Strengthening Command of Number Recognition/记密码

Age: From 3 years old

Objective(s):
1. To train the child's ability to remember numbers and to pay attention.
2. To strengthen the child's command of number recognition.


Materials:
1. 3 sets of 3 groups of 4 numbers
2. 1 tray

Directions:
1. Write a group of 4 numbers on a piece of paper and ask you.

2. Show it to your child on a tray for 5 seconds and read it to him.

3. Ask your child to repeat the number after you.

4. Then ask your child to help you remember it.

5. Keep the paper and ask your child to repeat the group of number.

6. Repeat step 1-5 with another set of 4 numbers.

Tips:
If your child have difficulty, reduce the group of 4 numbers to group of 3 numbers.

Additional Information:
I got this idea from a Chinese child's activity book. A good memory is a form of intelligence highly valued by the Chinese. Many of the Chinese's way of learning involves memory training. Learning the Chinese language is in itself a memory training from childhood, since all the Chinese characters must be memorized. The Chinese way of training a good memory has been labelled as rote learning stifling to a person's creativity. I agree and I also disagree. I do not actually think so, as I have seen many creative ideas and also in the Chinese activity books for children. I think though the real danger of rote learning is that over-doing it kills the joy of learning for life.

I think it is important to strike a balance. The challenge is that it is not easy to strike a balance. I don't think that the Chinese approach has managed to strike a good balance. I do think that in general, the Chinese approach is too heavy on the rote learning, which is why I am such a believer in Montessori philosophy of learning. On the other hand, I do think that memory training, and thus rote-learning, has its place and value. Many things have to be committed to memory first, before it can be internalized. One such example is learning the time-table. One should not have to think too long to say out the answer that 2x2=4 or 12x12=144, for example. The only way to do so is to commit it to memory.

On the other hand, too much rote learning kills a child's desire to learn. This is the last thing I would want for my child. It does not matter how fast or how slow Joshua learns, as long as he cultivates a love of learning for life. I think this game is a good way to train the brain's agility. I would like to try it with Joshua. However, if he finds it boring or kills his joy for learning, I will stop.

Updates 4.6.2012:

I tried this today on Joshua. It was very useful in that it showed me which number he has mastered and which numbers he still needs more practise. As the numbers are not ordered in ascending order, Joshua could only say out the number 1 and 3 correctly all the time. For the rest of the numbers, he got it wrong sometimes. He could get the number 1 to 5 right, because they have been arranged in order in the past. This suggest to me that he is saying the numbers not so much by recognition, but by the order.

He also used this activity to trace the numbers. However, this activity wasn't so useful as a memory game yet. When I hide the set of number after showing to Joshua for 5 seconds, Joshua could not quite figure out that I wanted him to say out the numbers without seeing them. He only got it right some of the time. He also quickly lost interest and wanted to move on to the other Montessori water-play.

Easy Colouring Activity

Age: From 3 years old

While waiting for me to prepare breakfast, if I remember, I will try to occupy Joshua with colouring activity, so that the time is not wasted in waiting.

According to the book, On Becoming Preschoolwise, colouring is a good activity to train Joshua's character development in patience and perseverance, and I agree. But it is not always an easy task, and can be an uphill task sometimes. It requires consistency and determination from parents, but I will try my best.

Colouring is also a good activity for preschooler to practise pencil grip and control, which is a pre-requisite skill to writing.

If your child doesn't like colouring, you can try this.

Montessori Activity: Playing Hide-&-Seek with the Stop-Watch (3D)

Idea adapted from the book "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children"

Age: From 2.5 years old

Objective(s):
1. To stimulate the development of phonemic awareness in children.
2. To further train your child's ability to focus their attention on specific sounds of interest.
3. To develop the child's ability to concentrate and focus.

Materials:
1. Ticking clock, alarm clock or stop-watch
2. Blind fold (optional)

Directions:
1. Show the child the stop-watch, start it and let him be familiarize with the sound.

2. Stop the watch and tell your child that he should cover his eyes, while you are going to hide the stop-watch.

3. While your child's eyes are covered, find a hiding place for the stop-watch and start it.

4. Ask your child to open his eyes, listen very carefully and try to locate the stop-watch.

5. During the search, everyone must be as quiet as possible.

Tips:

For younger child or child who is not so sensitive to stop-watch, try hiding a musical box until the child is familiar with this game. Then re-introduce the stop-watch.

