Tot School - Letter Dd

Tot School has been hanging in the air for the last few weeks because I have been very busy with our primary school's annual Teachers Day Concert. So the letter of the week was actually spread out over a few weeks; we had tot school whenever I didn't have to go to school for practices.

It is my first time directing the concert and this is the project that has been keeping me on my toes for the past month and zapping a lot of time and energy out of me. However, I enjoyed the experience very much as I loved working with the incredibly talented students, some as young as 7 years old, who came forward and auditioned with their skits, songs and dances, as well as some other special talents such as wushu and instrument-playing. Moreover, I am always happy to have anything to do with theatre, stage, and performing d:)

(Mouse is 36mths old this week. We celebrate his 3rd birthday.)

Letter Dd for Dog, Duck and Dino

Because I couldn't find enough satisfactory activities for only one animal, I decided to go the full monty and use all the D animals available on the homeschool network for this week(s)' letter. Very typical of Singaporeans - kiasu (afraid to lose).

Using printouts for Dinosaur from COAH, Dog from Royalbaloo.com and Duck from 1+1+1=1, we focused on the D sound. There are also flashcards from Kidzclub.com (I love how they provide flashcards for multiple items beginning with the letter rather than just one item per letter) and these were really useful in linking up the different familiar items that begin with D.

Here he is working on the Dinosaur counting activity - we used number magnets with the printout on a magnetic whiteboard. And we discovered our number 3 magnet is missing d:(

He finally opened up to using scissors and cut up the little doggies, with me guiding his hands on how to hold the paper so he wouldn't cut himself. Then I passed him the glue stick and he applied glue and stuck those doggies on paper.

It is now our habit to put the crayon-coloured animals in the pocket chart (which has moved house to a clothes rail). He loves either naming the colours (blue duck, green dog) or counting the animals (not very correctly yet).

More dinosaur activity - sorting big and little Ds. I should mention that he is wearing his Tshirt that has a stuffed dinosaur on the front d:)

Next up, playdough with the Dd playdough mat from Homeschool Creations.

And there was a Letter Hunt maze from 1+1+1=1. He didn't get the idea at first, so I guided him by pointing to the letters, and finally, after he had coloured them, I showed him how to draw a line to join them up so the duck gets to the pond. Here is the letter hunt maze on our pocket chart.

The children played dressup and here he is in a Dinosaur headdress from IKEA.

Non Letter Dd activities

Chinese lesson - we reread our 小扭扣 book and played with some coloured buttons. I will need to get some more buttons in blue, green and yellow.

I got hold of some magnets in different shapes and put them on the IKEA art easel for him to play with. I also showed him that he can do a sort of colour graph by lining up the magnets according to colour, regardless of shape, under "head magnets". Then, we counted up the magnets in the same column/colour.

While I was assembling a shelving unit from IKEA (to store my homeschooling materials), he played with the screwdriver bits from our toolset. He liked plucking them out and sticking them in again, and remembered not to touch the last two which were thin and sharper.

And last of all, he wanted to play with the Giraffe ABC/123 puzzle which was a gift from Grandma for his elder brother years ago. He needed some help with the right pieces to fit in as his version of the alphabet song is kind of slurry.

I haven't prepared my E materials yet, so it's a good thing I don't school on Mondays. Plus this week is the September one week hols for the older kids, so it will be hard to school with them around. Strangely, Mouse is just more distracted when they are in the house.