Homeschool Room For Kindergartener and Preschooler

Some quick updates for March 2015.

It is an evolving process since I enjoy organizing so much.

I will post updates on the playroom and outdoor classroom later.

 Because lovely Hubs stole my "grass" carpet for the living room, I've had no choice

but to use this ELC alphabet tiles because the others were too small.

Initially they looked haphazardly cheerful, like this.

Last night, I rearranged them.

So. Much. Better.

Why didn't I do this earlier??!?

I've replaced the doors on the lowest levels of the bookshelves to reduce clutter.

And I've also removed the dangerous metal door handles and replaced them with some 

DIY pipe cleaners and XL pony beads.

So much nicer and child-friendly.

Those are currently the kids' treasure cupboards. One each. No fighting.

This week's Toy-centered Learning:

Cars

Playset from Enfagrow milk powder.

There was a broken toy car for Tiger to take apart but it's missing now :p

Some big machines books and his fav Usborne Look Inside Cars.

 

Space

Inspired by this Toobs set.

In the study room itself, the biggest challenge was delineating the 'zones' for my kids 

to reduce friction. The two aren't exactly best friends right now.

And the room is really tiny.

 Dragon Girl's Baby School Area is mostly to the left of the room.
Their artwork are proudly displayed no matter how, erm, creative they look.
The trays are created with a late 2 year old in mind.
Nothing advanced for her like what I did with Tiger. 

Left (top to bottom)

1. Peep Inside Zoo with miniature animals for matching

2. Two-to-three pieces animal puzzle

3. Froebel J1 for sorting.

Middle

1. Magnetic puzzle

2. Sponges for threading

3. M&D stacking blocks

Right

1. Clock

2. M&D letter stamping with ink pad

3. Our construction sensory bin

 

The creative area. 

This is mostly used by Dragon girl only.

The cart can be rolled off to gain access to the materials behind it.

Occasionally, Tiger tries to be artistic too :)

Tiger's kindergarten skills area

Math area

English and Chinese reading area

Music and science area

A 'secret' writing area that's placed higher up to hide our sand tray from Dragon :)

Last but not least, their small little games area just outside the study.

The marble run is surprisingly very, very popular and well used.

I've placed more board games on the bookshelves since they seem to enjoy those now.

Alright, that's all for now, folks. I am grateful to have the resources to teach my children in a loving, protected environment. I cannot imagine doing anything else in my evenings. Have a wonderful weekend!

PS: Just leave a comment if you are curious about the materials/toys used. If I do not reply here, please pm me on Facebook.

Toy Centered Learning: Knight versus Dragon

Knight = Tiger

Dragon = a toy, not the girl, ya? 

Most of the time it is the boy vs the girl.

But not today.

 This is our simple setup.

I only had two Usborne books about knights. 

I found the poor New Year Dragon in the Chinese New Year Deco Box.

Luckily I found him, otherwise we will have to use my daughter :p

My knight in rm17.90 armor :)

The helmet and shield are made from EVA foam.

They smelled when I took them out but quickly dissipated after I aired them overnight.

It came  in a set with this book from Bookxcess.

 (ISBN: 9781592238088)

You can read more about it here

We needed a sword, so I just cut one from a board and wrap the end with packing tape.

Took me about five minutes.

The kid was amazed...*flips hair*

We also had this IKEA play tent to complement our reading.

Not mine. On loan from my sister.
She buys new stuff and we get to play with them first..haha!

We talked about fighting and killing.
This child is preoccupied with the idea of dying.
If I urge him to do something risky, he will ask,
"Will die or not?"
"If I die, I cannot see you or Grandma. So I don't want to die."
Mind you, risk of dying includes jumping off tables @.@

He was irritated with the helmet after 5 minutes and
proceeded to plan an attack in his 'castle'.

His plan was to attack the enemies with magnetic alphabets,

arranged correctly and very neatly.

Perhaps he should just be a knight for Halloween.

Save me some money from buying a costume :)

Pretend play has a ton of benefits. 

I do it to balance some of the Tiger Mom activities we do, like addition and memory games.

Don't want a crazy, stressed-up kid at the end of the day :)

You can read about the benefits here

Read & Play: Three Little Pigs

This was initially a toy centered learning topic but I thought it would be fun to

built different types of houses to go along with the story of

"Three Little Pigs"

Here's the setup:

The toy is actually a picture from my kindergarten graduation concert :)

I've had the picture frame for as long as I can remember.

It's one of the few things that had survived my regular spring cleaning.

The books are a variety of pig-related stories found in our own little library.

But our main book was this one from Usborne

We really enjoyed the simple words and cute illustration.

Tiger especially enjoyed the verse, 

"Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin"

which he still uses to this day :)

Ours came in a set bought during MPH sales

 

I must admit that when I think of pig, the first thing that comes to mind is

bah kut teh and bacon. Terrible, I know.

But I didn't tell Tiger that part about pigs, yet.

Did you know that pigs are very intelligent creatures?

I found out about that in Singapore Zoo when I was 11 or 12 years old.

Go here to learn more about pig awesomeness

So, the houses were obviously the focus of my creative, engineering mind *ahem*

I wanted to use the straw from our broom at first...haha, not very hygienic is it?

Then I thought of straws!

I have lots and lots of them from IKEA.

We tried several methods and this was the easiest, a triangular prism 

 

This is our messing planning process, trying out different materials.

Tiger will imitate my thinking face as he thinks:

 one hand on hip, eyes upwards,  one finger on lips...

"Hmmm, what else can we use?"

My little Mini-Me

Setting up the props.

I didn't purchase mini a mini wolf/pigs.
We already had them in our farm and wild animal set. Lucky me :)

The straw house is the trickiest to setup and easiest to blow down,

He always played the wolf and I, the pigs.

  

 The wooden house made from unifix cubes base, some sticks and spatulas.

It had to be purple.

The pig in the house No. 2

 He huffed and he puffed very, very hard...haha!

Our lego 'brick house'

Genius ain't it? I thought of it and I hinted the idea to Tiger.

When he thinks it's his idea, he takes pride in his work :)

Win-win

We read all the books repeatedly, except Peppa Pig which Dragon girl had refused to share.

My bad for stating it was her present :p

To complement this activiy, we used printables from 3dinosaurs, here.

One of our most successful project to date.

And no, bacon was not discussed at any point.