Learning A New Language

One of the advantages of growing up in Malaysia is that we are expected to learn at least two languages. The national school uses Bahasa Malaysia (which is the Malay Language) as the medium of instruction and communication for all subjects but English is being taught as a second language. Besides national schools, we also have vernacular schools, which is also supported by the government but uses either Mandarin or Tamil as the main medium of instruction and communication for all subjects. Both Bahasa Malaysia and English Language are compulsory subjects for students attending these schools. As such, the students here are either bilingual or trilingual. 

In our family, we speak both Mandarin and English so it is easy for the kids to pick up these languages when they started school but they would have difficulties with Malay. I did not really spend time teaching them the Malay language until recently. JS has learnt the basics from his teacher in school but he still did not have a clear idea of how to read in that language. He has started to pick up in English reading so I thought it was a good time to start giving him a clearer idea on how to read in Malay. 

Here, I would like to share with you a simple activity that we did in an effort to give him a clearer picture of how Malay words are being formed. 

Since he has already know most of the basic syllabus used, I chose a few groups of syllabus to help him form words. 

Here, I chose three sets - ba bo bi bu be, ca co ci cu ce, la lo li lu le. He is familiar where these syllabus so it helps him to find the correct syllabus easily, therefore, he finds the activity easy and it helps to build his confidence in completing this task without much struggle. 

Next, as you can see in the picture below, I would read two syllabus (to form a word) one at a time, and he would choose them and write the word down. 

And lastly, he would draw a picture of the word to help him remember its meaning. 

It was simple, straightforward, fun and most importantly, we completed the activity in less them 20 minutes. I think it is a good drill for beginners like him. 

If you have experiences teaching a foreign language, please share with us a simple and fun method to introduce a new language to a child. 

Racing Against Time

JS has been very active ever since he was a baby. He wouldn't stop moving his limbs even when he was lying in the incubator. He was prematurely born at 30 weeks. He was also very talkative. The only time when he would not be moving his body or talking, is when he is sleeping. Thus, it is a challenge for me, who is not quiet active in sports, to come up with lots of physical activities for him. 

I have always wanted to create a "sort of" relay match for him so one day, I just came up with this simple race. Since he had no one to race against, I made him race against the time, which is to finish all tasks and reach the finish line within a minute. 

He had to run from the main entrance of the house to the living hall where the sofa is and stack up a specific number of pillows according to my instructions which was only given when he reach the sofa, which was "Station 1". The pillows in the living hall comes in two different sizes so I would say something like "3 big and 2 small" which meant, 3 big pillows and 2 small pillows. 

Once done, he need to run to the first "tunnel" (formed using two chairs) and pick a specific number of Lego Duple also, according to the instructions given only when he reached the location, which is "Station 2". 

Next, he would have to go through the second "tunnel" and drop the Lego Duplos in a container just in front of the "tunnel". This is "Station 3". 

At "Station 4", he would have to pick a flashcard based on instruction given. 

And once he got the right card, he is supposed to go under the table which is the finish line of the race. 

Through this activity, he learnt to take instructions and carry them out accordingly within a short period of time. On top of that, he gets to run and crawl around the house, something which he loves doing all day long. 

And while JS was busy running and crawling and carrying out the tasks given to finish his races, JE was happily stacking up the Lego Duplos.  

Weather Chart

Here is another long delayed post. JS made this weather chart a few months back. I have been busy organising, scheduling and re-scheduling my time and things-to-do list for a few months now, trying to find the best way I could to juggle housework and the children's needs, thus, neglecting this blog for quiet a while. On top of that, I have been a bit selective on the activities that I prefer to post first. I just noticed that I have not even posted the second part of our Chinese New Year activities. I will try to find the time to write that as soon as I can. I am trying to psycho myself into getting up 1 to 2 hours earlier so that I can get more things done but I am finding it hard to get out of bed when I wake up at around 5am to make JE a bottle of milk. When JE was still an infant, I did not go back to bed after feeding her at 5am and I could get a lot of things done but now, I wonder why I just couldn't do the same. Hmmm... perhaps I am getting old? 

OK. Lets go back to the weather chart. It was very easy to make as we used cut out pictures. The colourful pictures actually made the chart look quiet attractive. We used labelling stickers for words and cut a pointer from a foam sheet. 

I wrote the words "WEATHER CHART" on a piece of paper for JS to refer to as he formed the words on a black mounting board. After that, he arranged and glued four pictures - rainy day, sunny day, cloudy day and windy day on the board. JS used to refer sunny day as "hotty day" (I presume that he figured the term out, in relation to "rainy day"). Until now, he would sometimes prefer to use his own terms. 

Then he placed the labels correctly under each picture. 

Lastly, he fixed the pointer at the centre. 

We hang the chart on the easel that we put near the sliding glass door where JS could check the weather whenever he likes and use the pointer to point at the correct weather. 

One morning, while on the way to school, JS told me that he dislike sunny days because it is too hot. He likes cloudy day or night time when the sun is not shining. Hmmm... he is more like his dad in this aspect. I love sunny day! Cloudy day is nice but if it lasts too long, I feel gloomy. Sunny day makes me happy. What about you? 

Mommy, What Is Liquid?

JS was doing his English homework yesterday and since he was absent from school for the particular assignment, he needed some guidance with the work. He has the habit of asking the meaning of the words that he has to write and there was one particular word that sparked his interest. The word liquid. To give him a clearer understanding of liquid, we went online to search for meaning of the word and looked at pictures of things that are in the form of liquid. 

JS studying the pictures to get a clearer idea of what liquid is.

Then we had a little game of liquid hunting around the house. 

Here are some of the items he found. 

