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 19months Wk 2.(Wk 1 was a break due to CNY). The 22nd Week Since This Started.

Date: 22 Feb 2010 – 28 Feb 2010

Theme of the Week, Lesson 5 : Fish

I decided to do Fish this week because he finally started ‘noticing’ the fishes after the tank was revamped and managed to say ‘fish’ a little. Can you believe that even though we had two tanks of fishes from the time he was born til now, he didn’t bother looking at them? Everytime we pointed to the fishes, he was more interested in the water filtering and trickling down, staring at the pipes and lights instead. So finally, he had some interest in the fishes and would stare at them while I’m feeding him lunch near the fish tank. And even repeated after me once softly. So it’s time for more in-depth learning about them.

• Word: Fins| Shape: Rectangle | Letter: F | Number: 6 | Nursery Rhyme: Once I Caught a Fish Alive
  

Read on for details below: Long Post With Photos Ahead

So the Lesson 5 – Fish Went Like this:

Monday: Theme -Fish, Vocabulary Word- Fins was introduced using pictures, a song, a storybook, a poem. Showed him the laminated picture of a Fish(our very own AngelFish–photo taken by me).For the Fins picture, I took a drawing of an Angel fish from Google Search and pointed to the fins with arrows. Told him ‘Fins help the Fish to swim’.

He is now accustomed to pasting and taking the pictures off. The whole week, he kept peeling off the Fish picture and pasting it back.

The Storybooks Read: 1) The Pout-Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen 2) Fidgety Fish by Ruth Galloway 3) Dear Little Fish by Andre Dahan

Stories about Fishes are rather easy to find. I managed to find three very nice books and read them throughout the week.

We read ‘The Pout-Pout Fish‘.It turned out fun to read-aloud but it was quite tongue-twisting. At first, I was reading the long story rather slowly and he couldn’t sit through.Then, I started changing the rhythm a little faster, speaking the words with a beat so it sounded more interesting. I also tried to make it animated with the different voices of different sea creatures and he grew to like it after the second day.He would listen attentively to the story and flipped through it himself. One paragraph remained constant throughout the book so it caught his attention.Excerpt: “I’m a Pout-Pout Fish with a Pout-Pout face. So I spread the dearies-wearies all over the place…Blubb…bluuub…bluuuuuuub!” When I said the Blubbs, he always laughs. The book was quite big and illustrations good.

‘The Fidgety Fish’ is very apt to describe Fish to him because it tells about how a little Fish had too much energy and was sent out of home by his mother to expand his energy. He met many creatures and almost ended up in a Big Fish stomach. The illustrations are cute and colourful and story simple to read-aloud.

What he learnt: He managed to pronounce the word ‘Fish’ (fff…is) only occasionally. Most of the time, he managed a “Fff..ui”. And he loves sounding out F. He kept saying, “F…F…” when he sees the word, and also the alphabet for the entire week. He got more adept at saying 6 and managed to say, “seh…xx”.

Poem-Fred and His Fishes (source): He was okay with the poem, not particularly interested.

Song-1) Slippery Fish(main) 2) I Saw Five Fishes.

From several pre-school sites, I noticed this song called ‘Slippery Fish’. I looked it up in YouTube and found these girls singing it very well. There’s also a few other links on this songs but I prefer the girls with the actions. I would sing to Darius using the laminated Song Lyrics then move him to computer to show him the video.

Here’s the Links:

• Slippery Fish(two girls performing)
• Slippery Fish with SketchBook

Darius would look back at the board where the laminated lyrics are whenever we watch it on Youtube, showing that he remembered the tune that I just sang it to him.

Song 2 – ‘I Saw Five Fishes’ is a very nice song performed by a Children’s song Singer. She created the videos herself using just her home. I love her ‘Month Song’ and always show Darius after we viewed the Five Fishes.

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Tuesday: Shape-Rectangle was introduced. We read a book about Rectangles, called “Rectangles Around Town“. Quite informative but Darius hasn’t show signs of really knowing it yet. He just listened attentively and allowed me to help him trace the ‘Two Long Sides & Two Short Sides”.

Next, I showed him how to draw a rectangle and drew several on a sheet of paper. Then, I asked him to scribble and colour on it using crayons. He had fun moving back and forth across the paper and even onto the table.

When I noticed he was using his left hand (even though I remembered to put in his right), I quickly took the crayon and passed it to his right hand. I often had to correct this because I’m a left-hander and tend to forget I shouldn’t give stuff to his left hand but this time, he switched it himself. Alas, he fidgeted for a while and switched back to left again! This went on twice and he still preferred left scribbling. He also held the crayon by the tip and moved back and forth, sometimes grinning, sometimes in concentration. We had noticed earlier that he doodled on the magnetic board with left hand too. HOPE he doesn’t become a left-hander like me! It’s not good!

