K1 Term Two Week Five

We were unable to cover as much as I would like to have, because Mouse's older brother Roast Meat was unwell and home on medical leave. We spent a couple of mornings (always the best time to school) at the doctor's and only managed to do some work in the afternoon or evenings when I didn't have to cook or complete other work.

English Literacy

It's fulfilling to know that Mouse is learning more and more words, and he really does take to them like a fish to water! We did You Can Read Unit 6 as well as the -IG word family unit, both from 1+1+1=1. I should mention that, although the units include several different activities to reinforce the learning of the words, we do not use all of them as he is resistant to some stuff such as colouring and lots of tracing or handwriting. To keep him interested, I only print off one or two writing practice pages, one each to be used on each of the two days we cover that unit. He much prefers using stamps, Do A Dot, and tracing shapes.

Chinese Literacy

In his daily notebook (that he has to complete every school day at the start of lessons), I included another sheet of sight words. I teach him the order of strokes (although he's already able to guess them by now) and remind him to say each stroke out as he writes them.

Click here to download this page

We also revised the Chinese names for colours with this set of cards from Parentingjoy. I will be making a tracing practise sheet for colours soon (after RM's exams are over).

Math

We are using various Addition printables from around the web to practise and reinforce the concept. This week, we used this Domino Math printable from COAH. First, I had him select a domino (from Melissa & Doug that we bought years ago at ToysRUs) and dot the equivalent number of animals on his sheet. He had to count all the dots and write the total in the answer box.

Then he picked a fresh set of dominoes and wrote the numbers on the sheet. I tried encouraging him to count on eg. 5+2 "start with five, then 6, and... 7" but he still prefers to count ALL the animals from 1. This needs a lot more reinforcing and encouragement.

After that we just had some fun with the dominoes, matching them end to end.

Yeah!

Other Stuff

One evening on a day where we didn't have any lessons because of going to the doctor's and bringing Mouse for compulsory vaccination, I took out some Melissa&Doug puzzles nobody has touched for a long time.

He liked the fish one, which, although challenging, he discovered the trick to matching (under some guidance *cough cough*) and joined most of it up himself the first time. Subsequently, he was completely on his own.

And we had a set of 3D puzzle blocks nobody knew how to solve so he just used them to build a wall.

I sure hope next week we can go back to our regular schedule!

K1 Term Two Week Four

English Literacy

We are moving along faster now with the You Can Read series from 1+1+1=1, and are able to complete two units in one week. Each unit takes us about two days to complete. Actually we can finish in one day, but I prefer to cover more than one subject per day, and completing the second half on another day helps to recap and reinforce the lesson.

I don't have any pics but we did Units 4 and 5 this week.

Math

Pinterest is a valuable source of ideas and resources for me in my curriculum planning, and while browsing around, I found a very interesting activity which involves rolling dice (one of Mouse's favs) and building with cubes (which I like). The original did not have a free printable so I drew one up for Mouse. Just roll two dice, add up the dots and build the corresponding number of snap cubes on the sum.

Chinese Literacy

I am using these readers from my older kids' kindergarten days (they went to a church kindy). We've been reading them together for the last couple of years, but now we're earnestly into learning I'm also drawing up some simple Literature based activities for him. To begin with, in his Daily Notebook, there are always a couple of pages of Chinese characters for him to practise. I used words that he would be familiar with from the books.

Current book

And here he is sequencing the story on our pocket chart with the word cards.

Here are this week's character writing practise sheets.

K1 Term Two Week Three

This week, our focus has been on the Word Family for -AN, since he already knows CAN. I was worried at first that he wouldn't be able to catch onto the technique for word families but after demonstrating a couple of times by sounding out the first letter, he got it. I have often heard him sounding out the first consonant on his own. 

We are using the free printables for -AN family from 1+1+1=1. Here is our updated Word Wall with word cards from the -AN unit added. 

As expected, Mouse's older siblings have started playing around with the words on the word wall and come up with hilarious sentences for him to read, or for them to read themselves *roll eyes*

We started working on Ordinal Numbers. I found a lot of worksheets on Pinterest, and a colourful printable that lists the numerical form and word form on a pocket chart. Unfortunately, as our hanging pocket chart is the standard type, I have had to split the numbers into two columns.

It took him a little time to understand the meaning of the ordinal numbers, and I had to prompt him quite a lot to work out the answers in the worksheets. We will be doing more to reinforce the concept next week.

