Rocket, soccer, musical chairs and Math

I don't know if any of you parents experienced the same challenges as me. See, I was a bit stuck some months back when Dumpling was not engaged with numbers. While Dumpling has quite a good memory, if it's anything rote, I have a challenge on hand as it bores her.

So far, my challenges have been:

1) Number sequencing
She tends to be distracted and bored after reciting the sequence and would end up missing a few numbers.

2) Counting down
Likewise, she'd get bored halfway and skip some numbers and walk away.

3) Number Recognition
With this, she stubbornly refused to accept why 11 and 12 had different names and 13 is thirteen instead of three-teen. This is primary because Dumpling is a very "conceptual" person so she basically thinks if 14  is four-teen, why should 13 be thirteen and likewise for 15. 

Another part of the challenge was that Dumpling was not interested in recognizing numbers. On some days, she will entertain me by saying the correct answer - 27 e.g twenty-seven but on other days, she will go "2,7" Ha ha ha ha...

The funny thing is Dumpling cracked the patterning codes - ABAB, AAB, BBA, ABC sequence etc., before she turned 2.5 but for the above, she just refused to try. So, what's a homeschooling mum to do?

For (1), though I am not much of a rote learning person (oops, so maybe its my fault :p) Number Sequencing is one of the fundamentals since the child will need to know numbers and the sequence before they can even move onto the next thing.

So for (1), what worked for us was to use songs. Somehow for children, they recite much better when it's song based as it is catchy.

For (2), I wanted to teach her this as it will come in handy later when we do subtraction. While Dumpling understood the general concept of taking away and counting down = lesser, she was not engaged at all to learn to countdown by memory.

What I did was to play hopscotch and rocket games with her where after "1", we'd "blast" off!

Now, for (3), this took quite a bit of creativity. How we got over the 13 = three-teen and 15 = five-teen was I wrote out the word for her and showed her that while it is not the exact same word, it had the same starting sound - THirteen because it comes from THree, etc.  

While one half of the problem was settled, it was the last bit which was helping her to identify how to read 2 digits place value i.e. 27 is read as twenty-seven. Dumpling argued that twenty-seven should look like 20-7 instead of 27. No matter how hard I told her to ignore the last "0", she refused to accept that explanation. 

Conceptually, I understand her argument of course, after all twenty is 20 so shouldn't twenty-seven be 20-7? But believe me when I said I was close to pulling my hair out. :p

This is where soccer game and musical chairs came in. I first reinforced how the number "10" looks like. Then we played musical chairs. And I explained how there's only 2 chairs and because "0" means nothing, it didn't need a seat and hence was kicked away by the last digit.

The game instructions:

Reinforcing the number sequence / order

Then we made "10"

I will then shout out a number - 14 and Dumpling will then need to hunt for the number "4" and use it to "kick" away "0" and take its place since "0" means nothing and it does not need a seat. 

Our goal post was easily created using an empty tissue box taped to the desk 

The great thing was once the concept was understood, Dumpling was able to read all the numbers up to the hundreds value. I hope this works for you all. :)

四季树 - 4 seasons tree

This is definitely a first for me; a new post daily (here's last evening's post).  The joy of being on leave and having the time to share more. :)

After this post, I will try and share more on Science and Math. Math is definitely an interesting journey for Dumpling and I as she is bored with any form of rote learning which makes it challenging at times.

The beauty of homeschooling is that you are able to change course, speed and even the "subjects" if your child is not ready or when you wake up suddenly one morning and have what you think is a great idea! :)

That's sort of what happened to me last week when I woke up having suddenly remember a post I read on My Playschool and, decided to introduce "seasons" to Dumpling but in Chinese using "craft". Though she understands the concept and can read the words in English, it was another story altogether trying to expose her to and have her recognise " 春、夏、秋、冬". Even as I am typing this, we are still working on the words "季节".

What I used for this activity are:
1) Craft using 四季树: 4 seasons tree
2) 梅花与小鹿
3) A sticker activity book: 玛蒂娜的四季

Basically the 四季树: 4 seasons tree has 4 panels where each panel shows a different season using a tree. You can then embelish the tree and work through how each panel is different from the next with the change in season.

I first saw this tree in a post from My Playschool where Pauline shared her experience working on it with both English and Chinese resources. Like her, I worked on this with Dumpling using a literature based approach. In Pauline's post, she also shared her lesson plan with a mindmap / diagram of the various disciplines - Geography, Social Studies, etc included in her sessions. I found the post informational and most definitely useful.

