My Journal, a homeschooling mom

Letter to LT

2011-11-04T17:44:00.000+08:00

If you are like me, a control freak, having kid will be a big shock. ^^

Before I have Den, Im pretty much in control of every expects of my life (or at least I think I did). Then Den came along, nothing is under my control. I learned what is like totally depend on our Almighty Father.

Recently, after a lengthy conversation with a friend who think she might be having post natal depression, I wrote a letter to her. I hope my experience will be able to help her in her journey. The letter is written in Chinese:

对不起，昨天话还没说完就断线了。当时我不在家里，所以无法charge handphone battery. 虽然我知道我讲的话似乎像在传教但是这真实的是我的经验。

我非常的赞同你所说的生了孩子过后才发现有许多的事情都不在自己的掌控中。或者应该说其实生命原本就不在我们的掌控里，只是很多时候我们并没有发现而被生活的假象欺骗了，尤其当一切都在根据着我们的凑算在进行时，我们会以为自己在引导着自己的生命。而孩子（或病痛或死亡）把这假象撕破了。当我们发现无法掌控自己/孩子的命运时，我们会非常的害怕，担心 but all these are good for our soul. It forced us to face the true reality – to face our limitation.

当一个人发现自己无法掌控未来时，有的人选择只专注在现在，不去想未来，因为想到就很怕，所以不去想，只告诉自己船到桥头自会直；有的人终日忧心，害怕与担忧成了心头上无法与人分享的压力（无法分享因为他人会觉得自己杞人忧天），这份忧虑若是长久与持续就会成病。

我知道生命不在自己的掌控里，孩子的命运也不在我手里。即使我在怎么保护她，有一天，可能她上个厕所就被人拐走了。

就如今天DEN 与我跟一个我们完全无法预料的意外擦身而过。

刚才我带她去家附近的supermarket买菜，选完要买的菜，她说她要看看杂志。她一看起杂志来就是至少要15分钟，要不然绝不离开。既然今天不赶时间，我说ok.

正要走过去时，我忽然想到不如今晚煲个汤。所以我对她说先买肉和瓜煲汤才去看杂志。就在我们在选肉时忽然传来一声巨响！我们过去一看 - 二楼的玻璃无端端破裂，掉了下来，就掉在杂志的那里！如果我们站在那里，不死也头部受重伤！

虽然知道未来不在我的手里，我不选择不去想也不选择忧虑，我选择相信我与孩子的命运是在全能的爱我的父上帝的手里。我相信若不是他允许，没有任何的灾害会发生在孩子身上（包挂我身为母亲所可能因为我的无知或罪根而犯的错误）。若是他允许任何的灾害发生，那么必有他的美意，因为他非常的爱我，他在圣经里答应我万事必互相效力，必叫爱神的人得益处。他必定赐我出乎人意料之外的能力来面对困难因为经上他答应过他不会给予我过于我可以担的担子。

我就是这样子紧紧握住圣经上的话，神的应许来走过许多战战兢兢的日子 –当Den惊风休克时，当发现Den眼睛的问题时。我知道日后还会有许许多多穷出不断的难题，但我知道谁在掌管我们的明天。

你一样也可以依靠在他身上，虽然要靠他而非自己是个很可怕的经验但却是唯一可以经历神的大能大爱的方法。如今孩子已经叫我们筋疲力尽，你能够想像当我们必须面对自己的生老病死时吗？

iPad Apps

2011-10-31T16:37:00.001+08:00

Quite a few of you have asked me to post all the apps that I use in my iPad here, so here you go. Please take note that this is as of 30 Oct 2011, I upload/delete my apps on daily basis. I don't have the time to go into detail, so check them out your self. Many of them are paid apps but have free version, so make sure you download the free versions and try them out first before you purchase.

A) Utility:
1. AppAdvice - very useful for the updates on iPad and its apps. It has pc version FOC here.

2. Pocket Expenses - I use this to keep track all my expenses.

3. Sinchew-i - Read 星洲日报 online, FOC

4. CineXPlayer - to transfer and play avi movie.

5. Penultimate - for note writing

6. Facebook - for FB, FOC

7. Blogger - for blogging in blogger, FOC

8. MY Traffic Free- Lite version (that mean Free version) to check out the traffic on major highway in Malaysia.

9. Dictionary.com - FOC. My favorite dictionary apps.

B) Bible:

1. YouVersion - Great free app but need to pay for offline NIV (however NIV offline is free from today for 48 hours!). In order to write note, you need to be online.

2. NIV Bible By Tecarta- I opt to purchase this apps because it allow me to keep my note offline. It also come with study note.

3. 荒漠甘泉 - FOC

4. TheProverbProject - Read from my previous posting here.

5. LivingWord - FOC for verse memorizing

6. THEO - video about faith. First episode free.

7. Where's Jesus - puzzle game to find Jesus. FOC

C. Homeschool:

1. Homeschool Magazine - hmmm...it seems like it is not available for MLY account. If you have oversea account, then try it out. It come with 3 free issues.

2. Common Core Standard - FOC. Listed out the common core standard for each grade.

D. Math

1. Math Board - Read from my previous posting here.

2. Math Kingdom - Fun but a bit easy math game. K2 to Grade 1. FOC

3. Math Word Problems - FOC

4. iMathematics - FOC. It give you almost all the formula and definition you need in mathematics. Way above Den's level but good to have.

5. Sudoku - FOC

6. Nxtapp 4 kids -FOC.

7. Oh No! Fraction - FOC. Above Den level, so we have not use it yet but looks like a good tool to use for learning fraction.

E. Chinese

1. Easy Chinese - Top Chart - FOC

Below are the list of animated Chinese books I find interesting. All are FOC:

1. 动物百科故事绘本12合1 - One of our favorite

2. 神笔马良

hmm...this is taking too long....ok, I change my mind and not going to list out all the Chinese books we use, instead, this is what you can do - Go to your iTune, then select iTunes Store (on the Left panel), after that on the Right hand upper conner, key in the company listed below one by one and it should give you lots and lots of Chinese books, some free and some pay. Check them out your self:

1. RYE

2. Childhood Fine Art

3. QLL

Please take note, many of this apps are bilingual(some even have 4 languages), so you can select Chinese or English (after you downloaded)

F. English Books

1. Bartleby's Book of Button Vol. 1

2. Disney Comic

G. Music

1. Note Goal Pro - Read from my previous posting here.

2. Ear Trainer Lite - I did not purchase the full version. This is the FOC version.

3. Chord Picker - FOC

4. Virtuoso - piano, FOC

5. Praise Hymns - FOC

6. Musical instruments by Tidel - FOC

7. Pluto Music - FOC fun game

H. Other Good Edu Apps we enjoy:

1. Star Walk

2. Toontastic - Making animation

3. Free Spelling - FOC

4. Brain POP -FOC

5. Solar System Fun - FOC in Chinese only

6. 中国史年表 -FOC

7. Picture Book - FOC

I. Puzzle and Board Games that we enjoy:

1. Monopoly Here & Now, World edition

2. UNO

3. Chess Knight Free -FOC

4. Chinese Checkers -FOC

5. Checkers -FOC

6. Four In A Row -FOC

7. Backgammon Free -FOC

8. Ant Work -FOC

9. Monorail -FOC

10. Word Jewels -FOC

11. Doodle Fit -FOC

12. U connect Lite -FOC

13. Tangram -FOC

14. Match Puzzle -FOC

J. Other games that we enjoy:

1. Birzzle - we downloaded the Lite version before we purchase the full version but now I cant find the Lite version any where.

2. Cut The Rope Lite -FOC

3. Cut The Rope, Christmas Edition - Dont seems to be able to locate this.

4. Cordy -FOC

5. Talking Roby -FOC

6. Baby Adopter -FOC

7. Flower Garden - FREE FOR LIMITED TIME ONLY

8. Jack of All Tribes -FOC

9. My Horse -FOC

10. Princess Party -FOC

11. Make me a Princess Lite -FOC

12. Sara's Pretty Pet Parlour Lite -FOC

13. Disney Fairies Lite -FOC

Please take note that a lot of the free apps come with In Apps Purchase, so make sure you don't give out your account password to your kids or else.....^^

22 Oct 2011

2011-10-29T21:25:00.004+08:00

My DH and I went to Cambodia for 5 days and left Den with my parents. I prepared a present for her for each day we are gone (2 Thea Stilton, 1 Winx, 1 Sparkle World and 1 assorted board games). I also gave her study works to do each day:

1. Piano Practice
2. iPad - Note Goal Pro and Math Board
3. TimeTable worksheets
4. Chinese 500 (5 chapters per day and practice writing a new word a day)
5. 1 poem page a day
6. 2 Brain Olympiad puzzles a day.

After she finished her work each day, she can open her present and watch GoodTV. She did managed finished all the assigned works and I really like her poems.

Below are some of her poems (Words given in the worksheet are in BOLD):

The Storm
I feel the wind blowing
I see raindrop here and there
I hear the storm going like this - BOOM! BOOM!
Time to go home!
Yes! Go home!
RUN! RUN!
It's raining! Oh! Help!

Hard and Easy
Its hard to do cooking (now)
but it's easy to do homework (now)

Its hard to take care of baby (now)
but it's easy to read (now)

Some things are easy, some are hard, some are in between.
Some things are hard 'cause I'm 6+ years old.
They'll be easy when I'm seventeen.

Picnic In The Park
I see tress and grass
I shoo away bees and ants
I munch on butter on bread
I eat lots of cake and cream
We play swing and sand
We play ball and skip
Darn-it's time to leave the park,
because it's really getting dark!

03 Oct 2011

2011-10-04T01:20:00.000+08:00

It has been a rather rough week.

Getting to know some homeschooling families and even though I know I should not compared, I cant help but to started to question the way we had been homeschooling. Are we going to the right direction? Am I spoon feeding Den too much information and not enough practical? Have I been lazy and rely too much on the curriculum and not making enough effort to make the lesson interesting for Den?

We continued to school as usual but all these questions were at the back of mind and lets just said because of that I was rather restless and short temper.

People always ask if it is difficult to homeschool. To me the difficult part is not the teaching it self. May be because I used to teach more than 100 kids in one session, so now teaching 1 is a lot easier. May be also because God has blessed me with a rather compliant child.

To me the difficult part of homeschooling is the mental struggle and self doubt. Since I grew up in conventional school system, how do I jump out of the box and school Den differently? How do I (or should I) measure Den's growth? Am I doing enough? Am I doing too much? From time to time, I will lose sight and forget Den's future is in God's hand and not in mine and thus worry my self sick.

Of cause it won't help when the whole world is questioning you as well - how about socialization? How about Secondary school? College? etc etc. Yesterday, my dad just found out my intention to continue to homeschool Den instead of sending her to P1 next year. Saying that he is not pleased is an understatement. I did not argue with him since I firmly believe it is my right to decide on Den's education. But it is going to be another war to fight soon when he realize I have no intention in following what he said.

God reminded me two weeks in the row with

Nehemiah 8:10 "Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength."

So for the past few days, I have been focusing in praising God. I choose a few songs in my mind and whenever I feel restless or depressed, I focus in praising God instead.

Another difficulty I have with homeschooling is Den is with me 24/7 and some time I fell like I don't even have the space to hear my self think. Especially now when my hubby is not with me and my mom is also away, there is no one to even take Den out of my hand for short awhile. This is one of the reason I sign her up for group art lesson (instead of individual lesson at home). I need a breather.

Since we don't (and can't) do school everyday, I have been trying to squeeze as much study into the days we do school as possible. Because of wanting to squeeze everything in, I get very short temper with her especially when she dilly dally. Sometime I forget, she really doesn't need so much formal school. She need time to do her own thing, to explore on her own. That is one of the reason I homeschool her at the first place.

So for the past few days, instead giving her lots independent works (homework/worksheets) to do when I'm busy (cooking/cleaning/resting...), I let her do her own thing. She happily reread many books from our library, playing piano, drawing, etc.

It has been rough and lots of up and down and shouting, but I also managed to do a lot of thinking. There are still more to consider and may be some changes in our way of studying.

This is the summary of what we have done for the past one week:

1. Bible - we continue Proverb Project in ipad (at Chp 12 now), praise and worship (sometime I led and sometime Den led) and a new verse:

Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hungry, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. ~ Roman 12:19-21

Den is getting very good in memorizing verses. This one only took her 2 sitting. I was a bit unsure if I want her to memorize the KJV or NKJV version (without all the old English words like saith, thou, shalt, etc). Learning KJV will help her in understanding classic like Shakespeare later on. So finally I decided to let her use all the thine, saith, shalt but change the last verse to NKJV (because KJV doesn't sound right on the last verse!)

She also did the copywork for this verse. It is a long verse, so I broke it into two parts and let her copy in her journal and she also drew a picture at the side to illustrate the verse.

2. Science - We almost done with the 66 scientists video (9 more to go!) and we've totally fallen in love with science again. Now Den says she want to be a scientist, just cant decide which field to go into! LOL! I learned a lot of new thing my self like Nano technology (ok, I have to confess I have never heard of this word before this!), lung cilia, etc. 9 more to go, who know what other new things I'm going to learn with Den.

We finished Sonlight Science Week 22 (mainly about what the scientist do) and started a bit on Week 23. Haven't done Week 22 experiment yet because keep forgetting to buy the red cabbage! Does anyone know you can actually use the juice from red cabbage to test and see which things are acidic?!!

Den also did an observation on ant for her homework. This is what she wrote in her science notebook:

We also had an impromptu discussion about Earth, Sun, Moon, seasons, day & night and New Moon, Full Moon, etc today (We discussed this once when Den was around 4+, but she had forgotten all about it. No idea why the sudden interest, but I'm very happy to explain it all again. )

3. History - We started Sonlight Week 23 today and read about different type of houses for the past hundred years or so (we already did those before this past 100 years).

