Learning At Home: Farm

We spent a great deal of time on the Farm theme, probably because there were lots to do, and we had not even completed half of what I set out to accomplish in my lesson plan!

Here are some brief samples of what we had done.

1) Visual/spatial intelligence (painting, visual arts, arts and crafts)

Crafts

We did a few farm-related crafts, much to the Bees' delight, as most farm crafts are really cute and enjoyable. By working on crafts, they also learned more in-depth about the various animals and plants that they worked on, as they focused on intricate details in the crafts and as we discussed casually about these animals/plants while our hands were busy crafting. 

Pink Pig

Little Bee created a slightly inflated pink pig from painted paper plates, and we loved the wiggly pigtail! 

She drew everything on the pig herself, hence the eyes with lashes!

She spelled and wrote PIG on the back of its legs!

Woolly Sheep

The Bees enjoyed this craft tremendously, especially the pasting of fluffy cotton wool to emulate sheep's wool! 

Big Bee's sheep with a nice woolly head

Little Bee's sheep

Fruit Orchard

They relished making different fruit trees from recycled toilet rolls and rolled up coloured paper so much that there were a few fruit-tree making sessions, even once with Val when she was visiting! I loved this craft for its happy, multi-hued colours. 

Corn craft

Another simple yet visually colourful craft.

Farmhouse collage

The Bees spent a fair bit of time completing this psychedelic piece of farm collage in many different colours and materials. I had great fun seeing how they selected the materials and colours from a child's perspective! 

2) Verbal/linguistic intelligence (reading, writing)

Word recognition

I worked on English and Mandarin word recognition with Little Bee on some key farm animals through a farm wheel and a flapbook, as well as some handwriting skills. 

These words were then reinforced through a homemade, customised story book that I created for Little Bee, with longer sentences and a farm plot.  

Little Bee likes writing titles of our little homemade books!

I also worked on simple sentence construction in Mandarin with Little Bee, focusing on farm-related words. 

Reading
We scoured the library and our bookshelves at home for a multiplicity of books on farms! Reading a good mix of both fiction and non-fiction books on the related homelearning theme always enliven the interest and knowledge levels of the kids. 

Relating stories

I got Little Bee to relate some short stories related to farm animals, and these stories from her imagination really tickled me to no end! 

Writing

Little Bee wasn't writing as much last year when we worked on this theme, compared to now in K1. But nevertheless, I recreated a rough mini book from recycled paper, and got her to write and draw the animals she likes.

The scribbling beside Little Bee's name was her signature, or so she claimed!

Cat was drinking milk from a bowl, hence the bowed head, according to Little Bee :P

Acrostic poems

These are fabulous instruments for bigger kids to start categorising their knowledge and concepts about a particular theme, and to assist them to focus hard on the various elements and keywords in a theme. A short acrostic poem is also good for kids around Little Bee's age (K1) to reinforce beginning letters and what they stand for. 

Big Bee did an acrostic poem on FARM ANIMALS, which is a wee bit long to feature here. I will just highlight what she brainstormed on FARM:

Fish

Apple tree

Rooster

Milk

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

Math

Little Bee strengthened her concept of addition and numbers from 11-20 through a homemade kit I created for her, with a carton of 10 eggs and individual eggs which was great for teaching tens and ones. She was also able to work on addition sums with more zest with the chicken and eggs! 

She also played numbers fill-in-the-blanks, so I could monitor if she really internalised what she learned. 

Join the dots

We worked on the concept of tens from 10 to 100, and used this join-the-dots exercise to reinforce this concept. 

Mazes

Simple mazes printed from the internet for lazy days when I did not feel like doing any learning at home! 

Science

Learning about mothers and their babies

We have this wonderful animal puzzle where we match animal mummies to their babies, and learned all sorts of marvelous names for the animal babies, eg cygnets, fries, owlets, etc. So we played a lot with that while working on this theme. 

I also created flashcards focusing on farm animal mummies and their babies, and Little Bee was fascinated with these cards for a little while. We played memory and matching games with these cards.

We created a booklet comprising of farm animals and their babies to augment her flashcard learning. Little Bee drew the fat round pig and wrote "piglet".

