Learning At Home: Forest Animals

The months following June seemed to whiz past so fast with a new job, new adjustments, the Bees (and the whole family!) falling sick, myriad social activities and Big Bee's term 2 test and now final year exams. Hence, I did not have time to update what we had been doing for our homelearning activities, and I also found my creativity and energy levels a wee bit low!

We followed the multiple intelligences format for this theme, which is nothing new, just a re-categorisation of what we used to do with our usual thematic learning. Here were some of the activities we indulged in - most of them were done from late June to August.

1) Visual/spatial intelligence

(Painting, visual arts, arts and crafts)

We focused a lot on this, as this caters to Little Bee's learning style. She learns best when she is participating in an active craft or painting session.

Crafts

Ducks in a pond

We did a bit of collage art and created a little pond in the forest with wild ducks, since we had been seeing ducks and swans in Botanic Gardens so frequently! It was good to put into art what the Bees observed in nature. They both had a fantastic time working on this, finishing in one sitting! Took about 30 minutes to complete.

Big Bee's duck collage

Little Bee's duck collage where she wrote the word "duck"

Duck paper plate craft

I was trying to teach Little Bee the letter "d", and was focusing a lot on duck crafts! She made this paper plate duck with a little assistance from me, and wrote the words "duck" herself. For me, this was a good way to reinforce writing skills in Little Bee, as she is not one to work on those traditional writing worksheets, unlike Big Bee. I also wrote 鸭子 on the duck's body, so that she could identify the words with the duck. Hence, she can now read both 鸭子 and "duck". This duck is 3D, hence could stand on its own, so Little Bee played a fair bit with it thereafter.

Hands and feet deer

This was a superbly easy craft, which just took us about 20 minutes to complete, with minimal preparation work. It is also a perfect craft for much younger toddlers. I traced both my foot and Little Bee's foot on brown construction paper, just to illustrate the concept of different sizes. I also reinforced the letter "d" as she wrote the word "deer" and she drew the eyes and expressions on her 2 deers. Notice the different expressions? 

As she worked on the craft, I also spoke about what deers eat, where they live and what their antlers are for. From one single craft, it is amazing that we could impart the knowledge of language (the sound of "d", word recognition of "deer" and 鹿), Math (different sizes) and general knowledge.

Paper plate rabbit mask

We created a simple rabbit mask where Little Bee learned about wild rabbits in the forest (versus the usual caged-up tame rabbits she saw in pet shops). It was fun creating this and she wore the mask thereafter to hop about. She drew the face and ears herself.

Painting

Squirrel in a fruit tree fingerpaint

2) Verbal/linguistic intelligence (reading, writing)

Through the various activities, I introduced 6 forest-related words to Little Bee: duck, deer, bear, rabbit, fox, squirrel. Story books with these animals as well as flashcards were used to reinforce these words. 

We played a fun activity regularly where Little Bee was supposed to match the Chinese words to the English flashcards below, and she was able to do it independently after a few tries. She had difficulty in reading all the Chinese words, so I had to help her along, but she had no problems recognising the English words. 

Letter booklet

The Bees love creating minibooks, so we created this little booklet that we downloaded from the internet for Little Bee to identify letter "d" words. She had real fun pasting pictures and words with the beginning letter "d" into the book. She had been spelling and writing her name independently since June. 

3) Logical/mathematical intelligence (science and math concepts)

Math with squirrels

Numbers 11 to 20

We did a craft with an old CD and circles of different shapes and sizes where Little Bee arranged them into a bear's face. The craft is great to reinforce the concept of different shapes and sizes. Little Bee then counted the total number of circles on the bear and picked the number 17 from the number cards below. I also got her to identify the word "bear" from the 2 flashcards below. 

Chinese number recognition

Concentration game of forest animals

We played a memory game of different forest animals, which is great for sharpening Little Bee's concentration skills and also for me to explain more about what these forest animals are.

Pattern completion

While we were on the topic of bears, we read about the story of "Goldilocks and the 3 Bears", and played this pattern completion game with characters and icons from the story. 

She also played with icons of different sizes from the story and arranged them into small, medium and big formations. 

Teddy bear dice game

The Bees love this game where we throw dice and put our respective markers on the bears with the same number of dots as the number on the dice we threw. The first player with markers on all the bears wins. It was a really exciting game for the Bees, especially when the Bees were so frustrated if they could not get the number they wanted!

4) Bodily/kinesthetic intelligence (games, speech and drama, dancing) & 

5) Musical/rhythmic intelligence (music, songs)

I combined the 2 intelligences as I could not think of many activities in this arena (not my forte!). We sang the "Five Little Ducks" song, and Little Bee who loves to dance, merrily twirled to the tune of this song.  

We also used these card puppets to re-enact the characters in the song. We introduced the subtraction and addition concept as the five little ducks dwindled down to zero ducks and then back to five ducks again. Little Bee loves this game! 

6) Interpersonal intelligence (empathy, cooperation, trust, conflict resolution)

We read the Ugly Duckling story, which is wonderful for instilling strong empathy with the children. 

We also worked on this time-consuming forest diorama project that took up a lot of energy from me, but unfortunately, creative 3D modelling was not exactly my strength, so I think we can still improve on our diorama skills! 

Big Bee was a remarkable saving grace though - many of the ideas on constructing the diorama came from her, so this helped foster problem-solving skills in her. As the Bees worked on the dioramas together, cooperation, trust and teamwork were values that were augmented through this project. 

Painting tree trunks in the shoe boxes for the diorama setting

Big Bee's forest diorama

Little Bee's forest diorama

7) Intrapersonal intelligence (self-reflection and analysis)

With their interest in painting, I encouraged the Bees to use paintings to reflect what their ideal forest habitat would look like, and they produced a couple of works on this. 

From our numerous nature walks around our densely foliaged estate, Big Bee was also rattling on about imaginative scenes in the areas we ambled past, thus opening her imagination to us. I also motivated Little Bee to tell stories from her own perspectives, and she tended to always relate stories about the particular theme we were learning: Storytelling

Breakfast with the birds

Individual portraits of their ideal forests

Other forest paintings

Big Bee's forest - or rather, apple orchard!

Little Bee's, erm, forest! She always could not resist dotting all over her painting once she was done with it, hence distorting her original artwork! 

8) Naturalistic/environmental intelligence (awareness of nature, field trips)

With our family's love for nature, we spent an abundance of time immersing ourselves in nature walks and alfresco picnics, trying to identify all sorts of forest animals around us - squirrels, snakes (!!), monitor lizards, birds, wild ducks and swans, etc. This is always my favourite part of homelearning - outdoor field trips! 

The path less trodden

Home of the black swans

Breakfast with swans

...and many more!