I also found this wonderful wonderful book in MPH sales corner called Fatimah's Kampung (I felt like I've strike gold! ^^). It is so wonderfully illustrated! It bring the readers back to the time of the old in Kampung and it also talks about how the kampung has gave way to the modern development and thus a lifestyle had been demolished.

I was standing in MPH totally in awe of the book, but at the same time cant decide if I should spend RM45 (after 30% discount!) for a book. (Don't ask me why I would be hesitated to pay RM45 for gold. Our budget for books has gone so far out this month....and BBW sales is coming this Friday!!! STL, pleas pretend you didn't see this...hehehe...you are not here to stop me!!! ) Den saw me struggling and told me she would give me all her pocket money so that I can buy the book. Now what more reasoning do I need? ^^

We just started reading it. I am going to count it as history and social science study.

4. Chinese - As I mentioned before this year is our "Improve Chinese Year". So far I think we are progressing well. Den is close to learning to read about 100 Chinese words now and her listening has improved a lot too. When my Sister In Law is back, she will have someone to practice conversation with (my SIL only speak Mandarin!). My urgent need is to get more level appropriated good reader for her to practice reading. I have a few from Odonate Publishing but it is not enough. Ok, I need to go through all those Chinese picture books again and hopefully can find something appropriate for her to read.

We have finished reading the comic book about Thomas Edison and now into Helen Keller. Den loves the series. She will even read through the pictures even though she cant read most of the words yet (I was like "YES!!"). To know more about the comic series, read here.

5. Math - After playing the games from Peggy Kaye's Games For Learning (read here), Den is getting better in place value! So we continued on our Challenging Math workbook. Today she did the multiplication below 40.

6. English - We are listening/reading Dr. Doolittle now.

We also did all the read aloud in Sonlight week 23. Today I let her start using Scholastic Instant Poetry Frame. It is much easier than writing journal, so she jump right into it. ^^

CLP is getting harder and harder, so I didn't let her do the worksheet as often as last time.

7. PE - She swam 3 times this past one week and also the usual Ballet practice.

22 sept 2011

2011-09-23T01:54:00.000+08:00

Today Den asked if we can have a book reading day- whole day reading books (she read hers and I read mine) and no study. Since we have not had that for awhile, I said yes.

There was another reason for me to say yes...the last time we went to the SG library we had a BIG argument and ended up with Den tearing up. We argued about two things-

1. How many book she get to borrow- normally we can borrow up to 8 books. To be fair, we have 4 books each (we share an account). For the past few months I had not been borrowing much, instead I let her have my share. That day was a double your limit day, so we could actually borrow up to 16 books. So I told her I would like to get 4 or 5 books. She got upset and insisted that I should not borrow that many books.

That make me mad and felt that she was being selfish. I scolded her there and she started to cry.

2. What books to borrow- Den has been obsessed with Rainbow Magic Fairy and Magic Tree House recently. Im alright with both of the series however I disliked the way that she rejected everything else. Whenever I bring a book for her to read, if it is not from either of the series, she will says she is not interested. I felt she was not giving other books a fair chance.

On that day, after our urguement, we went to the Jr. Reading Department and can only find 1 magic tree house and none of the Rainbow Magic. I, still angry with her, told her that I'm so glad she didn't get to borrow any of her favourt books (I know, it was not my best moment), that off cause started the tears again. Finally she was so upset that she decided she would only borrow the one Magic Tree House book and didn't want anything else. So I ended up choosing another 13 books for her. Books that I think she would enjoy if she give them a chance.

We left SG before she had the chance to read any of the books. Today would be the perfect opportunity to test it out...since I knew she will read anything when she has nothing else to read!

She finished 10 out of the 14 books in 4 hours. She loves every one of them.

These are the 10 books:

If you are interested in the two series that Den is totally hooked on, here is the link:

09 Sept 2011

2011-09-12T14:43:00.001+08:00

I started writing this last Friday! 09 Sept 2011. Was not able to finish until today.

Den spent the nite with my parents last night. She came home in her pj at 1030am. After lots of hug hug (well...we haven't seen each other for the whole night, what do u expect?) and breakfast, we started our study at about 1130am.

We stared with Bible Study using Proverb Project (Read more about this cool iPad apps here). We read Chapter 6 and 7 and it talked about adultery and prostitute. I explained about the first one (unfaithful to your husband or wife) and since she did not ask about the 2nd one, I just continued reading!! ^^

After prayer (Den said, "Lord help us not to be like the bad women in Proverbs." ), we played another game from Peggy Kaye's Games For Learning. I really enjoy her book. I especially appreciate her writing down why and how she use each game with her students. Today we played 2 games from her book. One for math and one for Language (she meant it for English but I used it for Chinese). If you want to read about another math game we used from her book previously, click here. Or check out the content and others comments at Amazon site below:

For math, I wanted to help Den to have better understanding on place value, so we played The Rearrange Connection. This game required a bit more preparation than usual. I've to make :

a. A game board

b. 36 number cards

Then we were set to play. We take turn to turn over a number cards and put a marker (hers were blue marbles and I used markers from scrabble) on the corresponding game board. At first she still had to take some time to think about which number on the game board corresponding with the number card she turned over but at the end of the second game, she can go as fast as me. To win, you just need to have four of your markers next to each other - horizontally, vertically, diagonally or basically any positions as long as they can be connected:

For Chinese, we played "Road block". I took 15 words that she learned before but not very familiar and wrote them down like these:

Her challenge was to travel down the road. To make it, she had to read out each words. When she reached a words she cant read, ROADBLOCK. I would then read out the word for her and she would repeat it after me and she had to start the trip from the beginning again. She had 3 chances to reach the end of the road. If she make it, she win or else I win. Unfortunately I won. ^^ (we had not been looking at all these words for the past 2 months!). We will do this again and again until she can always make the trip, then we will change the words.

As you can see, it took some time to do prepare the game especially the math game. So while I was preparing them, Den wrote her English journal. She started this recently. She also draws for every journal entry.

Since I took out the Scrabble set (so that I can use them as marker in our math game), I decided to play Scrabble with Den. Half way through, I realized I actually didn't know how to play....I did try to google it there and then...but still had lots of question! hahah! STL! I need your help.

After all the games, Den did her Yamaha homework and practiced piano while I cooked.

After lunch, we continued watching a few videos from PBS about Scientists (66 current scientists,all of them in different fields of study/research! The link has short video for each of them to introduce their work and how they started and why they love science, link here). 66 of them...we still have a long way to go...we try to watch like 6 per day.

After that Den practice Chinese reading using Chinese Basic 500 (I wrote about this in my previous posting here). We are still at Level 1 book 5....had stop since we went to holiday in NZ in June! Time to pick it up again.(Have to remind my self daily...this is Improve Chinese Year...this is Improve Chinese year....)

Den watched GoodTV Chinese cartoon in the afternoon.

08 Sept 2011

2011-09-09T02:20:00.001+08:00

The more I read about the stories of the famous people, the more I doubt the wisdom of a so call "balance lifestyle". I mean we had been taught, well, I had been taught, it is important to have enough sleep (sleep early, wake up early), eat right, balance your work and church and family, oh and don't forget to exercise! but when you look at the stories of all those great men and women, how many of them lived a so called "balance lifestyle"?

Thomas Edison slept four hours a day...and not even consecutively! He took 1 hour rest when he was too tired and he only allowed him self to take 4 rest per day! Helen Keller studied day and night until she fainted because of exhaustion. This is the quote about Mother Teresa "Mother Teresa of Kolkata (Calcutta) led a life beyond balance. She had no secular career, no family, no apparent hobbies. She had an all consuming ministry to those completely abandoned by society. Founding and leading a religious order and expanding the work of the Missionaries of Charity, left little time for sleep, let alone rest and relaxation." How about our Lord Jesus? How much time do you think Jesus get to sleep?

Great achievement often come from great passion. Great passion often doesn't leave much room for things like sleep, eat or exercise. So now my question is, is it more important to have great passion or balance lifestyle? Or do you think they can be obtain simultaneously?

Why am I asking this question? Because I find it a very important question to ask my self, as a homeschooling mom. When Den is interested in something, should I let her spend all her time in that particular subject/field or should I insist she has a more balance/well rounded education? Sometime when she is in reading mood or craft mood, she wants to spend the whole day/s reading or doing craft, should I let her be or should I insist on doing school as plan? Am I killing/suffocating her interest/passion by insisting she know a bit about everything instead zooming in into one area? Am I going too broad instead of deep?

These are just thought in progress...writing blog is a good way for me to organize my thought. So I have no ready answer. You are welcome to vote on that thought! Hahah! Im in voting mood!

Any way, as I said, those are just thought in progress, so please take them with a grain of salt. Remember also, this is from someone who has a rather dysfunctional sleep pattern and prefer to stay up til dawn and sleep til noon. One side note, Einstein claimed to sleep 10 hours per day and 11 hours if he need to work harder in solving the problem....because he said dream help him in problem solving. There! I presented two side of the coins! ^^

Back to what we did today.

Den woke up at 10am. After hug hug in bed and breakfast, we did the sunflower seed math (read about this at my previous blog here) at the kitchen table...Den think it is a game, so happily (insistingly) played with me. After that we left the house for lunch in a mall and followed by Den's 2 hour art class.

She just started the art class about a month ago. She asked me to send her to art class since she was about 4 or 5 years old. But I kept delaying it because I'm a bit worry art class might kill her creativity - you know, being told how to draw, how to paint instead of just draw the way you want it that kind of thing.

However when I think back about my own experience, I loved drawing when I was a kid but I stop when I was a teen because I did not have the technique to draw the way I wanted it to come out. So I can understand her frustration when she does not know how to draw what she want to draw. When I found a school that is willing to let us pay on class by class basis, I decided to sign her in. She enjoys it so far and very proud of what she can do.

After the class, she played in IKEA smallland for less then an hour before we had to leave (to beat the rush hours traffic). I sent her to my parents house, so that she can play with dogs and her grandparents. While she was there, she used iPad to do two pre-assigned homeworks -

1. Note Goal Pro - a music note reading program Den uses to practice note reading. Yamaha students are infamous for their poor note reading skill, so I'm trying to compensate for that. ^^

2. MathBoard - I use this for math drilling. I pre program the apps and it will automatically generates 20 math questions (that suit her level) for Den to works on. When she is done, she can save the result so that I can check on them later. On cool tool is the black board at the side which you can use to do all the draft calculation that you need. This is really cool on a travelling day, no need to prepare extra draft paper.

Yes! I love iPad and I think it is really great for homeschooler! Im contemplating writing a whole posting about all the great apps we use.

We had dinner at a restaurant together. While the adults were talking away, I read a book that I just bought for Den today. Recently Den has shown great interest in comic. It started with Winx Club (Im still not sure if it is actually suitable for Den's age!), and later she discovered Calvin and Hobbes. So when I saw a series of comic featuring biography of famous people (in Chinese!童悦坊漫画名人堂) in Popular, I knew I need to get them for Den. I bought two of them - Thomas Edison and Helen Keller. I read them while waiting for Den in Art class and I love them! They are very well written. The story lines and the drawing are captivating. The language is simple .

I decided to read Thomas Edison to her first since we just talked about Thomas Edison this week. At first she was a bit reluctant because it is in Chinese but when she saw that it is in comic form, she eagerly agreed to try it out. She loved it and was very upset when we had to stop (the adults were ready to leave the restaurant!). I'm going back to buy the other two in the series - Lincoln and Newton. I think they are good buy at RM16.90 each (before member discount).

07 Sept 2011

2011-09-08T02:15:00.003+08:00

I know, I know, I haven't being blogging for sometime now...more than one person has reminded me that....I started one last night and gotten too sleepy and decided to go to sleep instead...you see, to blog, I have to sacrifice my sleeping time...most of the time....but then lesson preparation/researching, reading for pleasure, The Mentalist (on my defense, that is the only TV I watch!...ok...may be also Bones!) etc etc also eating my sleep-time away....I always wonder how does other homeschooling mom does all these and yet get to have enough sleep?

Another reason for not blogging? There were so much happened for the past four months, I don't know how to blog about them all...so I've been procrastinating....I have finally came to the decision to just simply ignore the past few months and start from TODAY! ^^

Yesterday was a bad day....I planed a packed school day (we don't study every day, so our school day usually are long - 2-5 hours), Den ended up taking one and half hour finished her lunch...that make me crazy and did all the huffing and puffing....and then later we were stuck at math. Took us 1.5 hours....and I realized Den is still confused about place value (I'm very glad I found out about that though!).

Today was a good day. Everything went super smooth and had extra time for extra activities.

I woke Den up at 10am...this is something new that I just started about 2 months ago...I actually wake her up for study instead of just let her sleep in...^^

After breakfast, I taught her how to separate the whites and colors and put them into washer. I also showed her how to run the washer and later she helped folding and putting the washed clothes back to closet. The only thing I didn't allow her to do was to put the detergents into the washer....after watching the thought provoking video from TED - 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do....I am thinking now, may be I should let her put the detergents too...

I taught her how to fold clothes when she was about 3 or 4 years old. Now she can fold them better than me. While we were folding clothes, she told me when she grew up she wanted to be a laundry maid! Hahahaha!