Additional Information:
It takes discipline to introduce language activities to Joshua. I haven't been that discipline and consistent with it, as I find the Maths activities more fun and interesting to implement. But I will persevere on. This is quite an easy activity to do, so I will try to do this tomorrow.

Actually, I believe this activity would be also good for children with ADHD, to train their concentration skill.

I highly recommend this book "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children" by Marilyn Jager Adams et al from Amazon. It provides a very organized approach to teaching language, which I like:

Montessori Activity: Training Ability to Listen to Series of Sounds (3B)

Idea from the book "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children" by Marilyn Jager Adams et al

Age: From 3 years old
Objective(s):
1. To develop the memory and attentional abilities for thinking about series of sounds and the language for discussing them.

2. To stimulate the development of phonemic awareness in children.

Materials:
1. Actions with Objects that make interesting and distinctive sounds such as
- banging on wall/table/lap
- blowing
- blowing a whistle
- blowing nose
- clapping
- clicking with tongue
- closing purse
- colouring hard on paper
- coughing
- crumpling paper
- cutting with scissors
- dropping (various things)
- drumming with fingers
- eating an apple
- folding paper
- flipping newspaper
- hammering
- hopping
- noisy chewing
- opening window or drawer
- pouring water
- ringing a bell
- rubbing hands together
- scratching
- sharpening a pencil
- slamming a brook
- smashing crackers
- snapping fingers
- stamping
- stirring with teaspoon
- tearing paper
- tiptoeing
- turning on computer
- typing on keyboard
- walking
- whistling
- writing on blackboard
- writing with a pencil

Directions:
1. Ask your child to cover his eyes and listen very carefully without peeking, while you make a familiar sound such as closing the door, sneezing, playing a key on the piano, etc. Make only one sound and ask your child to identify just one sound.

2. Once your child has caught on the game, make two noises, one after another. Ask your child to guess the two sounds in sequence saying, "There were two sounds. First, I heard a ____, then I heard a ____." as advised by the book.

3. After your child has become quite good with pairs of noises, produce a series of more than two for him to identify and report in sequence. Complete sentences should be encouraged.

Tips:
1. With your child's eyes closed, make a series of sounds. Then repeat the order, but omit one of the sounds. Ask your child to identify the sound that has been omitted.

2. Invite your child to make sounds for you to guess.

3. This game is good to review your child's use of ordinal words such as first, second, third, middle and last.

Additional Information:
I will be doing this activity from Marilyn Jager's book "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children" with Joshua. I highly recommend this book:

Montessori Activity: Training Ability to Listen to Sounds (3A)

Idea from the book "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children"

Age: From 2.5 years old

Objective(s):
1. To stimulate the development of phonemic awareness in children.
2. To train your child's ability to focus their attention on specific sounds of interest

Materials:
Recording of various sounds such as:
- Birds chirping
- Buses passing
- Cars
- Clock ticking
- Dog
- Water dripping from tap
- Fan turning
- Footsteps
- Hair-dryer
- Motorcycle's engine
- Ocean waves
- Rustling of tree leaves
- Scissors cutting
- Swallowing
- Train
- Voices
- Washing machine
- Wind

You can download for free evaluation of the sounds here: www.sounddogs.com

Directions:
1. Start by talking about the difference between listening with eyes closed and with eyes open.

2. Ask your child to close his eyes and listen for a few seconds or 1 minute (depending on the age of your child. For younger child, start with only a few seconds and gradually build up). Your child will listen to the sounds in his surroundings or play the MP3 player.

3. Thereafter, invite your child to name the different sounds that he heard. He will quickly learn to listen actively.

Tips:
Repeat this game in a different location.

Additional Information:
According to the book, "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children" by Marilyn Jager Adams, Barbara R. Foorman and Ingvar Lundberg, the goal of this game is to develop the child's linguistic awareness in a way that cognitively prepares them for learning to read and write. The children are asked to listen to many everyday sounds. Through this game, the children will discover that if they pay attention and listen, they will b e able to hear sounds around them.

This book provides even a suggested schedule on how to introduce the phonic activities for kindergarten children. The whole program takes about 8 months. I highly recommend this book:

You can buy ready recorded sounds for convenience from Amazon below:

or you can download for evaluation for free from this website, which is what I do, since Amazon does not sell to our geographical region:

http://www.sounddogs.com

This year, I am focusing on Maths and Language with Joshua. I believe that this game can be started with younger children of 2 years old, but I didn't have the time to explore that then, being a working mom, as our last year curriculum concentrated on Montessori Practical Life.