From farm to food

Most importantly, we discussed a lot about how farms impact significantly in our daily lives through our food intake like fruits, vegetables, eggs and meat. We played games like fishing to emulate life in a kampong and for them to role play how fishes (their favourite food!) ended up on our plates from the fishermen to the market to our kitchen and then the dinner table! We did a harvesting exercise with some of our crafts to understand how sheep's wool can become the winter cardigans we wear, and how fruits materialised seemingly miraculously from trees into our refrigerators. 

The Bees were pretty grossed out when we discussed about slaughterhouses for cute animals like pigs, cows and chickens. So when Little Bee saw a piece of pork, she would utter, "Yewwww, this pork is from a pig!", although that did not deter her from eating meats in future. 

We also had a fun roleplay game where the Bees "milked" a cow using a rubber kitchen glove, squeezing water ("milk") into a tub and hence, understanding where milk came from. That was really hilarious, messy but utterly enjoyable! 

Differences

As our previous theme was on forest animals, we started this farm theme with a discussion on the differences between farm animals, and I got the Bees to sort out farm and forest animals from their huge collection of small animal toys. 

4) Musical/rhythmic intelligence

Again, I need to focus more on this category as I usually tend to neglect it (not very good at teaching singing and all!). We sang a little of Old MacDonald's Had A Farm and Mary Had A Little Lamb, and emulated some farm animals' sounds. 

5) Interpersonal intelligence

Farmyard games

The Bees constantly pulled out their entourage of barnyards, Playmobil farm set and dozens of farm animals and recreated farm scenes in all sorts of permutations. This reinforced values of teamwork and sharing, and we do get many moments of peace as they played together. Through such games, they could also learn about sorting and categorisation - the right farm animals into the appropriate quarters in a farmyard! 

Farm activities

Again, many farm activities that we roleplayed (milking a cow, shearing a sheep, harvesting fruits and kelong fishing) reinforced teamwork and amiable playing alongside each other. Despite some inevitable petty squabbles (eg "Little Bee put the apples into the pail for the oranges!" or "Jiejie kept milking the cow, not fair!"), these games encouraged the Bees to work and play harmoniously together. 

6) Intrapersonal intelligence

The farm activities mentioned above also highlighted the difficulty of farming to the Bees. Whilst they were squatting and "milking the cow", they both complained it was hard work and started wondering aloud how farmers could milk so many big cows over a long period of time. Of course, I reminded them that there are now milking equipment in some big modern farms these days, as seen from one of their trips to a goat's farm. 

They also grumbled a little while shearing their sheep craft, with Little Bee telling me it was very "tiring work" and Big Bee quipping that it took a long time to shear all the wool from just one sheep! The value of empathy was thus enhanced from such activities. 

Art

Drawing is a good way to enhance self-reflection and thereby, intrapersonal intelligence. Big Bee draws a lot to reflect her thoughts, and Little Bee is starting to do the same. It is rather amazing when we peep at their respective drawings - which really provides a privileged peek into their different personalities, perspectives and emotions about different issues that impact them!

The Bees painted landscapes of farms, and I provided stencils for them to come up with their ideal farms. It was very interesting to see different viewpoints from each Bee, despite using the same set of farm stencils.

Little Bee's farm

Big Bee's farm

Little Bee created a farm scene from roller brushes, which is great to instill a sense of achievement and confidence in younger painters who may have difficulty painting the things they want to draw. 

The farm collage was also excellent for them to roam around the infinite borders of their imaginations, and for them to appreciate a piece of work that is uniquely their own creation. 

We also created spontaneous art competitions where I as the judge would utter a farm animal, and the 3 of them (including Hubby!) would doodle that animal, and then I would "grade" their animal caricatures. This is a great family-night activity for laughter and bonding.

Pink board: Hubby's cow; Purple board: Little Bee's cow; Orange board: Big Bee's cow :)

Stories

Stories is one way to strengthen their self analysis and how they internalise the learning process. I did not manage to get Big Bee to write a farm story or journal this time, but Little Bee related several stories about farm animals from her own imagination, and was mighty pleased to see me writing these down in a little booklet!

7) Naturalistic/environmental intelligence

We went on a farm stay in Singapore so that they can be closer to nature and experience some elements of farming in urban Singapore. We would love to stay in a proper farm in New Zealand where they can milk real cows and shear wool from real sheep, but I guess that could wait for another time! 

8) Summary

Little Bee worked on a very simple lapbook, where she collated a few of her works as a summary of her learning process, and she never failed to refer to it with child-like pride and satisfaction! 

Oops, forgot to rotate photo, sorry!