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 2. The 19th Week Since This Started.

Date: 25 Jan 2010 – 31 Jan 2010

Theme of the Week, Lesson 2 : Car

This week the Lesson theme was supposed to be  ‘Jungle’ but since he started uttering Car softly a few times while we were doing the Cow theme, I wanted to delve into his current interest and thus, chose ‘Car’ as the theme (supposed to be lesson 13) and then, modified it with items from Lesson 2.

• Word: Wheel | Colour: Red | Letter: B | Number: 2 | Nursery Rhyme: See Saw Margary Daw.

Read on for details below: Long Post With Photos Ahead

Just To share the materials I had prepared for printing and laminating, here’s the file for download.(PDF File Download: THEMEWK2_CAR). The font used was Primer Print Font and Comics Sans.

So the Lesson 2 Went Like this:

Monday: Theme -Car, Vocabulary Word- Wheel was introduced using pictures, a song, a storybook, a poem. Show him the laminated picture of a Red Car and read the word to him with my fingers pointing from left to right. Gave him the picture of the Wheel and read the word to him. Told him ‘a Wheel is a part of a Car’.

Interestingly, when I passed him the printed picture of the Car after explaining to him, he immediately turned around to want to paste it onto the sticky board. I hadn’t taken down the Cow pictures yet so he couldn’t stick it but it surprised me that he remembered and understood that the pictures are to go onto the board. So I took down the Cow pictures and he stuck the pictures onto the board himself.

The Storybooks Read: 1) Toot Toot Beep Beep by Doreen Conin  2) Life of a Car by Susan Steggall

The recommended book wasn’t suitable to read because they were too lengthy so I found the books through the online catalogue myself and found one really suitable book, entitled, ‘Toot Toot Beep Beep’. It was filled with cute cartoon Cars and Sounds of different types of cars. (some could be trucks, vans or taxi).He even say after me, “Honk honk!” where his version is not so accurate but sounded like it.

‘The Life of a Car’ was easy to read and useful as the word Car appeared on every page so he can’t miss it. But he doesn’t like this book as much due to the pictures being not as ‘cheerful’,showing cars looking like real cars.But he would flip it by himself when I left it on the floor for him.

What he learnt:By the end of the first day, he was saying, “C….ar” in a low voice following me when I pointed a car out to him on our walk. By the second day, he was replying “Car” to me when I asked him, “What is this?” Pointing to the picture of the car on the board, or picture of car in the books. By the end of the week, he was saying “Car” accurately in a normal tone with the Ccc sound heard, on his own accord when he sees a car zooming by outdoor or when he sees car in pictures.

Recently, he has this strange habit of kissing a picture of a book he likes. He only does it to certain books and he loves this pink car. So I got into the habit of cleaning every page of the books I borrowed from the library too! Don't know how long they've been there.

Poem-The Busy City Overpass: He sat through the poem and even bought it to me a few times during the week pointing to the word, ‘Busy” and said, “Buh..buh…”, asking me to read for him.

Song-Toot Toot Chugga Chugga Big Red Car. I found this song from The Wiggles which I had shown him when he was younger, very appropriate for this lesson. I printed it, laminated and sang to him in my lap pointing to the words and doing some hand actions. Then, I reinforced by using the ipod to show him the Youtube video or sat in front of the computer to show him the video. He jiggled in my lap happily everytime the song is played and smiled. Then, he would be hooked to the song. I still had to help him with the hand actions though because he did not want to swing or move to the beat, just wanted to concentrate on hearing the song.

Here’s the song:

Because of this, I also discovered other nice songs by Wiggles and we both enjoyed it. At least, it attracted his attention more so than Barney(which he is scared of). On Saturday when he watched with Daddy, he even protested when Daddy stopped the videos and put him down from his lap. He was so hooked.

————————————————————————–

Tuesday:Colour- Red was introduced. I chose this colour because Cars are usually in Red and there happened to be a nice red car picture. He also doesn’t know Red as well as other colours. I let him wear a red colour shirt and told him that was Red. I pointed to things in red. We read a storybook of colours, emphasising Red. I went around with him collecting things in red into a basket. He still does not get that concept yet though but I did try to ask him to get a red ball from the ballpit and he took red.(there’s yellow and blue).

He finger- painted a Red Bird outlined by myself (from the Brown Bear, Brown Bear Story).

Wearing my old tank top since he dislike the waterproof apron so much

——————————————————————————————

Wednesday: Letter B was introduced. This time we painted using a Tonka toy car (the wheels are easier to clean) by running though red fingerpaint and across the paper back and forth. So he get learn both Car and Letter B  at the same time. I told him, “This is a car. We moved it across the B. Car brrmmm brrrmmm.” He’s funny in that he would say, “Boom boom” the way he says for the thunder. I asked him what the letter was before we painted and he said, “Buh..bur..” (the phonetic sound of B). He needed my help initially but got the hang of it to push the car afterwards. Most of the paint is outside the b so I had to help him move back to cover the Bs. I then cut out the B and stuck it onto the board.

The paint is poured onto the paper with a plastic spoon and the car is ran across and then put onto the paper.

