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From our little family to yours....

Animal Classifications

Last week Mavi learned about animal classes.  He’s been playing with his animal figures for weeks and I thought that maybe I could have a little activity that would make use of these animals and learn at the same time.   And it hit me that we haven’t talked about animal classes yet.  All we ever do is sort animals whether they live on land or water, or whether they’re farm or zoo animals. So the thought of having a new activity got me really excited.

So per usual, I went to the library to get some books relating to animal classifications.

I started telling a story about the animal world wherein they are grouped according to their characteristics.  I used the images here to describe each of the class and then we sorted each of the figures whether they are mammals, reptiles, fish, birds or amphibians.

MAMMALS.  (Fur, mommies nurse their young with their milk, four legged and warm blooded)

REPTILES. (Scaly and dry skin, 4 legs or no legs at all, usually lay eggs, cold-blooded)

 

BIRDS. (Feather, 2 legs, lays eggs, warm-blooded)

FISH. (Scales and fins, lay many eggs, live in the water, cold-blooded)

AMPHIBIANS. (Moist smooth skin, live in land and water, lay eggs,webbed feet)

My son had a wonderful time with this activity.  For two days, this is just what we did, he loves sorting his animals.  Then one day, while he was doing free play in his room, I peeked and saw him sorting his animals all by himself :)

 

It felt good to see your son loving the things that you teach him.  So note to self, that the next time we’ll visit the zoo, we’ll play a game of telling what the animal class a certain animal belongs :)

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On Sick Leave

Dear readers,

I am currently nursing a flu.  And because of the Advent season I have my hands full as well.  I still have a few more updates that I needed to post once my online sick leave is over :) 

We did animal classification last week, and currently enjoying our Advent activities that goes along with our Advent calendar. 

For now feel free to browse through my blog and feel free to use whatever idea that interests you :)

Happy holidays everyone!

 

Best regards,

Jae

Rocks, rocks and rocks!

Mavi started collecting rocks lately.  Everytime I pick him up from school he would always bring a rock with him... and would say that it’s his collection.  Funny because he doesn’t have a collection.  Once we arrive at home forgets about the rock and so I just simply throw them in the bin.  But yesterday, when we were at the library and he specifically handed me these books (about rocks) and asked me if we could study rocks.  And how could I not resist!

And that’s what we did.  To be honest, I’m hesitant with rocks for the reason that I don’t have resources.  And it’s untimely to do go out and collect rocks due to the freezing temperature.  

Then I realized I can make my own “printable” rock cards.  It may not be as real as an art kit... but it’s close to that anyway LOL. I often forget collecting rocks during our travels :(

There are three group of rocks:  igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic.  I made us a rocks cards, 5 samples for each group.  All pictures in the cards were taken from geology.com.  But I edited out the background because I don’t have enough ink to print it.

IGNEOUS. 

  

SEDIMENTARY.

 

METAMORPHIC.

 

You get a copy of the materials from here. Just note that ALL THE PICTURES USED were taken from Geology.com.  I just removed the colored background of the images because I am saving printer ink.

Aside from reading the books and examining the pictures, we also watched this video in youtube.  It’s a short presentation of the three groups of rocks, and is animated. 

We’ll be doing experiments in the next few days, recreating these rocks.

Stay tuned!

 

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Math

I’m curious how you guys practice addition at home.  Aside from the usual worksheets, what we do is mostly use our beads and counters to do hands-on addition.  I wanted to gather more ideas because as of now I’m running out of activities as to how I could make “addition” more interesting to him.  Don’t get me wrong, he loves addition.  At times he would randomly play addition using his fingers or spend his free time playing a MATH BINGO app.

I caught him one time playing with the app.  He's the happiest whenever he gets a correct answer.

              

We use beads as follows: 

I handwritten the equations on the writing paper and all he needed to do is follow what’s written on the paper and solve the equation.

 

For the bear counters:

I wrote numerical equations in a notebook and solve the problem using number cards and counters.  He records the answer in the notebook.  Aside from checking if it’s correct or not, I can also check whether he writes the number correctly.  At this time, he still finds it difficult to write number 4 and 5 LOL.

                

  

So this is what we usually do with our Math :)  How about you... any more ideas?

Asia ~ Singapore (our learning materials)

For a while, we lived in Singapore.  While there, we explored some of the famous landmarks, experience the diversity of culture and of course enjoy Asian foods!

As part of our Asian unit study, we reminisce our days in Singapore with these pictures:

My son attended a local school.  He was only 2 yrs old then. They have Chinese lesson in the afternoon and most of his classmates were Chinese.  Here are pictures taken during his 3rd birthday when we celebrated it in school.

Some pictures of our daily life:  our pad, me visiting Chinatown and Mavi playing at the park.

Before we left, we visited the Universal Studios. Despite the head, we had a blast! Too bad we were not able to ride some of the interesting stuff because of the endless queue. 

And we just have to take a picture with the famous Merlion.

Mid this year, a friend sent us some helpful materials to add up to our collections of Singaporean memorablia.  I was so happy since we could use these in our unit study.

Here are some brochures from the three zoos in Singapore: The Rainforest Zoo, Night Safari and the Bird Park.

A booklet of all Singapore “sites to visit” which includes Little India and Chinatown.

 

Postcards!

  

A map of Singapore and the MRT connections.  Oh how I miss these fast trains!  This is how we travel around in the island :)  Singapore is just so small that you can roam around the entire country in one day LOL.  Too bad we didn’t get to visit Malaysia while still there :(

And of course we have paper bills and coins, keychain of a Merlion, stamps, entry tickets to Sentosa and our ezlink card (card accessing trains).

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Artist Study ~ Edgar Degas

We were watching my niece’s ballet recital and I was telling my son that there was once a painter who loves to paint ballerinas.  And out of nowhere, I found myself setting up an Edgar Degas artist study.

Degas is well known for his pictures of racehorses, nudes and of course ballerinas.  He was fascinated with ballet dancers.  He showed them in many poses, not just dancing... but going to classes, chatting, stretching and tying shoes.  He spent hours observing and sketching ballerinas, totally absorbed in his works.  And as he aged, he eyesight worsened so he turned into sculpting.

Using my homemade art cards, we looked into some of Degas’ famous works.

         

Here’s a copy of my Degas art cards.  All images were from Google/Wikipedia. 

Afterwards I looked for a picture of my niece in her recital dress and asked my son if we could draw her using oil pastel (Degas uses oil pastels!).  He made an outline using a pencil but asked for my assistance when he started drawing the skirt.

         

His finish product. 

 

Books we read, courtesy of our library.

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