Outdoor Excursion

I had decided to think out of the box. Learning don't confine on workbook alone. Learning is all around us. Previously, I can concentrate and have one to one time with my eldest daughter while my baby took her afternoon nap. As my second daughter grow, she skip her afternoon nap and need a lot of attention from me.

I have decided to bring the girls for an outdoor excursion. It's not typical me of going outdoor without planning what to do. I go ahead with no end in mind and let the girls lead me. We started having lunch under a hut. It was a windy day. I brought along their chalk and crayon with a roll of paper. The girls started with drawing. It was really fun to see them sharing and communicating. One using body language and the other talking. The younger one will 'copy' her 'jie jie' in anything. I get to have a quiet lunch while the girls busy with their drawing.

They continue playing at playground. I end up drawing a hop scotch on the sand. We play hop scotch for a while. Then, we numbered the same hop scotch and we had Maths game - addition and subtraction. We will put the little one into the box with the right answer from the addition and subtraction game. The young one will learn to recognize the number. It was really fun. We played word game too. We look around and find objects start with letter A to Z. We learn new words from each other. It was a fun 2 hours.

                                           

Child-Like Learning about Coins

It's time to teach simple calculation and money management as she (my eldest girl) is starting Primary 1 next year. 

We started with simple counting exercise. Besides counting, we sum different combination of one dollar. Then, she traced the coins. We continue to play. We take turn to be hawker and customer. This has helped her in counting especially addition and subtraction. After playing for 2 days, I continue to prepare her on saving versus spending. 

As she was preparing for a school visit, her school asked her to bring SGD 3 (combination of SGD1, 4xSGD0.20, 1xSGD0.50, 7xSGD0.10). With my previous experience with her, she need to learn not to spend all her pocket money. So I initiated by asking how much she plan to spend during her school visit. She said she plan to buy chicken rice, ice milo and an apple. So we estimated it will cost her about SGD 2. With that, I asked how much she can saved by deducting SGD2. She took sometime to count and answered SGD1. I continue to asked is there anything that she wants to eat? She said 'mamee' which is a junk food. It will cost her another SGD 0.30. With that, i asked how much can she saves? She answered SGD 0.70. 

So I continued to clarify whether is it better to save more or little. She answered little because with money she can buy things she likes. So I continue to compared SGD 1 and SGD 0.70 using more or less. I asked which is more, SGD 1 or SGD 0.70? She said SGD 1. So which is better? SGD 1 is more and SGD 0.70 is less. She pondered a while and answered SGD 1. So I asked, which is better, more or less? She said, more. I concluded that it's important to save more than spend money on things that's not important (like mamee, it's junk food). The more we save, the more opportunity we can utilize our saving to better use. 

Few things I learnt here:

1. Children at this age (5 years old) are very instant. When they have power to purchase things they want, they will buy. They can't utilized judgement yet. Their judgement is 'child like' judgement. If I want that, I will buy it. Period..

2. It's important for parents to role play with their children in new situation. The more we role play, the more 'control' possibilities come up and we, parents gets to control the thinking and the outcome before they step to the real world. They carry the benchmark they learned with you (parents) and compare when similar situation arise. 

3. Be patience. When they starts counting money, it can be very confusing for them. At primary level, I feel they need to know combination of coins to make it a dollar. So be patience and play with them. Help them identify a few different combination of a dollar.

4. Continue to follow up and play money game. 

After her school visit, she happily told me that she used SGD 0.80 for her fish ball noodle. She didn't buy any drink because she has water with her. Her eyes brighten when she said she saved SGD 2.20.  I am so happy for her. 

Ice Bowl Fruits Salad

10th May 2013 - Ee Rynn at 5 years and 6 months old

Ee Rynn, you came home full of excitement. You shared you enjoyed eating the fruits salad you made in school. You want to make it again at home. As we don't have grapes and kiwi, we use apple, peach and dragon fruit. It was a fun moment to watch you doing it. It was yummy!

