One-Week Activity Log

Too difficult to do a proper activity log! Kept forgetting to take photos or to note down what we did :P So here are the few photos I did take, and my inspiration for some of our activities/books we are reading.

Monday morning: Messy play with milk, dishwashing detergent, food colouring

Sticker play in the afternoon

Did a jigsaw puzzle together

Tuesday afternoon: Did 3 sticker books with Jiale while Didi was napping. No morning play that day as I had a gynae appointment.

He asked to play with flour : )

Playing with Geomag

Hao Xue Bao talking pen

Wednesday morning paint play with marbles & other round items

New Chinese nursery rhyme sound book which just arrived in the mail

We definitely did a lot more than what the above pictures showed. Other than the main activity in the mornings, it was hard to remember to take photos each time we engaged in an activity. Other than the child-led activities we did, I used the book 'Playful Learning' as a guide to choose our library books and activities.

In the picture below of the library books we were reading last week, the Big Cats and Cheetahs books were a follow-up on our recent visits to the zoo and Jiale's interest in these animals, and the Monster Trucks book is his all-time interest. The other books were recommended in the Playful Learning book, which has themes such as 'Mathematicians at Work' (Black Dot Adventures), Scientific Investigations (Cloud Gazing, The Life Cycle of A Seed), Exploration of Art & Artists (Open-Ended Art Explorations), Growing Globally (Wake Up, World book on how children around the world live, My Map Book), Nurturing Young Authors (Making Lists), etc.

For most of the topics, we did not go very deeply into them. Some of the books were too advanced/wordy for Jiale, so we just read through. Mainly, it's a guide for me to introduce new ideas/concepts to him, so that we are not stuck on 'academic' topics. I did a few Themed Learning with Jiale before, but it's not often that he gets so 'obssessed' with a topic that it's worth a theme on its own. So in between such 'big' themes, I shall just do small bits here and there with him. If he shows more interest in anything, I will then go further with him. This method also allows me to have a clearer idea which books to borrow from the library, cos it's very difficult to go browsing with the boys in tow! Now I just reserve online and collect the books from the service counter.

For the Seeds topic, we grew a few green beans and the boys water them everyday. One of the seeds did not make it and I explained to Jiale that it did not get the nourishments (nutrients or sun or water) it needed and thus it died. For the Ten Black Dots book, I gave the boys black dot stickers of course :p

Extension of My Map Book - I drew the plan of the boys' bedroom. I could see the quietly amazed & incredulous look on Jiale's face as he watched his 'room' appear on the paper.. it was priceless.. the moment you know something has 'clicked' in a child' head : )

Trying to Teach

Updates about my attempts to have more learning time with the boys:

Today is the third day and I think these two days have gone pretty well : )

On Tuesday afternoon, the boys woke up at 4.30pm, and we read many books together for more than an hour! No, I don't force them to read books... they are free to go off to play with their toys or run around anytime they want to. But they chose to stay for the books. I guess I am quite a good storyteller after all! : )

Yesterday morning, I brought them to the playground downstairs. Things didn't really go as planned though, oops. Wanted to leave the house by 8am but we only managed to go down at 8.15am. Because Jiale didn't want to go to the playground! He said he wanted to play with his trains instead : ( Oh dear oh dear, is it because we haven't gone to the playground for too long? Or is it because our routines etc have somehow made him into a homebody? After some coaxing, finally got him to go downstairs willingly - told him he could let his cars go down the slides :P

The boys had fun playing... for a while.. Less than an hour later, Jiale said he wanted to go home..... : / Haii, I rushed and rushed to get them fed and ready to go to playground, planning to stay outdoors for about two hours until it got too hot... But but but... we have our plans and they have their own plans.....

So we went back upstairs and luckily, it was another good day for books : ) So we read and read until it was time for lunch, and then we continued reading after their nap, with a few pockets of train play (what else?) in between.

