MathStart

Mommy's been rather inspired by this set of books Mathstart by Stuart Murphy. He delivers math concepts through simple stories and some even rhyme. We began withs some simply one on patterning. Of course our little boy loved the story since it involved cars but nonetheless if Mommy gets him to focus, he can surprisingly recognise simple ABAB pattern. This was definitely too easy for Keziah and she ended up making her own pattern.

For easy manipulatives for home learning, Mommy's friend has started a website MyPlaySchool sharing resources and a good one stop point for mommies interested in finding some ideas for activities for learn through play.

A house for a hermit crab - Part 3

Making our house and flat! Mommy thought about paper marche that she did when she was young and attempted for the little ones to make starch glue out of plain flour since some had just expired. They were happily adding water and mixing observing and feeling the consistency after the flour has been mixed. Of course, Mommy did the heating and finally when the mixture was cooled, it was our good sticky glue.

So the kids went about painting the glue on the empty tissue boxes in our efforts to recycle things we had, tearing waste paper and finally gluing them on bit by bit.

Nothing excites them more than painting the colours after the glue was dried. We had red and yellow to begin with. Keziah was challenged to pain her flat in alternate colours for different levels and she soon realised when yellow mixed with red, it became orange. Remember a story we read about "Colours of us" in which tells how a girl's mommy taught her how there are different shades of brown by relating to the different skintones of people they met and one could make brown out of red, yellow, black and white, we tried it out. It worked!

Abel was having great fun just painting. One thing unique about this little boy, he's always very neat with his work. Even without an apron, he didn't mess his shirt. Rather when he got paint on his hands, he will ask to be cleaned.

Keziah now has better control of her brush. Mommy was actually quite glad to see her work with colours being distinct from one another.

We are still working on the final bits to put in the windows for Keziah's flat and the other parts for Abel's house. We will probably finish off with comparing the two and looking at some home's of animals, writing our address and learning about ordinal numbers through the different levels in a block of flat.

A house for a hermit crab - Part 2

We did really simple things today. Just simple motor skills of scooping beans which the kids have well mastered it over time into some old socks we got from airlines to make our beanie sea anemone.

Then, it was just outdoor time to familiarise Abel with number sequence 1-10 in ascending and descending order with none else but good old hopscotch which Mommy drew using chalk. For Keziah, she had to hop to the number on which her beanie had landed and tell the number before and after above it all. Of course, most of the time, our dear Abel was just too happy throwing his 'sea anemone' around.

Some Math activities we did over the past days….

The fish were really meant for Abel to sort by size and count but Keziah had good fun doing likewise on top of searching out the middle fish, from the left 2nd fish, 4th fish, from the right first fish and 'gobbling' them up.

A house for a hermit crab - Part 1

Mommy was inspired by some works of lapbooking and we decided to start something this holiday with our favourite author Eric Carle's "A house for a hermit crab". Progress was slow but each day we did a little. We started off with knowing the months through retelling the story and knowing a little more about hermit crabs through this craft. These definitely interest Keziah but when we went on to doing things related to English and Math, her interest kind of weaned a little. Guess it's about motivating her to go on.

Plain versus decorated

Some vocabulary cards to bring out some words we read in the books

Keziah coloured these and we laminated them to be used as puppets to retell the story

Facts…well a little boring for the little ones for now…Mommy has to think how to make facts more interesting…

We sang some rhymes and did some crawling side to side like crabs! Kids loved them!

We're Little Orange Crabs


Sung to: "The Farmer in the Dell"
 
 

We're little orange crabs
 

Who live down by the sea,
 

And where we do go
 

We're quick as quick can be.
 
 

We're little orange crabs
 

Who like to run and hide,
 

And when you see us walking by
 

It's always side to side.

Five Little Sea Creatures

Five little sea creatures


On the ocean floor;

The lobster walked away


Now there are four.

Four little sea creatures


Living in the sea;


The octopus crept away


Now there are three.

Three little sea creatures


Wondering what to do;


"Good-bye," said the starfish


Now there are two.

Two little sea creatures


Not having much fun;


Off swam the sea horse


Now there is one.

One little hermit crab


Sad and all alone,


Back came the starfish,


Back came the sea horse,


Back came the octopus,


Back came the lobster,


Then all five went home.

CRAB FINGERPLAY  (Math/Language)


One little crab by the sea so blue, (Hold up one finger.)


Along came another crab, and that made two. (Hold up two fingers.)


Two little crabs swimming in the sea,


Along came another crab, and that made three. (Hold up three fingers.)


Three little crabs playing on the shore,


Along came another crab, and that made four. (Hold up four fingers.)


Four little crabs so glad to be alive,
Along came another crab, and that made five. (Hold up five fingers.)


Five little crabs just having some fun,


Crawling on the sand in the hot summer sun. (Wiggle fingers.)

Few things Mommy planned to cover including simple activities with Abel:

1) Learning about months of the year

2) Math - number sequence, patterning, maze, dot-to-dot, ordinal number and sizing

2) Sea creatures (memory games and recognition)

3) Types of houses

4) Types of shells (field trip to the beach to pick some shells and see if we could spot little crabs burrowing in the sand)

It's definitely a lot of work to prepare all these. Let's see how we progress...