I realised that the used of puppet was a very effective teaching tool.  Ethan was able to focus very well.  And when the puppet ‘did’ the closing prayer asking God to guard words that come out of our mouth, I saw Ethan closed his eyes and looked VERY SERIOUS when he prayed.

Game

And for game, from the website, I printed little notes with good and bad comments.  We took turn to pick a little note.  When it was good things like “I love you.”, “Thank you”, etc, the big mouth monster would love to eat it, but when word like “I hate you”, “Shut up”, etc was said, we would crush the paper and throw it into the bin.  I trust that through the little game, Ethan would realise the importance of the kind of words that we should say.

A Humbling Lesson

This lesson is very very humbling for me.  Cos as we go through the little notes, some of the bad things are actually things that I used (maybe once or twice).  And when we picked those, I actually apologised to Ethan for saying nasty things.

I think I was the one who needed God to guard my mouth more than Ethan.

Homeschool Week 4 : Nutrition & the food pyramid

The display desk consisted of plastic and real food.  Some are being used when we constructed the food pyramid.

Theme : Nutrition, Food Pyramid

High Frequency Words : we, go

Numbers : 3 – Three

Maths : Weighing using non-standard measurement, counting beyond 20

Chinese : Food names, (again, not much done… sigh…)

Bible : Creation – God Made My Guarded Mouth

What is mentioned here is only a highlight of what we did, if you have like a copy of the actual lesson plan, feel free to email me privately at delci215@yahoo.com

Aim

The aim for this round of Nutrition theme is to introduce the various groups in the Food Pyramid.  With only 1 week, and at this age, I didn’t want to go into the details on the purpose of each type of food. Most importantly, is to highlight that we should eat less oil, sugar, salt and the likes.

By the end of the week, I’m pretty please cause the target was met.  And on Monday, when we 1st intro the theme, I happened to add too much oil to the Bee Hoon that I fried for lunch.  While on the 2nd day, the amount of oil I added to our fried rice for lunch was little and just right.  So Ethan was able to differentiate the different and could make a good choice of which is better.  What a good mistake that I made!

For the pyramid, instead of using pictures, we used plastic and real food.  That helped to make it more realistic.  And reading the book “The Edible Pyramid” by Loreen Leedy was a great way to build the pyramid while we read.

Free Play

After the 1st day’s lesson, we pretended play a restaurant, and with me as a ‘customer’, I asked the ‘chef’ to plan a nutritious meal, and here was what I got.

Not too bad, with pasta, fruits, vegetables and fish.  Donut… erm,,, well, not too ideal, but oh well… its ok…

 

Maths

 

For Maths, just for this lesson, I invested nearly $50 on the balancing scale.  Well, at least I have already saved on all the school fees, and I bought it during the Growing Funs 20% sale, so quite worth still lah.

We used the food to experiment with weight.”Lunch” by Denise Fleming was a simple book that helped to lead us to weigh the food items mentioned in the book.

Grapes was used as the standard of measurement, and we dropped down the number of grapes needed to balance food like turnips, carrots, corn, apple and oranges. Well, for things like that, its a fun ‘toy’ for Ethan.

And in the midst, since we needed to count the number of grapes, counting beyond 20 was reinforced.

 

Just for Fun

 

And just for fun, since I have some balance Christmas nuts, and Ethan had never tried it, Ethan had the opportunity to crack the various types of nuts.  And when he tasted it…

Well, the expression said it all…

My Zoe…

I now reserved high concentration part of lessons to be taught only when Zoe nap.  Seems to work.  And of course, she has to get her hands on the display…

Farm

  

The display desk was empty at the beginning of the lesson on Monday, but it was filled up after our 1st activity, which was to go around the house, looking for things that directly or indirectly come from farm.  Added the pics taken when we went to the goats’ farm.

Theme : Farm and things from the farm  

Alpha & Phonics : /p/

High Frequency Words : and

Numbers : 1 – One

Chinese : 1 – 10, Animal terms (didn’t do much, sigh…)

Bible : Creation – God Made My Eyes

Farm theme is not a new thing that we do, but this time, instead on focusing on farm animals, I directed Ethan to things that come from the farm, thus, the importance of farms.  It helps that I purchased the children’s National Geographic Series of Windows on Literacy (http://www.edventurebooks.com/WOL/index.html) and the books were part of display area so Ethan (and Zoe) can browse through the appropriate books to enhance what he learn.

Below are some highlights from the week’s fun packed activities.

Sprouting

When we were planting our green bean seeds, I was surprise to realisd that 1 of the seeds that we picked and planted from the walkways sprouted.  This happened at the right moment for our Science unit.  But we still look forward to the sprouting of our beans that we plant this week. 

Planting Onion

We also did what a website suggested, ie, planting onion.  Will update once we see more result.

 

Cow’s ‘udder’, Latex glove filled w/ diluted milk  

‘Milking’ in progress

 

Done! Poor ‘cow’

The highlight of the week was the ‘cow milking’ experience.

