Reading

I've recently been reading articles online and reading about education and many ideas are challenging what i would usually expect. We all know early reading program is in the rage these days, even i bought the "You can teach your baby to read" vcd series. I've been half-hearted about teaching it though, partially cos Eliza is only half interested in the vcds (except when the songs come on). That books series was fun cos it was a flip up book and Eliza loved seeing the pictures in it...so we talk about the pictures, though she flips it so fast i don't quite get to say much.
While Eliza loves her books, i'm not sure i want to push her to start reading so early now. And reading from these books, the time will eventually come when she is ready to learn reading.

i chanced upon this book
A Home Start in Reading by Ruth Beechick

Prereading
"...when and how to begin teaching 'reading'. First let's take up the question of when. That's very important. ...The early starters have read books about how to teach their baby to read. They have labels on furniture, appliances, and doors all over the house. Their baby plays with word cards every day. The late starters are more relaxed. They read books too-the 'late is better' variety. They read to their children. They teach them to cook and garden and help fix the car. And they won't be upset if a child doesn't show a desire to read until age eight or so.

Which of your friends are right? ...In walking between the extremes, we probably lean more toward 'late' than 'early', not because there is anything especially wrong with the early systems, but because we have seen more damage done to the early children. ...but it's too often an over-anxious mother pushing for it.

It is trus that some children can learn to read remarkably early. But the fact that they can does not necessarily mean they should. Should is another question. One school district set up an experiment to help decide this question. Some kindergartners in the district received extensive instruction in reading. Others spent the same amount of time learning science. They melted ice. ...Books and pictures were available for these children if they wanted them, but no formal lessons in reading were held.

What did the school district learn? By third grade the 'science' children were far ahead of the 'reading' children in their reading scores. The reason? Their vocabularies and thinking skills were more advanced. They could read on more topics and understand higher level materials. The reading children, by starting earlier, used up a lot of learning time on the skills of reading, while the 'science' children spent the time learning real stuff. And when they did begin reading, they were older and knew more and learned in a fraction of the time that the others took.

...They drive home the fact that each child has only a limited amount of time in his early years. That time can be squandered in trying to teach reading before the 'optimum' time for it. Or it can be used wisely in teaching 'real stuff' that the child is read for. ...

The real stuff your child learns does not have to be only science. Science is a natural because children are curious about the world around them, and you can capitalize on that curiousity. But you can teach also about music, art, literature, money, work, safety, God, people, and everything else you and your child are interested in.

All such teaching is 'prereading' instruction. It is getting ready for reading. Everything your child learns increases his vocabulary and develops his thinking skills.

Prereading instruction, then, is wider than the whole world. Teach about the cooking and cleaning going on in your kitchen. Teach good eating habits, nutrition, care of teeth. And teach about the stars and the God who made them. Solve problems. "

This is quite a old book...printed in 1985. But somehow i find these wisdom from books such as these really refreshing from the many education 'methods' today. (i'm also reading For the Children's Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay)

God help me to reflect on these things i'm learning so and learn to apply it in our lives.

Randoms

Pear Juice
It's the age of "i want this and i want it now" (sometimes i think we don't outgrow it...how awful). Last night, we were at my mum's place having dinner and her fav thing at my mum's place is the Pear Juice. I wouldn't allow it till the meal is over, else she'll be too full to eat anymore. Somehow, a few more spoons to the end of her meal, she remember it and started asking for it. We had to come up with stories on why she can't drink it yet...and she wanted it so much she broke down into a pitiful cry-plea. I really don't know how to describe it, she wasn't jumping up and down or throwing herself about...and somehow halfway through we all started to find her expression so hilarious we started laughing. Anyway i wasn't going to give in and told her that she's able to drink it after she finishes her meal. amazingly she did. She asked for it again and wow, you should have seen the super-delighted-this-is-the-best-thing-in-my-life-look on her face when i got up to get it and opened it right before her eyes.

Quick cry and stop
There are times when she wants something not the most desirable to play with (like the long plastic rolls, or rice, or water in the cup..) and i'll allow. But there are times when doing or taking or playing somethings are an outright no-no. Depending on her mood and how much sleep she has had, she'll, at the mildest, cry and then stop immediately. At the worst, she'll throw a tantrum...or more like throw herself around and bang her head on the floor. (i come to find that this happens when she is not sleeping enough or when it's close to bedtime)

I think she was crying cos she was using the pen to rip the paper and then draw on the table, so i took the pen away.

And she stopped quite immediately to see the camera.


