What Is Tot School, see post “‘Tot School’”
For the curriculum of activities I’m doing with Darius, go Letteroftheweek.

This is what we have done for 15 months – Lesson 5 Wk 1
Date: 12 Oct 09 – 18 Oct 09

More details below: Long Post With Photos Ahead
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Books Read For the Week

-English

Daily: Tumble Bumble by Felicia Bond

He stares intently at the pictures

Storyline:
Read about storylines, my review and Darius’ reactions here

'Can you see a little bear?' was meant for Art Appreciation but again, Darius cannot focus on watercoloured art.

Other Books: Big & Little by Steve Jenkins (see difference btwn Big & Little),  Can You See A Little Bear? (spotting skills), Why Are Animals Yellow? (to see real life animals, learn abt colours) – This week, I finally found a non-fiction book to add to the literature mix. Must expose him to photographs of real animals too. No flip-flap books this week since I can’t find a suitable one.

He likes the illustrations of Steve Jenkins.

-Chinese

Daily: We are reading ‘快乐的森林舞会’(Dolphin Media) a new book from the 15 books set for the first week.

Read about storyline & review here

Still need another week for the story to sink in...

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Daily: Reading this series (中国第一套儿童情绪管理图画书 set of 8),this book ‘我不想生气’ for the first week.

Read about storyline & review here

Wow, someone wrote a lesson plan for this for older kids.

He likes to look at the pictures of the rabbit, especially if it's of plain bg like this.

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- Bible Story

Samuel Listens & David And Goliath from ‘The Rhyme Bible Book for Toddler’.
An Excerpt:

Samuel listens,
And Samuel is right!
For God has something
To say tonight.

Even when Samuel
Grows old and gray,
He listens when God
Has something to say!
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Learning Toys / Motor Skills

Finally found a nice wooden xylophone from the learning toys shop in AMK Hub. He likes to use the wrong way (the stick end instead of the pink ball end) to hit on it instead though.

Playing with the shaper sorter animal with button to press to reveal body parts. He manage to press more to reveal the parts now and always like to examine the parts sticking out.

Not a learning toy and not something new. He has been doing a lot of times during the week though when he’s doing free-play so I just had to snap a picture. He will throw the pink base and see it spin and clatter. Then, he’ll crawl to it and throw it away again, just to see how it moves. He can do this repeatedly for a long time.

This is also something that he likes to repeatedly do nowadays. When he first started pushing it last month, he always whine when it gets stuck on obstacles. But now, he can push it very rapidly, walking fast and even make turns with it when it reaches a block. A good toy for his age now even though it was supposed to be for babies learning to walk (it’s too light then and yet too heavy to push when add weights).

Finally started with some ‘home-made’ toys. Activity is ‘Matching’. I used the pom-poms I bought to ask him to put into the colour stacking bowls. He knows he’s supposed to put them in after I demonstrated once. On the third try he got it wrong..hee. but that’s okay, it’s just exposing him to the concept of ‘same colour goes together‘. Will keep playing with this.

Another activity to start on is ‘Transferring’ to practise fine-motor skills and work on his fingers. Got Darius to take up himself & transfer small clips from a stacking bowl or floor, into a narrow-neck bottle. He did it successfully with the blue water-bottle. We also tried with the milk bottle too. But he’ll only do it once. Two more times and he would start throwing some away because I supposed he’s wondering, “Why must I do this?”

Transferring from small bowl to bottle

I always sit him in front of the mirror when we finished reading and sorting, and begin with ‘Heads & Shoulders’ song. He can’t do the actions himself but he will smile when I hold his hands to do it. This week, when we sing the ‘If you are happy & you know it” song, and started the tapping of his knees, jiggling his hands, he started giggling loud. It was funny to hear him laugh so much once I hold his hand to do that. But he still wouldn’t do it himself.

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Nature For Tot

His new stunt of tilting his head to the sky & putting his hands up to air while he walks.

We didn’t do much exploring of nature this week, just walking and walking.
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Exercise

He held onto the railing to walk up the playground stairs instead of climbing on fours like he used to

Since he could climb higher, I thought why not let him try climb the higher steps (around his waist level) at a playground and he did it successfully!

He's showing signs of stepping without much support now. Will work on it more.

Daddy carrying him to move the exercise wheel

Daddy wanted to kick ball with him on the grass but he was emo, took up the ball to pass to Daddy instead.

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TV Time

We also watched the DVD animation-chinese version of the chinese storybook (我想飞)from Dolphin media which we had been reading for the past two weeks. Finally, I can show him the action of the dragon flying and doing the exercise. That’s why I like this set so much. After reading the book for two weeks, the animation can enhanced what we had gone through. We usually watch it during either breakfast or lunch.
We also started watching LeapFrog Letter Factory and watch Starfall.com a few times to learn some phonics.

learning about 'B' from starfall.com

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Fav Pic of the Week

He likes to do this 'funny face' a lot. He will go 'geesh...GEEEsssh..GEEEssssh', until the saliva keeps spurting and dropping everywhere.

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