Letter B and b 'ran' down by car wheels

During the week, he started saying more “Buh Buh” everytime he spotted the Letter B, in books, on the board, when I asked him. and even said, “Bue (blue)”, “Ball”, “Bear” on his own accord. He had said it occasionally when we read The Alphabet book but it was rather weak and sometimes, he skipped it totally. So finally, he said it more confidently once we did this Letter for the week. He still doesn’t say the name of B though. (Bee)

Board during Mid-Week: I’m really liking this new ‘systematic’ way of learning. Since the items are placed onto the board in order. I remembered what we are supposed to do each day to ‘replace’ the item last week. Like on Wednesday, the board looked like this and I knew that we were supposed to do Letter B next. (the number 1 has fallen off in this picture).

——————————————————————————————————

Thursday: Number 2 was introduced. I drew out the number 2 for him on the folded sheet of paper and took out animal & dot stickers for him to stick. He chose the pretty stickers himself by pointing to it. And even though we had to try several times to get the stickers to stick, he enjoyed doing it and wanted more but I stopped at only two spaces. I showed him the comparison between sheet 1 and sheet 2. Number 1 has 1 sticker underneath while number 2 has two stickers underneath, counting, “1, 2″ by pointing to the stickers. This is to let him understand that the quantities has increased. On Friday, we finished sticking all the 8 spaces and it became a sheet of number 2.

A 'habit' from the ipod. He likes to touch pictures of numbers in case they would sound out. hee

—————————————————————————————————–

Friday: Nursery Rhyme- See Saw Margary Daw was introduced. Just a recital of the rhyme so he knows that there are different kind of ways English can be written- in a poem, in a rhyme, in a story, in a song.

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.

Friday: Fine Motor Skills: Make A Car Out of Squares

You will need some red and black paper. Cut out one 4″ square of red for the body and cut it into half to get two rectangles. One  2″ square of red for the top and one 2″ square cut into two halves into triangles for the sides of the top. Two circles for the wheels.

He stuck the right black wheel himself so the wheels were unbalanced.

I helped him glue and he tried to stick the items onto the paper with my help too. When the picture was completed and I asked him immediately what it was, he said loudly, “Car!“. Haha, it made me so pleased that he understood. Then, I wrote the word Car for him using a marker, saying slowly with each letter appearing, “C….a…..r…Car!” He was very interested and looked intently. It was after this that he stood beside me and read out, “C….R”. (as mentioned above)

OVERALL, THE LEARNING CORNER & BOARD We specially re-painted the wall a light green last weekend before this lesson starts in order to set up a new corner for Learning Activities. I’ll sit him down everyday at the start of the lesson to point to the items on the board to refresh the memory. The mirror was just placed against the table and he likes to check his own reflection in it. He also often sits down on the mat in front of the board to read his storybooks. And the green table a bit further away is used for his sticking, colouring activities.

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.

=======================================☺☺☺===========================

We played with playdough and I made a playdough car for him. Then, I asked him, “What is this?”. He replied, “Car.” So again, he understood that the model I made was “Car”. As you can see, we had many opportunities to practise saying the word, “Car” throughout our activities.
I was helping him to roll a dough into thin sticks too and with inspiration, I made a small letter b for him and asked him what it was. Again, he said, “Buh..buh”. Thus, he recognised that it was the letter b. Then, he squeezed my painstakingly made car into bits as he felt the texture and tore the letter b into small bits. He’s a destroyer for sure. Doesn’t like to create. He was only poking the playdough to ‘death’ with the knife or trying to tear them apart the whole while.
Skills learnt: Learning that materials put together could create an object.

He transferred big pom poms and animal counters using a measuring flask which he always like to hold and walk around the house. But I didn’t realised the animal counters were a bit too heavy and sticky and made it hard for him to ‘pour out’ into the container. Somehow, he can’t tilt the flask more with his tiny hands and he ended up putting the flask into the opaque container instead.
Skills learnt: Pouring items with a flask into a container

Hubby let Darius play with the coins again one night by asking Darius to slot all the little coins back into the Chicken Bank after he poured them out. He slotted them in patiently for a loooong time and couldn’t finished in the end. Shan’t show the picture lest people know how ‘rich’ the chicken is. *grin*
Skills learnt: Fine motorskill, putting objects into tiny spaces.

English Books: Colours, One, Two, Three! (Boynton on Board) |My World Lap Edition Plus the two books above.

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

Also started Bk1 – 拍球 from the set I got from Odonata Publishing.

With Hubby’s colleague’s help, we sent the books to his address in Malaysia and he passed them over to us. The shipping to his house was 2.50 Ringgit only. But right after we ordered, we found the entire set sold in the Popular bookstore when we went over to Johor Bahru’s City Square that day. Forgotten the pricing in Malaysian Popular but my set of 8 books was 40 Ringgit from the site. So far, he likes me reading it to him since the sentences are very short and the pictures are cute. Still trying to source for how to teach Chinese effectively.

Weekend: Went to the newly opened neighbourhood park near our place. The park is special in that it has a big sandpit for big children and a small sandpit for toddlers!  The sand is unusually white and fine. Darius stepped cautiously over it but didn’t like it much, preferring to run on the track. There’s a small flying fox setup and a special running track made of pressed grass/plant materials.

(Vincent: His expression reminds me of this smiley~ >_<)

No related posts.