Using art as a reinforce activity after reading a book!

Le Xin continues to show great interest in reading.

In general, she prefers reading books with a story line rather than some boring repetitive readers. 

Here's a book from an author that she is really fond of! Yes - The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle!

Wow another book from Eric Carle, I love it!

This book also has the moon and the big leaf like The Hungry Caterpillar said Le Xin

Le Xin began to read....

Mummy I like this big ladybug, can I make a ladybug too? asked Le Xin

MummyT2X thought for a moment....

What a great idea....

Let's get it going......

Firstly, Le Xin squeezed some red paint on a plastic plate....

Then she started to paint....

Le Xin stirring the paint with a brush....she simply loves to do that!

Painting the head with black paint.....

Using her finger, she dabbed the black paint and printed some black dots on the ladybug's body...

Ta da.... nicely done! Good effort Le Xin.... I helped to create the eyes as part of being involved! 

Crafting is such a great reinforcement activity to do with a child after he/she has finished reading the book. It creates more interest for the story and provoke the child to expand his/her ideas on how the learning can be represented. 

I think "The Grouchy Ladybug is a nice story but a bit lengthy for her age :p

 Nonetheless she likes it! 

When engaging in the crafting experience, I saw her how focused Le Xin was, she did paused for a few times to ask me questions when she had doubts but I could tell that she was quite confident about what to do.

Here's a short clip of what she did!

Making Tuna Sandwiches....

Remember the previous time Le Xin made delicious pizza for the family?

This time round Le Xin decided to make some delicious tuna sandwiches...

Easy to make and best of all.... Yummy :)

Let's check it out!

All ready to start....Bread and Tuna and that's it!

Using a plastic knife.....

Scoop some tuna.....

And place it on the bread...

Hmm... I think it's easier to use a spoon...

Daddy Scott comes to rescue!

Okay I'm sure I will do a good job with the spreading....

Giving the bread a good press...

Packing the sandwiches on a plate for serving...

After serving to everyone, finally it's my turn to eat!

Mummy what's inside? asked Le Xin whahahaha :p 

There are many reasons why I think young children should be involved in "cooking". Firstly, I feel that it cultivates responsibility. When Le Xin is tasked to prepare a meal , she is serious about her role. To her preparing a meal is a form of contribution. Next, I strongly believe it also builds self-esteem. Le Xin is always very excited to cook and she feels a sense of pride and accomplishment, this could be seen when she was serving the food to me and Daddy Scott! When Le Xin was preparing a meal, we would discuss about the origin of the ingredients used, which helped her to learn more about food. To me cooking is a basic and life-long skill that I want my child to learn...What about you? What kind of meals did you get your child to prepare? 

Leaving you with a cute video of Le Xin - My Baby Masterchef! 

Reinforcing Capital and Small Letters

Remember my post on Phonics where I shared about how I introduced letter shapes and sounds to Le Xin? 

Here's a simple activity I did with her just to reinforce the concept of recognizing upper and lower case...

Essentially, these are the materials we need!

Wow what's in there?

Small letter "x"

Match it to the big one!

Mummy is this "b" or "d"? asked Le Xin

Small pieces of blue tack were placed at the side for her to attach to the mini letter cards...

I think I found another one....

No peeping said MummyT2X

I want to see what's the card inside said Le Xin

Le Xin took some time to locate letter "R", it appeared that she has forgotten the letter shape of capital "R".

Okay I will not look into the bag said Le Xin as she tilted her head...

Alright the last one....

Hooray, I am done!

This learning experience has boosted Le Xin's confidence in recognising letters. When she was matching the small letters to the capital letters, she was making connections between the letters. For example, she realised that both the capital and small letters have they same sounds but they look differently and I also told her they are used differently - Capital letters are usually used at a start of a sentence or when it is the name of a person or a place. I did not mention proper nouns as I think that's too difficult for her to understand.

So how did I go about creating this learning material for her?  \

Firstly, I browsed through catalogue on children's toy and I found this...

Letter Puzzle.... 

With that, I created a simple capital letter chart with different colours for each font (just to make it looks more interesting) and created mini letter cards for her to match. Notice the small letters were black? Ideally, I think it should be because I feel that having too many colours might be over stimulating and confusing for young children. Since the capital letters were colourful, I prefer to use black for the small letters....

 It's take a lot of patience for a child to complete the chart because it can become quite boring after some time so do not repeat this activity until the child lose interest in it. For me, I introduced it to Le Xin once and placed it on her discovery table once in 12 weeks. I hope you find this learning experience a useful reference to you and you can try it at home too for reinforcement purposes...

Leaving you with a video of Le Xin @ work :p

Le Xin the Hairstylist

Let's find out how Le Xin fare as a hairstylist?

Shall we?

Ready go.......

The materials needed...

Don't I look cute with this.....I need my specs to see properly...

That's me isn't it? 

Ohh no...I don't think I can work on project  if I put this on....

Firstly let's do some pasting...

 That's my name

Putting glue on a piece of yarn.....

 Let's style my head...

Daddy it's your turn.....

I am going to make you look funny.....

Mummy has long hair....I think I need a longer yarn....

Ohh no I forgotten my fringe....haha all done!

Giving your hair a good press Mummy....

Let's start to paint....

I will paint my hair first....

Not a bad idea to be a Blondie...

Little fingers @ work...

I will use brown for Daddy's hair...

Opps I painted out of the line....

 Maybe it's a better idea if I just hold on to the yarn while painting...

Tada....My family with cool hairstyle....Nice?

I think I surpass David Gan :p

It's always a pleasure to observe Le Xin coming up with creations like these...You can try it too, just laminate a few photos and your child can do wonders with them which is completely based on his/her imagination.

Remember...

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. Your imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will" - George Bernard Shaw

Ending this post with my baby darling...

Sweet, everything can be stuck on, hope you get stuck on to my blog too!