We started our study with Bible reading. We have been on the book of Proverbs for the past month or so...detoured for awhile with My Passport To India Part II, now we are back to Proverbs. We use a very interesting iPad app called "Proverbs Project" to study Proverbs. Cartoonist Vern Herschberger illustrated every verse in Proverbs and it is such a treat to read them. Today we covered more than a chapter and Den was still bagging for more. These are some examples:

After Bible reading and prayer, we continued our Sonlight Science week 22. We had been on Week 22 for the past 2 weeks because of some of the very interesting internet links - we finally finished one of them yesterday about 4 famous scientists- Marie Carie, Jagadis Bose, Thomas Edison and Galilea (Yes! I can remember their name without checking! ^^).

Another links we have been using featured 66 current scientists, all of them in different fields of study/research! The link has short video for each of them to introduce their work and how they started and why they love science...Den and I LOVE it! We learned so many interesting things - Do you know cockroach can hold it breath for up to 45min?? LST!! That is why you should not try to drown the cockroaches! and Entomologist is the scientist that study cockroaches and other bugs! Most importantly, all these video make us feel like science is the best thing and we all want to be a scientist!

After that, Den did a puzzle using Brain Olympiad Book 1. Today puzzle was a bit more difficult, she got it all correct but took her quite some time to complete.

This is the puzzle she worked on today:

While she was working on the puzzle, I prepared a math game to play with her. Since I noticed she still having problem with the concept of place value, I looked into Peggy Kaye's Games For Learning and found a few good games to play with her. (Wow! I finally figure out how to put the Amazon Widget in my website! Yes! Now you can just go to the link and see some of the pages inside the books and read comments!)

Today we play with one of the game. I prepared some Sun flower seeds, a few plastic cups, paper and pencil. We decided on a number (Den chose 30), then I took a turn first to scoop up (with a plastic cup) what I estimated (no actual counting is allowed) to be 30 Sunflower seeds. I counted them and put 10 in each plastic cups. I filled 3 cups and had 8 seeds left, so I had 8 more than the expected. I wrote 8 on the paper. Then it was Den's turn. She did the same thing and filled 3 cups with only 4 seeds left. The closest to the actual number win and so she won the first round. We did that again and this time we were equal.

We are going to play this again and also some other games from the book until she get the idea of place value. I always love the idea of playing and learning at the same time and hopefully these games will help her learn the place value...or else I would have to find some other methods.

After that she practiced her ballet steps before we had lunch.

Den practiced her piano after lunch. We make a cake for tea after that.

We started CLP language art workbook 105-8 and Quiz 2 at around 3pm. Den make a few mistakes (some careless) in one section of her Quiz and that cost her 12 points and she lost the chance to get a reward from the reward box. This was the first time since we started the reward box system, she did not get a reward and thus the 'water gate' was burst opened. The workbook is getting harder, I was wondering if I should lower the benchmark....but I think I will wait and observe it more first. (To know more about the reward box, please read my previous blog here).

We had tea after that and she watched Goodtv Chinese Cartoons (Im counting that as part of the study - learning Chinese!). Since it had been a very hot day, she went swimming for an hour after that. Some of her friends came down and swim too and they had a very great time together.

At night, we finished making a small strip of clothes using her loom (she has been very fascinated with loom since we study it in history) and we also decorated it with gem stones.

I have been thinking how do I actually count the homeschooling hours? Should I include all the piano/ballet practices, house works, cake making, craft, swimming (PE!) in it too? It doesn't seems fair to only count the sit down work, right? Besides, what kind of example are we setting for Den if we tell her only the sit down work are consider learning?

Should I add in the many hours of reading that she did everyday as part of the schooling hours as well? Hmmmm...something to think about. So take a vote!

Princess Club 1st meeting

2011-05-11T01:42:00.000+08:00

2nd May 2011 On our way to dinner, Den (stuck in the traffic jam and was bored) decided she wanted to start a Princess club. She named her self the president and asked me for permission to have the meeting in our house. I agreed (thinking of all the organizing skills and new vocab she will learn in the process!).

She wrote her opening speech all by her self right after dinner. She also wrote the opening speech for the 2nd meeting as well! When I asked her why did she write the speech (I was very surprised!), she said, "my friends might not feel welcome if I do not welcome them properly." ^^

Princess Club 1st meeting: The president Opening Speech

Princess Club 2nd meeting: opening speech

She also set the rules for the club:

She was indecisive on rules no 5

At first I thought my hubby help her out with the spelling and he thought I help her out. It turn out she wrote all these all by her self! I was very impressed!

She told me who to invite...I have to help her to narrow down...she would prefer me to just post it in FB and invite the whole world! ^^

She also plan the itinerary of the 1st meeting..I'm surprised she did not write it down:

3:00-3:30 Arrival of guess; Start meeting with speech and rules

3:30-4:00 Make a Mother's day card

4:00-4:30 Tea Time

4:30-5:30 Movie

530-6:00 Play time

Two of her friends cant make it to the 1st meeting. One of them called her up on 5th May to let her know she cant make it. Den told her friend she need to come earlier the following meeting so that Den can brief her on what she has missed on the first meeting!!!! (I was like!!! That sounded just like me!!!^^)

4 princesses turn up on 7th May (including Den) and they had a blast~! Very successful 1st meeting and everyone is asking when is the next meeting....it will depend on our unpredictable schedule!

Den help me make the cake and set the table.

Everyone worry Den has no enough socialization since she is the single child and schooled at home. From this experience, I would say she has shown very good social and leadership skill!

Chick Study Day Three

2011-04-23T02:31:00.001+08:00

We finished the last two lessons about chicken from Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock:

Lesson 6: Feet

-The functions of feet

-Chicken are fast runners (didn't know that!)

-Compare chicken's feet with duck's feet.

Lesson 7: Chicken ways

- Chicken communicate through different way of clucking, cheeping, peeping, etc - Never realized that! I thought they just keep clucking away without reason instead different way of clucking has different meaning!

Besides using the handbook, I also found some interesting things from the net and I decided to make them into part of our Chicken study. Today, we look at some of the different breeds of chicken - there are over 100 breeds!

We also study a little bit about egg today, we will continue this the next lesson and that led me to my GREAT DISCOVERY- I discovered yesterday through internet researching, hen doesn't need rooster to have eggs! It is just that the egg she has without a rooster is unfertilized egg and will never hatched!!!! Eggs that we buy from stores are mostly unfertilized eggs! I never know that! And almost everyone I talked to, never knew that either!

We put some of these info in a page:

Inside the little yellow chick ("Growing Up") we include the following info:

- Chick grow a comb at about 3 weeks old, in other words, Chicka Chicka and Boom Boom are not yet 3 weeks old;

-Chick usually considered fully grown by 6 months old;

- Hen starts laying egg at about 18-20 weeks old;

-She lays 1 egg at a time

-She can lay egg every 24-26 hours.

I also printed out 4 short stories about chicken and let Den read to me one story a day. I get a lot of this idea from lapbook page at http://www.homeschoolshare.com/chicken.php but I decided not making a lapbook, just make some note pages and I will stable them together when we are done.

Chick Study Day Two

2011-04-22T01:53:00.000+08:00

This is going to be just a short input. Tired...just came back from Maundy Thursday service...and it is 130am...but hubby will be around the next few days so might not have much time to update...better do it now.

We didn't have time to really study on Wed but Den still get to spend 30 min or so playing with them. Today she played with them for about an hour and I asked her to pay more attention to their wings, eyes, ears, nose and beak. It was really amazing how much she observed by her self just by pointing her to the right direction.

We covered three lessons from the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock....I learned so many new things today! To a point, I think homeschooling is to homeschool the mom and not the child!

Lesson 3: Wing:
- We experimenting with Umbrella to show how the overlapping wings feathers help chick fly;

- We talked about the function of chick's tail - act as rudder and also help to fly

Lesson 4: Eye and Ear
- We found their ears...we knew they have ears since Chicka Chicka and Boom Boom (their name) has been responding very well to Den's voice...come running to her whenever she calls...and they love music, whenever Den play piano, they will sing too...but we never knew where are the ears located...today we found them. ^^

- Den observed that chick has only lower eyelids.

- I saw the film lid that came out from the corner of chick's eyes and cover the eyes like a veil when they first arrived but I never knew what that was... today I learned....and found out even human has the film lid!! At the corner of our eyes near our nose, just that we can't move the film lid like chicks...any more...I need to find out what is the function of the film lid...Den and I guess - to protect the eyes.

- Chick cannot see the same object with both eyes at the same time

Lesson 5: Beak
-Found the nostrils!!

-Compare Duck bill and chick beak

-Functions of beak

-Chick has no teeth and not much sense of smell.

Den also identified different part of a chicken and color it:

While discussing, Den asked me a few interesting questions that I had no answer! But with the help of the internet, we have discovered:

1. The function of Comb and Wattles - (I thought they are just there for deco!!) is to cool down chicken's body temperature

2. How to tell the gender of bb chicks - the best way is to look inside the vent...which I am not going to do! So we settle with the latest way - tell by color of their feather - the lighter will be hen and thus we declare Chicka Chicka as a rooster and Boom Boom a han...the most interesting thing is Den already told me that on the first day they arrived! From their behaviour, Den told me Chicka Chicka is a boy and Boom Boom is a girl! Lets wait and see if we are correct!

There is another GREAT DISCOVERY (to me!!!) but I will leave that for another day.

Chick Study Day One

2011-04-19T21:36:00.001+08:00

Den is getting a little bit bored with our usual schooling materials, so I decided it is time to detour. Last month I downloaded Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock from Freebie Of The Day, I decided to give it a try since we have not had much hand on in nature study (Im very much a city bookworm...not the outdoor type...)

For Bird study, the author suggested to use a hen. The way I see it will be more fun to raise a bb chick than getting a full grown hen....and much easier since we are living in an apartment! After asking for help in getting chicks in FB, a friend volunteered to get 2 chicks for us from her hometown! We were overjoy for I have no idea where to get bb chicks in KL/PJ.

2 kampung bb chicks arrived at our place yesterday. We decided to put them in a box since we will only be keeping them for 2 weeks...as I mentioned it will be hard to keep 2 full grown chicken in apartment!

There were many things happened yesterday and we did not get to really study them until today.

Today after her ballet class in the morning, Den spent 2 hours study/observe/play with the chicks. We took them out of the box and let them walked freely at our wash area. Den kept them company for 2 hours until I had to put a stop and asked her to come in for lunch. That's how she is, she really really likes animals and have lots of patient with them.

After lunch, we discuss about different parts of a feather- Quill, Barb and Fluff; functions of feathers and why male bird's feathers is usually much prettier than female bird (I also printed out some pictures of other birds to show her)(Lesson 1 and 2 from the handbook). This is what she drew in her book:

Since Easter is coming, we have been spending time talking about Jesus last week on Earth. Today we focused on the promises of Jesus from Gospel of John. Tomorrow we will focus on the parables that Jesus told.

She watched Goodtv in the evening and after dinner we study Chinese.

P/S: for those of you who are interested in reading the handbook online, you can go to Google Book, then type "Nature StudyBy Anna Botsford Comstock".

03 April 2011

2011-04-04T01:44:00.000+08:00

We started a few new things in our school last two weeks. Before we go there, lets talked about some of the 'normal' things we did:

1. History - WWII (I haven't check out the internet links yet because I'm not sure I want to use them...after WWI experience...)

2. Bible - We focused on two ladies that God used during WWII to do great things for Him -Gladys Aylward (from I Heard Good News Today) and Corrie ten Boom (from both Little Lights and Heroes For Young Readers series, read about these two series in my previous entry)

We stop using the Word and Song Bible since Den started doing daily devotion her self but I decided it is time to use it again. We listen to Ruth story yesterday and as usual we enjoy it very much.

3. Science - We finished Sonlight Science week 20. In week 20 we studied about major organs in our body, blood and vessel, skin, bones, muscles, and digestion. No time for internet link yet.

Den drew this in her science workbook - digestion

4. Chinese - I asked my brother to help me get 70 books from China. All from the same series 玛蒂娜 (Martine by Belgians Marcel Marlier and Gilbert Delahaye) - 40 picture books and 30 corresponding sticker books. I fallen in love with the drawing when I saw it online and I knew Den will enjoy it too and I'm correct. Even though she cant read most of the words, she spent the whole afternoon just now looking through the pictures. She seldom pick up any Chinese books so I'm very happy about that.

We read 4 of the books this two weeks and so far we enjoy the story..even though I have my doubt in some of the translation...sometime it didn't make sense and sometime it didn't go with the drawing...I manage to bluff them off...good thing about Den cant read most of the words!!

example of the sticker book

Since I make this year "improve Chinese language year", Den's speaking Mandarin has improved significantly. A few of our friends comment that, so I'm very happy about the direction we are going - lots of interesting Read Aloud, Goodtv Mandarin cartoon and always do Chinese lesson first (right after Bible, so that we will always have time to do it properly!)

5. CLP Language Art - She finished Workbook 103 (Total score 98!! Reward systems works wonder in this case!) and started the first lesson in Workbook 104. In 103, we learned about Question words, contractions (don't/can't), Was/Were, Rhyming words, Consonant digraph - CH, Vowel Set - ai, ay, ee and ea.

In 104 first lesson, we learned about Vowel set - ie and y=i and 5 consonant blends- bl, fl, gl. pl and sl.

6. Math - She did a few worksheets from varies workbooks, a new sudoku book (she complained the last one was too hard...so I got her a new one Sudoku Basic RM4.50 Popular) and we also started playing Tangrams (bought a set from Times warehouse sales at RM15 that came with 200 puzzle and 2 set of Tangrams so that we can play it like competition).

7. Calender - Another new thing we started last week. Sonlight K came with a calender kit but we had not used it until last week. I finally feel she can grasp the concept of months and this will help to make the concept even more concrete for her. We are going to do it month by month, we started at the end of March and we worked on the month of April. At the beginning of each week, we also fill in the activities of the week.

