Rainforest and such
This week has passed by more quickly than I expected and is already coming to an end. Its the second week of our Rainforest co-op and I am grateful to Raihanah for preparing some of the materials which I have managed to use in my daily lessons.
Monday morning was mainly the co-op thingy, I enjoyed walking around Choa Chu Kang Park and looking at the trees and trying to identify what type of leaves they have. I was very ambitious because after that we went to IMM and managed to do some shopping, eating and playing at the playground but had to ditch the water area as I realised my lighter than usual baggage was due to the fact that I didn't bring a change of clothes and towels for my children.
Tuesday was a long work session as I woke up half awake to Sofiyya asking for papers and stationery to do the metal insets (what did we move up the school hours?) I managed to squeeze in some housework as the boys worked on the 3D puzzle of the globe. After breakfast, Ihsan was timing himself on the puzzle as I worked with Umayr on his bromeliad model which was unfinished from Monday's session. Ihsan later joined us and made his while Umayr worked on the Darby activity book with his sister.
I put together some materials to make the miniature environment of a farm and asked Umayr to help me get some animal farm figurines. There was some confusion about which animals lived on a farm and this led to a 'modified' presentation on wild and farm animals. The boys searched for figurines and toys of animals around the house and put them into two groups. At the end of the search, we went through each pile and decided whether they belonged to the correct group and why. We then identified the similarities and differences between wild and farm animals.
We then worked on our miniature environment with a hut, bridge,pebbles,a cow and a horse I got from Daiso and a matchbox truck. There used to be more on our old farm but they 'got around' as most things do when it come to miniatures especially.Umayr of course took the opportunity to play with the truck with the excuse that he's working on the miniature farmhouse.
During this time, Sofiyya was working on her painting of fairies who flew through a gate to go back home.(I need to cut down on fairy storybooks)She then related this story to my mum, my dad and my husband, besides me of course. (My parents are staying with us as they are in between houses)
In between the works I've mentioned, Umayr and I actually did a 3 part lesson based on the Lego Knights and Castles book he asked me to read. At first we just read the book and Umayr would reproduce the scene with his magnetic figurines on the book. He then came to me asking which character was which and after I read to him the snippets at the back of the book I suggested he write them on labels.
The next day, he continued to work on this and labelled them to the figurines and checking his answer with the book.
On Wednesday, we somehow managed to start school on time which was not the case for almost the whole of last week. We usually start school at 8.30 and end by noon but I have not been disciplined in teaching the Islamic and Arabic lessons (basic Arabic with much reference to books ya..)if not class will usually resume after zuhr and end around 3p.m.
On that day, I revised with the kids how to take photos of the crafts we made for the rainforest co-op with my handphone and transfer them to the laptop. They then learned how to print out the photos and paste them into their lapbooks with a tagline. Ihsan wrote his on his own but Umayr refused to have any words in his. The boys worked for almost and hour decorating their covers with drawings of plants and animals of the rainforest.
Sofiyya had pictures of herself printed and I showed her how she can arrange them and staple them together neatly. The next day, I found pieces of paper folded together and stapled like an A5 sized book on the floor.
She also continued drawing circles with her metal insets on Wednesday and she came to me saying she couldn't cut a proper circle with her scissors. I asked whether I could show her. 'Oh, you have to turn then you'll get a circle!' Sofiyya said.It was a revelation to her that you have to turn your wrist around the circle outline to cut out the shape.
This continued on Thursday and she was drawing circles with her metal inset and cutting them that I suggested we make a centipede based on the book 'Speed,speed, centipede.' we read last week. Umayr joined in. The book was about counting in tens to hundred and I wanted to cut out ten sets of ten shoes but realised that it was too challenging (mostly for me) and settled on teaching Umayr how to make a paper chain of shoes.
While we were working on the centipede, Umayr said that he will make one that stands up. I was almost commenting that it'll be a complicated process requiring hardier cardboards and joining the pieces together with something ( what kind of explanation is that?) but I stopped myself and let him go figure it out himself. In the end he did make one that stood up. I actually thought he didn't realise that he was joining the head and tail together when in actual fact, he made a three dimensional model.
At the same time this was happening, Ihsan was sitting at the same table, working on his rainforest map and trying to figure out where the tropic of cancer and capricorn are on the globe to indicate on his map to demarcate the area where most rainforests are.
He then coloured the map according to the Montessori colours and pasted it into his lapbook. He worked on this for the next hour. I think I should have let him rest but him doing so in the room meant a diversion from his work mode; maybe this is 'false fatigue'. I had worked on the Birds nomenclature, in relation with the birds from the rainforest book we read in the morning,with Umayr earlier and was going to an extended one with Ihsan but he complained of tiredness.
I confess I should have dealt with it more intelligently, but my threshold was up to the neck today and I sadly, threatened deprivation of toys instead of trying to find a hook. He came reluctantly, and stated that he will read everything backwards and spoke to me backwards. It was easy with labelling, but I guess reading paragraphs on the functions of each part backwards ( he was reading from the end of the paragraph and right to left)was too much and he gave up after two paragraphs...hehehe...
I later did a presentation on the 3 part animal puzzle with Sofiyya and we traced the puzzles to reproduce the puzzle into a picture. I let Umayr play with an Oxford Reading Tree program on the laptop later and Ihsan worked on Math games with a Math Lab CD-Rom. Sofiyya got her Wordworld CD. I'm going down the drain with my sensorial and play philosophies with these CDs but sometimes they can be rather attractive.Sigh, I hope I can get the materials done soon, so I won't cave in to this...