Today I decided it was time for more of the great outdoors. So we got a ride from Daddy to East Coast Park early in the morning. After breakfast at McDonalds, we began our Long March to Polliwogs. (Need some indoor playground time cos it would be too hot outside by 10am+) The walk took longer than I expected, good thing Jiale was very well-behaved (as usual!) and never once complained about being tired or hot.. though he did ask quite a few times 'playground where?' and commented 'playground 不晒, here 晒'. Didi also exceeded my expectations by walking for 40 minutes! :D When we reached Polliwogs, the not-tired (???!!) boys went crazy and zoomed around in the playground for 3 hours! I felt tired just looking at them!

All in all, I am feeling much better about what we are doing together. Seems that we are at least spending our time together more constructively. I don't have any ambitious plans for now, just hope to really spend time being present, being with them. Other than the first 3-4 months of my pregnancy when I was feeling so crappy and bone-tired, there was no good reason why each day seemed to be just passing us by. Now, I am more motivated and more disciplined - it's more stressful cos I have to be more organized and more 'on-task' but it's not too difficult. Mainly, I think it's the feeling of not having much time left... only about 3 more months before Meimei arrives and my days will be thrown into a frenzy again.... So I really need to make good use of this time! Who knows when I will be able to really spend time with the boys after Meimei's arrival!


[From experience, the first two months are really crazy. Then it will be another 16 months before things really become much more relaxing.. like now! hee hee. But I really don't want to be 'neglecting the boys for 18 months!!]

Butterfly Lodge & Our Butterflies

A couple of weeks ago I brought the boys to Oh' Farms Butterfly Lodge. The main purpose was to purchase caterpillars for the boys to observe how they grow into butterflies, and to visit the Butterfly Lodge since we were already traveling all the way to Yishun.

But the Lodge turned out to be quite a small enclosure. I wouldn't say that the butterflies looked too impressive either. Luckily, while I was planning the outing the previous night, I recalled that another mummy brought her children to Bottle Tree Park on the same day as Butterfly Lodge, and I decided to bring along the boys' wet gear for longkang fishing.

Bottle Tree Park is really very near Oh' Farms! I strongly recommend that you plan these two on the same day if you intend to visit Oh Farms, especially if you don't stay very near the area.

I bought three caterpillar kits ($4 each). Each kit came with two caterpillars in a plastic container, as well as care instructions and leaves to feed the caterpillars. The auntie was also very detailed when she taught me how to take care of the caterpillars.

Hmm, how did our caterpillars turn out?

The very next morning, four had turned into pupa and two were lying motionless on the bottom of the container. I also saw a few ants attacking the motionless caterpillars. I guessed they were dead so I threw them away. Out of the four hanging pupa, one looked rather black..

One week later, two butterflies emerged in one morning. Hubby wanted to release them before we went out in the afternoon, but I thought their wings were not dry yet as they were not flying around in the container and decided to wait till we came back. But when we reached home at 8pm+, one of the butterflies was not moving anymore! It seemed to have died (of hunger??).. nevertheless Jiale and I brought it downstairs to the bushes in case it had just fainted. The other butterfly was released successfully, but before it flew to my leg and stopped there for a while! Couldn't bear to leave us? Hee hee.

A third butterfly appeared the next morning. This time we released it around noon.

One of the normal-looking pupa

One week later, there was still no sign of life from the last (black) pupa. I decided to throw it away since it was probably dead.

Tip for rearing caterpillars:

Our 2nd butterfly

I should have put the containers in plates of water as soon as I brought them home. I think they are susceptible to ant attacks, though I wonder how they survive in the wild then.

Bye bye butterfly

Caterpillars!

Excreting excess dye

The pupa that looked red & raw, before turning black

The survival rate indicated in the care instructions was 50-60%, so I guess our 3 butterflies out of 6 caterpillars wasn't too bad lah.

[Sorry for the messy photos which are not in sequence. I can't get them to align properly, and Didi is up!]

Self-Initiated Learning

A few recent incidents really wow-ed me.. I was floored by how children instinctively and naturally learn.

