Watering Hole

Today we continue with the "Water" theme with activities related to our visit to the Newater Visitor Centre in Changi. I tied it up with tech skills; taught the kids how to transfer the pictures we took there from my handphone to my laptop using bluetooth.
The boys, especially Ihsan, was pretty fast with it. I of course hand held Sofiyya on what to click on. I think it helped that my handphone had a touchscreen.

I also taught them how to edit the pictures which were facing the wrong way. They get to practice clockwise and counter-clockwise. After that I tried to do shared writing with the children but Sofiyya ran off to her dolls, Umayr was only interested in cutting out the pictures and I have to say thankfully, Ihsan was the only student left despite his reluctance.

I am planning to try this again tomorrow with all the pictures. I can bring in sequencing besides shared writing and try to draw a concept map of the process that takes place at the plant.

Thereafter, I did my presentations to the children; metal insets for Sofiyya, cloud cards for Umayr and types of roots cards for ihsan. They were all introductory lessons, I was pretty relaxed.

Umayr did his written work after a long hiatus and my little princess is so into learning her Arabic letters she sat by me to recite and revise and did it again in the afternoon.

Learning and teaching

We continued with our water theme today, I wish I can let them be more independent but the kids have been a bit restless. Probably, itching for a holiday or just the usual cycle.

I read 'The Faraway Island' by Hofmeyr and Daly about a man who lived on a deserted island and turned it into a garden haven. Sometimes when you meet so many people here, you feel like going away to live on a deserted island,I can touch base with this character.

So from there, we made a model of an island and I reviewed the definition with the children. They were not as eager to make the model though. Ihsan went on to find 45 islands on the globe, when I only asked for 10 and wrote on how to collect water if he is left on a deserted island and what he will use them for.

Sofiyya did botany puzzles with me and I named the parts verbally for her and later she tried reading 'Clifford Barks' to me. Where is Umayr in all this? He was whining about not being able to play longer at the playground.

He did however join us for the island model, storytime and news on the Singapore International Water Week. Today we talked about how many people don't have proper sanitation and the main causes of contaminated water.

Just for Sofiyya, I cut out the picture of Holland's Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, so she can see a real prince who was championing the cause of recycling water and providing proper sanitation. The chatty little princess would later tell her father later in the day that some people didn't have water to flush...

Water

This is what every homeschooling mum dream of; a theme that happens to be in the news and for my case it was a real coincidence that this should be Singapore International Water Week when our (unplanned) theme is water.

Yesterday I read DK eye know's "water", something dearest daughter picked up from the library last week. Today we looked at the purifying process that used water goes through at the Changi Water Reclamation Plant; though of course we did not go into details.

It was also a great chance to convert figures. We converted cubic metres to litres and tonnes and Ihsan enjoyed how big the numbers were. We also compared the sizes of the tunnels relative to the size of an average man and reservoirs. The kids learnt how we can use common items to relate amounts or sizes in communicating to others.

We made a mixture with water, chickpeas, spices and tumeric and tried to sieve out as much as we can using different sieves as well as to observe the process of sedimentation. Ihsan listed out verbs that are used in the purifying process and Sofiyya used the syringe to transfer water.

Umayr, ever the rebel, of course wanted to read a book for the (planned) theme for next week 'Catching the Moon' by Myla Goldberg. I crayon sketched a moon by the water picture for him but he chose to sketch the picture from the book where the moon was rowing a boat. Now to planning for the rest of the week and next. Sometimes though things turn out best unplanned.Over dinner, Ihsan said he wanted to be a butcher, hmm that's an interesting theme to take in the future...

Hiatus

MasyaAllah, is it June already?We've been doing a lot of things. I think I have also been influenced by my Waldorf inclinations that I have not been using technology much and I get bored with my TV which I still watch with hubby when the kids are asleep. I don't think I will be able to get rid of it.

Today, we read on the Arabian Peninsula as a key lesson in "Our Prophet Muhammad (Grade Two)" the sirah book that I'm using from IQRA. How apt, I got my chance take out our Asia puzzle map which was collecting dust and highlighted the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf.

I also got to review land and water forms with the kids as we tried to recall what a peninsula and a gulf is.After that we coloured the map of the Arabian Peninsula from IQRA's " The Life and Sayings of Rasulullah (Grade Two)". Then we listened to Dawud Wharnsby's MadinatunNabi....

I am inspired, gonna go and write up a unit now...