Side-Activity: FishBowl with little fishes, 1 to 5. I printed this from FirstSchool. Gave him crayons to colour according to the colour outline of the fishes and also held his hand to colour the fishbowl. Then, we lined the little fishes and counted them. Later, he took up the yellow crayon and to my surprise, took the yellow fish number 2 out of the many fishes, to colour over it again.(notice left hand again!) He knew they matched.

He matched the yellow crayon to the yellow fish by himself

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Wednesday: Letter F was introduced. I did not introduce E because firstly, he already knew the letter well. Secondly, F coincides with Fish so it would be silly to stick to E.  This time I printed the Letter F with the drawing from an online resource website, First School. This resource site is really good with lots of ideas. Would be printing from it often!

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Thursday: Number 6 was introduced. I didn’t do the usual hand-drawing this time but printed out a number 6 with circles on it. The circles were drawn in Photoshop and the text also done in the programme. I included a Chinese Text of 6 too. I wanted to do the Do-A-Dot Activity with him but at the last moment, changed to just pasting sticker dots on it. He was able to pronounce it well after I asked him a few times. “seh…xxx” He chose 6 animal sticker to stick to the bottom half. (these stickers aren’t sticky enough…already lost some over the week)

I also let him paste dots on the Counting Book I made for him. He’s getting more adept at it. At least, his thumb pressed down and managed to stick it on first before lifting his finger off.

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Friday: Nursery Rhyme- ‘Once I Caught a Fish Alive’ was introduced. Had him coloured the numbers using different colours. Some numbers being the same colour. Then, when I allowed him free rein, he went scribbling away again. Hence, the paper became streaked with lines. Oh well, I do not want to restrict him and cause him to lose interest. I recited the rhyme for him but he wasn’t paying acute attention. Nevertheless, it was good to introduce. I also let him watch a Youtube video on the 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.

Friday: Was supposed to work on a fish craft using paper plates but never did.

OVERALL, THE LEARNING CORNER & BOARD

So that’s all to the Theme-Based Learning.

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– He wanted to play with Playdough, carrying the container over to find me and whining because it was too heavy for him. The moment he saw the scissors, he took it and didn’t want to play with anything else. I rolled the Letter F for him which he recognised and said, “F”. Rolled the smaller f for him and he pronounced the Letter f too. He then proceeded to take away the lower vertical line, hence the picture showed a broken f.

I rolled the dough into the word, ‘Fish’ for him and asked him what it was. Instead of telling me the whole word, he said, “Ffff…Hah hah…” I pointed to the i and he said, “i”. Pointed to the S and he said, “S”. I told him to say the whole word but he didn’t managed to. He could pronounce it when I showed him the laminated picture. This showed that he doesn’t recognised the word fish, he only recognised the picture of a fish and said fish.

Since he was opening and closing the scissors with two hands, I showed him how to ‘cut’ the playdough by putting a piece of it through the opened scissors. When he closed over it and a piece of it separated, he laughed. This was the first time I showed him cutting since he’s too young to use scissors so he seemed amazed to see that this object he’s holding could cut another item.

Here’s a video of him reading the Fish Word and chanting F, F, F… His favourite letter of the week.

English Books:1) Dear Zoo 25th Anniversary Edition by Rod Campbell. Love this book for the cute story and illustrations. Darius had fun lifting the flaps. 2) A Walk in the Rainforest by Kristin Joy Pratt. This was a chance find and I knew he would like the book because it listed things in the forest beginning from A to Z with the alphabets very clearly shown. It even has J for Jaguar, and the Rainforest Jungle is a theme we just learnt. 3) My Many Coloured Days By Dr Seuss. Had read it to him before but found it again as a bigger book and it looked so much better than the small board book. Great for learning colours.

Introduced a new animal to him this week. 'The Giraffe'. I happened to have the figurine and the book, Dear Zoo had the pic of it. So he often took up the Giraffe and flip to the page to 'match' it.

Chinese Books: 最好吃的蛋糕 （Dolphin Media Set of 15books), showed him the video of it too.

• He is into exploring all the drains and letterings on the floor this week. He likes to touch the holes and throw things (twigs, leaves, stems) into it to see how it disappeared.
• He noticed the Starhub writing and always want to point and touch each letter, pronouncing his H, S, T… Lately, he takes our fingers to point to the letters instead!!
• He also walked to these markings on the ground and kept wanting to read them as “H” and “I” even though they are actually just markings for the Kindergarten children to line up.
• He also ‘found’ lines in the walls interesting and kept trying to make them meet each other like what he does with the sliding doors of our wardrobe at home.
• Besides this, he would take up objects and tried to make the ends meet each other too, like two ends of a towel, two twigs, his shirt, two similar toys.

Weekend: Nothing special over the weekend.

The story was…. He passed by these three markings on the ground, stood there for some time and kept saying to his Papa, “Wa…Wa…Wa!” He saw them as the alphabet W just like he saw some taping on the ground as H and I. He is beginning to visualise items as something else. A start of pretend play?

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