Incident One
Jiale has got his toy animals and (quite) a few animal books for some time. A few days ago, I saw that he had taken out a toy snake and was reading Snakes Dictionary : )

Incident Two
I have a shelf near our usual bedtime reading area (i.e. living room sofa) where I put the books which I would prefer to read for bedtime. (But he is free to choose any other book from anywhere else for me to read.) All along he has been largely ok with the selection. But recently, he has started to go to Didi's shelves and chosen board books, which are mostly simpler stories with fewer words, and he started reading after me!

Incident Three
I seldom sing nursery rhymes to the boys, because I am not a great fan of singing nor do I have a good voice. Not that I am shy to sing in front of my own children la, just that I don't have the habit of breaking into song that often, lol. But what I do quite often is to insert my own words into the tune of a rhyme while talking to them. Urmm, the most often one is probably 'Didi is a naughty boy, naughty boy, naughty boy..' to the tune of 'London Bridge is Falling Down'. Haha. And nowadays, I notice Jiale has been doing the same thing! He sings (sorta), but the words seem to be all his own!

In general, I am very laid back about Jiale's developmental progress, especially after the first year (cos I became a cooler mum?? Hee hee). And these incidents just affirmed that what I am doing, at least some must be right! : )

My Best Parenting (Non)Decision

is not sending Jiale to school before/when Didi was born. At that time, I was actually inclined toward packing him off to school, but there was just a tiny little bit of doubt in my heart. I also couldn't decide on a suitable school, given Hubby's thriftiness and the fact that I would have to be the one sending & fetching Jiale... with a newborn in tow! I was reluctant to commit to anything which would disrupt my newborn's naps, especially given my obsession with naps for the kids. (A good thing, see Didi can nap so well now!)

But then, given my just-do-it character, I would have disregarded/overcome the 'obstacles', if not for that tiny little bit of doubt which led to me proscrasinating.. dragging my feet.. half-hearted about things.. Not my usual style at all.

By the time I felt some urgency about the school enrolment (when other mummies whose EDD were 2-3 months later than mine had all settled the school arrangements for their firstborns), it was too late as Didi was almost here, and there would be no 3-month adjustment period for Jiale. I did not want him to start school just before Didi arrived, as I did not want him to think that I was sending him away because of Didi (though that would be the truth).

So, I missed the boat.

And I am really glad! It was not easy coping with two young children (both under 2 years old!), but I have never regretted keeping Jiale at home with me. (Just occasional bouts of frustration when he was being naughty, and occasional self-doubting moments when I wondered whether school would be better for him.)

In a way, the adjustment was gradual. When we first came home from the hospital, the confinement nanny helped a lot with caring for Didi. And Didi couldn't do much anyway.. not mobile yet, could only lie there the whole day.. the most he could do was to cry (loudly).. what I mainly needed to do was to breastfeed him.

Then as he got more mobile (and demanding), it also meant that there was less no-idea-why crying (andd no need to feed so often!) We also got into a routine for both the boys' daily essentials like naps and mealtimes.

Now Didi is really very mobile and not at all shy to make his demands & preferences known, can fight with Kor Kor and beat him. But it also means I don't have to worry so much about him falling down, don't have to keep guessing what he wants, and he can defend himself when Kor Kor bullies him.

Through all these, there have been so many wonderful precious moments with Jiale. Moments which we would not have together if he were in school instead. We have been to so many adventures together, from playgrounds to parks to zoo and many others. As little as the amount of time we spend on homelearning activities, this would have been further reduced if he had to go to school everyday. He might not have learnt as much as compared to going to school, but whatever he receives is 100% attention and love.

By the way, I no longer have any lingering doubts about whether this is the best for Jiale. I know it is.

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 : ) ]

Survival Theme

Have decided to focus our learning activities around the survival theme.

Firstly, that will include survival skills. I really need to read up and learn about this. Not forgetting my dear sister who was in Girl Guides - please teach your nephews how to tie knots etc! I was in NCC for six years, so I guess I do have some knowledge in this area too. And of course the daddy who did his National Service! Jiale is already attending swimming lessons, i.e. learning how to survive in the water.

