What Is Tot School, see post ‘Tot School’. How/Why I started the Curriculum below, see post “17th Week“.

This was what Darius learnt at 18months Wk 1. The 18th Week Since This Started.

Date: 18 Jan 2010 – 24 Jan 2010

Theme of the Week: Cow ( lesson plan from here)

• Word: Calf | Shape: Square | Letter: A | Number: 1 | Nursery Rhyme: Hickory Dickory Dock
  

Read on for details below: Long Post With Photos Ahead

To share the materials I had prepared for printing and laminating, here’s the file for download. (PDF File Download: ThemeWk1_Cow)

The font used is Primer Print Font and Comics Sans

(For Details on how exactly the lesson was carried out & materials, refer to post “17th Week” cos I’m still doing the same theme as last week was trial)

So the Lesson Went Like this:

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.

The Storybook Read: Dooby Dooby Moo by Doreen Conin.

The book recommended was Click Clack Moo which I couldn’t find in the Library and found this book instead. I’m glad too for this book was really a great find! Nice to read and entertaining where you have to sing some words in songs. “Dooby Dooby Dooby Moo, Dooby Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo” (tune of Twinkle, Twinkle). At first, it was rather lengthy for Darius but he sat through it after two days and enjoyed listening. At the end of the story, the sounds go “Boing Boing” and I bounced Darius on my lap which made him giggled.

He also recognised the word, “Moo” by the middle of the week,

me: “A Cow Says….?”

Dar: “Ooo….Woo….“

He also says this when I point to the word, “Moo” while reading stories with him. Finally, he learnt to say “ooo” instead of just “mmmmm”. He still doesn’t know how to combine mmmm with oooo though but good enough. And he still doesn’t know how to say “Cow” as he has trouble with the “c” sound.

Poem-The Purple Cow: I happened to have a purple cow counter so I showed him the Purple Cow and read the poem. He doesn’t really enjoy it though.

Song-The Cow.He still 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.

He helped me stick the laminated pictures onto the board.

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-Tuesday: Shape-Square was introduced. Only managed to find 4 things that are squares in our house. Plus looked at squares in the ‘My Little Counting Book’.

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-Wednesday: Letter A was introduced. Coloured with crayons again with my help. This time I outlined in my digital drawing programme and exported to word document(file above) and printed it out. Included a small letter a too even though the author of the curriculum says to introduce the capital first. I have to choose a font with the small letter written in a not cursive way. After he coloured it, I cut them out to paste onto the board.

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-Thursday: Number 1 was introduced. I drew out the number 1 for him on the folded sheet of paper and took out animal stickers for him to stick. Also took out the dot stickers. He chose the animals himself by pointing to it. He saw the tiger and recognised it from the DVD, kept looking at it for the whole week. He was better at pasting these bigger stickers than the yellow dots as they keep sticking onto his index finger and he doesn’t know how to use his thumb to push them down. From this activity, I realised he enjoy sticking things a lot and would sit still to do it. Glad this was introduced.

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-Friday: Nursery Rhyme- Hey Diddle Diddle was introduced.

Reviews: On each day, we did reviews of the lesson we went through the day before. Therefore on Friday, I went through all the items with him on the board and we did a craft work of glueing and sticking to work on his fine motorskills.

-Fine Motor Skills: Make A Cow Out of Squares

You will need some white and black paper. Cut out one 4″ square of white for the body, one 2″ square of white for the head, about nine 1″ squares of white to make the legs and tail, three or four 1″ squares of black for the cows spots, and three or more 1/2″ squares for the eye, ears, etc. in black. Help your child glue the cow together on another sheet of paper (of a different color).

Using my Cutterpede paper cutter, this was easily done within minutes since the ruler is already on the cutter. A MUST-get item for cutting craft things and save time.

Cutterpede

All the different sizes squares

Completed Work

I helped him glue and held the squares to him. He took the squares and I helped move his hand to hover over the spots but he placed them down on it himself and we ‘tap tap tap’ the papers to make them stick. Surprisingly, he enjoyed doing this for a while and didn’t proceed to move away til all were completed and he found the tap tap tap hilarious and kept tapping on the paper, laughing away. Then, I wrote the word ‘cow’ for him to show him the letters appearing one by one. He did understand this was a cow because I asked him what this was and he said, “ooo….wooo…”

OVERALL, THE LEARNING BOARD (this was taken last week)

I forgot to take a picture of the new board but it’s basically the same except for the Letter A.

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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We did sorting of COW counters into different compartments and he sorted the above himself. He didn’t get it when I started him on putting the calf together with the cow in the same compartment. (guess I must use another container) So I gave up on that one.

Skills learnt: Sorting 1 to 1

He transferred every pom pom from the opaque container into the stacking bowl. He had to place his hands deep into the container to take the tiny pom poms out, so it was a bit of a challenge because some dropped before he could transfer them.

Skills learnt: Transferring one object from a holder to another.

He was interested in the bottle again so I showed him and also held his hand to turn the bottle cap. After many many tries, he finally got it right by slowly turning his fingers instead of plucking the cap out straight. When he first got it, his face showed a slight pleased smile, then quickly serious again. He’s always like this, quietly celebrating his triumph.

Skills learnt: Screwing open a bottle cap and closing

Got the time to finally do this. Slotting coins into the coin bank. He loves this so much that he kept trying and trying for a long time, deep in concentration to get a 5cent (the smallest size) into the slot. His fingers are better with bigger coins. When he can’t slot in immediately, he would change hands. And he knows how to hold it by one hand and push it in with the other. I didn’t help him this time. He slotted quite a number all by himself! Finally, I ran out of coins and he had to stop.

Skills learnt: Fine motorskill, putting objects into tiny spaces.

New! Bought this together with the Animal Counters from LearningStore.sg but only started playing with it recently. Had started last two weeks but only blogged now. For the first pic, he was trying to poke the string into the pegs while I actually wanted him to stack up. These pegs can be stringed or stacked. I showed him and guided him to stack the second row of similar colours onto the first row. After that I let him have free rein and he decided he only want to built one tower and they would be different colours. He always laughs when the pegs fell down. He doesn’t enjoy building as much as taking them apart or making them crash down.

Skills learnt: Stacking similar colours together, stacking upwards. Differentiating colours.

English Books: Colours, Maisy’s Colours, Dooby Dooby Moo.

Chinese Books: 哇！变色了（Dolphin Media Set of 15books),  咦？那是什么？(Pelangi Books Rainbow Reader), 我和他

Weekend: Flew a kite at the big grassland behind our estate and introduced Darius to Bubble Play for the second time (our previous bubble container was leaking). He didn’t like walking in the grass but finally saw the kites when we flew low for him. Then, he stood right in front of Hubby as the wind blew, closing his eyes as bubbles flew past and some burst on his face. Enjoying, chasing and laughing. So much fun.

The wind was so good and our kite flew easily. There were so many people flying the kites that we were wondering, why did we had to go all the way to West Coast Park?! ^_^ Nah,that was for outing experience. Kite-Flying was not so popular here on this grassland before but rather at another location slightly further down though.

We took soooo many nice photos and this was one of my FAV! He laughing like crazy, the clear bubbles blown by the wind and our kite on the grass.

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