28 Dec 2009

For the last two weeks, we have been traveling back and forth SG and KL. There is going to be more traveling until mid-Jan. We are pretty much-taking long breaks from studying or just doing whatever we can.

When I was in SG and my DD, Den in KL, I gave her daily assignments like reading (small phonic reader books), math worksheets, Chinese reading, etc, and asked my parents and sister-in-law to help make sure she did them. Well, she did half of what I gave her. Better than expect. :)

We have not been using Sonlight until today. We drove to SG yesterday (missed church again!!). I brought along some Sonlight books with me this time. However, I can't bring too much since we are taking a flight back to KL this Thurs.

We are temporarily staying in a very nice serviced apartment in SG. My DH, ST's company paid for it. Wish we could stay here forever but it is only for a month. So we shall fully utilize it as long as we can.

I didn't want to stay in the apartment the whole day, so Den and I went down to the resident launch to study this morning.

It was a good decision. The launch is very spacious with a nice sofa and no one in there. We have the whole place all by ourselves.

We are still in Sonlight week 3!! Hahaha! Den is so good with the week 3 memory verse now since she has been reciting it for the past month!! It is a good verse to remember though - Obey your parents for everything for this pleases the Lord! (Colossians 3:20)

We always start our study with a memory verse, prayer, and Bible study. However, the Word & Song Bible (under Bible) is too big for me to carry to SG, so I brought along a small comic book published by my church instead. It is a delightful Chinese comic book drawn by a young sister from our church. It is about how we can glorify God in the roles that we play in our lives - big and small - as long as we play them wholeheartedly.

After that, we started our Week 3 Science. We continued reading from the small book - Weather (under Science). Today we learned about the different types of clouds (we learned about this 2 years ago, so it was a good review for both of us), fog, snowflakes, hail, and how lightning and thunder happened. We also did 2 pages of worksheets.

I planned to do the optional activity included in the schedule. However, can't find some of the things I needed here, so I had to skip that and maybe do it in KL next week.

After that, she did a worksheet using Disney Princess Addition & Subtraction Workbook (under math). She is getting really fast with that. I have started teaching her carrying the tens unofficially -- as in I will do it with her whenever the math question required it but haven't let her do it herself. That is the next step in her math study (We are using Qdee's math) but I decided not to go into it yet until she is better with her addition and subtraction. I think she is ready now.

We took a break after that. She played at the outdoor and indoor playroom for a while before we headed for our lunch at the shopping center next to our apartment. One thing I love about this serviced apartment is that it is so convenient. After lunch, I bought some food I needed for cooking soup tonight.

We resumed our study at the resident launch after we put the food back in our apartment. She read one of the small phonic reader books for me. Then I read a Chinese book from 怡学故事列车 (read more about this from my previous post http://homeschoolingmomjournel.blogspot.com/2009/09/for-review-info-on-most-of-books-i.html) for her and we did the activities at the end together.

After that, she did a worksheet from Developing the Early Learner Lever 3 (under Workbook). I planned to let her do 2-3 worksheets but it took her such a long time to finish one, so she ended up only doing one.

We did a craft together after that. It is one of her Christmas presents - Glass Deco Art. We traced the pattern (included) on a piece of plastic using the black liner and after that, we fill in the colors. We need to wait for 8 hours before we can peel the artwork from the plastic and stick it to the window or glass. We are going to peel it off tomorrow morning.

After that, we went to the playroom again. We spotted some puzzles, books, and board games we are interested in when we came in this morning. So Den read a little bit (Barbie on Little Golden Book series!), then we tried to play the Cinderella puzzle, but there were too many missing pieces, so we gave up. We gave up on the incomplete Mastermind too. Finally, we settled on monopoly.

I did not want to play that with her at first because I think she is still too young to play that. We ended up playing for an hour and she was quite good. She can't count the money...too many zeros! I have to help her with that but she has a strategy...at least she claimed that's her strategy (I thought it was just luck!), she brought a whole block of properties and ended up winning the game!! We had to stop playing after an hour because ST was back and we were going out for dinner.

We are going to do that again may be Wed or Thurs. That was fun!