Activities for Chinese New Year (part 1)

Chinese New Year is just around the corner and of course, most of our recent activities are related to this occasion. JS does not really understand the meaning of the celebration, which is the ushering of a new year based on the Chinese calendar but he knows some of the things related to it, namely the lion dance and ang pows or red packets (which is money given to children or the younger relatives, siblings or friends who are still not married). 

This year, I planned to introduce to him the Chinese Zodiac and also some delicacies related to the celebration. Here, I would like to share with you the Chinese Zodiac activity we did several weeks ago.

I found some pictures of the Chinese Zodiac (I purposely chose the ones in Chinese paper cutting) online and printed them out for this project. 

First, JS had to cut the pictures of the zodiacs and the Chinese characters out one by one. 

To make the chart, he chose a brown coloured paper, which I thought was a good choice because it goes well with the pink zodiacs. 

Here, he learnt how to find the centre point of a paper and drew a circle with a compass. 

JS folding the paper to find the centre point for his circle chart. 

JS drawing a circle using a compass. 

Then he had to divide the circle into twelve parts for each of the zodiac. 

After that he arranged the pictures and the Chinese characters accordingly on the chart. 

And he learnt that his Chinese zodiac is tiger and his sister's is snake. I am also glad that he remembers his Daddy's is dragon and Mommy's is the same as his sister's. 

Snail Mail Follow-Up Activity

JS has been sending and receiving some mails since the first postcard he sent to himself last November. Soon after he received his first postcard, his grandparents sent him a Christmas card. He was elated! After that, he started to expect "special deliveries" for him whenever the postman comes. 

In an effort to let him continue sending and receiving mails, I signed him up for an International Homeschool Postcard Swap. It is a group I found on Facebook which was shared by Homeschooling Hub Malaysia not long ago. 

The main reason I wanted him to pursue this activity was because I want him to learn the important of knowing how to read and write. He is starting to learn to write but more than often, he preferred to invent his own language. I saw the need for him to learn about the relationship between written words and verbal communication and I am sure this activity would do him good. 

Back to the postcard swap, as the name suggest, we were supposed to mail postcards to designated children in a particular group. However, we had difficulties finding postcards near our neighbourhood and thus, decided to send them Chinese New Year cards instead. Anyway, it was still something special we could share with the pen pals. 

We printed out their names and addresses and JS chose the cards that he wanted to send to each of them. He could not really write yet so I helped him by holding his hand. We discussed a little on what to tell his pen pals and I helped him with the sentences. 

Then he put the cards in the envelopes and we wrote the names and addresses on. 

A few days later, we went to the post office to send them off.

About two weeks later...

JS' facial expression tells it all. He was so excited about receiving the postcards from Utah and Texas, USA. He kept on talking about them and told his Daddy about his "special deliveries" from USA as soon as he arrived home from work. 

And I hope our recipients would receive our cards soon. 

Fine Motor Skill Activities for Toddlers

We have started JS  with formal schooling in weekday mornings and so now I have more one-on-one time for JE. She has just started walking, about two weeks ago, so she is enjoying her new skill and exploring in many new ways. 

During the day when we have time for ourselves, I would let her play with certain things that helps to improve her motor skills.

Some of the activities requires her to sit down for a while and the rest would require more movements. 

Here are some of the activities she enjoys.

1. Playing with simple jigsaw puzzles. Besides learning how to fix and unfix them (motor skill) she also learns the names of the objects. 

 2. Flipping pages of books and lifting the flaps to see the pictures behind. This also involves motor skills and language. 

3. Playing with Lego is obvious a motor skill activity but it also helps to instill creativity and I here, I let her play with one particular colour so she could learn the name of that colour. 

4. Putting this into and taking them out of an envelope. This also involves motor skills and walking too because if the object drops and rolls off she would go and take it back. I purposely gave her round objects for this activity so it rolls further and some walking is necessary. 

To her all these are just plain P.L.A.Y. but lots of learning involved!

DIY Pizza Menu For Play

This is one of the "one-thing-lead-to-another" project where we were supposed to make crowns using paper plates but ended up making pizzas, and not just that, but a menu that we use for maths now. 

The paper plates that we used were too small for JS' head and thus the crown "broke" when JE pulled it off her brother's head and we decided to make pizzas instead using the triangle pieces. 

After drawing the pizzas, JS made the menu. I suggested several names for his restaurant such as Happy Pizza and Yummy Pizza, just to trigger him to come up with one of his own and he decided to name it "Laughing Pizza". 

Next, we named the types of pizzas. Since Aloha Chicken is almost the only pizza we order, JS is most familiar with this flavour. We made up the rest, namely Seaweed Chicken, Tomato Hotdog and Eggy Prawn. 

Then we moved on to price them and JS priced Aloha Chicken at RM3 each, Seaweed Chicken at RM4 each, Tomato Hotdog at RM10 each and Eggy Prawn at RM5 each. 

We proceeded with some pretend play where JS also learnt addition using lego bricks as money and an abacus to help him add up the prices of two pizzas. 

Another Word Activity

Whenever I ran out of idea to keep JS busy with some "more formal" learning, I would take out a "ready-to" kit for him to work on. Sometimes, if an idea popped up when he was in the middle of the activity, we would carry on with some extra activities otherwise, I would just let him do whatever he wished. 

One day, while he was fixing the jigsaw puzzles, I thought that I could introduce the fill in the blanks activity to him. 

To test the waters, I stopped him when he was working on the thirteenth puzzle (there are 20 words altogether). I told him that there was a new activity that I wanted him to try out. I prepared 10 words for him to work on and if he was interested I would let him do the remaining 10. After guiding him with the first two words, he proceeded to complete the rest. He seemed to be enjoying it so we proceeded with all the remaining ones. 

JS identifying the letters for one of the words.

JS looking for the word that matches the one that he is working on.

JS filling in the blanks.