Birds , Volcano and more

We started our lessons in February with a workbox system which suits us well. KB & NB were both able to "look for their lessons" themselves which means I really don't have to tell them to "come, let's play the piano, or do Science or Mandarin".














Language: Writing & Reading

KB likes to make words, write or draw in his spare time. We also do a verse a week for him to practise writing since he enjoys it so much.












Chinese

We use pictograms to explain how chinese words come about. We bought the books here.
It worked really well. We would read books related to rain and write a sentence about rain.

















Simple word recognition and family tree.





















Science: God created water

We learnt about the difference between solid and liquids. Liquids has no shape. It takes the shape of any container it is put into.















We read books about the various type of water God created in form of pond, lake, ocean. We talked about the importance of water.

Water is denser than oil so it sinks to the bottom of a jar filled with oil.















Playing with colours under the sun. Nevermind them doing this a million times, they simply had loads of fun making purple and cyan and other colours out of the primary colours.
















Learning how different pressure creates various speed.




















Free Play/Pretend Play

KB creates a zoo using playdough, some toy and ice-cream sticks. Look how my old rice cooker pots has transformed into helmets! Loved their imagination.




















Outings

The Baby Panda is by far the best childrens play I have ever seen. It is lively and interactive. The boys loved the songs which they already knew how to sing and had lots of fun doing it in a group of kids their age. Kids also went to Dinosaur exhibition at Science Centre. Very visual experience. KB tried his hand at being an archaelogist, digging up dinosaur skeletons. He had fun.






























Devotion/Character

We role play Jesus healing the sick as the man was lowered from the roof by his friends. KB & NB had to do this over and over till all their "patients" aka soft toys are healed.

Delight learning

Birds

We spent quite alot of time here as there were so / too many things KB was interested in. First a bird flew to our neighbours corridor, just one floor down to make a nest! How can we not get excited over that? So we decided to embark on a "birds" unit. Check out the eggs and baby bird! We did various worksheets for fun and sneaked in "sex education" - an introduction of how birds were made really; egg, sperm and all.

KB was very patient as he tried his hand at weaving. No, we did not expect him to get every line and flap right, it was a child's work afterall, but he got the idea how bird's nest were made.

Volcano

This was relatively easy and enjoyable as we made the mould of volcano out of flour, I added some colouring to turn it into brown colour. Once ready, baking soda goes into the bottle and there, we simulated a volcano eruption. The boys were thrill. Kb asked me how come there is no cloud of ash above our volcano. hahah.. He does know his stuff. We use various online resources, printables and Usborne Beginners: Volcanoes.
































Art & craft

learning to read

Reading
KB is having fun making 'at' families words and matching pictures to the right word, together with Bob books.




















We also learnt some sight words "The" , "is", "a" and "and"
These are the sentences KB made using sight words.

And - The squirrel is hanging and finding food.
And - A hippopotamus is climbing on an elephant's trunk and a ladybug is trying to snatch from the back of the elephant (bad ladybug, she's is trying to snatch the elephant's mummy).

The - The bird is trying to eat a worm on a tree
The - The bat is flying in a dark dark place looking for ants and other animals in the dark dark place.

is - The cat is 7 years old
is - The ladybug is kind and beautiful.

A - A caterpillar is climbing up to a safari car
A - A butterfly is hanging on a boat.

Delight-Learning
KB was interested in how we swallow and digest food, and basically the digestive system, so we showed him how things worked. It was good we had a anatomy model to play with. we could see which part of the body goes where. pretty awesome. KB would wake up from a nap and tells me "mummy , I can hear my heart pumping blood into my body!" hahaha..




















We also read "see inside your body, Usborne flap books, to learn more about our body.


Making ice-cream
I seriously didnt think this was possible until they did it! Both boys slurp it up as quickly as the ice-cream melts.




















Pretend Play
This would be the most hilarious pretend play we ever had at home because KB suddenly turned the envelope over and made it his crown. Everyone joined in the dance and it was just pure hilarious. We talked about us being the King's (God) son - princes. Look at the goofy picture on the left, the boys just have to do that for a picture!







































Math
Rule of the game - For each bottle that gets knocked down, you get two tokens which can be used to purchase ping pong balls to play for the next round. We learn counting by twos.















We also ventured into cuisenaire rods. We loved that it is so easy to see numeric values at a glance and the more the child plays with it, the more familiar he would be. KB is at the free play level.












Outdoor
Playing by the lawn. Relaxing by the lake.
















Catching National Day rehearsal @ the Pinnacle. Beautiful sunset.
















Craft: Spider web
We just finished reading a book on spider and we thought of making a spider web. This craft takes two days as it is important to let the glue dry out completely.

We use a balloons and got the boys to dab starch (home-made) on yarn. It is really slippery and provides great sensorial fun, although the yarn hardly sticks on the balloon! Once they are done with it, mummy uses PVC glue to go over it. Once the glue dries, the yarn would become hard and a random shape would be formed. Viola! Thei very own spider-web!

Then the boys could pry their spider - web from the balloon and paint it. The process is loads of fun. KB paints it and put some glitter glue on it as well. We put a plastic spider in the completed spider-web.



































Character: Servanthood
KB is asked to help little brother button his shirt. Other responsibility includes putting his little brother's slippers in the right order, and delegating which toys little brother should keep. Loved it when the big brother help out this way.

Raising little business men with a heart - FUn FaIr FUN!

Homeschool fun fair was round the corner and that got everyone excited. Mummy was thinking of popcorn, and son was thinking of probably a million things to make and sell.

So we started brainstorming and KB came up with close to 20 ideas, amongst which were making jeans, house, aeroplance, rockets ... and finally he said "mummy, I like music, I would make a trumpet to sell" and I had to say YES!

So we figured we could let him paint his beautiful drawing board in whichever way he likes and mummy would help to roll it up for him. These are the completed 'trumpets' or 'loud hailer', but we decided to call it a trumpet becuz the name was more catchy.

KB looks at his wallet (probably deciding there were too few coins), picks up his loud-hailer and calls out for customers... ha haha... this is so cute!



After some logistic challenges (something to do with bringing extension wire to hook up our popcorn machine!), mummy decided to scrap the idea of making popcorn and decided to just go for Game-for-charity. There was a Food Crisis at East Africa and that provided an excellent cause to go for. It would be meaningful yet fun to do something like that as a family.




















Game-for-charity : Scoop as many balls as you can under 10 secs. Highest scorer of the day wins Family Boardgame, "Chutes and Ladders". Game is suitable for aged 2 yrs-old onwards!

My 4 yr-old is in-charge of giving out stickers to those who completes the game, though sometimes he would also tend to his 'trumpet' stall.





































Which child would say no to ice-lollies? ;)















Face-painting!




















All good things must come to an end. Many (little) hands make work lighter.