A country is featured in every month. The month of April is Italy and so coincidentally that Den saw some Gondola at Marina Sand two weeks ago.We spent sometime talking about Venice, Rome, Pompeii, leaning tower of Pisa and I show her some of the photo, hubby and I took when we visited Italy.

We also spent sometime talking about Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. We decided we are going to wear black on black Saturday.

8. Sewing - It is rather ironic that someone who cant sew is trying to teach sewing!! Den has been asking me to teach her to sew. I think the normal needle is too sharp and too small for her. So when I saw this sewing kit in Diaso (RM5) I jump on it and brought the biggest needle I can find. So far, Den has not prick her fingers yet!

some of this stitches are done by me and some by Den and you really cant tell which is from who...I dont know it is because she is really good at this or I'm really sucks at this! ^^

This is how it is going to look like (hopefully!!) when it is done.

I think the most important "new thing" we started last week is we have set our study goal for this week together. This is the first time we did this. Usually I do the planning my self but I think she is old enough to do this with me.

First we plan out how many days of school we are going to have this coming week - 3 days. Then we write down how many works we are going to do in each subject in this 3 days. This is our goal for this coming week -

Yamaha - 5 practice and 1 homework

Bible - 3

Chinese - Lesson and Review 2, Read Aloud 3, Den Read Aloud 2, Copywork 2

English - Read Aloud 2, CLP 3, Copywork and comprehension 2

Math - 3

If she can achieve the goal then she will get 30min of PC game credit which she can use it right away or accumulate. ^^

p/s: Den was in drawing mood, so I updated some of the most recently drawing here.

Den's drawing progress Part III

2011-03-25T02:00:00.003+08:00

I realized I have not been updating Den's drawing progress. Believe me it is not because she stop drawing! Ive more than a whole shelve of drawing...and not to mention the one I threw away secretly...Shhhhh! The last couple of days has been rather stressful - Den and I had food poisoning, Den first ballet exam, etc etc and I need some cheering up. Her drawing always cheer me up, so here you go:

May 2010 Girl in high heels

May 2010 Girls with cross necklaces

May 2010 Girl in pigs' farm

May 2010 Elephant

May 2010 Cute house

May 2010 Swam lake

May 2010 Dancing

May 2010 more dad & mom's wedding

June 2010 Our apartment on the 9th floor

July 2010 Girl in veil

July 2010 Native American

Aug 2010 Tree of knowledge/Garden of Eden

Oct 2010 EE dancing in KY's wedding

Oct 2010 curly hair

Oct 2010 more wedding...I should start a new collection on wedding drawing!

Oct 2010 girls with scary teeth

Nov 2010 Girls

Dec 2010 a big hole on the ground

22 March 2011 My favorite - Den got a new pair of glasses that day!

27 March 2011 The Royal family and their pets- unicorns!

27 March 2011 Who am I?

March 2011 Barbie, she color Barbie and designed 3 new dresses

03 April 2011 Princess Den sing a song and bring a flower for her mommy Queen

03 April 2011 Mommy Queen and Princess Den

Lesson with 4 years old XE on 19 March

2011-03-19T00:46:00.000+08:00

I probably should have blog about what we did on Mon, Wed and Fri but I think there are more readers out there waiting for this...so I decided to do this first.

If you read my blog from last year, you should be quite familiar with XE, the little one who used to come over to our house twice weekly whenever we were in SG. A few of you have responded and said you liked what I did with her in a series of lessons with a 3.5 years old (please see 2010 archives) and you when you used the same lessons with your kids, they responded positively. I am very happy to hear that. I hope those lessons can be served as examples and you can progress from there.

XE turn 4 two weeks ago and she started going to kindergarten this year, so she is no longer coming over unless it is a school holiday like this week.

We actually went to the Art & Craft Exhibition and the library 5th anniversary celebration together but she was very reserved in both occasions and did not want to participate. That make me a bit worry about today (19 March! It took me two days to finish this!!) lesson. I was worry may be since she had not been to our house for sometime, she might need times to warm up (is like starting all over again!). However, when she turn up at our apartment today, she was not shy at all and acted as if she has been here everyday! I was very pleased.

XE was late today, so we did not get to do all the things I planned. However we had a very good time together. Our theme today is Pride.

(A)We started off with the memory verse.

Don't do anything out of selfish ambition. Don't do it because you are proud. Instead, be free of pride. Think of others as better than yourselves. ~ Philippians 2:3

It was not an easy verse to remember but added with actions and a few repetitions, they managed to remember most of it. I explained the verse and we prayed.

(B)We used the following videos from Youtube as Praise and worship:

1. Jesus Loves Me (Go fish version. I love Go fish songs!)

2. Every Move I Made

3. My Redeemer Lives (Hillsong)

4. 恩典之路 (The Journey of Grace -Den fallen in love with this song after she sang it in our MLY Sunday School)

As you can see there were lots of jumping and dancing, so by the time we were at the last songs we were all out of breath! But what a fun time to shout and dance and praise our all mighty God together! May be I should do this more often with Den.

(C) Story: Emperor's New Clothes - Since we are going to study this as a one off lesson, I decided to let them watch a Youtube Movie instead of reading from book. We watch the first one but may be you will like the second one better:

Emperor's New Clothes Video 1

Emperor's New Clothes Video 2

As mention previously, most of the lessons I did with XE were taken from Lesson Pathway (if you haven't check it out, you really should!) Language Art. In its' Emperor's New Clothes lesson plan, it also include a few interesting links we did not have the time to use:

Read story here

Read and listen to story here

If I do this as two part lessons like I usually do, I will use the read aloud in the first lesson and only let them watch the video on the 2nd lesson.

After the lesson, we talked about out how foolish were the adults, all of them were so proud and would not want to be looked down by others and thus fallen into the trap. Only the little child said what he see! We prayed together and asked God to help us to see others better than ourselves.

(D) Lunch Break

(E) Craft -

Before we did our craft, we read about how the author of Emperor's New Clothes, Hen Christian Anderson like to do paper cutting! He carried with him a scissor everywhere he went. That is new for me too. The link is here.

So in the tradition of Anderson, we did paper cutting too!

I preprinted paper dolls and different hair styles for them to cut and paste (link is here). Den was cutting really well and I did not have to help her at all. XE was much better compared to last year, a few months can really make a lot of differences especially to a young child. I still have to help her to cut some of the more difficult part.

Both of them chosen the same hair style for their dolls (XE wanted to follow the big jie jie!).

After that, I help them drew the dress and crown (according to what they wanted) for them to cut and color/designed. These are the final products:

XE's doll

Den's doll

Thats all we had the time to do! There are some other very interesting things listed in Pathway Lessons that I wished we had more time to do them:

(i) Invisible Art from http://www.education.com/activity/article/speakaboo-mystery-paint/ (I cut and pasted this fun activity here)

What You Need:

· 4 tablespoons baking soda

· 4 tablespoons water

· Small bowl

· Q-tip or cotton ball

· Sheet of white paper

· Watercolor paint

· Paint brush

What You Do:

1. Mix the baking soda with the water thoroughly in the bowl.

2. Lay out the sheet of paper in front of your child and hand her a Q-tip.

3. Have her dip the Q-tip in the baking soda mixture and paint an "invisible" picture on the paper. In the spirit of The Emperor's New Clothes, encourage her to paint a picture of the Emperor in his brand new outfit. Just like in the story, it's invisible!

4. Set the painting aside until it's completely dry.

5. Once dry, have her paint the picture with watercolors. Watch her eyes light up as the Emperor's clothes magically appear. Unlike in the story, these clothes turned out to be real after all!

(ii) Read and play dress up game at here

Hope you will have as much fun as we did!

School Trips

2011-03-15T22:09:00.000+08:00

I'm not sure if it is good or not good for Den but she has a mom who think activities are equally (if not more) important than seat work, so we always jump to the chance for field trips and activities.

This week is school holidays in SG (and MLY), so there are more kids' activities. Through our SG homeschooling group, we get to know an interesting art and craft exhibition at Raffle City Shopping Center called "Children Of Asia". It featured about 20 artisans from Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka.

It is supposed to have hand on activities but the press release never specified what kind of activities and to what age group it cater to. There is the problem with free programs like this, you have to go there in order to know if it is any good. We decided to give it a try last Sat (12 March) since we had nothing on that day.

There were not many hand on and the artisans at the fair though very friendly, had zero experiences working with kids and yet despite all these, we spent 2 hours there and enjoyed our selves very much. I think it has a lot to do with Den's attitude. From a very shy and reserved child, she has grew into a confident young girl. She tried her hand on everything she can, even on station that was for viewing only, she pester the person in charged until she let her tried her hand on!

Silk Cocoons

One of the thing I find most interesting in the exhibition was the silk cocoons. Den saw these and right away asked me if the caterpillar still alive inside. I asked the organizer and she cant answer me, so she asked around and came back and told me, these cocoons were from silk cocoons farm. After caterpillars changed into cocoons, the farmer sun the cocoons. The hot sun killed the caterpillar inside the cocoons.

Boil cocoons and separate the silk fiber

Den get to do it finally!

After that, the cocoons were boil in hot water and the workers separated the silk fibers to make silk thread. Because of the hot water, this station is only for demo and not hand on but Den really want to try it her self. After going back to the station again and again and finally the Cambodia jie jie let her do it!!

After that the worker used a loom to wave the silk thread into silk cloth. We studied about loom in our history but Den has never seen one in real life. In this exhibition, not only she get to see it, she get to work on it for a long long time. Not many children at the exhibition wanted the hand on activities (I'm not sure why!), so Den monopolized the loom for a long long time. The Cambodia jie jie in charged of the loom teasingly told her she can come and work in Cambodia.

After the cloth was done, it was dye into different pattern using natural dye. Den wished she can do this too but was told she cant! :(

Dyeing is a very tedious process

These natural materials are used as dye

In this exhibition, Den not only get to work on one type of loom but three! One of the hand loom was placed too high (adult height), so she had to give up after a few try. But no fear, she went on to try out another type and this time the thread fiber was taken from plants!! And when the cloth was done, it could be make into wallet, handbag or other colorful and amazing product (displayed on Den's left).

After weaving the plant fiber thread into clothes, it can be make into all those beautiful products on Den's left.

At the paper craft station, Den make a beautiful paper rose, I jokingly asked her to make me 600 for mother's day!

In this exhibition we also get to see some other interesting craft like stone craving, wood craving, jewelry making and floor mat making.

making floor mat

Jewelry

We also watched some cultural dances at the fair. Before we left, the Cambodia jie jie working on the boiling cocoon station was so taken by Den that she gave her some cocoon to take home with her!

Today, the library we always go to celebrated 5th anniversary. I was debating if we should attend the activities there or stay home and study...finally decided to go so that we can try our hand on Henna drawing. We learned about Henna in Sonlight's My Passport to India and now we were given the opportunity to have henna drawing on our hands!

Henna on Den's hand when it was still wet. Have to wait til it was dry before washing.

Henna after washing, it will last a few days.

Henna on my hand.

Stick on tattoo on Den's arm!

Part of the Origami craft program that taught us how to make a paper vase and it was just nice for our paper rose from the art and craft exhibition last Sat.

Since school going kids have field trip, I decided these can be counted as our field trips as well! ^^

The past one week

2011-03-08T01:29:00.000+08:00

It has been an unbelievably busy week and totally out of expectation, we ended up babysitting for 3 afternoons for a friend, saw two eye docs (one eye Sergent and one eye therapy) and went through a very long fitting for a pair of new glasses (2 hours!!). Good news is Den get lots of playtime (which is as important as sit down lessons in my book) and eye doc think her eyes are going very well (as far as her squint concerned. Thank you Lord!). Bad news is her eyes went from long sighted to short sighted in a year (about 100 degree difference!!!) and thus were advised to get a pair of very expensive glasses that hopefully can slow that down. Another bad news...we did not get much time for study, so we just squeezed in some schooling here and there.

This is the summary of what we did:

1. Bible - Den is very good with Matt 6:33 song now. We also managed to finished reading 5 stories from I Heard Good News Today and thus finished Sonlight WK 19 history. At my previous posting, I blog about some of the amazing stories we read from I Heard Good News Today, a friend wrote to me after she read my blog and asked where can she get books like these. Off cause the first thing I said is Sonlight! ^^ We read so many amazing Christian books from Sonlight Pre K and K. Having said that it is very expensive to buy from Sonlight if you live in MLY and not getting the whole core, so I also recommended the following, you can get these from local Christian bookstores like Canaanland:

(a) Little Lights series - I bought 4 books from these series - Corrie ten Boom, George Muller, Amy Carmichael and Hudson Taylor. David Livingstone and Helen Roseveare are coming soon. They especially suitable for younger kids (4+). One thing I like about this series is each book started the story when the famous Christian was still a child and that give a positive impression that all these famous Christian were just a little kid like us. It also imply that if we are willing, we can all do great thing for the Lord! RM23.90 each from Canaanland. You can read more here.

(b) Heroes For Young Readers series - It has 25 books, I only brought 4 (all female^^) - Corrie Ten Boom, Lottie Moon, Amy Carmichael and Ida Scudder. I would love to get my hand on Gladys Alyward but it was out of stock when I was at the bookstore. Very beautifully written in captivating rhyming poems. We love them. I read one of them to Den and her friend two Sat ago, even my 3 months old niece was listening attentively!! RM 19.90 each from Canaanland. You can read more here.

