Baby School: Lesson 2 @ 12 months

Baby School's tagline: Let's play

I prepared these trays.

 Left:
1. Small muffin tray with reusable ice (replaced them with porcupine balls later)
2. Ciggie holder/ashtray with unsharpened pencils
3. Faux grass with some miniature animals

Right:
1. Magnetic three piece animal puzzle
2. Magnetic ABC book (M&D)
3. Poker chips and raisin can

And the winner of the week is...........

 Every time I watch her little hands at work, I am giddy with joy :)

She was also into the 'letter box'

She will open one, take out some letters, examine, replace them and close.

 

 The tray for one-to-one correspondence.

She did well considering her attention span

It was great for sensory too.

Tiger saw a video of his ice cream shop in my phone and....

.........here we go again.

Can I be cheap and pretend this is Lil Dragon's first sensory box?

I was kacau-ing her with the pom-poms when the brother decided to copy cat.

We showed Lil Dragon

soft, big, small, red, blue, pink, many, few, in, out, scoop, etc

She was excellent at pour and throw

When she is doing it free style, it's messier :)

 

Maria Montessori would not be pleased with Tiger's extension of the broad stairs

She is also obsessed with my phone.

She swipes her fingers like an expert while looking for songs and videos.

 

During the weekend, she yelled and screamed to join us outdoors.

She is a very giving child but somehow they always end up slapping each other.

Occasionally, they play nice.

Cute, kan?

The teeny dimples and cheeky smile drives me nuts.

Oooh, the trays that I did not photograph, she ignored.

Tiger played with them instead.

So it was not a total waste of my time

Preschool: July Report

Tiger's still very into homeschool at the moment.

I am not allowed to laze around after dinner.

He will creep next to me and say, "I want to study"

No matter how tired, I will always smile and play along.

Reading

He is able to decode and blend simple ones.

When reading a new word, I usually sound out the first letter and let him guess.

It's okay to get it wrong, as long as the child tries.

He uses play dough for spelling purposes only :)

He enjoys creating his own words and then ask,

"Is this a word?"

'Reading' to his sister

Fine Motor

I'd prefer he strengthen his small hands muscles with fine motor activities

instead of writing at this age

but he loves this ABC stencil (you can get from any book store)

Tap a shape

He was like Wow for 5 minutes....quickly became blah.

Will have to try again later with this one.

Threading with straws

He came up with this pattern :)

Another blah tray...

Math

He loves the Master of Addition CD from Shichida

despite the weird singing

Geometric puzzle

I demonstrated with the red rods.

He was to self correct.

In this picture, you can see he got the height component all wrong.

I just watched quietly as he corrected himself and declared,

"I'm done. All correct"

I just smile and shrugged, as in 'no biggie'

 but really, I LOVE moments like this.

Patience, concentration, self-satisfaction, no praise.

Geography

Brillkid

We were quite disciplined with the lessons this time around.

This picture was taken on Day 1. 

Look so interested, right?

By Day 2, they were pressing all the keys 

=.="

By Day 3, Lil Dragon was pointing when the image showed POINT.

^.^

Girls.....so cute!

YAMAHA

Tiger had a problem doing 'v' with his finger...weird...

Until this week, that is. He secretly asked his nana to help him and

surprised me in class :)

 He kept signing 'v' and asking,

"You want two?"

"Mama, that is two is it?"

Chinese/Bao Bei

Taadaa!

Model student...woot! woot!

 

His papa was more thrilled than I was 

=.=''''

First time la...give face a bit....

His progress: 

3rd week: 1 card

4th week :4 cards

5th week: 4 cards

6th week: 8 cards

Teacher's report: Very serious during flashcard session.

I like to think it was due to our home practice. 

^.^

 The best part about including Lil Dragon in class?

They are more than siblings now....more 'friend',

can play nice together

Preschool: Countries & Flags

Admittedly, I buy a lot of things/teaching tools for my children

but

 they don't attend daycare which cost about RM1000 a month

or

 right brain classes, save another RM 400 a month 

So, 

I just have to remember everything I bought and put them to good use.

