Tot Learning Week 16 of 2010 (19th to 25th April 10)

~Yvette is 23 mths~

I had been lax recently. I have not been doing much with Yvette. Managing meltdowns has indeed a toll on me. Thus, even I plan a lot; I might not have time to run thru all the activities with her.

As such, sometimes I have to go with her flow although I do feel constipated at time. If she picks up some books on the shelf and ask me to read, I will just read that book for her. If she happen to pick up some learning materials on the desk, I will just do it with even it is not in our theme. (Some books and the learning materials are on the table and all within her reach.) But all these activities will not be recorded here (as they might not be related to the theme and the letter we are doing for the week).

If you will like to find out what we did for the past week in details, click to continue.

Alphabet Activity Theme of the Weeks: M is for Money

It is time to instill the value of money to Yvette. Since she was always being carried most of the time, she had gotten the idea of money even before she turned One. Yes, pardon me, it is really before ONE. When I going to make payment, she will anticipate and will say 谢谢 when we gotten our stuffs from the store. As she gets older, and started to verbalize, she will chant 钱，钱，钱。Or she will say pay pay pay!

So off we went to AMK hub to get her a piggy bank. (I found out this piggy bank when we were at Ashlyn’s house last Wednesday.) And she loves this piggy bank. So every day, when Papa is back, Papa will give her 20 cents and she will happily put them in the piggy bank. She loves the idea of putting the money in. However, no matter what, she is still very young to understand the conception of saving and this will be taught as we moved on. But with this in place, it is much easier for me to teach her the value.

We traced letter M’s in upper and lower case with crayon as also sound out the letter with Yvette. (Source)

We used the Do-A-Dot Art Marker with this. (Source) Initially I thought L is easy and Yvette can do it by herself. But then when come to letter M, I am surprise she really can follow the instruction and dot the marker onto the circle. I hope she can be better next round when we do N.

Letter Hunting is a new worksheet introduced. (Source) Of course she can’t circle those answer herself yet. What I did was asking her to point out the Letter M to me and I will circle the right answer for her. She made two mistakes and couldn’t find the last M.

I am gearing toward more and more worksheet and my target is to do 5 worksheets in a week to prepare her for preschool. However, I will never force her to do those worksheets with me if she really doesn’t feel like doing it. I am totally fine with her resistance (if any) because after all, she is only coming to two.

We read Money, Money, Honey Bunny! by Marilyn Sadler. This book is a hit for me. A nice story to teach value of money. I really like the cute rhymes. Honey Bunny knows that money is not an end unto herself; she knows the virtue of sharing too. She used her saving to buy things for her friends and her families. Here are some extracted of the book.

I showed her some coins and arranged them in sequence. She already knows 50 cents as in 五毛钱， so I did teach her both in English and Mandarin. I traced the coin on the paper and asked to put the right coin onto paper which is a simple test on her eye here.

I am sure she will understand the value of saving if I continue to impart this concept. Since she already knows money, the word she learnt in this lesson is Piggy Bank and she heart it!

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Learning English

We did mystery bag. 3 words were taught. Milk, Mushroom and Macaroni.

We also learn the word Monkey using the sign card and by reading That’s not my monkey… by Fiona Watt. It’s a Usborne touchy-feely books. I planned to do a mask with her, but somehow I dropped the idea despite I have already cut out the material. (Yvette already know monkey, I just added it in for revision.)

We are still on Reader Rabbit Playtime For Baby & Toddler and Starfall for computer time.

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Learning Chinese

We read 小猫当当 – 我最喜欢游泳了。 An adventure on how 当当 help the tortoise to find his mum.

We skip the 口令. No listening activity.

The Songs and Rhymes for Chinese for this week is “怎样叫” (Normally, I will go thru the rhymes with Yvette every day.) This is a book I brought from Popular long ago.

Apparently, Yvette likes “我会读幼儿启蒙读物”- 数字 和 动作, we were still learning word from set of book for another week.

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Learning Shapes, Colour

We learned Oval by using an egg, a rhymes and a craft.

This is so interesting. I finally get yellow into her head now. By telling her white is egg white and yellow is egg yellow. She is so into egg yolk and every time she sees yellow she will utter egg yolk. (Two colours were revised.)

I recite Humpty Dumpty Sat on the Wall.

We did a (oval) mouse. It matched the letter of the week perfectly. (Source)

Daddy reviewed some shapes with Yvette using learning cards too.

As for colour, I did not introduce any new colour but we been using the training pant for learning since Yvette started to relate Red as Xigua, Orange as Orange or Papaya, Yellow as Egg yolk. I always grab the opportunity to help her to recognise these colours.

P/S: Some colours like red, light green, another type of pink are missing.

As of this lesson, the colours she could recognise are Red, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Green, White & Brown. I think she also know Pink but not very confidence when telling me.

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Learning Number & Dates

Finally 10 was introduced. It is time to ensure she know the sequence of all number from 1 to 10.

We read Mommy Hugs by Karen Katz for learning/counting number again. Yvette like the illustration of this book and particularly she will pay attention to number 5, 7 & 8.

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Learning Toys

Surprise, surprise, I wonder did she not play her toys last week or I didn’t play attention to take picture when she plays. Usually she will be left to play when I need to do housework; I eat or sometimes read the paper.

She played with her Shape Toy and I think she is in flavour of Semi-circle. She keep pull out the semi-circle for matching.

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Practical Life Skill(s)

I let Yvette peeled an egg.

She did some pouring and scoping using the beans.

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Other Learning Activities

Other than playground trip, there weren’t many activities we did for other learning.

Oh yes, we brought a new gadget, iPod Touch and we downloaded a lot of programme for Yvette.