2. Chinese lessons-
a) For conversation/new vocab lesson, I make up a song to teach Den some of the vocab about playground, she was having a hard time to remember all these new vocab but with the help of the song, she managed:

(Tune: 郊游）
游乐场游乐场 (playground, playground)
滑梯秋千翘翘板 (slide, swing and seesaw)
真是好玩 (very fun to play)
我还要在去玩 (I want to go again)

b) Chinese Read Aloud - Ops! Only managed to read a book this week!! Not good!

你很快就会长高 (You'll Soon Grow Alex by Andrea Shavick) A very fun story about a boy who is very sad because he is very short despite doing everything he can to grow taller. Later, his very tall uncle show him being tall can be troublesome too sometime and teach him a very important lesson - choose to be happy despite his height.

c) Den Chinese Reading - We have been on and off using Basic Chinese 500 (基础汉字500) for awhile -It works like the Peter & Jane series - build up the words steps by steps. For example, this is Peter, this is Jane, this is Peter and Jane that kind of thing. It has Han Yu Ping Ying as well as English subtitle.

Recently I decided it is time to pick it up again but this time, I covered all the Han Yu Ping Ying because I realized even though I had never teach Den Han Yu Ping Ying, she has kind of figure it out her self and has been relying on it instead of memorizing the actual word. It takes quite an effort to block out all those Han Yu Ping Ying (I'm almost done with one book and there are a lot more to go!) but I think it is worth the effort.

d) Chinese Copywork - she wrote 里(inside), 很 (very) and 两(two) - words that I realized she was not familiar with when she did her her reading in Basic Chinese 500 Book 3.

3)English:
(a) CLP Language Art workbook 103 - She did Lesson 2, 3, 4, 5 and Quiz 1. As I wrote in my previous blog, she make a lot of careless mistakes during quizzes and tests. When confronted, she told tell me since she actually knew how to do it, I should not worry about the mark!!!

I have been cracking my head, thinking of ways to solve this...did not think punishment is a good idea in this case. Two Sat ago, her friend EE came and play. EE attend Homeschooling Center and she told me whenever she got 100% in her test, her teacher gives her a small present! That gave me the idea. I put some of the trinkets I brought for her (I always buy any cheap and interest trinkets whenever I see them and keep them for "special occasions" - like when I need to have long conversation with friend or Im not well and no one can take care of Den- to bring them out and that can pretty much keep her busy and happy for awhile) and put them into a special box. I told her if she can get 96-100% in her quizzes and tests, she can pick one item out from the special box.

It works! She checked and rechecked her quiz and got 100% mark! ^^ She chose a blow art kits (RM2.99), we have not had the time to experiment it yet. May be tomorrow, hopefully.

(b) English Comprehension - she did 3 lessons from Disney Princess Reading Comprehension (I blog about this previously, if you are interested, read it here.) She finished the whole workbook except for the review questions. A years ago, this was still too difficult for her and now...it is almost too easy! How much she grew in a year!

(C) Read Aloud - We did 4 chapters of In Grandma's Attic

(d) Reading - I brought Roald Dahl's George's Marvellous Medicine for her (and Vile Verses for me!!) last Thurs, she finished reading on Friday. I really need SG library!!! Talking about SG library, we have access to the SG online resources as well and I downloaded (legally!!) Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox CD (1hr) and The Witches CD (3 hrs). We has been listening to Fantastic Mr. Fox and going to keep The Witches for the long family trip coming up in May.

(e) Copywork - She did 3 English copyworks this week.

4) Math:
a) She did 2 Sudoku - she is working on 9x9 puzzle now.

b) We started using a workbook I brought quite sometime ago - Mental Maths Strategies Year 2 (by Synergy Media. RM8.90 Popular). It cover all the topics/concept a Year 2 students are supposed to understand. I find the workbook interesting and the questions are put in a way really testing if the student understand the basic concept well. She did parts of the Unit 1-4 (some sections are too easy and I let her skip) this week and from these, I realized, she still making mistake in naming the month of the year (she misplaced October) and even though she knew what is a "corner", she has problem when asked to differentiate shapes that has or has no corner (she kept thinking circle has "corner" because her definition of corner was "where two ends meet"!)

5) Craft: I found this series of amazing paper craft books from Daiso for only RM5 each. In each book, there are about 19-22 pre printed pattern to fold and cut. It is fantastic for eye hand coordination and kept Den occupied for hours (especially for times in the restaurant waiting for food!!). We only work on book 1 (it get harder and harder) and look at these fantastic patterns she cut (I can feel my hands are itching! May be I will start cutting on Book 3!):

24 Feb 2011

2011-02-25T00:54:00.000+08:00

Wow Im actually blogging today schooling on the same day! Patting my self on the back! ^^

It was a good school day. Den woke up early at 930am because she was excited about what we were going to learn today (will talk more about this later). I made French Toast for breakfast and while I washed up and cutting vegetables for lunch, she practiced piano.

We started school at 11:30am. We learned a new verse today, week 19 verse -

Seek Ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. ~Matthew 6:33

I taught her a song of this verse we used to sing in church. She learns faster in song and the most important thing is she can remember song much longer than just memorizing verse.

It is not an easy verse to explain, I tried but not sure I did a good job. The two stories we read from I heard Good News Today were good demonstrations. Today we read about Annie Funk, an American missionary in India who was on board on S. S. Titanic. She gave her seat on the life boat to a mother. She die when the ship sank.

Another story about Lucy Jamison, a Chinese Christian who was imprisoned for 20 years by the communists because she refused to denounced her faith.

When Den led the prayer later (we take turn), she prayed that we will be like Annie Funk, willing to give up our lives for others. So I think she is getting the meaning of the verse. ^^

After Bible study and prayer, we watched 7 short science experiment episode about plant from Discover & Do DVD (Sonlight K Science week 17 & 19). We still have not decided if we are going to do the growing bean experiment because with our travelling back and forth, who is going to water our plant for us while we are gone?

After Science, we did review on Chinese. Den still confused about 五(five, she wrote five exactly opposite! mirror image!) and 九 (nine), so I let her wrote this two words as copy work. We also learn 里(inside) and 外(outside) today. She did some worksheets on these.

I read a picture book for her - 世界为谁存在? (Who is the world for? by Tom Pow). Beautifully written but not easy for Den to understand because there are lots of descriptive words.

Last night I went through my bookshelves looking for books for her to read today...since she finished the two we got from SG library...and I found Shel Silverstein' books from my own collection. I never shared with her before because I think it was not suitable for her then.

I choose to read a few poems for her from Shel Silverstein's A Light In The Attic. My book is actually bilingual. So I read the poems in Chinese for her first then I reread in English. She loved them and she tried to "steal" the book from me so that she can read all the poem in English her self. I refused to give it up because once she read the poem in English, she will not let me read in Chinese for her!! Instead, I gave her another Shel Silverstein's book - A Giraffe and a Half. Since this one is only in English. I told her she can read after she finished her homework. She did. Her commented after she read, "this author is just like Dr. Seuss!" Since she loves Dr. Seuss, so I supposed she loves Shel Silverstein too.

After Chinese lesson, we read Mother Goose...we are kind of behind on this (but very much ahead with The Llama Who Had No Pajama, so you can tell which is our favorite!).. so we played catch up today and read 6 pages. We also started on Come Look With Me - Animal In Art.

After that, I introduce CLP LA 103-Lesson 1 to her. It was quite easy, just learning question words like could, would, etc. I let her worked on the worksheets her self (and Yamaha homework) while I cooked lunch - rice with 2 dishes of vegetables. No meat for lunch since we are going to have lots of meat at dinner.

After lunch, we did a very interesting project - the reason for Den to woke up so early and being so good with all the homework and schooling, so that she would have enough time to work on this project before her ballet class - she was going to be a paleontologist today!

Yesterday I brought an Excavation Kit from ToysRus for less than RM16 (after 70% off, I felt like a paleontologist finding hidden treasure already! ^^) Den was super excited about this and cant wait to start on the project even though she knew she wont be able to finish it today. I told her she can work on it if we finished school early today. We did.

The kit came with a plaster pyramid (with treasures hidden in it - a mummy coffin and 4 Canopic jars), tools (Chisel, hammer, brushes) for digging the hidden treasure and 5 tiny pots of paint for coloring the coffin and jars after you dig them up.

It was not easy to chip away the plaster pyramid, after working on it for about 45 min (with some help from me with a real hammer and chisel!), she finally managed to excavated one of the Canopic jar (but not the cap) and she also managed to broke the pyramid into half and the coffin and the other 3 jars are visible now. All four caps are still missing in action.

Yes! Found the first jar!!! Then the next!

The coffin and the other 3 jars are visible now!

I had to put a stop on this at 330pm, so that we can clean up for ballet classes.

After class, we brought duck for dinner (left over will be for the super nice duck porridge! Yum!) and since it was a quite night in and she had not watch any TV for the last two days, I promised to let her watch a cartoon DVD of her choice tonight. She choose Tinkle Bell. I did some house chore when she watched.

After movie, she did her devotion and got ready for bed. I read a chapter of 绿林小子 (The Everygreen Wood by Linda & Alan Parry) for her. It is an adaptation of the Pilgrim's Progress for children. The language is way too deep for Den but she just loves that book, so we have been going through a chapter a night (I have to paraphrase and explain almost every sentence! So a chapter is the most that I can take in a night!!!)

23 Feb 2010

2011-02-24T01:04:00.000+08:00

Den and I traveled back to MLY on Mon (22 Feb 2011). We did not have any sit down schooling but we did review on the road, I still think this is one of the fantastic thing about homeschooling, we usually get our review done during travelling - in the bus, cab, MRT, etc.

We reviewed on 2 & 3 times tables, Chinese- shapes, etc.

She also started and finished Ronald Dahl - The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me in the bus (from the moment we went up the bus til we cross the border, I was very impressed with the speed!...and worry what she is going to read for 2 weeks in MLY) She loved the book and was laughing like a mad lady while reading it. ^^

She started another book - My Naughty Little Sister during dinner but I refused to let her continue after the food was served. If given the choice, she would have read and eat at the same time (and think it is so heavenly....a bad habit learned from....me...)

Yesterday (Tuesday 22 Feb 2011) I had some trouble with my car and spent the whole day pretty much sending her to various classes (2 ballet and 1 Yamaha) and fixing my car problems (that is another interesting story, may be I should blog about it next time...might get arrested by ISA though...).

Den stayed in my mom place between classes. I left a 3 worksheets for her to work on:

1. CLP LA 102 Lesson 11: It is more like a self check than a lesson. It cover the various topics we learned and prepare the student for the test. She answer all the question correctly but make so many careless mistakes that she ended up with only 82/100. For example -when she was asked to underline, she circle! She missed out a whole section even though she knew the answer.

2. Enchanted English Key Stage 1 - I blog about this a few months back when we first started using this (you can read about it here) and have been progressing very slowly because I usually only let her do this when I cant afford to supervise her.

3. Four Times Table.

Today (Wed 23 Feb 2011) was no better than yesterday. In the morning I brought my little niece to the hospital for check up and vaccination. Then afternoon Den went to her eye therapy. So we only had a very small window of time in between. She managed to finished CLP LA 102 test and a copy work. She scored 90/100 because once again she circle instead of underline a whole section...10 marks! And before you asked, yes she know the word underline!!!

She also managed to finish reading My Naughty Little Sister and started and finished Usborne Beginners series - Under The Sea (part of Sonlight Science program). What book should I let her read tomorrow????

At night I read a chapter of a Chinese book before she sleep.

I am looking forward to the next 3 days, we should have more time to study then the past 3 days (crossing my fingers...).

19 Feb 2011

2011-02-20T00:38:00.000+08:00

This is what we did yesterday (Friday):

1. Piano Practice & Yamaha Homework

2. Eye Exercise

3. Christian Story and Prayer: Read a story about Peace from 圣灵水果屋 (House of Spiritual Fruit I)

4. Chinese Lesson -
a. Review Shapes and worksheets on shapes -正方形 (square)，长方形(rectangle)，圆形(circle)，椭圆形 (oval)，三角形(Triangle) - we have been through this so many time but the vocabs dont seems to stick (when she know her shapes in English since she was 2 years old~! )

b. Review - 四 (four)，五 (five)，六 (six)，七 (seven)，八 (eight)，九 (nine)，十(ten)

5. CLP Language Art 102-Lesson 10 - We learned new consonant digraph today - WH

6. English Comprehension Workbook for Primary 1- Hand me down from my landlady. In every worksheets, Den need to read a short story and then work on the corresponding questions (some multiple choice and some open-ended) I let her work on it from time to time (usually when I don't have time to work with her and have to leave her to do her own thing). So far she has not much of problem.

7. One sudoku

8. Copy work

9. Goodtv- Christian value cartoon in Chinese

It was a busy day for me and I did not have much time to sit down and school her, so as you can see, she did more worksheets instead.

We usually don't do any study (except Read Aloud story books) at night because it is the time to spend with dad dad. However, since my hubby was having a very long conference call that evening, Den and I continue to study.

We spent about an hour with a very very good World War I interactive game call Over The Top. It is an online adventure game that allows the player to experience life in the trenches during WW I - the excitement, despair, brutality and sheer horror of trench warfare. The player is asked to make crucial decisions from time to time. The decisions will impact the survival rate of the player. The objective of the game is to make good decision and survive the war.

I really enjoyed the game and at the same time learned a lot about trench warfare (I never like war movie/novels...so my war knowledge is very limited). I thought it show the brutality of war but at time same time it was not too scary...but I was wrong. Den seemed to enjoy the game even though she was very afraid to make wrong decision at the beginning. She was getting rather decisive later into the game. So I thought she was OK with it....until bed time!

