Learning At Home: Animals Theme

Last week, Little Bee's homeschooling theme was on farm and zoo animals. She really loved this theme, as the output of her craft works were more fun to her than colours, numbers or alphabets! 

I dug up all the books I had on farms and zoos and read to her every morning and night. Until this week, when the theme is different, she was still asking for "cow book" or "farm book"! 

I taught her to make comical animal sounds. We sang all kinds of animal songs like "Old MacDonald's" and "We're going to the zoo". I had to do a fair amount of research into songs on zoo as I was not very familiar with any zoo song! 

We playacted as animals for music and movement - flapping our elbows like silly chickens, waving our arms like elephants' trunks, quacking away noisily like ducks and roaring ferociously like lions and tigers! But every so often, she would put on a scary grimacing face with 2 clawed hands and chased after me with a fearsome snarl, pretending to be a monster, which was her favourite "animal"!

I steered away from teaching her formal alphabets and numbers as I just wanted her to have a fantastic time last week. So, we made plenty of craftwork instead.

We created a cow mask, which she still plays with everyday till now! I cut out the cow's face from a paper plate, edged out the eyes and stuck on the ears. And she did everything else! From sticking black patches and nostrils onto the face, colouring the pink nose, scribbling some black hair and drawing a cynical-looking mouth! She loves it to bits and treats it as a prized possession now, telling everyone that she made it! I am just lacking an elastic band to tie it around her face. 

Who's the cow?

I drew a mock zoo as a matching game, getting her to stick matching animals onto the different zoo enclosures, learning casually about the spelling of Z-O-O, sticking the alphabets onto her mock zoo, and creating a mini Little Bee who walked about the zoo! And she kept insisting Z is "N"! I guess they looked a bit similar huh? 

1 and 2: Before she stuck on her matching animals and ZOO words

3 and 4: A zoo with pairs of animals, complete with a mini Little Bee!

We also did other craftwork like creating a chicken laying eggs using coloured paper and a black lamb with stuck-on cotton wool. In the end, she was so tickled with the concept of eggs coming from hens that she made me cut a dozen eggs for her to stick all around the hen! And whenever she sees a cow picture, she will proudly yell out "Milk from cow!!!" Hm, I think she had conveniently forgotten that milk comes from mummies too! 

Intense concentration when applying glue to an egg. Eventually, there were 8-9 eggs stuck around the base of the hen! 

She stuck on the different coloured parts of the hen by referring to the craftbook's picture herself, with just a little guidance from me.

Of course, this theme culminated with an inevitable trip to the zoo last weekend where we took along her mock zoo "map" for her to identify the animals in the real zoo!

With jie-jie just outside the zoo

I had fantastic fun planning for this theme! And we were so excited to share our work with Big Bee every time she was back from school :)