Chinese : Counting 1-10

For Chinese, stamping is one of Ethan’s favorite activities.  So I got him to stamp using some farm animals stamps and count in Chinese while stamping.

 

Vegetable Painting/Printing

The week ended with Veg Painting

For reading & phonics, I will share more in another entry.

Lesson : Safety

Theme : Safety, specifically, fire and stranger
High Frequency Words : I, Can & See
Numbers : 0 – Zero
Chinese : Body parts
Bible : Creation – God Made Me
 
On Monday, we started the lesson with a practise fire drill.  Taught him what to do when the house or place is on fire, and also what to do when his clothes or body caught fire.  I thought it would be good to actually have a fire drill. So we crawled to out gate, went out by stairs (instead of lift), and ran to the field next to our block.  I trust that such experience will be better remembered than mere talking.

 
And the making of the fire truck was the highlight.  1st thing Ethan wanted to do on Wednesday morning was to play with the fire truck.  The sling was too long and needed adjustment.  Was great after that.  Buuuuuttttt, from Wednesday till today, he only played with it once in a while.  However, its Zoe who is more keen with it.

By Thursday, when we finished our lesson after lunch, Ethan kept asking for more lesson.  Ai ya, but how to whole day lesson?!!! Also need to spend time with Zoe what!

About Zoe, sigh… this week she was not so co-operative… think perhaps due to the rain and her cold… she didn’t get to go out, not even downstairs cos my place is so windy.  Thank God sun is back, hopefully next week she will behave better with some outdoor time.

On Thursday when we wrap up the week’s lesson, I was glad that Ethan remembered nearly all the safety rules that we went through.

Overall, it has been a good homeschooling week.  But can be better if I can manage Zoe better.

 

Theme’s display corner
 

Ethan in the fire truck

Zoe’s hand gesturing driving a fire truck while I was singing ‘Hurry hurry drive the fire truck’

Africa

I survived!

Thots

I’m pretty happy with our progress this week.  The homeschool time has become a good bonding time between Ethan and I.  I notice that this week he didn’t do silly things to get my attention anymore, and I believe its due to the time well spent with him while schooling.

What we did

This week our main theme is ‘Africa’.  And for Bible theme, we started on our Creations series.

Thanks to my friend, I’m able to grap hold of stuffs from S Africa.  Also borrowed some good books fiction and non-fic for our theme display and reading time. 

Our theme display area

Ethan enjoyed the little ’action play’ we did, and Zoe enjoyed and joined us in the action too!  Here’s the chant (its not from me but from one of the website, which I can’t remember where!)

Africa Finger play

I’d like to go to Africa (Point to self.)

Where natives build straw hut like this (Join fingertips of two hands and form roof)

Where elephants have big, gray trunks (clasp hands & swing arms in front like a trunk)

Where natives’ arrow seldom miss (Shoot arrow in pantomime.)

Where lions shake their manes and roar (Shake head & roar)

I’d like to go to Africa. (Point to self)

Zoe was good most times.  When Ethan sat down to listen, she also sat too. When we sang the phonics song, she joined.  When we did action song, she did it.  When we did craft or writing, she also has a color pencil, paper and blunt scissor for her to do her ‘craft’.  Overall, she has been an angel, enjoying the homeschooling sessions, and didn’t bother us much.  I pray and hope that it will stays this way most time.

Busy Zoe and Ethan

 

 Ethan proudly holding his African ‘straw hut’

Creation craft

A smooth start

This 2 days, I tried out my homeschool routine. Very smooth, and very happy with the progress so far.  Very tempted to stop attending the group homeschool, cos we are progressing pretty well.

The day is also more relaxing for us.  I find myself nagging Ethan less (cos no need to nag him to quickly eat, bathe, etc, else will be late), and some how because no nag, Ethan also finishes his meals on his own very quickly.  I also find myself having time w/ both kids.

We started on Reading A-Z’s phonics section.  I aim to do reading everyday, w/ Maths/Bible/Science as the supplement.  Yesterday did Read and Maths, today REading and Bible.

Maths from the www.preschoolexpress.com was fantastic.  It was fun and Ethan enjoyed himself.

  The final count

Ethan free-play with the Maths tools after lesson

For Bible, I re-inforced on the Salvation and went through the purpose of the cross in a artistic way from http://www.daniellesplace.com/html/salvatinSandyCandy.html (some area in this web needs subscription).  Since I don’t have the tools, we draw and color instead of using sand.  It worked and i was very surprse that Ethan has actually grasped the meaning of the cross and its purpose very very well.  Its my prayer that this will stay in his heart for the rest of his life.  I stuck the cross on his room door so that it can be a constant reminder.

The session ended with the sinner’s prayer.

 

Ethan’s and mummy’s cross

“Ethan, pls always remember,

Yellow – God wants us to have eternal life, cos its presious like gold/yellow.

Black – Sins (black) separate us from the holy God.

Red – Jesus took the punishments on our behalf, and through His blood (red), our pass/present/future sins are all forgiven

White – We are now holy and pure (white).

Green – It doesn’t means that we can go on and sin, we need to grow (like the trees that are green), so that we can please God.”