This game is actually very similar to the Montessori's Silence game. Joshua had tried this today for the first time. I tried to make action to go with the sounds, incurring lots of giggle and laughter from Joshua. He found it fun. He could guess the sound of cars and voices of people easily from the recording. He could not guessed so well the sounds of birds, thinking that they were ducks. He mistook the sound of waves to be the sound of cars. He guessed correctly the sound of scissors cutting only after I made the cutting handsign to go along with the sound. Similarly for the sound of wind. He could not gues the sound of footsteps and clock. After listening to the recording of clock, we went to his playroom to listen to his clock. It made him more aware and interested in listening to the real clock, after this activity. After today, I think it has made him more aware of the different sounds in our surrounding. I am following the suggested programme schedule by this book and will be repeating this again soon.

References:
Phonemics Awareness in Young Children by Marilyn Jager Adams, Barbara R. Foorman and Ingvar Lundberg
http://www.sounddogs.com/

What to Do If Your Child Does Not Like to Do Colouring?

Colouring is an important pre-schooler's activity, as it helps them to practise pencil grip and control. It is precusory to learning to write. It also teaches patience and determination. The book "On Becoming Pre-Schoolwise" by Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam wrote that colouring and puzzles are some activities that would teach a child attention span and concentration skills, which are very important skills, when starting school. And it has to be developed from young.

Recently, I am vexed that Joshua doesn't seemed to be taking any interest in colouring activity. I have been trying to find ways to encourage him, and today I have made some head way. I hope it will continue, and I will add to this post more strategies on what to do, if your child does not like colouring.

Here are some ways that worked for me:

1. Start Bedtime Routine Earlier

Start the bedtime routine earlier, so that it leaves you enough time to squeeze in colouring activity, before your child goes to bed. Most children would not want to go to bed and sleep. So I will give Joshua a choice - Do you want to sleep now or do just one more page of colouring. Given the choice of going to bed and colouring, he would choose colouring anytime.

2. Use Oil Pastels

I gave Joshua colour pencils and wax crayons, but he didn't like it. The colours were too bland and not rich. He lost interest. Actually I lost interest too. Joshua never did complete his colouring. Below is one such incomplete work.

Then I remember that when I was a child, I used oil pastels to paint, and I really enjoyed it. Thus, I bought this for Joshua from Singapore. I tried it today, and it was an instant hit. For the first time, he completed colouring his sheet (of course, the fact that I timed it just before bedtime helped).

This is what he coloured today. I started him off by helping him to colour the mother duck. Joshua (2Y11M24D) coloured the duckings, the water, the grass and the flowers. It was the first time, that he actually completed colouring the whole picture!

Joshua clearly prefers oil pastels to wax crayons or colour pencils. Oil pastels' colours are much more vivid and blendable. It has inspired Joshua to sit and colour. I highly recommend it, if you want to encourage your child to enjoy colouring activity. You can also buy it from Amazon below:

3. Do Colouring Yourself

Lead by example. Initially, I was simply giving instructions to Joshua, "Joshua, please colour this. You should colour here, etc." This is because I wanted him to be independent and do things himself.

It suddenly don on me that maybe, I should start doing it myself, and hopefully it would inspire him. So today, I started by first colouring the mother duck with the oil pastels. In the process, I wanted to teach Joshua that colouring can be fun, and that it gives great satisfaction to see your completed work. It seemed to have worked. When I handled the oil pastels to him, he began to colour it with more attention and care.

4. Discipline

The book "On Becoming Pre-Schoolwise" by Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam recommends that if your child is not happy about doing a proper job by colouring a sheet properly, but simply scribble the picture in 30 seconds and jumping on to the next picture or activity, give him back a new sheet with the same picture and ask him to colour it nicely. Set the timer to 5 minutes, and tell him that he cannot leave, even if he has completed the work. He has to sit there until the timer goes. After a few rounds of repeated sheet, he would know that he won't be able to get away. The child would then sit down and take the time to colour properly. I tried this method with my 4 year old nephew in Singapore and it worked. Upon giving him back the sheet with the same picture to colour again, he did a perfect and beautiful job, colouring the picture fully and within the lines.

5. Pray

Lastly and most importantly, I always believe that you can have a plan, but pray hard to God to change the heart of your child from the inside. You must do your part to encourage and pray and ask God to do His part too. Pray also for wisdom from God to find strategies that would work for your child. Pray also for patience and His peace to surround you. I have been praying for a week, and today, I had a break-through with colouring with Joshua.