 

 



Celery Experiment

23rd April 2013 - Ee Rynn @ 5 years and 6 months old

Ee Rynn came to me wanting to know how plants drink water. She knew plants need water but how do they drink? She told me she saw an activity somewhere using food colouring and celery. So this is the list of items we have prepared.

1. plastic cup
2. food colouring
3. celery
4. chopping board
5. plastic knife

She choose yellow and red food colouring for this experiment. We filled the plastic cup with water and pour the food colouring into the plastic cup. She put the celery into each cup and told me to leave it overnight.

The next day, she want to cut the celery stem to check whether there's water in the stem. She explained that we will know by examine the tiny holes inside the celery stem. She chopped the celery and happy to see the tiny holes filled with yellow and red. She concluded that the celery drink water and causing the leaves to change colour according to the colour in the water.

She took out her note book and record her findings. She draw a picture of the celery too. It was a fun moment for us.

Ee Wern was attentive throughout :-)

 

Activities You Can Do with Your Children in your Daily Life

When my daughter turned 4 years old, she was active and always looking for things to do on her free time. I was not experience then, especially in looking for resources for children exposure. Along the way, I have learnt to note down some interesting activity that she can focus on.

Our primarily focus is to spend time with them during their growing up years. We want them to learn important life skills from us too. Home is the best place to learn because it's a safe place to improve and make mistake. Once they reach teenager years, they will have friends they want to spend time with. Therefore, in their early years, we want to build a strong and trusting relationship with them.

Below are some suggested activity you can easily do together with your children :-

1. Start a journal together with them. Note down their happiest and interesting moments. It will put a smile on their face when they read it again. It will remind them on memory they have with the family.  You can print some photo and stick on the journal book. Pictures speak a thousand words. Your child learn to cherish things in life.

2. Write thank you card to people that matters to them. Make time to help them count the blessing and be thankful to people that matters to them. You can bring them to post office to post the card. Your children will have opportunity to learn about post office too. This can be a yearly affairs. It can be on every December.

3. Turn on your favourite music and dance with them! It's time to bring out the little child in you. Your children need to see you letting loose and have fun too!

4. Cycling around the neighbourhood. Along the way, teach them about road safety. Remember to have fun along the way and don't turn the outing to a lecture session. You can plan a biking trip with them. Let them map out the route. They will have change to exercise their judgement skill.

5. Make your own wrapping paper. You can use them to wrap birthday or Christmas gift.

6. Unleash your child creativity. Design a family photo album. Let your child select pictures they like and get some material ready . Spend couple of weekends with them to produce the album. They will be delighted as output comes alive!

7. Mark important dates and decorate it on the calendar. Plan to do list on that important dates. The first thing they might tell you is their birthday! My birthday is an important day! :-)

8. If you have more than one child, let them choose a topic and arrange a play during Christmas or weekends when grandparents is around. This will strengthen relationship among siblings. It will help them to work together too.

9. Choose a topic and do a project with them. For example if you child likes car, then you can help him build a car model. Find some material that you can use to build a model. Eg: Clay, cardboard, wood, newspaper etc.. It'll definately takes more than a weekend. Building a model from scratch involve a lot of trial and error. Your child will learn that perseverance is important to achieve the right outcome they want. This is an important life skill. The good news is you are there to encourage and support them.

10. Make salt dough together. You can create lots of things with salt dough. Fridge magnet, snow man, hand and finger print, animal or flower model and the list go on and on. Fridge magnets can be given away as a gift too.

To ensure the mixture turn out right involve adding, subtracting, measuring and judgement. Your child will learn maths concept like composition and measuring. Your child will have chance to practice their judgement skills too. Baking with them are fun too.

11. Play dress up with them. Take out some old clothes and look for material to enhance it. For example use fabric paint or pens to add new print on it, use ribbon and sew it to the edge of the collar etc. The process creates lots of fun and spark creativity.

