Learning Construction

Jiale was showing a lot of interest in construction sites, especially the heavy machinery, so we did a simple learning on this theme. It was quite easy to prepare, as most of the 'learning' actually took place outdoors. I realised how common construction sites were in Singapore! Every bus/taxi/car ride, the boys looked out for cranes. Even Didi now goes 'boom boom' whenever he sees a crane! (Actually it's the pile driver which goes 'boom boom', but never mind, no need to be so exact :p) And when we were close enough, especially at smaller works (e.g. road repairs), we would stop to look and I would explain what was going on. (I mean, I tried my best la, not that I am enginner lor.. But I did learn many new terms too!)

Jiale is also spending quite a lot of his free time playing with the construction toys, about as much time as he spends on his trains! (i.e. he gave up half about his train time for this, aka喜新厌旧，移情别恋！）

Very long word! No expectations for him to spell la.

Books & toys!

Naming common construction machinery

Related safety signs - we did a lot of scenario play with Lego figurines & the toy machinery

Cranky is of course THE tower crane!

Pretend play

I'm really enjoying our homelearning activities. Nowadays when we go out, we notice more things and have more things to talk about. First it was the weather, now we are often enthralled by construction-related things too. I prefer to go from real-life to homelearning, i.e. take the topic from something we see/hear/do/use then look for books/activities to complement. With the help of books, we can look at the machinery in more details, which in turn makes it easier for us to talk about the things we see. From here, we can also branch out to things which we do not see so often/at all, to increase his (our) general knowledge and expose him to new things.

[I guess for older kids, there is probably no need to do a 'study' on such a simple topic. Probably just a verbal explanation will do.. But this is tailored to my 32-month-old-not-speaking-a-lot son : ) ]