That brings me to my second point - safety. Learn how to swim so that he will be safer in the water. I discourage the use of floating devices cos I think they give the child a false sense of security, i.e. he thinks he can float but he doesn't know it's the devices keeping him afloat. The coach does use floats during lessons to let Jiale practise kicking etc, but other than that I don't put floats on Jiale when we go to the pool. Anyway water safety is not the only thing, I shall definitely bear safety in mind when I consider our homelearning themes.

Learning to read safety signs

Also related is health. Can't survive for long if body is not healthy. Thus our outings will be mostly outdoors &/or sports. Natural breeze vs air-conditioning. A healthy mind is the bonus : )

Last but not least is interest. Interest is how to keep his curiosity and desire to learn alive (pun intended :p). If he does not show any particular interest in any topics, we shall just go without and declare a holiday. At the moment though, he's too fast for me to keep up!

Thematic Learning (Weather)

Recently Jiale has been asking more questions about things around him. Hmm, or maybe not really ask questions la, given his limited verbal skills :p More like he seems to take notice of more things around him, e.g. he points to the clouds and goes '?' (Don't ask me how I know it's a '?' cos I just know la.) He points to the rain and says '雨' (rain). I wonder if he feels perplexed about what these are and how they come about. Can't do for a 2-year-old to feel perplexed! Haha. So I have started to be more systematic in our homelearning activities, and thematic learning seems to work best for us now.

I read up on thematic learning and it seems that the way it is usually done is to choose a theme and then incorporate many subjects into the learning activities. E.g. for a theme 'animals', the teacher (parent) will read books on animals, fiction for literature, non-fiction for science, maybe do geography too by learning about which parts of the world the animals live/originate, do craft work like a cat hand puppet, do math by counting number of bears, activity sheets like matching baby animals to their parents, field trip to the zoo, etc.

Mine is a very simplified version of this. I am not keen on parent-led craft work and activity sheets, at least not for now. Perhaps when Jiale is older, he might be more interested. Together with what I read about the classical method, I concentrate mainly on reading relevant books with Jiale.

Illustration using our recent topic on the weather:

Water droplets in the clouds

Fall down as rain

Borrowed some of the books from library. I do a catalogue search for the topic I have in mind. If there are many related books, I go to the library (while Jiale is in school) to browse and choose which ones are more suitable. If there are limited books, I reserve the book and I can just collect it from the library I want. I might also buy the book(s) if I think it's worthwhile, such as The Little Cloud by Eric Carle, since his books are generally good. The other books are what we already have at home, and of course the trusty talking encyclopaedia. For this topic, we are using 2 books - Sky & Earth and Nature.

This is a new learning corner I set up. Had thought of getting a front-facing bookshelf but did not want to take up excess wall space, as these bookshelves are usually quite high. So in the end, I just 3M-ed an IKEA wall shelf to the floor. In this corner, I put the books we read for the previous topics (Firefighter & Ballet) and the current one. It is a place where we tend to hang out often, as it is near the kitchen and somehow we often end up sitting around the area. There used to be a small table here but I moved it away. There is actually available space at the balcony but that's where Jiale usually hangs out alone with his trains and books. Somehow when I am free, we won't be there. So I decided to leave his 'private' space alone instead of 'forcing' my way in.

Learning corner

Actually the topic is a bit vague la. He has also been point point pointing to the sun so I just wanted to put all these 'things in the sky' into one topic. So our 'Weather' actually includes clouds, rain, wind, water cycle, sun, and day & night. (I am quite sure if he gets to see the moon more often, he would be point point pointing at it too.)

Shown here is how I tried to explain day & night to him, with a simple round light (from Daiso) and a globe. At his grand old age of 31 months, I am not sure how much he understands this round thing is supposed to represent the ground he is standing on. And I don't want to use DVDs/Youtube as far as possible. So we keep referring to the books where it's illustrated that the people are standing on the Earth, which looks the same as this globe.... and err, why the round light is the sun..? Haha, never mind, just explain a bit, can do this topic again when he's older.