Monday morning was mainly the co-op thingy, I enjoyed walking around Choa Chu Kang Park and looking at the trees and trying to identify what type of leaves they have. I was very ambitious because after that we went to IMM and managed to do some shopping, eating and playing at the playground but had to ditch the water area as I realised my lighter than usual baggage was due to the fact that I didn't bring a change of clothes and towels for my children.
Tuesday was a long work session as I woke up half awake to Sofiyya asking for papers and stationery to do the metal insets (what did we move up the school hours?) I managed to squeeze in some housework as the boys worked on the 3D puzzle of the globe. After breakfast, Ihsan was timing himself on the puzzle as I worked with Umayr on his bromeliad model which was unfinished from Monday's session. Ihsan later joined us and made his while Umayr worked on the Darby activity book with his sister.
I put together some materials to make the miniature environment of a farm and asked Umayr to help me get some animal farm figurines. There was some confusion about which animals lived on a farm and this led to a 'modified' presentation on wild and farm animals. The boys searched for figurines and toys of animals around the house and put them into two groups. At the end of the search, we went through each pile and decided whether they belonged to the correct group and why. We then identified the similarities and differences between wild and farm animals.
We then worked on our miniature environment with a hut, bridge,pebbles,a cow and a horse I got from Daiso and a matchbox truck. There used to be more on our old farm but they 'got around' as most things do when it come to miniatures especially.Umayr of course took the opportunity to play with the truck with the excuse that he's working on the miniature farmhouse.
During this time, Sofiyya was working on her painting of fairies who flew through a gate to go back home.(I need to cut down on fairy storybooks)She then related this story to my mum, my dad and my husband, besides me of course. (My parents are staying with us as they are in between houses)
In between the works I've mentioned, Umayr and I actually did a 3 part lesson based on the Lego Knights and Castles book he asked me to read. At first we just read the book and Umayr would reproduce the scene with his magnetic figurines on the book. He then came to me asking which character was which and after I read to him the snippets at the back of the book I suggested he write them on labels.
The next day, he continued to work on this and labelled them to the figurines and checking his answer with the book.
On Wednesday, we somehow managed to start school on time which was not the case for almost the whole of last week. We usually start school at 8.30 and end by noon but I have not been disciplined in teaching the Islamic and Arabic lessons (basic Arabic with much reference to books ya..)if not class will usually resume after zuhr and end around 3p.m.
On that day, I revised with the kids how to take photos of the crafts we made for the rainforest co-op with my handphone and transfer them to the laptop. They then learned how to print out the photos and paste them into their lapbooks with a tagline. Ihsan wrote his on his own but Umayr refused to have any words in his. The boys worked for almost and hour decorating their covers with drawings of plants and animals of the rainforest.
Sofiyya had pictures of herself printed and I showed her how she can arrange them and staple them together neatly. The next day, I found pieces of paper folded together and stapled like an A5 sized book on the floor.
She also continued drawing circles with her metal insets on Wednesday and she came to me saying she couldn't cut a proper circle with her scissors. I asked whether I could show her. 'Oh, you have to turn then you'll get a circle!' Sofiyya said.It was a revelation to her that you have to turn your wrist around the circle outline to cut out the shape.
This continued on Thursday and she was drawing circles with her metal inset and cutting them that I suggested we make a centipede based on the book 'Speed,speed, centipede.' we read last week. Umayr joined in. The book was about counting in tens to hundred and I wanted to cut out ten sets of ten shoes but realised that it was too challenging (mostly for me) and settled on teaching Umayr how to make a paper chain of shoes.
While we were working on the centipede, Umayr said that he will make one that stands up. I was almost commenting that it'll be a complicated process requiring hardier cardboards and joining the pieces together with something ( what kind of explanation is that?) but I stopped myself and let him go figure it out himself. In the end he did make one that stood up. I actually thought he didn't realise that he was joining the head and tail together when in actual fact, he made a three dimensional model.
At the same time this was happening, Ihsan was sitting at the same table, working on his rainforest map and trying to figure out where the tropic of cancer and capricorn are on the globe to indicate on his map to demarcate the area where most rainforests are.
He then coloured the map according to the Montessori colours and pasted it into his lapbook. He worked on this for the next hour. I think I should have let him rest but him doing so in the room meant a diversion from his work mode; maybe this is 'false fatigue'. I had worked on the Birds nomenclature, in relation with the birds from the rainforest book we read in the morning,with Umayr earlier and was going to an extended one with Ihsan but he complained of tiredness.
I confess I should have dealt with it more intelligently, but my threshold was up to the neck today and I sadly, threatened deprivation of toys instead of trying to find a hook. He came reluctantly, and stated that he will read everything backwards and spoke to me backwards. It was easy with labelling, but I guess reading paragraphs on the functions of each part backwards ( he was reading from the end of the paragraph and right to left)was too much and he gave up after two paragraphs...hehehe...
I later did a presentation on the 3 part animal puzzle with Sofiyya and we traced the puzzles to reproduce the puzzle into a picture. I let Umayr play with an Oxford Reading Tree program on the laptop later and Ihsan worked on Math games with a Math Lab CD-Rom. Sofiyya got her Wordworld CD. I'm going down the drain with my sensorial and play philosophies with these CDs but sometimes they can be rather attractive.Sigh, I hope I can get the materials done soon, so I won't cave in to this...
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