Mommy School ~ Aa is for Ambulance

We did letter Aa activities five days before Kai turned three.  I decided to do “intentional” home preschool with him to reinforce the letters/letter sounds he has learnt at Gymboree so far, to expose him to math concepts (number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, shapes, patterns, size sequencing) and other non-academic skills like pre-writing, art/craft, cutting/pasting, puzzles, cooking/baking.  We do these activities after lunch for about 45 minutes before picking Belle and Keefe up from school.  We always start our home preschool by reading a book that goes with the theme for the day, followed by printables.  We’ve had a good week and Kai looks forward to it everyday.  In his words, “I want to study.”

31.3.2014 ~ Dot painting Aa’s and painting the ambulance.  Our book for the day was "Ambulance in Action".

31.3.2014 ~ Left-to-right tracing, cutting, finger tracing number 1, colouring number 1

6.4.2014 ~ Kai wanted to "study" on a Sunday night so we did the 4-piece ambulance puzzle, sorting uppercase and lowercase letter Aa, cutting ambulances and pasting them onto the letter A

Some of Kai’s finished work for Aa is for Ambulance

Mommy School ~ Letter Uu

We worked on Letter Uu last week, as I realised that Kai’s preschool only briefly touched on this letter (more like an hour!).  The Zoo-Phonics animal for letter Uu is Umber Umbrella Bird so I decided on an umbrella theme. 

Day 1 – Dot painting the umbrellas, Letter Uu vocabulary cards

Day 2 – I decided to set up learning stations (inspiration from here) so that Kai has an idea of the activities that we will be working on that day.  Kai loves this set-up!  He did everything except for the math station.

Painting the umbrella (and later on, gluing on the umbrella shapes under the painted umbrella), coluring umbrellas, dot painting the uppercase and lowercase u, lacing, 3-piece puzzle.  Kai also did left-to-right tracing and cut umbrellas to practice his scissor skills.

We had a free trial account for Reading Eggs from school (which has since expired) and Kai loves to play with the activities.  Here he is looking at pictures/words beginning with letter Uu, finding the same letter Uu object, finding all the lowercase u on the dump truck, and helping the umbrella bird search for lowercase u.  

Gymboree Preschool 1 {Letter Ww}

Zoo-Phonics Animal: Willie Weasel
Motion: Place your arms in front of your chest, elbows up, and hands clasped on top of one another. Move your arms in a wave-like motion. This suggests what Willie Weasel looks like when he is running. While signalling, say the letter sound /w/.

For this week, Kai’s teacher decided to skip letter Vv and do letter Ww for weather.  We had sun, rain, hail (on Monday!), clouds and wind this week in Basel so it was timely for a weather theme.  Kai did a storm and rainbow craft for the weather theme.  They did free painting yesterday and made a fish with a fishing rod today.  Kai was a classroom helper early this week and got a green smiley face on his hand for being a great helper!

Grade 1 ~ Healthy Bodies

At the end of each unit of inquiry, first graders share their work to their parents.  For the past two months, the first graders have been inquiring into “Healthy Bodies”.  

Belle had her 4th portfolio sharing session yesterday and she shared her final project, which was a poster she made to show what she has learnt about staying healthy.  She broke down her poster (titled “How to Be Well-Balanced”) into four components: Nutrition, Germs, Exercise, Hygiene, provided facts and examples for each component.  I thought it was well done because she included detailed information and drawings in her poster.

Belle showed me her imaginary germ called “Valentine” who spreads only good germs to people.  How creative is that! J

Belle shared her portfolio folder with me but singled out her favourite activities to share in detail.  One was a glitter experiment, and the other one was hunting for germs.  I thought the germ-hunting experiment was quite interesting ‘cos each student had to take a cotton swab to collect some germs, spread the swab into a pool of tomato paste, observe how their germs “grow” after a few days.  Belle took a swab from under her chair and it turned out to be a tiny germ (but still yucky!).  She told me that her friend Bibi took a swab behind the interactive whiteboard and it turned out to be a BIG germ that she didn’t even want to touch it!

St Patrick's Day Fun

This week is review week of the letters Q, R, S and T in playgroup so Kai made an S is for shamrock. 

At home, we had some activities from this printable pack.  It was Kai's first time using the pocket chart and loves to use it for matching the vocabulary cards.  He also used clothespins for the first time for counting practice (one-to-one correspondence of numbers 1 to 4 & number recognition) and it was great practice for those fine motor skills! (Honestly, I thought he couldn't do it!) We also did an uppercase and lowercase letter Cc sort - he didn't like this as much as the other activities.

Keefe also had some activities from this printable pack.  We worked on ordinal numbers (first, second, third, fourth, fifth) and he did perfectly!  He did the patterns super quickly only to realize (after I took the photo) that he made two mistakes so he quickly corrected them.  He enjoyed the clothespin activity as much as Kai.

The leprechaun visited Keefe’s class and in Keefe's words, “made a big mess”.  The class watched the movie “Leprechaun’s Gold”, made St Patrick’s Day hats (with the different symbols associated with the celebration) and had shamrock cookies.  He had a St Patrick's Day-themed bento for lunch.  Each child in the class had to make a wish for the leprechaun and Keefe's wish was: "I wish I had a baby sister." (Well apparently, 7 kids in the class wanted a baby sister!)  He also remembered to make a birthday card for me in school.  Inside the card, he wrote: "IIU mummy".

 

We celebrated my birthday at home in the evening blowing green candles I found in Aldi (because we didn’t have cake!) and a super simple dinner.  Belle made a crown for me because I was "Queen for a day"! 

Grade 1 ~ 2nd Quarter Reflections

Today was the second parent-teacher-student conference in school.  Unlike Keefe, I don't know much about what Belle learns or does in school every day.  We received the formal written report of Belle's 1st semester progress back in February and she appears to do well in all core and specialist subjects.  

These are some of the artwork she did in class, which I saw during the conference.

Oil pastel/watercolour painting, food plate done with another 1st grade class as part of the "Healthy Bodies" unit of inquiry, skip counting craft

An activity she did during German class where she labeled different parts of herself in German

A fiction writing activity as part of Read Across America week

Belle's teacher mentioned during the 20-minute conference that Belle is doing very well in class and always hands in quality work because she always does her very best in everything she do.  The teacher showed me Belle's Math journal which I was told was "elementary" for Belle (adding numbers using number lines) but was told that it was important for her to learn the different math strategies.  They were working on word problems this quarter so Belle was taught to highlight key words so that she will know when to add or subtract.  I thought these were good skills to reinforce but not new for Belle as she has already learnt these as part of our Primary 1 afterschooling last year.  

Belle was moved from Level M to Level N in Raz-Kids which according to her teacher, was more challenging as it requires deeper thinking and comprehension skills.  She is reading beyond her current grade level so the teacher wants to push her further.  Belle enjoys reading so I don't see any problems stretching her.  Her teacher recently started a book club where a group of readers meet regularly to read and discuss books, and have meaningful discussions with their peers.  Belle enjoys these book club sessions.  One of the areas that she will be working on for reading is to tell the main idea(s) in the story as opposed to summarising everything. 

Belle's writing has improved from the previous quarter and this is an area which I think the teacher is doing a wonderful job!  Here is a non-fiction writing piece she wrote this quarter about Singapore, which I thought was hilarious! (Click on the picture below to read the entire book!)

This was the summary I received from Belle's teacher after the conference:

Preschool 2 ~ Letter Uu

Uu poster

Uu is for umbrella craft

Uu sound book

(Handwriting rhyme for U – Scoop up, down and under the umbrella, up to the top and down the puddle)