Earth and the Sun :p

Thomas the Tank Engine is Jiale's favourite character, and it happens that one of his books sees Thomas and Percy going from day to night and back to day again. Just right! I used blu-tac to attach the train figurines to the globe so that Jiale could see his trains being cast in shadow (night) and in 'daylight' as they turn away from and toward the light. I feel pretty ingenious! *pat on the back*

Simple experiment to show him the water cycle. Some soil and water in a glass container. Left it in the corridor for an afternoon. Pointed out to him the water droplets that gathered on the underside of the lid. Told him that the water droplets that fell down were the same as rain.. Urmm, I tried la :p
       

Simple vocabulary. Googled for some images, printed them out, laminated, pasted velcro on the back. Not forgetting Chinese words too.

Cut out the strokes of the Chinese words from cardboard and attached magnets on the back. Wrote the word on the whiteboard and Jiale just had to put the correct stroke accordingly. For the four 'dian3' in the word '雨' I used our 'water droplets' : )

Also referred to this book to show Jiale how the Chinese words came about. This will also help him to remember the words more easily.

I will not intentionally do a field trip if I do not have a good place in mind. Science Centre is probably too chim for Jiale as of now. Since I try to bring the boys for a nature walk every week, I chose a place where he could easily see a large body of water and the sky, i.e. Changi Beach. It was a very sunny day with huge white clouds. I emphasized to him that inside the clouds was water. When the water falls, we call it rain.

OK, that about sums it up for our thematic-based homelearning. I shall blog about our future topics provided I don't feel too lazy about it :p

Moving the water droplets around like the water cycle

Even got lightning ok!

Categorization

Having fun in his rain gear!

(this is the most tedious post I have done so far! *tired*)

Our Letterland Journey.. (or Not)

Bought the Letterland Living ABC cd-rom sometime ago as I wanted to move beyond the 26 basic letter sounds + the 5 vowel sounds (i.e the vowels saying their letter names). There are more than 40 phonemes and mummy here is very lost.

Other than the cd-rom, we already had The ABC Book, Alphabet of Rhymes, and My ABC of Letters.

BUT I have not been using the cd-rom regularly with Jiale. The main reason is I saw him starting to get 'addicted' to it - everytime he saw me using the laptop, he asked for 'abc' : ( No tantrums when I refused, but I foresaw it happening. So I decided to put it aside for the time being and only let him watch occasionally. Now we are just reading the Letterland books and listening to the audio CDs.

I also read the Letterland Teacher's Guide but did not find it very useful. Instead, I have bought two more Letterland storybooks - Beyond ABC and Far Beyond ABC. These are for sounds like 'sh', 'ch' etc, and too chim for Jiale now. They are mainly for me to learn and remember what the digraphs and trigraphs sound like, as the books are stories of why 's' and 'h' don't make their usual sounds when they are together. Jiale also likes to flip through the storybooks : )

On a sidenote, I read that there are concerns about children being dependent on the Letterland characters to recognize the letters, e.g. they only know 'c' when they see the cat, but not when it's the plain letter. Jiale has no such issue, probably because he learnt his alphabet just using the plain letters, before I started him on Letterland (to learn & reinforce phonics). 

On top of that, I have also been exploring the other phonics learning systems such as Jolly Phonics. I like the Jolly Songs as they sound just like normal children's songs, i.e. a nursery rhymes with adapted lyrics, so we can listen to the CD while we are playing with other things. Letterland songs, on the other hand, sound more boring :p I will continue to look out for and explore other ways for me to learn phonics and to teach Jiale, after all, what I do not know, I cannot teach.

(By the way, the conclusion is, I am STILL lost about phonics. I hope very much Jiale is not an auditory learner, cos my spoken English cannot make it. Hope hope hope he's visual or whatever!!)

