Learning At Home: All About Me

October was all about the concept of "me", where the Bees learned everything about themselves! We completed so many activities that I will divide this entry into 2 parts. We were interrupted in our activities for 2 weeks with Big Bee's exams, but thereafter, we picked up our fun with more flurry, and I constantly had trouble brainstorming more engaging activities for Big Bee!

Part 1 is about name recognition and body parts, so the Bees were excitedly using their fingers and mouth to create artpieces, instead of the traditional paintbrushes or colour pencils!

Featured books

Who Am I? Where Did I Come From? (An amazing pop-up, 3D book that inculcates sex education to our children and teaches them about the miracle of conception)

Your Amazing Body (More suited for older children like Big Bee, but the abundant illustrations will attract the little ones on what goes on inside our bodies, beyond the skin!)

Key song

Head and shoulders

Name recognition

I finally managed to teach Little Bee to recognise her name, as well as that of Big Bee's and us, using a variety of homemade flashcards. We used the names of her friends so that she could feel a strong sense of familiarity and association, which I thought was very important when learning new words. We simply laid out flashcards of all our names, and when prompted, she would pick out her name. She also recognised her name (and ours!) when we showed her the respective flashcards. 

Name writing

As Little Bee enters into N2 next year, when they will start to write their names in school, I decided I had better teach her to write her name properly. I found it more challenging to teach Little Bee compared to Big Bee, probably because she is a year end baby with very short attention span. I usually felt deadbeat after every name-writing session! 

Her first attempt to write the 1st 2 letters of her name, before she decided to indulge in some self portrait. She probably thought it is visually more exciting to draw her face than to write some boring old letters!

Finally, Big Bee and I brainstormed to make writing a fun game for her, so Big Bee started writing her name on these heart-shaped foam templates. Little Bee followed soon after. The beauty of these foam templates is that I could use my fingernails and indent the letters, so Little Bee only needed to trace over some of the letters. 

Craft: My face

Little Bee definitely prefers art and craft to any writing (sigh). Hence, she was diligently completing her facial features in this paper plate craft. I used painted yarn as hair, and the strips of hair are a great way to teach her the concept of opposite (long versus short hair) as well as counting. Eyeballs and pretty eyelashes with compliments from me :)

Math: Concept of opposites

I let Big Bee trace her hand and foot, and I did the same for Little Bee. When you placed them side by side, the girls can learn about "big" and "small", as well as the concept of "self", how big or small they are in relative to someone else. 

General knowledge: Body parts

I used a large piece of paper and asked Little Bee to lie down on it and traced the outline of her upper torso. She then filled in her face but was too distracted to draw in her hair :( The sisters then spent some time (in which I can relax!) putting together this body parts puzzle - of course jie-jie was diligently matching the harder body parts. Great to teach the kids the different parts of a body. 

Painting: Fingerpainting

I taught the girls to paint using only their fingers, without brushes. Big Bee taught Little Bee the names of all our fingers (which I cannot really remember!) - Mr Thumb, Foreman, Tall Man, Ringman and Pinkie. I am sure I got the names wrong! 

Little Bee's caterpillar painted with only her thumb - she drew in the face and I completed the rest of the legs and feelers. She needed a bit of guidance for this as it was not easy to gauge the spaces between the different colours. 

Big Bee's work of art - she painted everything painstakingly with only her thumb and fingers. The grass, tree trunk and caterpillar were painted with her thumb, whereas the rest were with her forefinger and little pinkie. I really love this painting of hers :) 

Painting: Straw painting

We then proceeded to learn about painting using only their mouths through a straw. I took this opportunity to teach them about how air comes out from our lungs out through our mouths, and they kept blowing air out incessantly! They had fantastic fun blowing paints of different colours through their straws (which resulted in me having some me-time of my own!)

Huffing and puffing!

Big Bee's blow-art

Little Bee's creation