What Is Tot School, see post ‘Tot School’

This was what Darius learnt at 17months Wk 5. The 17th Week Since This Started.
Date: 11 Jan 2010 – 17 Jan 2010

I got ‘lost’ with Tot School updates for a while because he became resistant to certain planned activities I laid out for him and refused to cooperate to play them, preferring to just read books. In the midst of it, he suddenly recognised alphabets, numbers and started speaking out some words he heard too. I almost wanted to give up on this ‘education’ part because I don’t know what else we can do when he doesn’t want to just play with learning toys and work on his fine motorskills.

Then, I thought, maybe he preferred activities more related to a book with colourful pictures? I decided to start on a Tot Book from 1plus1plus1equals1, which is just some paper activities related to a storybook we are reading contained in a filefolder. Since it was just a ‘testing’ item, I only started printing and laminating the numbers and the ‘Head & Tails’ game for the Brown Bear, Brown Bear book. Unfortunately, he did not enjoy the Head & Tails game and didn’t want to attempt to match them himself, only preferring me to do it for him. (That’s why I had been trying hard to get him to work on his fine motorskills because he’s not doing enough in that area)

I was at a loss again and stumbled back to the Letter of The Week Site. Darius was doing that curriculum from 13months, enjoying just reading, listening to music with me, reading poems with me when half-way, I switched to Tot School fine motorskills type of learning because I thought the Montessori Style (scroll to ‘Tot Trays‘) seemed more fun. Indeed, we had fun until more recently where he started feeling afraid of getting things wrong through sorting items or just doesn’t want to use his hands. And we don’t always have many new toys for him to explore.

So I looked at the Preparatory Curriculum this time and it sounded interesting enough, covering all different topics. Though it’s actually for 2 years old and above, it might be quite suitable for Darius who already knew some letters & words by sight and knew some colours. It is different from starting with a Letter each week and getting him to know objects based on the letters. It is starting with a theme instead, and learning one letter, one number, one shape, one colour per week, coupled with books, songs and poem related to the theme.

Since the Letter of the Week curriculum follows themes based on a letter each week, the Preparatory curriculum has themes related to the color, shape, number, and/or nursery rhyme of the week.  This provides variety and allows your child to not feel like they are repeating the same curriculum when they move on to the next level.

So I started on Tuesday, and did this ‘light’ curriculum til Friday. The instructions are easily to follow on how to teach the concepts to your child and the materials are already available. I would not be following all of the author’s themes and would adapt to fit with what he’s interested in at the moment or knows a little of. Usually he is less resistant when he sees something that he is a little familiar with. There’s only a few activities requiring motorskills such as colouring a letter or pasting a sticker. He was alright with it and did not protest as much. We are continuing this theme for 18th Week since this week’s was only a ‘trial’, to see if he is receptive to theme-based activities. I’m still playing some learning games with him when we feel like it but they would not be the main focus so he would not feel so pressurised.

Read on for details below: Long Post With Photos Ahead
Theme of the Week: Cow ( lesson plan from here)
Materials I used:
- A Popular Sticky Board to act as a Learning Board. Items are just stuck on and removed when the theme is changed.
- Normal A4 paper with printer
- Laminating Machine
- Poem, Song, Nursery Rhyme gotten from the site and edited on a word document using my own fonts while cliparts for them were googled.
- Pictures for the theme were googled, printed and laminated.
- Cow model was from a farm animals pack I bought quite sometime ago. Just happened to be a black and white cow like the pictures I found.

How it was implemented:
-Monday: Theme -Cow, Vocabulary Word- Calf was introduced using pictures, a song, a storybook, a poem. Gave him the picture of Cow and read the word to him. Gave him the picture of the Calf and read the word to him. Told him a Calf is a Baby Cow(it helps that he is learning the word, Baby from the Your Baby Can Read DVD). Then, I say, “A Cow says?” He replied, “mmmm….” He still does not know how to moo nor say “cow” but at least he knows the sound starts with mmmm..

Poem-The Purple Cow: He sat through the poem reading but was fidgeting since he usually needs time to warm up to something new.

Song-The Cow.He likes the song where I took the Model Cow we have and tilted it to sing, “Moo Moo” with the lyrics. He giggled at that.

Plus Gross Motorskill activity where I pretended to move like a cow and went “Moo! Moo!” at him, chasing him. He was giggling so much and playing hide-and-seek with me, finding me based on my Moos. I stuck the laminated pictures onto the Learning Board, under the words, Weekly Theme and Word.

-Tuesday: Shape -Square was introduced. I only managed to find 2 or 3 items around the house that were squares and showed him. I pointed to the picture of the square I printed and read the word to him, then outline the sides saying, 1,2,3,4! Then, we looked at squares in a page which consisted of many shapes and specially took his finger to point out all the squares, tracing the 4 outlines of each square. Then, I stuck the square onto the Learning Board, under heading, “Shape/Color”.