Homelearning, Let's Go!

'Mummy, let's go!' is probably one of Jiale's most-often used phrase, haha. OK, not really relevant :p

Not long ago, I was quite lost about how to do learning activities with him. Though I want to prioritize and focus on fun activities, I also hope to do some learning with him if possible. Best is if we have time to do everything! Haha! *dreaming*

Seeing all the interesting stuff other mummies were doing with their kids, I wondered how how how to go about it.. until the answer revealed itself to me recently! As with most good things, it came totally unexpected : )

One morning, I saw Jiale standing at the window pointing to the rising sun and talking to himself.
 -- mummy fasterly gathered the books about sun that we had at home.

Another day while we were browsing at the library, I saw a book on lighthouses and thought it would be a good idea to go through the book with Jiale as we are now learning Letterland phonics and 'L' is represented by Lucy Lamp Light who lives in a lighthouse.
-- again, gathered the other books about lighthouse that we had at home. Surprisingly, Jiale was very willing to sit through the impromptu session : )

Outside one afternoon when Jiale took a sudden interest in the clouds. He kept looking up at the sky and point point point, going 'wow wow wow'.
-- haven't done anything about this yet, but I shall do it soon!

(This is why I think it's good to have a set of encyclopaedia at home! But of course, if you don't mind letting your child use the computer, Youtube and other Internet sources are very good resources too.)

 At the moment, I am inclined toward using such learning opportunities to impart general knowledge and science facts. I feel quite unmotivated to use our favorite books etc to teach numbers/alphabet etc... shall see how lah, maybe one day there will be an eureka moment for that too.

Jiale is also going through a 'learning explosion' recently. He is very keen on all things related to the alphabet and numbers, and for almost everything he comes across, he reads out the letters, e.g. while drinking Milo, he goes 'M.. I.. L.. O', without any prompting. And of course, he reads out the letters of the names of all his precious trains.

When he lines up his trains (very often), he 'counts' them too. Or rather, I think he's imitating us when we count.. he points at each train and goes '1.. 2.. 3.. 5.. 9..' Yes he skips numbers so he doesn't get the correct quantity, but that's ok lah : )

Even when he scribbles or 'draws', he looks at his masterpiece afterwards and points out all the 'letters' or 'numerals' that he finds. Of course he isn't writing lah, just anyhow scribbling and somehow by luck gets something that looks like a letter or numeral. If he's really writing... no such illusion :P

And my favorite:
Got him some Geomag (one-inch magnetic rods) recently, and there happened to be five of the rods lying around on the dining table. Suddenly he showed us a 'L' and told us 'L'! Then Hubby and I helped him to make / made for him the other letters.. so fun!

I have been waiting so long for Jiale to show me he is learning from all the non-learning stuff we do at home.. And yes, he has shown me that Wait long enough, and good things will come : )

In His Own Time

Read an article on one of my favorite blogs recently and it got me thinking of my worries about Jiale's concentration span when he was not even two years old. At that time I saw other children of his age being able to sit down for 'lessons' with their mums, but it was next to impossible to do such seat work with Jiale. I felt rather worried then, even having some concerns whether he was hyperactive. Yet, he did not really seem to be hyperactive.. just.. not able to sit down for 'lessons' with me. Given my parenting style, I chose not to 'force' him to do so, and just let him be.

Fast forward to a few months down the road. Now, there are so many times during each day that I see Jiale fully concentrating on whatever he is doing. Even though he does not have to go to school everyday and he has so much time at home, I still feel that he needs more time to do what he wants to..! Often when I tell him it's bedtime/bathtime/mealtime soon, he responds with 'no! play!', usually while fully focused on his 'work'. This 'work' might be his trains & tracks, blocks, a book, or one of his many toys. Each time, he is able to easily spend up to an hour engrossed, playing on his own.