Which I do.

I have a mental inventory.

Right now, he is into flags.

 He went through all the flags with his talking pen.

It 'talks' in more than 10 languages.

Even Russian...hihi...we had a good laugh.

 

When I told him that Spain is in Europe.

He went back to the Montessori continent map and kept

 singing the Continent Song repeatedly.

 

I made this into a game by writing the name of each country on small white label sticker.

He thought that was cool and insisted on labeling all thirty flags

We also played a matching game with his flag stickers.

We used some when he was attending Tweeddlewink here

He found the matching Egypt sticker and put it on the map

 

 Then we did Brazil

Matching sticker to the flag

I love Geography...

Messy Play: Coloured Cloud Dough

 I absolutely love it when I am free on Saturday mornings.

Both of us will be outdoors the moment we are half awake...

I will have my Nescafe Gusto and he will be in jammies...

Clean teeth and hair not required  :)

I prepared the materials on Friday night and stupidly wanted to try it out immediately.

Luckily, Lil Dragon joined us and I evaded a major catastrophe.

NOT FOR INDOORS, my friends...

Ingredients

Multipurpose Flour ---> 8 CUPS

Baby oil --->  1 CUP

He is a big boy now, so he got measure out 8 cups by himself.

Baby oil has a ton of usage besides making cloud dough.

I wanted to keep some for Hub's golf clubs but the munchkin used the whole bottle!

I was weeding (OCD)

For 45 uses of baby oil, read here

See the face and pose?

Cannot tahan him....

I suggested, "Try with one finger?"

Dirrrrrty and oily it seems.....

Pffttt

Had to let him stir with a bubble wand first

After a while.....

Guess who decided to join us?

And ended up in a urine specimen bottle (clean one la)?

After one minute, we let it go.

When Tiger couldn't find it anymore,

 he declared the grasshopper dead because mama stepped on it.

 

I love our outdoor classes...always something extra will turn up....

Like self service in the art drawer :)

We ended up with coloured dough and

 played Cupcake Shop

Cupcakes, anyone?

He insisted on bathing outdoors.

This is his version of swimming where the water does not come into contact with his face.

I usually do some gardening while he plays unless

he calls for me to join him.

Otherwise, I find myself annoyingly interruptive.

Everything was oily after play.

Some amount of cleaning up and washing is required

I stored the container for play in the evening but ours became too mushy

(because of all the paint he added)

Cost of flour and baby oil is much cheaper than buying PlayDoh :)

 But keep it outdoor, ya?

Baby School: What Really Happens During Class...

Remember I mentioned Lil Dragon ignored the trays?

Besides the poker chips tray, she enjoyed this

And ONLY THIS giant beads tray

I was tired of holding the sticks, so I borrowed the tin from another tray

So, she enjoyed 2 out of six trays

Okay laaaa.....

Surprisingly, she likes flashcards.

Weird, I know....Is this a girl thing?

Because Tiger used to despise them.

He would rather remove his pinky finger than do flashcards

She 'reads' everything as /x/

Tiger only started enjoying cards after he turned 2.5 year old.

Now, he LOVES the Chinese ones.

Their Chinese lesson went like this:

Tiger: Sit, mei-mei. I teach you.

Five seconds later...

Dragon: Watch me get out

Watch me climb

Check out the gangster pose

Let me adjust....again

Hmmmm.....what else?

By now, Tiger has given up and went to do his own thing.

She meddled with the Bumbo for a good 15 minutes.

Sigh, stupid purchase of mine

When I am playing with the sister, Lil Tiger will self study.

This is why I think Bao Bei is worth my money.

He is so motivated to practice Chinese now.

I am going to introduce Brillkid's Little Reader and Little Math to her this week.

 Fingers crossed she will make it a worthwhile investment.

I showed them Tweedlewink's Lesson 1 DVD once.

Tiger was so excited about seeing the tuning forks again.

Lil Dragon?

She YAWNED

=.="

Funny kids.

They have no idea how much I enjoy watching them.

Even though I am sure my blood pressure went up a few notches.

^.^