In the same post, Pauline has also listed a link to download the template for the tree. I did not attempt to do the trunk hence my tree looks a bit different as compared to hers. (Maybe that also explains why my tree is not standing properly now. :p). Pauline also uses a different storybook from me and it is definitely worth your while to borrow that book too. I am definitely going to reserve my copy from the library.

To start off, I used an old cardboard box to prep for the tree and cut out some leaves with construction paper and added some flower punch outs with punchers from Daiso. I then read the chinese book with Dumpling (item 2 above where the 4 various seasons were very briefly mentioned) and discussed how the pictures / 梅花树 (tree) look different  from  one  season to another. I also paid attention to the adjectives used to expose and build up Dumpling's vocabulary.

Dumpling then helped to draw some veins on the leaves and stick on to the correct "colour" for the tree cut-out for Spring (we used Blue for winter, Green for Spring, Yellow for Summer and Brown for Autumn).

Thereafter, I worked with her on word recognition as well as adding on more words to the tree by asking her simple questions such as: "冬季是冷还是热?", "在冬季时,那 些白色的东西是什么? 是雪花", etc.  

I complemented the lessons with a sticker book (item 3 above). I find this series fairly useful as Dumpling is at an age where she still likes stickers and the series seems to have a book for everything - home, school, park, beach, etc. In addition, the stories in the book are kept very short and it also introduces us to new words and reinforces some vocabulary.

What I also found useful was to explain the formation of words. For e.g. for the word 秋, we printed the leaves using our thumbs with red and orange poster colours to show the changing colour of leaves. I specifically used these colours as they are the colour of 火 (fire). As Dumpling recognises the word 木, it was easy for me to draw the connection between the 木 and 火 and how in Autumn, the colour of the leaves are liken to fire hence the word 秋. I further elaborated that the top stroke above the 木 in 秋 resembles falling leaves. This is what I did for the rest of the "seasons" words too.

Montessori Chinese (Preschoolers) 新蒙氏阅读 Part 2

Dumpling and I have slowly moved on to Section 2 of the Montessori Chinese set.

I started off with the thought that it would be simple but boy, was I wrong! It was not as quick and simple as identifying body parts but it links the words to our "senses" and forming phrases and short sentences.

In this second section, I placed more emphasis on Word Recognition 认字 hence I tried the word matching exercise without any picture aid. :p

Here's the link to download the simple activity.

How we used this was, I first taught her how to recogise the words by comparing the similarity of the cartoons / pictures with the shape of the words (page 1). These are what worked for Dumpling so do improvise / change accordingly to whatever works best for your child.

Thereafter, I read the rhyme with her placing more emphasis on the words we just learnt (Page 3, left side). The next exercise is to then do a word matching exercise (Page 2, left side).

 Finally, you can use page 2 (right side) for memory game, word hunt or 排字. We also extended to 手 and 摸. This is where I bought my set from.

Chinese Characters and Radicals

I was searching for a guide online because while explaining to Dumpling at times, I realise that I have forgotten some of the radical terms!

Here's a part of table share. Due to formating, I was not able to paste the table down so I saved the below as a picture file as a "preview".

For the full list, you can get it from this site: http://www.ctcfl.ox.ac.uk/Radical_index.htm 
Alternatively, I have also saved it into a document and coverted it into a PDF file. Click here to download (6 pages in total).

Storybox - a great tool in our Chinese Home Learning

I have been out of action for a while because Dumpling had high fever but I am happy to say that I am better rested this week. :)

One of the earlier "craft items /projects" I did with C is to make a story box for retelling and the "acting out" of Chinese stories. This was when Dumpling was about 2.5 where she started babbling more in the language and I knew that I had to participate more in the Chinese front to encourage her interest.

The challenge I had was, how to make it fun and engaging? I did not want to take on the role of serious learning such as word recognition, etc., then because I wanted to leave that to her school. My focus was more on getting her exposed to the sound / tonation of the language, just reading loads with her and perhaps do more craft related things.

I came upon a blog entry on someone using an old box as a theatre and that triggered a thought that I can get Dumpling to do this up as a storybox based on "丑小鸭" - Ugly Duckling.
This is also a great way to recycle an old box. We spoke about what materials to use and how we were going to use each of them.

I had help from her in cutting. 

Thereafter, Dumpling pasted this to resemble the tall grass at the riverbank.

Thereafter, we discussed which panel to use to create a 'pond'. 

I precut the ducklings and had her fill in the missing parts - great way to understand spatial relationship.

Our little scene from Ugly Duckling - 丑小鸭! :) After the storybox was completed, I would then read out the story where she acted out using the various duckling cut outs (we also had "eggs" too) for the various scenes.