Play
It's quite fun to see her at play and the really interesting stuff her little mind comes up with.
I think she was walking Lion and getting him to go out to walk.

Nowadays she's talking more and she'll narrate her own play as well...somehow...i don't always understand what she's talking about.

lazy updates

There's too much happening with too little time to update.

Been quite busy doing some design projects at nights but not busy blogging.

In short:

Out to Orchard :)


Daddy & Daughter enjoy nuaing in the ball pit


We loved the outdoor concerts, of music, bubbles and food. We'll try to make it to as many outdoor concerts at botanic gardens as we can :)


We're a family of bus-riders. Goes with practice...so Eliza does quite well on buses.


I've got to plan a bit for Eliza's mini bday celebrations next saturday. Finally am free to do it. phews.

Letter B

We were on letter B for 2 weeks cos there're so many B words!

I didn't find any much B songs cos the star one was Pat-a-cake but i substituted it with the letter E. One or two i tried didn't quite catch with her. as her A song (the A-a-a-a-choo song)

We did Ball, Bubble, Balloon, Boat, Binoculars, Blue, Bean.

Anyway we started the letter B with colouring, as usual, which she'll happily scribble some few strokes for me.


This is our 'wall' which Eliza will paste the words and colouring for me.


Beans were a hit with her cos she could play with it and cook it..and...


Feed Elmo with it...ok it looks like he's intoxicated with green beans.


And we grew the green beans. Not that Eliza could really understand what growing is about till..

few days later when it bloomed. Actually it was a little neglected for the inital days cos i was working and i left the beans outside which made watering more difficult. After that i brought it in and got Eliza to touch the leaves and water the plants.
She super loves watering the plants, it's the water thing. Playing with water is the draw.

Making sure the water got in.

I should try putting these beans in the soil.

Then we folded paper boats like we folded aeroplanes. But silly me saw an activity to put paper boats in water and i did it....not that it lasted long anyway. I think the paper in the activity used was better ones. My coloured papers turned the water purple and yellow!! And it sank quite fast...esp when Eliza, in excitement flooded the boats.


On another day i tried to make plastic ones instead but it didn't look so boaty and i guess she couldn't quite tell from it. Got her to help me paste the sticker.


The fun was in stirring the boats with the stick


we try to water the green beans everyday


Got her to colour stuff to paste on the binoculars. I didn't exactly teach her the word but i thought it was a fun 'toy' to make.

tadaaa!


Bubbles was an activity we did for the week when our kid neighbour comes out to blow bubbles for her...which she super duper enjoys. And she could point out the word bubble for me. haa..i guess it's easier when you like it yah?

It's been fun learning or more like playing with her but i'm still learning to do stuff that's more age appropriate for her, so not too many dramatic or crafty things yet. Look out for letter C soon!

Bye bye pacifier

It's been like 2 weeks that Eliza has not needed her pacifier already. It wasn't all too bad and we didn't go cold turkey either. While the last time i blogged about it she didn't need it for bedtime. The day time nap was a bit difficult but by God's grace came one friday when i couldn't remember where her pacifier got hidden and i didn't want to go out of the room to find the other spare ones either. So i told her i couldn't find it and that she's a big girl now so she doesn't need it. There were some resistance initially but it wasn't really drama enough for me to remember what happened after that.

So it's bye bye pacifier. I threw them away. yays!

She occasionally mentions it these days but i'll say that she's a big girl now and don't need her 'tu tu' which she affectionately calls it. I'll say that mummy/daddy/ah-ma/elmo doesn't eat it either. And she'll say "Elmo mai/mummy mai/ah-ma mai". Last night i heard her say that to herself, repeating the people she knows and saying they don't want (it), i guess.

Letter A

To jump start on some informal formal learning, i started doing "Letter of the Week" with Eliza last week. I've been wanting to do so for a long time, after being inspired by some mums who are doing it..and also to find some activity to engage Eliza in during the day. There are loads and loads of resources available online and it was tough to choose through all of them. ABCand123 is one of them that helped me jump start this whole project.

So we started with the Letter A!

It was a little messy for me initially because Eliza wanted everything in the basket (see the green and white woven basket on the right?) and I didn't have time to explain anything much before she jump started into her activity. Oh well...little excited girl. :P Then i found the high chair too constricted to do colouring or other activities. Still we did start with learning & colouring APPLE. Not that she doesn't know it anyway.

The next day we pasted "A"s that i cut out from magazines to paste on "A". (8Days mag is quite good resource for nice big letters)

It took her a while to get the hang of the pasting, even so i needed to do a lot of guiding.