She has been sleeping in her room by her self since Oct last year. Hubby and I will stay in her room for awhile, saying thank you to each other and pray together. Then my hubby will leave her room. I will stay with her a bit longer, talking a bit more and then I will give her a foot massage. I will leave her room right after that even if she is not asleep yet. She has no problem with that since last Oct...but yesterday, she told me she was afraid...she can still hear the bomb (sound effect from the game...believe me the sound volume was very low) and her blanket smell like fire!

So I stayed with her until she fallen asleep and I decided not to continue other internet links that suggested by the Children Encyclopedia. She went to sleep by her self just now without any problem. Having said that, I think the links provided by the Children Encyclopedia are very good, so if your child is not as sensitive as Den, you can check out these too:

Animation about WWI

Eye witness account

17 Feb 2011

2011-02-18T01:25:00.061+08:00

This is what we did yesterday (Wednesday):

1. Reading: Den was in reading mood and she ended up spending more than 2 hours in her room reading. We borrowed 5 books from the library last Sat and she finished them all. This is the book list:

Author	Book Name
Sharon Creech	Love That Dog
Alan Durant	Diary of A tooth Fairy
Ronald Dahl	The Enormous Crocodile
Francesca Simon	Horrid Henry’s House of Horrors
Francesca Simon	Horrid Henry shows who’s boss

2. Eye exercise

3. Christian stories and prayer - From I Heard Good News Today, we read about Toyohiko Kagawa, a Japanese seminary student who decided to live in the worst slum of Japan and worked along side with drunkard, gambler, thieves and murderers so that he can share the love of Christ with them.

We also read about how two Indian believers from a remote village longing for missionary to go to their village to share gospels and taught their children about Christ. Finally, after many disappointments, they managed to convince Ezra Steiner, a missionary, went with them to their village and started a church. Years later, there were thousands of believers in that area.

4. History - We read about WWI in Children Encyclopedia. We did not have the time to go into the internet links yet. I'm still debating how in depth I want to go into this. It is going to be a balancing act, I want to let Den understand the cruelty of war and yet I do not want to scare her or make her depressed.

The book Twenty and Twelve came into mind, we should have read it now and not before! It would be a perfect tie in with WWI and WWII. I love that book, I think it balance very well the cruelty of war and the humanity. May be we can reread it.

5. Chinese Lessons -

a. Read Aloud - 露露的恶作剧 (LuLu- Grenadine Fait Des Blagues) It is about April Fools day. I realize I have not been teaching Den some of the sub-holidays (for us!).

I mean she is aware of New Year, Lunar New Year, Easter, Hari Raya (Muslim), Deepavali (Hindu), Thanksgiving and Christmas but not Valentine's Day (just taught her a few days ago), April Fools' Day, Labor Day and, National Day (did I missed anything?) I don't think we need to cover St. Patrick's Day since almost no one celebrate that over here....at least we dont know anyone who do. May be this year, I need to make it a point to put them into our study.


b. Learning new vocabs about Park - Like 公园 (park)，跑步(jogging)，散步 (walking)，运动 (exercise)，休息 (rest).


c. Quiz 听写 - 四 (four)，五 (five)，六 (six)，七 (seven)，八 (eight)，九 (nine)，十(ten)


d. Review Shapes

6. CLP Language Art 102 lesson 9 - We learned "Ve" Rule - If a v come before e at the end of a word, the vowel can be long, short or the sound of /Ə/ - in other word, the vowel before ve is pretty much guess work! ^^

7. Copywork

8. Piano Practice

9. Playground

Today (Thurs) we met up with a friend for lunch. Den did her math home worksheets when we were talking. I checked her work just now, she only make one mistake. This is the question:

A fruiterer sold oranges in boxes. On Monday, he sold 4 boxes of oranges. On Tuesday and Thursday, he sold 3 boxes each day. He sold 5 boxes of oranges on Wednesday. On Friday, he sold 2 boxes. How many boxes of oranges did he sell altogether?

The correct answer should be 4+3+3+5+2= 17 but she wrote 4+3+5+2 = 14 - she either does not understand the concept of "each day" or it is a careless mistake. I have not had the time to talk to her yet. Will go through with her tomorrow.

There is another question she doesn't know how to do. I promised to work with her tomorrow. This is the question:

Tomorrow is Friday and the date is 20 September.
(a) Last Thursday was __________ September.
(b) Five days from today is _______ September.

She just starting to understand how the calender work last month, so this is a bit advance for her.

After lunch we went to the library and borrow 7 books for her. She finished one (Daisy Trouble With Live by Kes Gray) before dinner. I was hoping to bring along 2 books back to MLY next week....but the rate she is going, she might finish all before that. I know I should not complain...but...it is really hard to keep up with her reading in MLY without SG library!

15 Feb 2011

2011-02-15T18:46:00.000+08:00

We did these yesterday:

1. Eye exercise

2. Christian stories and prayer- 2 stories from I Heard Good News Today about H.J. Brown (missionary in China) and 1 story about peace from 圣灵水果屋 (House of Spiritual Fruit I).

3. CLP Language Art Book 2 Quiz 2 - She scored 99% this time. Not very often she get the perfect mark. Not because she doesn't know how to do it but because of careless mistake...like forget to do a whole section....

4. Chinese Lesson -

(a) Review words that we learned

(b) Learn new words, copywork and had a spelling quiz on 四，五，六，七 (four, five, six and seven)

5. English copy work - copy the verse of the week - Remember the Sabbath Day.

6. Piano Practice- she is 3 songs ahead of her class now...Im thinking of talking to her teacher to get extra song for her to play.

7. Watch Goodtv Chinese Cartoon tru internet - The Torchlighters series on Gladys Aylward (艾偉德)- I'm so glad we (I also attracted and watched it with her) decided to turn on Goodtv today! This is a 30 minutes cartoon about missionaries. The story we watched yesterday was about Gladys Aylward, a missionary that saved more than 100 kids in China during WWII. Find out more about her and the series here.

A very encouraging story. I was crying when I watched it. In a world in need of hero, we should all introduce our kids to people like these! It is a perfect tied in with our earlier stories about HJ Brown and our forth coming study on WWI.

8. Picnic at the park - we have two very big and very good parks within walking distance from our apartment and we have not make full use of them! Since we were eating sandwiches for dinner yesterday, Den and I packed them and had a picnic at the park. We also played at the adventure playground, run at running track and studied flowers!

Summary

2011-02-13T22:14:00.000+08:00

Since it is my CNY resolution to blog, I better start now...it is half way tru CNY.

Lets start by summarizing what we have been doing and our progress so far.

(A) Sonlight - We finished Week 17 and now in btw Week 18-19. We detoured so much from the ReadAloud that we just dont follow the schedule any more. We still try to keep up with History and Science.

(a) History - We finished Wild Wild West and Victoria era and going to venture into World War I this week.
(b) Science - We finished animals and for the past few weeks we have been studying about plants. Expect to finish plant this week or next.

(B) Bible -Den has been doing devotion every night by her self. She finished a few children bibles already. Currently she is using God's Little Princess Devotional Bible (by Sheila Walsh) when we are in KL and The Children's Bible in 365 stories when we are in SG.
The Children's Bible in 365 stories is actually a gift from my dad when I was a teen. Now I give it to Den.

On top of that, we continue to memorize verses from Sonlight schedule. This week verse is:

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God. ~ Exodus 20:8-10

Even though it is quite long, she has no problem in memorizing them in just one setting.

Coincidently, today in our SG church adult Bible study we study John chp 7 in which Jews wanted to kill Jesus because they thought Jesus broke the Sabbath law by healing a man on Sabbath day. Jesus in turn asked them why they could perform circumcision on Sabbath and yet He cant heal on Sabbath. I intend to go deeper into this verse and discuss with Den about the meaning of this verse tomorrow.

I also continue to read to her I heard Good News Today (from Sonlight) and 圣灵水果屋 I (House of Spiritual Fruit I).

(C) English

(a) Read Aloud (books that I read to Den) - My Grandma's Attic- I decided to skip a few books in Sonlight list to this book first because I think it would be much more attractive to Den and I am right. She really love the short stories about a little girl (Molly) growing up more than 100 years ago. We will go back later to read the books that we skipped like Doctor Dolittle and etc.

(b) Reader (books that Den read to me) - I mentioned we borrow Sonlight Reader 2 Intermediate from a friends a few months ago. At the time, I was very doubtful Den would be able to read them since those books are recommended for Age 7-9 years old. But she surprised me by finishing them all (except for one) in less than 3 months! Hmm...the next time I order Sonlight 1, I wont be able to order the core curriculum any more since Core 1 only come with Reader 1 or 2!

So for now we have no Sonlight reader to read instead we rely on SG library. Recently she is very into Horrid Henry (by Francesca Simon), Daisy (by Kes Gray), some Ronald Dohl and Enid Blyton. She is reading too fast for me to blog about her reading list. May be I should just write down the name and author.

(c) CLP Language Art 1-She is finishing book 2 this week. We both enjoy learning about all these language rules very much. Since English is not my first language, I actually learning along side with her. Yesterday we learned about when to use CK and KE to spell the ending K sound. CK goes with short vowel sound and KE goes with long vowel sound.

(d) Copywork - She continue copywork even though she doesn't do it everyday. We have detoured from what we downloaded from Teaching You Own (read about this at my previous posting) and I designed my own copywork to go along with what we studied. For example, yesterday, she wrote "photosynthesis produces sugar and oxygen". Her writing has improved significantly since we started in Nov 2010. I am very impressed with how neat is her writing now. I don't have an access to scanner now so I can only scan some of her work next time.

Just a word to my readers who complained about their kids handwriting. Don't push when they are still young, I have never let Den do any copy work until she is almost 6 years old. Very minimum tracing when she was 5. But I let her color (lots of princess coloring books!), lacing, playing with things that require eye hand coordination and all these build up her ability to write.

(D) Chinese
Hubby and I are seriously thinking about sending Den to SG primary school next year for a year or two in order to broaden her social life (...she has almost zero friend here...). We have not make a decision yet and still praying for God's guidance. Any how, since there is a possibility we might be sending her to SG primary school, I really need to push her on her Chinese!!!

After some survey at the local SG bookstore, I realized I need to start her on Nursery Chinese! ^^ So that's where we start. I use the nursery workbooks in conjunction with some of the things we have been doing like 字形画 and 字家族. I also making sure I read to her in Chinese more frequently. Blessedly with my brother working in China, I can ask him to buy back lots and lots of Chinese picture books! We have "imported" more than 70 picture books from China!! ^^

Honestly, her exposure to the language is still not enough. I am still thinking how to expend her exposure. This year our focus is Chinese! (I've to remind my self that every other day...)

(E) Math
We progress slowly but surely on this, I think. She finally can grasp the concept of multiplication (I tried every half a hear or so), so we started last week on 2 and 3 time table.

Besides that, I also let her work on some of the more difficult questions from SG primary 1 math workbook. For example,these are the questions she did yesterday all by her self:

1) Complete the following:

   (a) 9, 11, 13, __, __, __
   (b) 10, 13, 16, __
   (c) 17, 19, 16, 18, 15, __, __, 16

2) If E=5 and J=10, what is N?

3) If D=3 and L=11, what is Q?

4) Kelly has 3 hairclips in her jewellery box. She put 1 hairclips into the box each day. How many hairclips will she have after 6 days?

On top of that, we continue to do sudoku, play lots of different logic games. She always asked me, "are you sure we are actually doing math, mom?" (She just cant believe playing game is math!)

That's all I can think of for now. Very long blog. ^^

Excuses

2011-01-30T12:13:00.000+08:00

Ive not been blogging for awhile. Den's schooling is progressing slowly but surely (I hope!), I just stop blogging about it. My excuses? Well...

1. She has been spending a lot of time reading. Sometime she finish reading 1 or 2 chapters books (or 5-8 picture books) a day. I kind of gave up writing down the titles of the books that she read. She was so into reading, for a while, our schooling actually stop so that she can have more time to read. Thank God for SG library!

2. I've been obsessed with something else...and that took all the time that I had for blogging.

Hopefully now both -her frantic reading and my obsession- have kind of ran their courses and we will be back to more regular schedule...^^ I feel a bit bad for not updating the blog and thus shut my dear hubby out on what we had been doing at home...Chinese New Year resolution, will try to keep up with my blog again!

Lesson with a 3.5 years old part 5

2010-11-17T21:55:00.003+08:00

Please check out the blog archives for previous lessons.

Lesson 8: 11 Nov 2010

1130am-12:00pm Bible: God wants me to be kind

1. Introduce Bible verse and tell Bible story

Introduce Bible Verse– “Be Kind to one another ~ Eph 4:32”
Luke 10:25-37 The Good Samaritan Read from Pray and Play Bible 2 (pg 126)
Sing Good Samaritan song (lyric http://www.dltk-bible.com/t.asp?b=m&t=http://www.dltk-bible.com/songs/cgood_samaritan_song.gif) and act out the story
Discuss: Who is your friend? (Explain that Jesus wants us to be kind and gentle to everyone.)
Talk about physically or emotionally hurt and how we can help.
Pray together and listen

2. P&W

Draw a happy face on Left index finger and a sad face on Right index finger. Sing:

(tune: where is Thumbkin?)
Here is my friend, here is my friend (move sad finger)
She is sad, she is sad
I can be kind and gentle, I can be kind and gentle (move happy finger)
We are friends, we are friends (Put fingers together)

(Tune: if you happy and you know it)
If you’re kind (gentle) and you know it say Amen x2
If you’re kind (gentle) and you know it then your life will surely show it.
If you’re kind (gentle) and you know it say Amen!