Review: I pointed to the pictures on the Learning Board again, pointed to the words below and read, “Cow” and “Calf”. Told him that the calf is a Baby Cow. Pointed to the Cow, say, “This is the Mother”. Pointed to the calf said,” This is the Baby”, read the books related to Cows, read the poem, sing the song.

-Wednesday: Letter A was introduced. When I showed him the A I had drawn out, he said, “AAAAA!” in a high-pitched sound. *hee. I showed him how to scribble with crayons and he went across the paper randomly. I only guided him when he kept colouring the bottom. Then, I cut out the Letter and stuck onto the board under the heading, “Letter”. I read the Alphabet book with him and he said, “Aye…” when he saw A. Yup, he already knows Letter A but still fun to do some colouring.

Review: I pointed to the pictures on the Learning Board again, read the books related to Cows, read the poem, sing the song, pointed to the Square and traced the outline, saying, 1,2,3,4.

-Thursday: Number 1 was introduced. The curriculum wrote that we should make a counting book and paste the correct number of sticker onto it. I should make a set of matching number cards too. I hadn’t done it cos there wasn’t enough time so I made do with just drawing number 1 on a piece of drawing paper folded several times and asking him to paste one sticker underneath it. He had a look of disgust at the sticker sticking on his thumb, wanting me to get it off. It was tricky trying to get his small finger to just stick a little and paste the rest on the paper. So we did it another time to get him to understand sticking. I’ll probably make him do it a few more times throughout the week, to reinforce the concept.
I should also show him how I draw a number 1 which I would do for 18th week.

-Review: Review Pictures, Words, Song, Poem, Shape, Letter on the board again.

-Friday: Nursery Rhyme- Hey Diddle Diddle was introduced. We started going through the theme again, words, the song, the poem, the shape, the letter, the number, pointing to each item on the Learning Board. Then, I read the laminated Nursery Rhyme to him.

OVERALL, THE LEARNING BOARD

I don’t like the big headings snatching the limelight so I’ll probably re-do them again so the contents stand out more. Letters would also be printed next time for him to colour so they have a more uniform look. My drawn A seemed a bit fat on one side.

So that’s all to the Theme-Based Learning. Only take a few minutes to go through and the items are stuck onto the board for a week til the same day next week, they are replaced with a different item under the same heading. E.g. A is replaced with letter B, Square is coloured with the colour learnt the following week. So whenever he walked into the room, he would see this board and remembered what we have learnt.

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On Monday, we counted the Brown Bear pictures together. He was interested in the cards and looked intently at the pictures and numbers. It was from here that we discovered he could read 9 and pronounced “Nine” cos we never had picture books with just numbers.

I played the stacking bowls with him by placing one wooden stringing bead underneath and showing him that it could be covered and uncovered and moved around. A bit like how people gamble with dice… He was happy to see the bead appearing after being shifted around under the bowls. He moved the bowl with bead himself too, just moving wildly and fast and hearing the clank clank of the wooden bead against the bowl.

Played stacking bowls with him but he still doesn’t know how to take the bowls in correct sequence for the initial portion, trying to put green on red immediately. Only when blue and green was left, he took the correct one to place on top.

On Thursday, we did this ‘Sorting Colors Game’ where he is to pick out the animal counters by himself to place in the correct colored bowl I held. Above shows the actual items he picked out, red and blue were one in each hand. Only orange, he tried to pick up red. So I picked out the orange duck to show him. The video was shown in this post.

Your Baby Can Read DVD was introduced to him this week and he quickly picked up words, like “Arms Up”, where he would put his arms up when the word is shown and read. He also did actions for words like “Nose”, “Clap”.

The most shocking word he uttered to me this week was “Ball” on Friday Morning. He actually recognised the word “Ball” and said it, continuing the sentence for me in several pages of the ‘Key words with Peter and Jane’ book 1a which I bought on the 9th of Jan, only after reading it to him for four days. It’s a beginning reader series for kids at least 3 years old when they start to read books themselves, but I find it no harm to start reading to him early since I’m already reading storybooks that are for Pre-schoolers to him. The words are repeated throughout in sentences but rather fun to read. It had shown to be effective in “introducing 100 key words to children as these 100 key words make up half of all those we read and write”. I’ll blog about this in a separate post once I am more sure of his knowledge of the words.

In the meantime, we had also ordered a chinese set of books for him which would arrive later. I’m neglecting his Chinese a lot and I meant to catch up. Lots of planning and learning to do as he embarked on this bilingual path.

We went to Bukit Batok Nature Park at 3pm (I think we were nuts to choose that timing!) and West Coast Park on Sunday where Darius ‘helped’ flew a kite. ^_~

This was funny. I tried this Spinach Noodles with him as lunch on Monday. The moment he saw it, he said, "S...sssss" & looked suspiciously at it. Remember the Professor S in the LeapFrog DVD which he fears? It was also green. Little did he know that he got it 'correct' cos Spinach starts with S too. He enjoyed eating this though after he had the first taste.

Reading his favourite book, The Alphabet Book by P.D.Eastman. A favourite because he recognises some letters and thus always want to read them out to show off his knowledge to us. Kids like to feel confident and this book makes 'sense' to him.

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