For review & info --For K books - http://www.squidoo.com/booksforK ;
Pre K books- http://www.squidoo.com/ahomeschoolingmomjornel

5 Dec 2009

It was a rather eventful week - both of my brothers came back from overseas, then one left for China again, my dad had a heart operation, my grandpa is hospitalized and in the midst of all these, my DH, ST is busy packing for his job in SG starting middle of this month. We did not have any sit-down and study time until yesterday. However, Den did worksheets and read from Fun Tales (under Sonlight K Reader)(we are down to Book 25, two more to go) whenever she can.

Yesterday, finally, we had time to sit down and studied. We finished off Sonligh Week 2. We did the memory verse, listen to Bible reading (Rebbecca's twins), and did all the Science books for week 2.

We focused on the weather in week 2. The water cycle, windy weather, rainbows, snowflakes, storms, and floods. Other than the Children's Encyclopedia (Under Science), we also started a new book called Weather (under Science). It is a small book from Usborne as well. Colorful and interesting.

We can't do the experiments this week because they focus on the concept of hot air being lighter (don't think I know about that before this!). All the experiments require a heater!! haha! Can't find any heater (lots of AC though) so can't do it. We read about the experiments in the Usborne Science Activities Vol 2 (under Science) and also watched how they raise the hot air balloon in InquisiKids DVD (under Science). I think Den got the idea.

We also did the Science worksheets that come with Science Curriculum and read a Chinese storybook I bought from the Big Bad Book Sales. It is about a little mouse who thought he is not a mouse because he is fairer than all his friends and thus he begins his journey in search of his "true identity". At first, he thought he might be a white cat, then he thought maybe he is a polar bear. At last, he realizes he is truly a mouse and goes back to his home happily.

I bought almost 2 boxes full of books in the sales. It was really wonderful. I only paid RM3 for this book.

Today, we started on Week 3. We have a new Bible Verse that started with "C":

"Children, obey your parents for everything, for this pleases the Lord."~ Colossians 3:20

Den remembers we studied this verse in Pre-K. She was right, we did. In pre-K, we did a shorter version - "Children, obey your parent."

We read one history lesson from Living Long Ago (under History). It talks about the food that Ancient Egyptians eat (surprised to find out it was very similar to what we eat now!) and suddenly we felt like making bread because it talks about how the Egyptians made bread.

So we stop our lesson and proceeded to the kitchen. We ended up baking a coffee cake!=D Have not been baking and it felt good to bake again.

While waiting for the cake to bake, we did the read-aloud. We read 2 pages of mother goose and 3 wonderful modern poems from The Llama Who Had No Pajamas (under rhymes & poem) and we started a new book - James Herriot's Treasury for Children (under Sonlight K read aloud). While I prepared for the lesson this morning, before Den woke up, I already knew she is going to love this book. True enough, she fell in love with the book right away.

It is a collection of animal stories, told from a country vet's point of view. It is also wonderfully illustrated. Today we read a story of two dogs in Only One Woof. Gyp & Sweep were brothers and best friends. Sweep was sold by his owner and Gyp missed him. Gyp was a silent dog, he never ever bark, until one day - one year after Sweep was sold, he saw Sweep in a sheepdog competition and make one bark - "Woof!" when Sweep won the competition.

Sweep came over and the two rolled and played together as if they had never been apart. Den's eyes were filled with tears and she said she was too happy for the dogs.

I told her, real friends will always be friends even if we are separated by time and space....trying to prepare her for separating from her friends when we move down to SG.

After that, we did a chapter in Come and Look with Me: Enjoying Art With Children (under Art). It is actually not in the Sonlight K schedule, I bought it as an additional because we both enjoyed A Child's Book Of Art (under Art & Picture Dictionary) in pre-K very very much.

Come and Look with me is different from A Child's book of Art. We only look at one picture at one time (instead of a group of pictures that share the same theme in A Child's Book of Art). Besides the picture, it also listed discussion questions and the artist's background. So far, we enjoy it very much too.

For review & info --
For K books - http://www.squidoo.com/booksforK(updated 5 Dec 2009);
on Pre K books- http://www.squidoo.com/ahomeschoolingmomjornel