Elias's Travelogue

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle

2011-07-06T23:46:00.001-07:00

Sensorial: Making Play-dough

And so his little hungry caterpillar was born...

Art & Craft: Making butterflies
We use coffee filters and got the boys to use markers to make any patterns or designs on the filters. After that, we spray water on them and viola, we see beautiful colours spreading out creating beautiful butterflies wings.

Once dried, we hung our beautiful butterflies on our "Flag Lighthouse" - A name coined by big brother, Krunchy Boy. Isnt it pretty?

Vocabulary, Matching & sequencing
Otter had to find the type of food caterpillar ate and to name them one by one. Then we tried sequencing with book closed.

Math: Counting & Sorting
Using pom pom balls we sorted big ones and small ones into different containers.

Lapbook; Sequencing, life cycle, smallest to biggest & more
Lapbook items are for both 2 yr-olds and 4 yr-olds

Bible Verse: 2 Cor 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

Field Trip & Family Outing: Watching butterflies @ Hort Park
Of course we saw more besides butterflies.. look! That's tadpoles and Frog's eggs? Yes?

And while we're at a horticulturally most beautiful park in Singapore, mummy thought we all attempt to draw something we see and like.

More Free Play: Museums
Singapore Arts Museum & Children Fest
Lots of pretend play and imaginary play

Otter & Krunchy Boy were hawkers serving Kopi-O and Teh-Tarik in a very busy coffee shop.

Colour matching: Moving domes to match coloured dome on the floor % Dress -up

Jesse bear, What will you wear

2011-05-23T02:10:00.000-07:00

We read Jesse Bear what will you wear

Observation: Spot the bear!
We tried to spot 'bears' in the pages of the book. Otter had fun playing "I spy the bears"!

Matching: Visual Discrimination
From a pile of baby socks, Otter has to pick the right pairs to match them.

Pretend play & colour-matching
We play bears dress-up and make up stories with each dress-up Otter does for Mama bear, baby Bear and PaPa Bear.

Art: (Gross Motor Skills) Printing
Bears & ducks!

Vocabulary: Animals
Pictorial naming of sorts

Fine Motor skills: Play-Doh!
Learning to use a scissors can be extremely rewarding as Play-Doh is firm yet, soft enough for small hands to handle with a scissors.

Music: Jumping to the rhythm
We use the trampoline for many uses, one of the ways we use it is bodily-kinesthetic feel for rhythm. Play the CD for average tempo and jump together. A real workout for mummy!

Gross Motor Skills: Precision!
Bouncing a ping pong ball and catching it with a big firemen hat! Next up, aim and throw the ball over the hula hoop and learning to take turns. Our vertical basketball training. :)

Servanthood: Setting the table
Otter says "its my job!"

Culture/Family Outing: Singapore Philatelic Museum & Asian Civilisation Museum
Feeding rabbits carrots! Technology replicates everything!

Oh, What a giant toothbrush!!! Otter is a stamp. :)

Walking in red clogs for fun. Playing dress-up in Chinese costumes and using chopsticks, er.. shall use my hands instead!

Morning walk in the city

Airshow 2011

Zoo animals

2011-04-25T00:55:00.000-07:00

Colours of the world: Still at RED
We worked at hunting for red colour toys in our house and matched it with our pictorial cards. Elias had a blast identifying 'red' colour toys. He then tried to make patterns using the Lego blocks.

Language/fine-motor skills/Focus skills We read Caps for sale
and had Elias work on using a glue-stick to put the monkeys on a tree. We went to the zoo and look at different animals. Seriously, nothing beats the real thing. We also fed elephants and giraffes. Elias worked on animal puzzles naming each animal in both English and Mandarin as he learns to master each puzzle.

Large motor: And we tried balancing bean bags on our heads. Wonderfully hilarious!

Project work/Craft/Creativity

Painting using sponge wands! Elias at his attempt at creating patterns and colours. Oh what a riot of colours!

Servanthood

Cleaning his bike after a ride.

And at this age, there are just lots of free play and learning to be a gentleman. :)

Not all apples are red!

2011-03-28T07:19:00.000-07:00

My Father's World: Not all apples are red! but today, you get to eat the red apple you pick? Where is it Elias? And he found it!

Pre-math/responsibility: Categorise all similiar pieces into a compartment. Learning to clean up as best as he can after play.

Pretend play/large motor/music & movement: Rainy day, so we play indoors, but we could also be a frog that leaps real high! We do our chinese song and rhyme that goes this way:
一只青蛙一张觜，　两只青蛙八条腿，　扑通一声跳下水



Art/fine motor/independent play/focus: free painting on a used egg carton, using paint brushe. Both boys were able to paint individually for an extended time. Really trains one to focus and work independently with much delight. We like to do these sort of arts in our 'mini-garden'. *grin*

Family outing/water-play (Sensorial): Water has the most soothing and relaxing properties for kids. Just watch them immerse in their own world of make-believe and discovery. True learning is pure delight! Our little commando decides to find his own challenge ... charge....! hahah... cutie indeed.

Fine motor skills: Cutting coloured paper is so much fun, they all start cutting the edge of the paper by themselves. (This activity was done when mummy was beside him doing devotion and he sat quietly totally engrossed.)

I'm a toddler now! Home learning starts

2011-03-06T23:37:00.000-08:00

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!

23-months old - trying my best threading (fine motor)

2010-07-16T07:09:00.000-07:00

Bathing - but I just have to taste the water! - 12 mths old

2010-07-16T07:04:00.000-07:00

Playing with my "Kor kor"

2010-07-16T06:53:00.000-07:00

trying to pray - 16 mths

2010-07-16T06:40:00.000-07:00

round the world in 40secs! - 16 mths old

2010-07-15T09:12:00.000-07:00

The world's cutest baby!

2010-01-14T06:27:00.000-08:00

2 mths old

4 mths old

5 mths old

6 mths old

7mths

8 mths old

9 - 11 mths old

2009-05-25T21:39:00.001-07:00

Make a Smilebox greeting

my family

2009-04-06T04:40:00.000-07:00

mummy's "bao bei"

2009-04-06T04:32:00.000-07:00

hi and hello!

2009-04-06T04:02:00.000-07:00

having fun..

2009-04-06T03:57:00.000-07:00

kor kor and me - I am 1 mth old

2009-04-06T03:37:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone, this is me, Elias Siauw!

2009-01-10T18:29:00.000-08:00

Folks who welcome me

2009-01-10T18:28:00.000-08:00

I arrived home and got busy... sleeping

2009-01-10T18:05:00.000-08:00

My First picture of Kor Kor & me!

2009-01-10T17:45:00.001-08:00

Kor Kor & I have some similiairities eh? guess which one is me?

2009-01-10T05:50:00.000-08:00

Standard buff photo

2009-01-10T05:05:00.000-08:00

wk 1 - hey good looking

2009-01-10T04:45:00.000-08:00

The International Big Yawn Championship 2008

2009-01-10T04:40:00.000-08:00

A snapshot of my family

2009-01-10T04:30:00.000-08:00