Life and learning

The CNY holidays went by like a blur for me. Although there wasn't much visiting to do (thank goodness) and since I am not really a fan of the festivities, I was quite glad that it was over and done with so quickly. On the household front, I have been maidless the last 2.5 weeks, due to the transition of the previous maid moving on to new employment after 4 years with us and awaiting the new helper to arrive. The daily routine was taxing; having to wash, iron, clean, trying to manage some craft orders, administrative matters for myplayschool.net, as well as care and cleaning after the 2 boys in the house.

After this maidless experience, I realised that it is still manageable without a full time maid at home, as long I am willing to survive with less than 5 hours of sleep daily, less time for crafting and I have to be willing to close an eye to the mess in the house.

Home-learning took a back seat for the time being, but with literature based learning methods, I still managed to do quite a bit of read-alouds daily and some lapbooks with K. We are still taking it easy on the academic front, no rush on learning to read, writing or math. His school has been quite pro-active in developing these skills, as K has been bringing home Rigby readers and Chinese readers from school and homework for handwriting practice weekly.

Just a couple a months back, I told K that we will be doing more hand-writing activities at home but he exclaimed that he will not do it at home, but only in school. Somehow, thanks to 'homework' from school, it has managed to change his attitude towards hand-writing practice at home. He told me earlier this evening, "I like homework," and asked for more tracing activities to do. I actually had to get him to stop after a while and told him to go and play instead 😉

hw1

For one that tends to fancy rainbow shades in his colouring, he has finally decided that he will colour things in their appropriate shades, i.e., apples will be red. I am not sure if this can be considered a milestone, since he is always given lots of freedom in his 'artistic expression.' Maybe the teachers in school have something to do with that…hmm…

hw2

I am still not fully an advocate of Susan Striker's theory of being totally anti about colouring books. An interesting quote that I have came across from her site about colouring books and kids.

"Coloring books take away the opportunity for the children to show their interpretation of the world. To create a coloring book picture is to conform to the adult version of the way the world is. Thus, coloring books are obstacles to artistic development. They prevent children from expressing themselves creatively, deny parents the opportunity to delve into the psyche of their children, and stifle the creation of original art." (Jeff Passe "Throw Away Those Coloring Books" Mothering, Winter 1986)

So true, but at the same time, I think colouring has got its benefits. I never buy colouring books for K ever, but he does get to do a fair bit of colouring from school and sunday school. Colouring, to a certain extent, helps develop discipline and a respect for rules and some conformity. And since I plan to put K through the local school system, some conformity needs to be taught.

Too much of colouring books will not develop an imaginative artist and it definitely should not be the only 'art' experience that a child has. Kids should be given more time to freely express themselves open-endedly with different mediums of art, and spend less time on colouring books.

Anyhow, K is still allowed the colour anyway he wishes to and I still will get Susan Striker's anti colouring book when he turns 5+, despite the fact that he is not turning out to be much of an artist.

Share it:

Related posts:

Family Art

K loves this book that we recently borrowed from the library; 

And he has been singing the catchy tune of the song 'Dem Bones', which is actually a song about the valley of dry bones from Ezekiel 37 :

"The toe bone connected to the heel bone,
The heel bone connected to the foot bone,
The foot bone connected to the leg bone,
The leg bone connected to the knee bone,
The knee bone connected to the thigh bone,
The thigh bone connected to the back bone,
The back bone connected to the neck bone,
The neck bone connected to the head bone,
Oh, hear the word of the Lord!"

We did a family activity this morning relevant to this book. I traced an outline of dh's body, dh then traced my body outline and then followed by K's.

bones2bones3

 

Dh went on to sketch the detailed skeletal structure of the bones inside the body drawing, while K got busy adding in all the other details. 

bones4 

bones8

 

K knows where is the neck and back vertebrae and the Fibula (the smaller lower leg bone) Tibia (larger lower leg bone) and loves to re-enact the drama of how the skeleton in the book kicks another skeleton's Tibia (or in the shin).

bones7

 

I absolutely love books that we can all learn and play from! 

