I'm a toddler now! Home learning starts

Elias started his home learning journey this year. He just turned 2. Still the playful, cheeky boy with a soft heart.




















Festive lesson; Chinese New Year : Fine motor skills and visual discrimination Mummy took both boys to Chinatown as a yearly tradition and Elias learnt about the colour red through the introduction of 'red packet'. He wore the a red traditional chinese costume. my cutie! Then mummy did some cut-outs from a red packet and let him paste into a shape of a rabbit as we are in the year of rabbit.




















Reading: Goodnight Moon

We read "Goodnight moon" by Margaret Wise Brown. Its Elias's favourite story, we would read it 3times a day and he would pull it out on his own to 'read' it on his own.










We played with shapes
He was to use these cut-out shapes which I laminated to build a house.
We name those shapes as we go along. These are Elias's variation of houses. He took turns with Kor Kor. (we didnt need windows or doors to be at a specific place, imagination is allowed!! :)) I love his vertical house, such creativity and perspective from a young child.












































Art & Craft: Starch painting
This is a really sensorial craft that really got messy and fun. We used Tapioca flour. Add water and boil until thick, then add colour. I like using the three primary colours because mixing them later on paper can create a riot of colours.
















Pictorial recognition: Objects/body parts in mandarin + Pine cones 2-yr olds are growing in their vocabulary in leaps and bounds. Elias love to ask "What's this?" But we don't speak much mandarin at home even though I do speak that language rather fluently. So we used these cards to help us name the parts in mandarin. We use it in a variety of ways. First we name the parts by looking at the cards. Then we play a game whereby mummy will call out the parts and Elias would pick it up for me.

Then we sing a mandarin song, "Head and shoulders, knees and toes" to the tune of London Bridge. and point to the specific part of body. It goes this way:












"To er, Jian bang, Xi, Jiaozhi" ( Head, Shoulders, Knees, Toes )
To er, jianbang, xi, jiaozhi, (Head, shoulders, knees, toes)
Xi, jiaozhi, xi, jiaozhi, (Knees, toes, knees, toes)
Tour, jianbang, xi, jiaozhi, (Head, shoulders, knees, toes)
Yan, er, bi han kou. (Eyes, ears, nose and mouth)

Daddy managed to get some real pine cones home from U.S and both kids had fun touching and smelling it. Highly sensorial activity this is. We have not come across any plant type that is as strong as pine and as interesting as pine cone.
Elias recognised it from one of his pictorial books he read and had to say "same, same" as he pulled out his book.














Imagination/Pretend play
This is Zippy the zebra. This time our topic was introducing ourselves. We use this to talk about name, age, gender, food he likes to eat etc. Elias loves zippy to bits, he would cuddle it and watch it closely. This time, I let him have a go at being Zippy. And he gamely posed for a picture. *grin*










Character building/Responsibility: tidying books

Elias is learning to put his books back after reading time, with Kor Kor making sure his books does not tumble down. Very cooperative, both!













Tons of free play times. Kids are so good, they can play with anything!