1200-1210pm Chinese：
1. Review and learn some new feeling words in Chinese – 高兴/快乐，伤心，生气，害怕，害羞, 紧张

2. Making sentences using the feeling words in Chinese

3. Read Aloud: 露露有些伤心

12:10-12:15 Story: Princess and the Pea (Usborn Young Reader version):
1. Tell the story or listen to CD * Den loves the CD but it was too long and too challenging for the 3.5 years old XE, so we only listened to the first 2 chapters.

2. Center Message: A real princess is Kind & Gentle, Polite and has sensitive skin.

12:15-12:45pm Worksheets:

Princess & Pea hidden object
Good Samaritan Coloring page (for XE)
Good Samaritan Unscramble word (for Den)

12:45-2pm Lunch and break

2:00-2:20pm Craft: Make caterpillar story book for the Good Samaritan story

2:20-2:30pm Phonic: Letter P

2:30-2:45 Individual Worksheets:

Den work on Story comprehension workbook and copywork
En En on Developing the Early Learner Book 1

12 Nov 2010

1130am-1200pm Bible Review
1. watch Video of the Good Samaritan

2. Looking for Bible Verse: Use 6 bandages. On each bandage write one word of the Bible verse. Hide the bandage and let kids look for them. Once they find them all, line them up in order and say the verse again.

3.Game: Draw a sad face on a tissue for each kid. Place the tissues on the floor. At the sound of “go”, kids pick up the tissues and throw them in the air. Ask them to keep their tissues in the air. If tissues hit the floor they keep picking them up and tossing them in the air. As they throw the tissues up in the air have them shout out, “I can be kind and gentle” (need be gentle in action in order to keep the tissue in the air and yet not break it)12:00-12:10pm Chinese:

Review: 害怕，害羞，紧张
Read:方格子老虎

12:10-12:45pm Princess & the pea Review:

1. Retelling a different version from My Own Stories

2. Dressing up and acting out the story

3. Let XE and Den retelling the story using the picture from the book.

4. Introduce different print material used in the Usborn Young Reader – Recipe, map, sign. Introduce other print material- Picture books, letter, magazine, newspaper, advertisement: Talk about the purpose of each items and how it convey the information. Talk about how advertisement try to make its products looks wonderful so that you will want to buy them.

5. Den: Make a chart of all the different type of printing material she see or (can find) in a day:

Newspaper
Magazine
Advertisement
Books

12:45-1pm worksheets

En En: Coloring
Den: maze from pathway

1pm-2pm Lunch and Free Play

2pm-2:20pm Newspaper

1. Learn about newspaper industry from Things that people do

2.Sing Newspaper song
(tune: Farmer in the Dell)
The reporter gets the news x2
Hi ho the reporter
The reporter gets the news

The photographer takes the picturex2

3. New words to learn:
• headline, article, editor, reporter, newspaper, photographer, recycle

• Chinese words –报纸，广告，记者，摄影师

2:20-2:30. Phonic Review

• P word dance with kids

• Use playdoh to make P

23 & 24 Oct 2010

2010-10-24T21:10:00.000+08:00

We did it! We managed to make 22 cupcakes yesterday!! This was the first time we make cupcakes and frosting, so we were a bit worry how they would turn out! They turn out quite cute, like Den, pink! ^^ Den ate 2 of them and we sold the rest to family members and church friends and we manage to collect RM281. That is like RM14 (USD4.10) per cupcake!! DH and I promised to match every dollar Den collected, so all together today we have RM562 (USD165.30) for Mission India!

We almost did not ended up in church today to sell the cupcake. My SIL had premature labour contraction last night, she was admitted to the hospital and I spent the night accompanied her since her hubby, my dear brother is currently working oversea. Thank God that every thing is all right and she was discharged this afternoon.

This morning when Den woke up and realized no one was going to church (I was in the hospital, my mom was exhausted, etc), she started to cry. She really really wanted to bring her cakes there to sell. So my mom ended up brought her to church and she sold all of them in like 15 mins. ^^ She was very very happy she manage to collect so much money for the kids in India.

Yesterday when I praised her for putting some of her weekly allowance (on top of tithing) into the collection suitcase for Mission India, she replied, "This is more important than keeping money to buy toys." ^^

Yesterday we managed finished Sonlight week13 Science. We learned about butterfly and flowers and how the insect carry the pollen from one flower to another. We also did copywork, Yamaha homework and practiced piano. We spent better part of the days making cupcakes.

22 Oct 2010

2010-10-23T02:37:00.000+08:00

I am still sick. I was getting a lot better (almost totally well) before I came back to MLY. Then after I came back, I got worst. Today I was running with slight fever but still we managed to school.

We are in Sonlight Week 13 and 14 for the last couple of weeks. Week 14 Bible verse is really hard -

No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Matthew 6:24)

So I decided to teach Den the same verse in Chinese using the song "一个人不能事奉两个主”instead. She managed to pick it up after I sang it to her a few time .

A sister from my SG homeschooling group has recently attached a copywork file in her blog which coincide with Sonlight K Bible verse. I was so happy when I received it, because I have been thinking of how to teach Den to spell. In her blog, she wrote about how her kids learn to spell simply by doing copywork.

Den did two of her copyworks this week - the first one is Matthew 6:24 but not the whole verse. I just let her copy "No one can serve two masters". Then today she read a short story(included in her copywork) and copy "It is unwise to treat friends badly".

This is how the sister arranged her copywork (For Den, we don't do copywork everyday):
•Monday – verse(s) from the Bible

•Tuesday – short story
•Wednesday - famous quotes
•Thursday – part of a poem
•Friday – journal page

I really like her idea of when you do copywork, you don't just rip a sentence from somewhere. Instead let your kid read the short story or poem, then copy the sentence. You can read more and download her copywork in her blog Teaching Our Own.

We have been studying about Native American, the pioneers, the move from East to West (America) both in History and I heard Good News Today (under Bible & Christian Stories). Today after we finished all the history about this era, we make a tepees, following the instruction given in Living Long Ago (under History).

We also listen to some of cowboys' songs here.

We did not do any new topic in science today, instead we did some of the Internet links on creepy crawlies:
1. Let's Talk about Insect: This one give you a very very lengthy and in depth information about insect. It is suitable for kids but we find too lengthy.

2. Brain Pop On Spiders: A very short animation on spiders.

I also let Den repeat the short vowels sounds lesson in Starfall (if you have never heard of starfall, you should really check it out. It is a free site to promote reading in phonics) because we had started using CLP's language art 101 recently and the first topic is short vowels sound.

After many many months of thinking and rethinking, I decided to buy some workbooks from CLP (Christian Light Publications). It is much cheaper for me to buy workbooks from the local publications, however I cant find one local publication that have a systematic workbooks that cover from K to Grade 6. So I have been buying from various publications and I find this really inconsistent. So after much thought, I finally decided to go with CLP. CLP workbook come with Teacher Guild which is a great help for me.

I bought the LA 101 -110 for Den but I did not buy the Learning To Read series that are supposed to go hand in hand with the LA because I find the Learning To Read series too easy for Den. So far she enjoy doing the workbook and very excited about the quiz! Hahah! She heard so much from her friends about quiz in school that she still does not want to go to school but very looking forward in doing quiz.

She did lesson 3 in 101 today and she is going to do lesson 4 tomorrow. After lesson 4, there is a short quiz (like a review). She cant wait for the quiz, begging me to let her do lesson 4 today. I refused since we were running out of time.

We also did review on some of the Chinese words she learned and read some Chinese books.

For the past few weeks we also have been using a program called My Passport To India. It is a 5 weeks program (every week 2 lessons) by Mission India and Sonlight. After we signed up (free), we received a "passport" (workbook) and a "suitcase" (donation box).

In every lesson, we watch a short video, then we see photo and read facts and stories and testimonies about India and about how God has been working in India. It has been an eye opening experience for Den. She knew some people are poor but she had no idea how poor is poor until she saw how the kids live in slum and 7 people live and sleep in a small one room hut. The testimony from one of the girl who is forced to steal to support her family filled her eyes with tears.

Den really want to help. She has been putting her weekly allowances into the donation box and asked her grand parents to contribute. She also tried to ask her best friend EE to donate but her explanation was too lengthy and EE ran away before Den could finish explaining! ^^

We are going to make some cupcakes tomorrow (1st time making cup cake, so have my fingers crossed!) and will bring them to church on Sunday to sell. We are not going to make much, may be 10 or so. So we don't expect to get much from the sale, however I think it will be a very good experience for Den. I have promised to match every dollar she collected in the donation box. Besides that, Sonlight also going to match every dollar that kids send, up to the USD $167,00 if we send our donation before 17 Nov 2010.

15 Oct 2010

2010-10-15T20:05:00.000+08:00

I'm still sick today. It did not seem to get better...

My throat is better though (even though headache and flu are getting worst), so after piano practice (45 min), I read 3 Chinese books for Den, including 我把哪个部分弄丢了？(What Is My Missing Part?).

This is part of the bilingual books I bought a few months back. I read the Chinese printed text for her, after that she pasted the English text stickers into the corresponding pages. You can check out my previous write up for the other two books from the same series -纸飞机飞到哪里去了？ (Where Is The Paper Airplane?) and 凯文在大海中旅行 (Kevin travels in the sea).

Today's book is about Shapes -圆形(circle)，三角形(triangle)，椭圆形(oval)，六角形(hexagon)，正方形(square)，长方形(rectangle) and 菱形(Diamond).

She knew all the name of the shapes in English, except for hexagon but she only know 圆形(circle), 三角形(triangle)，正方形(square)and 长方形(rectangle) in Chinese. Still need lots of revision after this. I'm still think on how to keep track of all the things that I need to drill her with.

After that she read a lesson from Disney Princess' Reading Comprehension (see the write up here) and answered the questions. She still made mistakes. Looking for answer in the story by her self is still a new thing for her.

After that she did a lesson on Capital Letters (when to put capital letter) in Enchanted English Key Stage 1(read more about that here) and a 3x2 Sudoku. She was much faster in the sudoku today but I still have to sit with her. She spent about 2 hours working on school works today.

I did not ask her to read her reader today because she had been reading a book I bought from garage sales called Magical Stories For 6 Year Old. She read 63 pages already. I think that's enough for a day's reading! ^^ She is obsessed with reading recently, basically will read everything and anything (too bad only in English! When she sees a Chinese book, she will just turn and walk away!!!)

Last night, my DH showed her my blog (she did not know I have been keeping a blog about her schooling), her first reaction was "DELETE ALL OF THEM NOW!!!" After my DH told her it cant be deleted and we did not put her real name in the blog, she was OK with that. Then she started to read my blog! DH said, from now on I got to be even more careful of what I write!^^

Lessons with a 3.5 years old Part 4

2010-10-14T23:51:00.000+08:00

Lesson 6: 23 Sept 2010

1115-1135: Bible Lesson: I’m Precious in God's eyes

• Bible Verse Psalm 119:73 (Learn how to find the book of Psalm in the Bible)
• Im precious little book (Den read)

• Rhymes & Songs:

（Rhyme 1)

God made me special.

He made you special, too!
He gave me ears so I can hear.
He gave me eyes so I can see.
He gave me feet to tap, tap, tap.
He gave me hand to clap, clap, clap.
He gave me legs to walk, walk, walk.
He gave me a mouth so I can talk.
God made me special!
God made you special, too!

(Rhyme 2)
God made people special.
We start as tiny babies.
Then we grow bigger.
Soon we can walk and talk.
And we grow,
and grow,
and grow until we are all grown up!
God made people special!

Song 1: (Tune:London Bridge)
I’m so glad that God made me
God made me, God made me.
I’m so glad that God made me.
God made me special.

I’m so glad that God made hands (hair, feet, etc),
God made hands, God made hands,
I’m so glad that God made hands.
God made me special.

Song 2:
你很特别
管人怎样看着你的脸
你很特别
神爱世人没有分别
你很特别
自信花朵开满心里面
只要相信神造我们
就是很特别

1135-1145: Chinese Lesson: 凯文在大海中旅行：Learn body parts in Chinese

• Read 凯文在大海中旅行

• Sing 头发，肩旁，膝盖，脚趾 (Tune: Head and shoulders)

• Play -Chant: 手对手（脚对脚，肚子对肚子，etc） Boom Ti ada boom, boom (x2)

11:45-12:30 Science: Nature - Read from the Berenstain's Bear Big Book of Science and Nature (under science)

• God made vs Man made
• Craft: Went out door to look for things are made by God and cut things that are made by man from magazines

12:30-12:45 English Read Aloud: Poem, books

12:45-2:15 Lunch Break

2:15-2:45 Individual Time:

• Den: Work on copying Bible Verse and Math worksheet

• XE:

o Sudoku -I used Den sudoku game board 2x2 to teach her the game.

o Worksheet - I started her on Sonlight Developing the Early Learner Level One (under workbook)

Lesson 7: 24 Sept 2010

11:15-Noon Review Bible & Chinese Lesson

Noon-12:45 Using Shape to paint (introduce Shape name in Chinese)- 正方形，长方形，三角形，圆形:

Den's artwork

XE's artwork

12:15-01:00 Clean up

1:00 Lunch and Library

14 Oct 2010

2010-10-14T21:19:00.001+08:00

I am sick. We were supposed to have school with the 3.5 years old XE today but I got throat infection and cant really talked. So we had to cancel school last minute.

Instead, Den and I had a quite day at home.

She practiced her piano (45 min) and did 3 homeworks (about 1.5 hours) -

1. Reading Comprehension - Using Disney Princess Reading Comprehension. I bought this last year but it was too difficult for her then. Now is just nice. She read the story her self and answer the written questions her self.

She has no problem in understanding stories but this is a very good practice in learning to answer question in a proper manner.