After that she 自由发挥 and started pasting it on herself and found it quite amusing.


And then slotting into the cupboards....


Weekdays are really rushed after i come home from work, still we manage to have fun with paper Aeroplanes!

She preferred us to throw and then she picks it up for us. She does throw it though she holds the tip of the plane so it doesn't go far...or drops behind her. haha..but we had fun throwing the paper aeroplanes :D


I tried making an apple tree with her but i guess it's not that simple getting her to grasp the concept of making some thing like that. I had to do this in 2 parts/days cos initially she wasn't really getting it and we weren't getting anywhere. (we can do this when she's older next time)
We eventually made the tree though!

She had fun exploring it :P


So we learnt the letter A: Apple, Aeroplane, Ant (i wanted to do some make-an-ant activity but just didn't have the time on the weekday).


She had fun pasting the words and her works on the glass panels and i'll try to review the words with her when i do. Actually, i did quite have fun preparing the 'lesson' and may expand to include other non-letters activities in future. Somehow i also realized that this was more or a platform for her to learn words and do fun stuff cos i realized she does know quite a number of alphabets from baby signing time. Still, there're 26 of them...and we have 1/2 a year more to learn many many things!

More on letter B next week!

The day we super gaigai-ed

Last sunday, we had my SIL's car for the whole day. It was perfect, considering we had quite a bit of places we had to go.

Location 1: Church
It's a sunday right? And we make it for church on time. It was a bit tough trying to get Eliza to wake up. She was still zzzing at 8am! By the time we got out she was still a little dazed.

This is her in the playroom during the sermon time. She'll always promptly tell me to go to the playroom after she's bored out in the church sanctuary. This is obviously her favourite place, even though she'll cling on to me if her friends come in. Ok la, she also does attempt to play but she's the non-aggressor type and giving type. So she'll retreat or give away the toys if her friends want her toys. Love it that she's quite helpful in keeping the toys when we need to leave.


In between we had lunch with my cell at Waraku Pasta at T2 and rushed off to Ww's colleague's son's birthday party. We didn't stay for long though cos by then it was 2pm and Eliza hasn't had her mid-day nap yet. She eventually did fall off to sleep in the car on our way to the next destination.

We decided that since we have the car, we should go to some ulu place that's quite inaccessible unless you have a car. Ww said it was a secret place and surprise but i kinda guessed where we were going to go eventually anyway.

Where is this?


Doesn't look like SG. I would love to have spaces like this for Eliza to run about (and the weather a bit cooler)...and at least she won't be so afraid of walking on grass. After a few minutes she'll be turning around to me and begging "mummy baobao1".

Anyway, this is at the Saddle Club, which i think is near Bukit Timah. There's a cafe there which is quite cozy for some afternoon tea and horse watching. Eliza was taking such a long nap she only woke about 415pm...and we could enjoy our coffee. After Eliza has woke and drunk her milk, we took a walk about and saw horses up close. We saw horses doing their exercises (the trainer makes them run round and round and round this round fenced area), we saw kids riding horses, we also saw the horses grazing at their fenced area.

After that we wanted to go Vivo for dinner but Ww took a wrong turn and we landed up at Scotts road. We thought, since we're so near the Botanic gardens, we might as well make our trip there.

Anyway, Eliza was hanging around this coin slot machine that dispenses fish food and we bought one for her. We wanted to head off to other places but she was so adamant in opening the fish food pack that we just have to let her clear it in the pond.
She enjoyed pouring the fish food and watching the fishes eat, though she only could pour it quite near the edge of the pond so a lot of the fishes were crowding there for a bite of the food.


Later we took a walk in the direction we hardly take, towards the Eco-garden side. We passed by the Evoloution garden which is really quite interesting. Eliza was in her stroller and when i asked her if she wanted to come out to walk around, she told me "No, no, no" it has to be the three times...and i know where it has come from. (me who else)

This is the Eco-pond. Really nice space where people have picnic and play ball in the fields behind. There're black swans here though and some people were feeding the pigeons and fishes with bread. (if you see the white white stuff on the ground)


This water-loving girl wanted to step into the pond but we had to pull her back and daddy found a interesting activity to do. Throw pebbles into the pond.


It was quite an exhausting day, really. By the time we sat down for dinner, all of us were quite spent. Eliza was also not the most cooperative and the restaurant didn't serve any rice, so we ordered spaghetti which was a mess for eliza to self-feed. (she won't let me feed her)
Still it was a fun day!