Learning At Home: Fish

I decided to focus our homelearning activities last month on a very simple and straightforward theme - fish. This is a direct repercussion of the high level of interest and involvement in the proliferation of guppies within our rock pond in the balcony. Once we allow our children to select what they are interested to learn, the process becomes so much more engaging and transformative. 

Featured books

The Rainbow Fish series

(this series is much loved by Big Bee and now Little Bee for its vibrant visuals and captivating stories of peer influence and individualism)

The Wish Fish

(wonderful for early readers with a strong moral slant on greed)

Fish School

(fantastic book as a prelude for a trip to Sentosa's Underwater World - a heartwarming tale of a field trip to an aquarium with alluring visuals)

Fabulous Fishes

(highly versatile for both Big Bee and Little Bee to learn about 20 breeds of fish in different reading levels!) 

Freshwater Fish

(for responsible Big Bee, who had taken up the important role as the main caregiver of our community of highly fertile guppies!)

Key song

1-2-3-4-5 fish counting rhyme

Word/letter recognition and writing

Little Bee is beginning to demonstrate strong readiness in writing and reading, which comes together hand in hand, really. She can now recognise the word "fish" after we reinforce this word to her through all sorts of play (versus academic) activities. She is also able to associate "f" for fish, and to write out the word "fish" if I spell it out for her. I made it a point to let her write "fish" whenever she did any crafts related to fish to build up her word association. 

Word search: Recognising the lower-capped "f"

Early writing skills for "Ff". Notice she tried writing "fish" with an inverted "s" at the top!

This was taught entirely by jie jie - Little Bee somehow scribbled the fish shape and wrote out the word "fish" with jie jie spelling out the word verbally

Mandarin

I decided to incorporate formal Mandarin learning in these home activities after seeing how much she is progressing in school. So I introduced the concept of "opposites" and Mandarin word recognition with the words 小, 大 and 鱼. She is now able to recognise and combine all 3 words with the flashcards I created for her. 

Little Bee loves matching games, including this activity of matching the right phrase to the right fish! She was able to do this exercise after the activity (below) of reinforcing Mandarin word recognition through flash cards. She can now write her name with some assisted verbal spelling. 

Through her own initiation, she is happily scribbling down the words 小 and 大 as well! 

The bottom words are written by Little Bee (hmm, I think my Mandarin writing on the first row is no nicer than a preschooler's!)

Math and number recognition

Although Little Bee is now counting numbers up to 20, we still sing the fish counting rhyme to her, whilst simultaneously letting her create her own fishbowl of 5 little fishes with dotted numbers to encourage number writing. 

Little Bee sponge painting an empty fishbowl...

...then she cut 2 fishes herself (not difficult to guess which fishes are the ones she cut, isn't it!) and, together with my other 3 fishes, stuck them into the fishbowl. She also wrote the numbers through trace writing, and wrote the word "fish" with assisted spelling. 

What I really enjoyed most was a fishing game, made entirely from coloured paper, paper clips and an old wooden magnetic fishing rod. I cut and drew 20 fishes in 3 different sizes, so she was able to learn the concept of "small", "medium" and "big". We were also able to use this game to subtly reinforce other math concepts like sorting in sizes and colours, as well as number recognition up to 20. As for Big Bee, this is a really fun and enjoyable method for her to learn multiplication tables - which means I have to create even more fishes! We are still playing this game till now - almost daily :) 

An assortment of fishes - the Bees can "catch" the fishes by hooking the magnetic fishing rod to the paper clips on the fishes (below).

Crafts

We had immense fun making fish-related crafts this time, creating some really beautiful crafts inadvertently! 

Paper plate fish

This fish was entirely created by Little Bee with nothing but a paper plate. I guided her to cut the triangular piece out and helped her staple it as a tail, and thereafter, she decorated the entire fish herself. This is a really easy craft for children to make and is very useful for them to feel strong pride and ownership over!

Fish of hearts

Using ready made foam hearts, we created 2 love fishes just by assembling different sizes of heart shapes together. This is a parent-assisted activity but it is wonderful for reinforcing different sizes and colours of a similar shape, which is a heart in this instance. 

It was amusing to see Little Bee's eyes lit up as the fishes took shape. She drew other supplementary accompaniments like ripples in the sea, seaweed, a crab (can you decipher where!?), sandbed, bubbles from the fishes, eyes on the fishes as well as wrote "fish" when I spelt it out for her. 

Rainbow fish

We created our version of rainbow fish with translucent pink and purple tissue paper. Ideally, more colours should have been used but I did not have the necessary supplies then. The finished result was beautiful, especially when you put up the fish against the sun and witness the rays emanating through the translucent paper. 

Little Bee busy sticking alternate strips of pink and purple tissue paper over a hollow shape of a fish cut from blue construction paper. This is great to strengthen her awareness of patterns and sequential repetition. I let her select a strip of tissue paper and she always knew which alternate colour to select from. 

The back portion of the rainbow fish where strips were pasted on...

...flip it over, and voila! You get a wonderful, translucent fish where sunlight can trickle through! Stick on some long strips for a tail and use silver glitter glue to paint on the eyes and ripples, and you get a beautiful rainbow fish. 

3D aquarium

For Little Bee's age group, I helped her create a simple 3D aquarium from 2 paper plates, a clear cellophane and fishes cut from coloured paper, as well as some decorative bubbles and seaweed. The completed 3D aquarium could be given as a sweet gift to grandparents or used as a lovely hanging ornament by simply punching a hole on the top of the plates, and tying a colourful string as a loop. 

Oops...Mummy's rather bad at punching holes! 

Fine motor skills

I encouraged Little Bee to hone her fine motor skills through a precise cutting activity by creating twirly fishes from mere strips of papers - cutting 2 polarised slits and connecting the strip of paper into these 2 slits, thereby creating a loop that resembled a fish! 

When the Bees held these twirly fishes up in the air and dropped them, they whooped with exhilarated excitement when they twirled merrily to the floor! It was a really fun activity to zap excess energies from the Bees! 

Sunny yellow twirly fishes that the Bees created...

...let's see whose fish twirls the longest in the air! 

Painting

I whipped out my trusty, reliable paintbrushes one evening and asked them to paint anything related with fishes. These were what they created :) 

Dolphin Delight by Big Bee

S for Stingray by Little Bee

Field trip

Ideally, this homelearning theme should be supplemented by a trip to the Underwater World, but I was trying my best to avoid the crowds from Sentosa's IR. Hence, the best way to teach them the various parts of a fish as well as how fishes breed and swim was (and still is!) the daily observations perched by the side of our rock pond with a teeming community of resilient guppies!