2. Grammar -Continued using Enchanted English Key Stage 1 (you can read more about this here). Today is a review on what we had learned for the past few lessons - alphabet order, plurals, present tense, ck ending, magic e (or silence E) and past tense.

3. Sudoku- I recently found a good sudoku for kids in Book Xcess (Amcop Mall, PJ). I cant remember the name of the book now. It cost RM12.90, a bit expensive for a sudoku book...since the one I'm using only cost me RM1!

But I like it that it came in 3 levels - starting with 2x2 boxes, then 3x2 boxes finally normal 3x3 boxes. In each level, the difficulties increased with each puzzles.

Den just started doing the 3x2 boxes. She is not very good at it yet. She understands what need to be done and how to do it but she keep making mistakes, so most of the time I need to work with her.

After that we make a craft (1 hour) - using colorful crystals and make a wind chime. I bought it from a homeschooling garage sales in SG. It only cost SGD1!! This is the 2nd time we worked with these colorful crystal beads, I think we did a good job.

We only had time for the activities above. I planed to let her work on Chinese and Reading but we never make it there....tomorrow is another day! Any way, we had fun staying home. When I asked her can we have another quite day at home tomorrow, just like today. She agreed eagerly. ^^

Lesson with a 3.5 years old Part 3

2010-09-29T01:09:00.000+08:00

Lesson 3: 31 Aug 2010
1. Bible Lesson: The Lost sheep: Luke 15:3-7
a. Read Bible & explain
b. Life Skill Question:

Have you had the experience of being lost?
How do you think you will feel?
What can you do to make sure you wont be lost?
What can you do if you are lost?
Do you know your parents' name and phone number?
v. Roll play

c. Game – looking for lost sheep: I precut paper sheeps and hide them.
d. Read Ps 23
e. Prayer and Listening
f. P & W –

One little two little Sheep (for lyric, see Lesson 1),
Jesus You are my super hero,
轻轻听

2. Read Aloud Story: Sebastian’s Roller Skating (most of the lessons plan are taken from Lesson Pathways LA K)
a. Introduction – explain:

Sebastian is very shy
Roller Skate- Show roller skate shoes

b. Listen to Sebastian story

c. Question to asked after the story:

If you found the roller skates, what would you do? Would you put them back?

d. Sing songs about feeling –

if you happy and you know it do like this (angry, shy, scare, tired, ask kids to suggest )
watch sesame video about Feeling

3. Review
a. 大，中，小，羊，桥, 角
b. Den read “ill” book for En En
c. “G” sound

4. Introduce “S” sound – Sebastian, Skate, Scare, Sad

a.Watch video about "S" in Sesame

All about S http://www.sesamestreet.org/video_player/-/pgpv/videoplayer/0/aceb8e89-156d-11dd-bb51-597ab51d2e81/start_with_s
http://www.sesamestreet.org/video_player/-/pgpv/videoplayer/0/aceb8e89-156d-11dd-bb51-597ab51d2e81/start_with_s
hello Sammy
S you are the best

b. Sing:"A Silly Slippery Snake"
(tune of "If you're happy and you know it")

Oh, I wish I was a silly, slippery snake.

Oh, I wish I was a silly, slippery snake.
Oh I'd slither across the floor,
And I'd slip under the door
Oh, I wish I was a silly, slippery snake.
c.Make a large letter S on the floor using masking tape. Have your child remove his or her shoes and slide on the letter S in his/her socks while making the "S" sound.

5. Lunch Break

6. Activity: Skate

Lesson 4: 02 Sep 2010

1. Bible Lesson: The Lost sheep: Luke 15:3-7

a. Read Bible

b. Watch Animation
c. Game:Sheep Pen
Materials: large sheets or blankets and furniture pieces arranged, as described below

Prior to the game, set up an area where the children can hide, as sheep in a pen. Arrange chairs and/or furniture pieces to accommodate a small group of children. You may need to have a couple of different sheep pens, depending on the number of children in your ministry setting.

i Tell the children that sheep pens are places where sheep are protected from things that could hurt them, like wolves and dogs. In Bible times, sheep would stay in a place surrounded by rocks or wood. There would be one opening, like a door. Shepherds used to sleep in these openings and would guard the sheep with their own bodies. Many times in the Bible, Jesus calls himself the “door for the sheep.” That means he protects us and provides for us.

ii Say: “Today, you get to pretend to be in a sheep pen of your own, safe and protected by your pen and the shepherd, who loves you and would die for you.”

iii. Have the children hide together somewhere, pretending to be sheep. Put a large sheet, blanket, or parachute over the furniture. Have one child pretend to be “the shepherd” and lay at the opening of the pen.

iv. The teacher can say this rhyme: (After a few times, the children will follow along.)

Here is the sheep pen, so big and so wide.

Let’s open the gate to see what’s inside.

1-2-3-4-5!!!!!

Pull the covering off the sheep pen and have children say, “Baaa!”

d. Prayer and Listening

3. Sing 5 little Sheep went out one day
4. Review feeling and learn Chinese word – 高兴，伤心，生气，害怕
5. Review S sound – make G and S with bread
6. Read 我不要睡觉
7. Learn to listen to instruction and the important of following instruction
8. Go to Library

Sept 28 2010

2010-09-29T00:37:00.000+08:00

Today is the busy Tuesday.

Den spent last night in my parents house and I only picked her up before her ballet class in the afternoon. In between ballet and Yamaha, she only had the time for her eye exercises and practiced piano.

After Yamaha, before bedtime, we had one hour of school. We are at Week 13 Sonlight Science and today we studied about Creepy-crawlies. She spent most of her time drawing in her science notebook different types of creepy-crawlies.

After that we read a chapter from Dolphin Treasure. I've skip some of the ReadAloud books from Sonligth K because I find some of the books like Family Under The Bridge has too many unfamiliar words and too much descriptive words. Plus after the not so enthusiastic read with the Hundred Dresses and The Light At the Turn Rock, I decided to skip the book for now and keep it for later. Instead we jump to Twenty & Ten (about WWII), Dolphin Adventure and now Dolphin Treasure. After Dolphin Treasure, I will jump back to Mary on Horseback (all books mentioned here is under Sonlight ReadAloud 1 & 2).

Den have picked up in her reading. She has been reading so many books per day that I wont bother to blog about them here, I just cant keep up! I also borrowed Sonlight Reader2 intermediate from a friend. It is a big jump for Den from Read 1 to Reader 2 intermediate but so far so good. She finished the first book, Clara and the Bookwagon without any problem. 2nd book, The Long Way To A New Land has more unfamiliar words like Emigrants but so far she has not much problem in reading it too.

We also has been working on a book we borrow from SG library called Math Magic For Your Kids (under Math) - it teach addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. So far we only finished addition and with some of the technique taught in the book, Den can add much faster now. For example 9+7, she will add 10+7-1. 11+8, she will add 10+8+1. She actually think this is super fun and wanted me to drill her often. ^^

Lessons with a 3.5 years old Part 2

2010-09-25T02:22:00.000+08:00

I like to repeat my lessons espcially for the younger kids, So Lesson 2 is closely related with Lesson 1. For Lesson I please click here.

Lesson 2: 27 Aug 2010

1. Review Bible Lesson

– The Lord is My Shepherd: Psalm 23 Part II *check coloring homework

a. Review memory verse

b. Dramatized

c. P&W- Den lead including“One Little Two Little Three Little Sheep”

d. Prayer & Listening

e. Craft: using Bread & round biscuit to make sheep shape

f. Drawing a sheep game (rolling dice)- roll one draw the head, roll two draw ears, etc etc and see who can finish drawing the whole sheep first! Fun to play, see game instruction here: http://www.daniellesplace.com/html/psalm231sample.html

2. Review Three Billy Goat

a. Den using Puppet retelling the story

b. Retelling the story in Mandarin

c. Learn Chinese word –大，中，小，羊，桥, 角 - I used 字形画 (Chinese words come from pictures, so I tried to draw out the picture and show Den and XE how the word came about. I find this help them to remember the Chinese words better).

3. Review – the sound of "G" (for XE) & "OA"(for Den)

4. Companion Rhyme: Jack and Jill -a nursery rhyme in which the characters, like the goats, are attempting to make it up the hillside and have difficulties;

a. Read the familiar rhyme

b. Introduce word family "ill" - Read a small book on "ill" - you can download this for free here.

5. Lunch break

6. Craft: make Sheep - pasted Cotton on sheep's picture and make a very pretty sheep!

7. Review –

a. Bible Verse The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want

b. Bible Concept – God is our good shepherd, He take care of us.

c. 大，中，小，羊，桥, 角

d. Sound of G & ill

Lesson with a 3.5 years old Part I

2010-09-24T02:19:00.001+08:00

I started homeschooling a friend's 3.5 years old dd, XE about a month ago. My friend send XE over whenever we are in SG.

Since a few of you have kids around 3-4 years old, I think you will be interested in what I did with XE and Den. Thus, I decided to share what we did here with you.

2 years is quite a big age gap (Den is 5.5 years old). Sonlight K will be way too difficult for XE, so I decided to reuse some of the Sonlight Pre K materials. I also need to make it more hands on which is really fun for Den. Since we started Sonlight K, other than Science experiments and lapbooking, we did not do as much hands on stuff as we used to.

This is our rough schedule -XE usually arrive around 11am. She will play with Den for 15-30 min. After that, we have lessons together until 1pm. 1-2pm are lunch time, follow by 15-30 min of play time. We have individual study time for around 30 min before XE goes home around 3pm.

We had 5 lessons so far. This is what we had done.

Lesson 1- 24 Aug 2010

1. Bible Lesson: The Lord is my Shepherd Part I – The Good Shepherd

a. Psalm 23– what does a shepherd do?

b. Great dramatization from http://ministry-to-children.com/god-is-our-shepherd-preschool-lesson/:

While reading Ps 23 aloud, I acted as Shepherd and Den and XE as sheeps. First, I walked my sheeps (Den and XE) through the “green pastures,” and let them lied down to rest for awhile. After that I led them to the "quite water" and let them "drank" water.

For the Valley of Death, I lined up a few chairs and put a blanket to cover it. I led them crawl under the chair. We said prayer together using Ps 23.

c. I found a mini book online and printed it out - Den read for XE...dont seems to be able to find the link again...sorry.

d. P&W- Den lead a few songs including the song below:

“One Little Two Little Three Little Sheep”(to the tune of “Ten Little Indians”)

One little, two little, three little sheep

Four little, five little, six little sheep

Seven little, eight little, nine little sheep

Ten sheep loved by the Shepherd

One little, two little, three little children

Four little, five little, six little children

Seven little, eight little, nine little children

Ten children loved by the Jesus

e. Praying

f. Listening

2. Story Time: Three Billy Goat: (most of the idea taken from http://www.lessonpathways.com/)

a. Talk about Goat -show kids real pictures of goats and share some facts about goats before hearing the story (such as where goats usually live, what goats like to eat, body parts such as horns and hooves, what sound they make, etc.).

• Different btw Goat and Sheep http://www.sheep101.info/sheepandgoats.html :

• Look at their tails
o A goat's tail goes up (unless it is sick, frightened, or in distress).
o Sheep tails hang down and are often docked (shortened) for health and sanitary reasons.

• Foraging behavior
o Goats are natural browsers, preferring to eat leaves, twigs, vines, and shrubs. They are very agile and will stand on their hind legs to reach vegetation.
o Sheep are grazers, preferring to eat short, tender grasses and clover. Their dietary preference is forbs (broadleaf weeds) and they like to graze close to the soil surface. Goats like to eat the tops of plants.

• Behavior
o Goats are naturally curious and independent, while sheep tend to be more distant and aloof. Goats will seek shelter more readilty than sheep.
o Sheep have a stronger flocking instinct and become very agitated if they are separated from the rest of the flock.

• Horns
o Most goats naturally have horns. Some goats have beards. Goat horns are more narrow, upright, and less curved than sheep horns.
o Many breeds of sheep are naturally hornless (polled). Some sheep have manes. Sheep tend to curl their horns in loops on the sides of their heads.

b. Introduced the the story , explained that in this story, although goats can be real, there is another character in the story who is not real- a troll (Dont make the troll too scary, young kids might get frighten).

c. Read the story

3. Introduce letter "G"
a. Introduce the sound “G” – Goat, Gruff

b. Printed mini book "G". Den read G book for XE http://www.dltk-teach.com/minibooks/g/index.htm (Im just showing one of the pages here)

c. Watch letter G in Sesame street http://www.lessonpathways.com/Pathways/Detail/11399/letter-of-the-day-game-show

4. Individual Worksheet

a. Den work on

a G maze http://www.printactivities.com/Mazes/LetterMazes/Letter_G_Cap.html
read OA sound in Phonic Picture dictionary
learn to spell Goat, Toad, Road, Coat, Boat, Soap

b. En- color G http://www.crayola.com/free-coloring-pages/print/alphabet-g-coloring-page/

5. Lunch break

6. Retelling the story: Using fingers puppet http://www.dragonsaretooseldom.com/script-billgaotsgruff-patterns.html

7. Craft

Using playdough on pre-printed story related mat. This is my favorite part of the lesson. Check out this wonderful playdough mat here http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/1246-1250/sb1246.html;

Use playdough to make a G, review G sound

8. Chinese story Read Aloud– 露露的拯救玩具大作战

9. Poem Read Aloud – Outside the line - one of my favorite book of poems, this is one of the example:

10. Science Read Aloud –The Berestain Bears'Of Science And Nature (under Science) - Big Book Berenstain Bears Nature Guide

11. Review –

a. Bible Verse The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want

b. Bible Concept – God is our good shepherd, He take care of us.

c. Goat vs Sheep

d. Sound of G

e. Homework – coloring & G Mini book