12. Plan a camping trip. Let your children plan the activities. It will open up their world to nature and skills to survive with basic amenities.

13. Get a glass marker and let your child unleash their creativity on window or sliding door at home. You can clean it easily after that.

14.  Organize play date with kids in different age. Let the older kids plan for treasure hunt. The older kids can exercise their leadership skills to lead the younger children. The young ones will learn teamwork to find the answer.

15. Decorate an old jewelry box.

16. Have a balloon or pillow fight.

17. Work with your child on your supermarket trip. Your child can learn about Mathematics in supermarket. They can learn about sorting, categorization and counting. Eg: Explain to your child that supermarket categories things and let your child direct you to the right aisle to pick up things according to your shopping list. It's exciting when they can find they favorite milk!

18. Let you child plan a meal (age appropriate). They will be thrilled to see what's on the dining table. For sure, it's a life skills that they need to learn.

19. Select a topic (general knowledge) and organize a show and tell. You can start with topic that interest them most. Show them informations (if they are young) and encourage them to share their point of view with you.

If you have an older child, let them do some research in the library and share their finding with you. Make sure you do your research too. Your children learn through modeling. If they know you put in effort, you will be very very surprise of the output from your children. In the long run, you are building a relationship where your child can talk to you about anything under the sun! You will become their friend.

20. Imaginative play. Suppose your child tells you that he's a doctor. You can play along with them imagining all the possible situation in a doctors' life. Let them lead the play and act it out.

Or your child tells you that she's a princess. You can act as a servant and serve them. It's fun to see them pretending. It helps them in expressing their thought and enrich their vocabulary. They might stop, blinking their eyes and tell you to pause just to ask you how to describe certain thing. This will lead to teaching moment.

I hope I have enriched your imagination and ideas. I hope you will enjoy some suggested activities above as we do. Please tailor the activities to you child's age. Learning should be fun.

I hope you can take some time to share with me here if you have tried them. Or please share with me if you have other fun ideas.

Have Fun!

Boat Project - December 2012

Ee Rynn @ 5 years old

During school holiday, you have decided to build a boat model with daddy. It was a fun journey for us. Mommy helped by bringing you to the library to look for information books on boat.



Books we borrowed from library



After reading the books from the library, you were excited. We have decided to ride on your excitement and support you all the way.

Collections of various boxes and toilet paper roll

Colouring

Engagement - exchange ideas

Decorating the boat with dried leaves she picked from the park

You realized the toilet paper roll in the box can't hold the sail

You have decided to stick the toilet paper roll together to create a firmer base

Beautiful outcome :-)



We enjoyed the journey very much. We believe children spell L.O.V.E. as T.I.M.E. We loves your company very much, Ee Rynn. We loves to see that little sparkle in your eyes that bring daddy and mommy to the world of possibility. We loves you.

Salt Dough

Ee Rynn has asked many times to make home made salt dough. We tried several times in Malaysia but the mixture don't firm up. We have decided to try again and we made it!

The ingredients:
1. multipurpose flour
2. salt
3. Warm water

We had fun. In this process, we learn :
1. Measuring - to ensure the right porposition of water and flour.
2. Addition - When calculating the right amount of the raw material together.
3. Sensory - When seeing the changes of two different ingredient become one, dough.
4. Logical thinking and decision making - when deciding on composition and colour
5. Communication - when we decide and discuss what is next throughout the process
6. Relationship building :-)

Mixing begin

Outcome - dough

She wants to make a mould of her palm

Drying process using hair dryer

Ee Rynn's right hand and Ee Wern's right foot

Colouring

Colourful outcome

Note : You may use oven to speed up the drying process. We may proceed for colouring when the dough is harden.

The dough can be a fun play for kids too. My Ee Wern don't like the sticky feeling on her hand :-)



Hope you may have fun with your children and all the best :-)



Sensory Play - Noodle

As we were having noodle for lunch today, I have decided to give a portion to Ee Wern. This is meant to train her for self feeding and sensory play too.