Share it:

Related posts:

There more to just learning how to read

Having a website on home-learning with kids made me realise how much focus parents place on certain areas when it comes to educating a child.

When we write about topics on general education; e.g., learning how to read (especially), the page views are all time high. Even topics of Math learning are less of interest versus articles about learning how to read.

Is learning how to read the panacea to educating a child? Hearing from a perpective from a middle aged lady with grown up children (my mom), she thinks that the child will be able to learn everything once they can read. Not to be-little her knowledge or her attitude towards child rearing, but I beg to differ.

golf3

Recently K surprised me by reading out the word 'GO' on a road sign. I have been teaching him the alphabetic principle and he knows almost 75% of the alphabet sounds, and somehow, something clicked in his understanding of how letters blend together to make words. He is showing signs of reading readiness and probably some parents in this situation might plan a full curriculum at home to ensure that he is exposed to sight words and will give him lots of new letters to learn and blend. Or maybe even reading the same books repeatedly and daily so that he will soon be able to read a 32 page book aloud by himself.

Am I not excited discover this development or motivated to hasten the progress? Indeed I am pleased to see some 'fruits' of my labour in my home-learning with him, but nothing much has changed. I still plan to take it at snail's pace, ensuring that he thoroughly enjoys the learning the remaining 25% of the alphabet sounds, read lots of new books every other week, play lots of learning games and have still plenty of time for free play. In reality, we spend less than 1.5 hours a week (cumulative) on home-learning.

golf4

Some might think that this almost like mis-representation for someone who has a home-learning site. Shouldn't home-learning be done on a daily basis to ensure that the child acquires the learning? For a young child, learning sessions are best managed within 15-30 minutes each time and will be most effective when it is child-led. In other words, K needs to be in the mood to do the learning activities, and his interest and learning is most effectively acquired when he is the one that initiates the activity.

I place his learning activities in file drawers in his room, and he helps himself to the activities whenever he feels like playing with the 'games'. For K, all these learning activities are games and not work. Every once in a while, when I feel that I need to allocate some free play time to learning, that's when I will initiate for him to do some activities with me. So far, this method works brilliantly for K. 

There is really so much more than to learning how to read. Reading is just a small part of educating a whole child.

We have started listening to Bach in the car, will then slowly progress to Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikowsky, Handel and Debussy. Read books on how honesty is important, how helpfulness is a virtue, learning how to respect others and himself, share and develop self-control. We are exploring new mediums to use in art, spending less time in craft. His art is still looking like multi-colored large blob plus lots of squiggles, and I have to make a point to remind myself that is the process and not the product that matters.

We will be resuming our nature walks on Saturday mornings, going for more excursions and spending more time talking about the wonders of God's creation, as well as our Creator's unrelenting love for us. Spend a more time dabbling in science experiments, training him to dawdle a little less and help around the house a little more. Reading books and more books on new concepts, countries, people of different cultures and creating lapbooks to accompany the books.

He can't read a 32 page book by himself (regardless of whether it is a brand new book or a book that he has seen countless of times). Neither can he read a simple sentence, as the only word he can read at this moment is 'Go'. He can't count to 100 either, in fact, not even 11-20 without getting the numbers mixed up. But he can recognise rhyme, knows the beginning sounds to words, knows spatial relationships, classification, patterning and one-to-one correspondence, and progressively, more concepts. Nonetheless, I am certain that he is having lots of fun doing all of that.

golf1

He can hit the golf ball fairly well with his golf clubs and manage a simple tennis volley with his grand-dad. Sports is still an area where I have yet to determine if it is his gift or just advanced motor skills, but I will be making sure that he will be spending a little more time in that area to ensure that he does not grow to become a pudgy 6 year old. 

Is there a need for haste when we can both enjoy the bonding and the joy that learning can bring?

This post will serve as a reminder that I should never be caught up in societal expectations or be swayed by what everyone else is doing with their kids.

Share it:

Related posts: