Mommy School ~ Cc is for Carrot {Part 1}

I had both boys at home today so it was chaotic!  Kai couldn’t focus well with Keefe around and even had a meltdown.  Since Keefe was home, I decided to do a carrot theme since it tied in nicely with his “From Seed to Supper” unit of inquiry in school, and we happened to have The Carrot Seed in our bookshelf.  Keefe and I bought the carrot seeds from a local supermarket this morning, but I told him we were not going to plant the seeds as it takes very long for carrots to grow and you need a proper garden to grow them!  I bought them simply because I wanted the boys to see how carrot seeds look like.

I made the printables myself (except for the triangle tracer) ‘cos I couldn’t find any carrot printables!  You can see Kai's sad look on the top picture because he wasn't happy with how he traced his heart shape.  He wanted me to erase the extra line on the side.  He wasn't into colouring his carrots today and asked me to help him colour some of them.  He now knows the concept of "medium" size but he intentionally sorted the medium and big carrots in the wrong columns, and had a bad meltdown.  I told him we'd call it a day and continue with the carrot theme next week when we're back from our Labor Day holidays.

Keefe worked on his sight word “said” and we learnt the life cycle of a carrot and a bean plant.  He also worked on a plant word search and did very well!

Mommy School ~ Cc is for Caterpillar

Kai loves The Very Hungry Caterpillar so naturally, we had to do a caterpillar theme.

Letter Cc maze, dot painting Cc, pre-writing 

Tracing shapes (Kai wanted his shapes to be colourful so he used different colours.  After he finished using a particular colour, he would arrange and put it aside.)  Sorting sizes, counting the fruits that the caterpillar ate from Monday to Friday, matching uppercase and lowercase letters Aa, Bb, Cc and Ee

I pre-cut all the shapes for our caterpillar craft and guided Kai in making it.

We made this craft a few weeks ago.  Kai fingerpainted the caterpillar's body and glued the googly eyes.  After the paint dried up, I asked him to draw the antennae and six legs.

Kai's finished work for Cc is for Caterpillar

Mommy School ~ Cc is for Crane

~Kai is 3 years, 3 weeks old~

We are back with Mommy School today after being away for more than a week for our Easter holidays. I decided to do a crane theme after seeing Royal Baloo's crane pack.

Our read-alouds were Lofty (Bob the Builder's crane friend) and Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site. I brought out a crane from one of our Lego sets. Kai loved playing with this.

Kai cheekily placed the crane on his paper while he dot-painted the letter Cc's. This was the first time I brought out our stamping set and he enjoyed stamping Cc's all over the crane. He did a matching activity and was trying to tell me that he matched one of the C's incorrectly and wanted me to erase the wrong line. Sorting the uppercase and lowercase Cc's is now a breeze for him.

Kai's pencil grip is steadily improving and he is slowly tracing his lines neatly. 

Kai's scissor skill has also improved and I noticed that he is able to cut lines straighter than before.

The highlight today was when Kai independently wrote a number 3 on a piece of paper. I was surprised when I saw it so I asked him to do it again. He wrote the number 3 two more times and was very proud of himself! Hooray!

Kai's finished work for Cc is for Crane

Mommy School ~ Ee is for Elephant

Today is the last day of our Letter Ee week before we go off for our Easter holidays tomorrow.  I came to know about Elmer the Elephant from Keefe, who never failed to borrow the Elmer series of books whenever he had his library days in school.  He asked me to buy this book for him during last year's winter market in school.  I decided to read it to Kai today as part of our elephant theme.

Dot painting E for elephant, sorting uppercase and lowercase Ee's, letter maze

6-piece elephant puzzle (Kai is not much into puzzles so doing this independently is still a challenge for him), shapes, feeding the elephant with popcorns.  He enjoyed this activity the most but couldn't control himself from eating some popcorns while counting!  I only gave him number cards 1-6 and a bowl of popcorn.  We worked on number recognition and counting.  We still need to work on the number 6.  

We made our E for elephant craft, inspired by Elmer.  I pre-cut everything using the template from here.  It was a great way to practice colours and positional words -- I'd call out a colour and ask Kai to glue it below or next to a certain colour.

Kai's finished work for Ee is for Elephant

Mommy School ~ Ee is for Eggs

~Kai is 3 years, 1 week old~

Yesterday, we had some friends over for an Easter party at home.  I only planned for 5 kids but we had 2 surprise guests in the last minute.  I baked muffins in the morning and bought some adorable bunny bread from the local Coop.  I boiled a dozen eggs and packed all the chocolate treats for the egg hunt.

A friend and I hid all the treats in our garden.  I hid the two biggest treats - an Easter bunny and a big Easter egg which took a while to be found.  Everyone had fun hunting for Easter treats!

I bought two decorating kits from Germany for the kids to paint and decorate their eggs.  They had so much fun that I had to boil the remaining 10 eggs left in the fridge!  The brown eggs seemed to have absorbed the dye better than the white eggs.

Belle tried making two-toned eggs while the boys used stickers to decorate their eggs.

Today, we continued with our egg theme.  We read Mickey's Easter Hunt.  Kai didn't seem interested with this book - probably because of the long text.  

Dot painting E, hunting for Ee's (he is getting better at this!), matching eggs

I set up 5 plates with grass (to look like nest) and placed number cards on each plate.  I gave Kai a basket with eggs (from yesterday's!) and asked him to read the number and put the corresponding number of eggs onto the plate.  Here he was double-checking that he had 5 eggs on the number 5 plate.  He can now easily recognise numbers 1-5. 

I asked Kai to peel an egg so we could make an eggshell craft.  He peeled one halfway and started eating the egg so I helped him peeled the remaining two eggs.  I pre-cut the lowercase e and glued it with the paper eggshells.  Kai glued the peeled eggshells on the paper.  Keefe and I helped him complete the craft 'cos he wanted to eat his egg! 

 Kai made an Easter basket and a peek-a-boo chick craft in preschool this week, which tied in nicely with our egg theme!

Kai's finished work for Ee is for Eggs

Preschool 2 ~ Circus Performance

Preschool 2 had their circus performance last Friday, 11th April, as a grand finale to their "Exploring their Arts" unit.  

Keefe chose to be a trapeze artist and had three rounds on the trapeze swing.  

Other children performed as acrobats, clowns, animals (lions/tigers/elephants) and strongmen.

There were also performances by the teachers ~ taekwando, clown acts, tightrope walking, magic/wizardry, and balancing!

The Preschool 2 kids practiced the skills and movements under their three P.E. teachers' guidance and made this circus performance possible for the parents.  This would never happen if Keefe was schooling back in Singapore so definitely, a performance worth remembering!

Mommy School ~ Bb is for Blue Birthday

I had a few ideas for the last day of our Letter Bb week until I decided to do a Bb is for Blue Birthday as an ending for Kai’s birthday week.  I didn’t have time to prep because of Keefe’s circus performance in school that morning.  

We read Franklin's Birthday Party.

 Kai helped me with baking blueberry muffins.  He stirred the mixture and the blueberries, and placed blue paper muffin cups onto the muffin tin.  We arranged the blueberry muffins in the shape of a lowercase b on top of blue doily.

We sang "Happy Birthday" and he blew a blue candle while wearing his blue birthday hat.  He ate his blueberry muffin and loved it.

 Finding all the Bb's (here he was using the dot marker as a telescope to help him find the Bb's), dot painting B, and playing with balloons

Shape tracing (we have to work on pentagon and hexagon), left-to-right tracing, matching, colouring the big presents (after he did this, he drew lines to connect all the small presents without me prompting him!), finding the "different" item (we need more practice with this but he learnt that "different" means "not the same")

Number puzzle 1-10 to practice number recognition & number order

Our b is for balloon craft.  Because there were a lot of balloons to glue, big brother Keefe helped him halfway through this activity.

Kai's finished work for Bb is for Blue Birthday

Mommy School ~ Bb is for Bear {We're Going on a Bear Hunt}

This happened on Wednesday, 9th April, which was Day 3 of our Letter Bb week.  We did “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” and had lots of fun.  I borrowed the Chinese version of the book from the school library.  He loved this book, especially the following text:

We can't go over it.

We can't go under it.

Oh no!

We've got to go through it!

After reading the book, I asked him if he wants to go on a bear hunt.  He replied, "No. Me scared!"

Pretend Play

I created a pretend play tub (inspired from here) to recreate the scenes from the book: grass - green shredded paper that came with an Easter basket, water - water dyed blue, mud - chocolate frosting, forest - pinecones that Kai gathered from our backyard and trees from our Playmobil, snowstorm - cotton balls, cave - a gardening decor we had for a while, bear inside the cave.  Kai had fun playing with the tub and finding the bear inside the cave! 

Today on our way home from Gymboree, Kai saw a "river" and said "uh-oh".  He also walked through a forest and bravely walked through long grass.  

Dot painting Bb's, left-to-right tracing, size sequencing (we need to practice this more!), finding the bear (he really loves this but we need to work on recognising numbers 6 to 10)

Making our B is for bear craft.  I pre-cut everything but Kai glued everything down himself after I showed him how the bear should look like.

Kai's finished work for Bb is for Bear

Mommy School ~ Bb is for Bus

We did the bus theme for Day 2 of our Letter Bb week.

 Finger tracing Bb, connecting buses to form Bb, intently finding the Bb's on the bus, sorting uppercase and lowercase b while sounding out /b/

Matching (when he completed this worksheet, he also drew a line to connect all the uppercase B's), placing the correct number of buses on the road, cutting and pasting buses on letter B, painting the bus

Later that day, we took bus number 37 instead of walking home.

Kai's finished work for Bb is for Bus