Tot School - Letter Ii

Mouse is 37mths old.

Letter Ii activities

Here is his Tot Tray corner on the first day.

Letter Ii setup

Letter Ii poking page from COAH and we also used the Letter Ii tracing page in prewriting practice.

Do A Dot practice from COAH again. We used a round stamp and inkpad because I still can't find an economical option to purchase Do A Dot markers from the US. I haven't found these in Singapore yet.

Stamping is always fun for Mouse!

Pattern blocks practice with activity card also from COAH.

Prewriting practice is from the Ice Cream Pack from 2TeachingMommies.

Prewriting practice for Ii

Included in the pack are clip cards for counting Ice Cream. We used some small wooden clothespegs from Daiso. His grip is improving and he's now able to open them by himself, although his fingers got rather tired by the 8th card and he needed help with the last few.

Ice cream counting on clip cards

Cutting practice with scissors. We cut up the ice cream pieces to use as pattern making cards.

Here are the pattern cards in action.

And of course, we couldn't miss out the Ice Cream colouring.

Blue icecream, yummy flavour?

I is for Ice Cream Do A Dot practice with pompom magnets.

Letter Ii maze from 1+1+1=1. This is the first time we are using transparent counters to mark the route. Erm, he put two counters on the wrong letters on purpose, for fun d:)

Cotton buds painting practice from 1+1+1=1 but he preferred to paint straight lines (as if he were writing) rather then do dotting with the cotton bud.

Matching upper and lowercase letters on the pocket chart. Printouts from 1+1+1=1, I printed two pages per sheet so they would be smaller and to save ink.

I made my own activity card for bottle cap matching practice because I couldn't find any for Ice Cream on the web.

Bottle cap matching for Ice Cream

Non Letter Ii activities

Sticking straws into the large holes of a parsley flakes bottle.

Hanging out with some animal puzzle friends.

Threading beads onto pipe cleaners.

Building blocks activity - I printed out these cards but can't remember which site I got them from! Basically they are structures built from building blocks for the child to copy. At first, he placed the blocks on the picture, but I demonstrated and pointed out block by block so he understood after a bit.

Tot School - Letter Hh

Mouse is 3 years old.

Letter Hh activities

Books for Hh week.

Hh is for Hippo activities from 1+1+1=1.

Bottle cap letter matching practice from COAH.

Hippo size sequencing from COAH, after which he brought all the hippos to the waterhole to drink and eat d:)

Playdough time! Uppercase and lowercase Hhs from COAH.

We used our wooden H block as a stamp and made H cookies.

Hh is for Heart prewriting practice from 3Dinosaurs.

Matching hearts and uppercase-lowercase Hhs.

Roll and Graph Hearts. I added a little bell inside the die for some extra fun.

I wrote big and little Hs on round stickers for him to stick on the Hhs on the heart in one of the worksheets from the Heart pack. Great way to combine sticker practice as well as uppercase-lowercase recognition. I saw this idea on a homeschooling website long ago but can't remember what the site was.

Hh is for hammer stamping activity from 1+1+1=1. After placing pompom magnets on all the stars, he told me he wanted to "chopchop", so we did.

Together, we built a house out of wooden blocks for the blue car.

This activity was succeeded by his automatic sorting habit once the Sorting Box was out.

Sorting wooden blocks by colour in Sorting Box

Non Hh activities

Pattern block practice, printable from COAH.

We went to Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb exhibition on Thursday so there was no Tot School that day, but I decided to get some schooling done in the car (kiasu Singapore mother). We brought along our magnetic cookie sheet, some number cards and magnetic pompoms and 12yo Takoyaki (who was in the back seat) helped with instructing him on what to do - count and place the correct number of pompoms on each card. My job in the front seat was just to take photos d:)

The next day, I was about to keep the number cards but he suddenly decided he wanted to play with them. So I encouraged him to line them up in ascending order on the table.

He then proceeded to place number blocks on the cards.

More Bottle Cap matching - Takoyaki helped me to make these spelling cards. There's also one with his photo and name but I won't be posting that up.

More stuff to do with Bottle Cap letters - UC-LC matching (on a felt board so the caps and letter disks which are not stuck on caps yet, don't slide around so much).

Just to fill up the gap, I brought out an old file folder game - Paint Brush colour sorting.

He browsed around his learning toys and pulled out the whole box of fruit puzzles. This was the first time his attention span was long enough to complete all the puzzles (with minimal help from me).