It was fun watching her. She started touching the noodles. She picked it up and started to clench her fist. The noodle stick in her palm. She tried to get rid of the noodle from her palm by pulling it. The noodle was sticky and she was restless getting rid of it. We started feeding her some noodle so she knew it's food. She continues to explore and she babbles a lot throughout the process. I guess a lot of findings going through her mind.

This sensory play helps to develop hand eye coordination, concentration and child's independence.

To Tie a Bow - Shoe Lace and a Box

I realized I need to create an opportunity for Ee Rynn to learn to tie a bow. As we don't have shoes with shoe lace, I bought a few pair of shoe laces and tie it to a box. This create the opportunity for her to practice.

It occupied her for hours! She started with tying it properly and went on exploring different things. According to her, she was doing beading, art and craft and before she 'finished' playing, she add a tiny card tied with pipe cleaner with 'I love you mom'. This is so sweet.

Ee Wern enjoyed playing with the box too. She was busy taking in and taking out cubes from the box. It occupied her and I get to relax.

This practice of tying a bow helps develop hand eye co-ordination, fine motor control, concentration, independence and to satisfy the child's need for order.

Hide and Seek.. now you see, now you don't..

Ee Wern @ 11 months old (January 2013)

She started to be so curious and kept flipping her play mate. Every time she flipped her play mat, she looks like she is searching for something.

I have decided to fold her play mate and put it on the low table we had in the living room. I put some of her goodies in there. She looks so happy knowing the changes. Soon, she started to flip the play mat and found some of her favorite fruit soft toy underneath. This itself occupied her for 20 minutes. Simple things that provide opportunity for exploration and learning experience.

Baby Sensory Bottle

Ee Wern was 9 months old and she get bored with toys around her easily. This is due to her short attention at this age. So I have decided to create some interesting bottles to occupy her. This is very useful when I am busy in the kitchen.

All I need is empty plastic bottle and :

1. colorful beads for visual and sound effect (especially when she shakes it)
2. various sizes of colorful pom pom (to learn about sizes and visual stimulation)
3. brightly color water (food coloring) with colorful beads.
4. water with soap (when she shakes it, bubbles will foam and that fascinate her)
5. colorful and different size of buttons for fabulous noise
6. brightly color twisted pipe cleaners for visual effects
7. mixture of water and oil
8. water in blue with sea shells.
9. multi color of pasta for sound and visual effects
10. colorful beans (red beans, green beans, soy beans)
11. various kind of grains
12. different shapes of tin foil (for reflection)

All these bottles keep her occupied. It's fun to see her explores these bottles. When these bottles was first created, her sister hijacked them as she thinks it's fun to play with!

Examples : Beads in various bottles

Reasons I created the sensory bottle because she always peep through the kitchen door, looking for her playmate :-)

She likes to shakes it! Facinated with the motion and colours.

This bottle is filled with various shapes and colorful pasta. I seal it with paper. She was having fun with it. It took her 10 minutes to poke it and took the pasta out from container.

This bottle is filled with colorful pom pom. She shakes it and realized there's no sound. So she took the bottle with beads and shakes it together.

This bottle is filled with tin foil. I seal the mouth with this tin foil and she likes the reflection from it.

Sometimes she chase the bottle because it rolls pretty fast on the floor. Good exercise for her.

As baby at this age get bored easily, I rotate the bottles. She will forget about it. When I take it out again, it's like new toy for her again.

If you have made some interesting bottle, please share with me too.

Have fun with your baby with these bottle!

Colours Sorting - Part 1

Objective of this game is to help EeRynn to recognise colours.

Item involve are different colours of
1. Bowl that I bought from Ikea
2. Cubes that I bought from Jusco dept store

a. I starts with blue and green bowl on the table. I will show EeRynn to sort the cubes accordingly to match the colour of the bowl on the table.
b. I will repeat until EeRynn recognise the colour. While matching it, I will teach her new words like blue and green