Other examples of things I felt worried/stressed about, and eventually he showed me that there was nothing to worry about:

Spelling/ word recognition/ reading
Much as I would like to do proper 'lessons' with him, I do not wish to 'make' him sit down with me. As a result, though I do get a few opportunities here and there, we do not have a structured lesson format going on. What we do have is a 'rich' environment - I put up word charts, flashcards etc all around the house - on the fridge door, on the walls, on the doors, on the coffee table.. everywhere! And of course we have books everywhere and I read to him at bedtime and whenever he asks me to.

Now he can recognise some Chinese and English words, even when the words appear in different books or when I write the word on his doodle board.

Drawing
I have never 'instructed' him when it comes to art & craft. I just let him have free play with the materials. And recently, he has starting 'naming' what he is drawing. For instance, he drew a lion while I was busy with something else, and when I came back to him, he told me it was a lion without me prompting him : ) Still, I shall take care not to ask him everytime what he is drawing, as he is still young and it is perfectly reasonable that sometimes he just wants to scribble and might not be drawing anything.

Talking
Jiale is quite late in starting to talk. Nevertheless, he is talking a lot more nowadays. Later than many others, but that's ok with me : )

From these examples, I have learnt that there is no need to rush him if he is not ready, and probably it won't do him any good to rush him. Mummy shall just wait patiently, and in the meantime, provide lots of opportunities (time & materials) for him to play, play, play!

Modern Encyclopaedia

We have a set of talking encyclopaedia from Educational Technologies - A Child's First Library of Learning (24 books covering Life, Nature, Science & Our World) and Early Learning Program (17 books covering Alphabet/Reading, Numbers/Counting, Colors/Mixing, Time, Manipulative, Visual/Observation, Thinking/Imagination, Problem-Solving, Social, Emotional).

I find it very useful as it is still quite difficult to do seat work with Jiale and my hard work to prepare materials in advance is likely to go down the drain. Probably gotta wait till he's older, or perhaps he's just not so suitable for seat work. So, how do I use the encyclopaedia?

Yesterday we went to Jurakids and there was a huge dinosaur outside. I was rather surprised to see Jiale gravitate toward the dinosaur and continue to show interest in it for quite some time. I had not read any dinosaur books to him and not talked to him about dinosaurs at all (other than Barney.. but I don't think the purple dino and this Tyrannoseurus look alike at all!). Anyway, since he showed interest, I decided to show him more about dinosaurs today.

First, I looked up the Index and found Dinosaurs has its own book. So I switched on the talking pen (called 'Walter') and flipped through the book, and at the same time showed Jiale the photos I took yesterday of the Jurakids dinosaur. I pointed out the similarities and told him they were the same thing. Since the book could 'talk', he got to hear the sounds that a dinosaur made while eating etc. (Of course, all the sounds are what the authors think dinosaurs should make la.. since none of us ever encountered a real dinosaur before :P)

After some time, Jiale took out his toy animals (no dinosaurs, guess what is on my shopping list). He lined them up and was most interested in the gorilla and tiger. So I referred to the Index again, and showed Jiale the relevant pages on gorillas and tigers.

Then he pointed to the tiger's tail. I have been mentioning the animals' tails to him quite often as I realise he often mixes up 嘴巴 (mouth) and 尾巴(tail), probably as they end in the same sound. So I looked up Tails in the Index, and showed him how animals use their tails (for balance, for attacking, etc).

Previously I also did something similar after we watched the Playtime! performance Rocky, The Baby Panda. (can't wait for the Singapore Zoological Gardens to finally let us admire the pandas at the end of the year..!!)

As you can see, I did not have to do any prep work. And we can easily change topics according to his interests. No heartache for me.. And no stress for either of us if he does not want to do the topic I choose or does not want to look at the books at all! Furthermore, we do not need a 'big' topic to do this.. Can just refer to the encyclopaedia as and when we come across something interesting in our daily moments or in his storybooks.

P.S. I am not saying this particular set of encyclopaedia is especially good. I have not used other sets of encyclopaedia so there is no basis for comparison.

The Learning Materials

Dunno why I couldn't add this photo to my previous post!