Phonics Activities

At what age a child should start reading?  Even though it is better if she start reading by 6 years, it purely depends upon the individual child. Experts say it may occur at the age between 4 years and 11 years.

 During my primary education, we learnt English alphabets only at the age of 7.  We were taught to memorize the spelling and the previous night of the English dictation days, I used to lose my sleep.  OMG, those old hard days…..So, I started reading only at the age of 10. 

Our language Tamil has a wonderful vowel set, it has letters for almost all the sounds.  But in English, there are only 5 letters in the vowel set. Moreover, the names and sound of English alphabets are different like letter ‘B’ (‘bi) makes the sound ‘bah’. Hence, initially it is really difficult for a child to read or write even if she knows all the alphabets.

Teaching kids the phonics is really a tough job when the names of the alphabets are introduced first. In most of the schools here, the alphabets are introduced not in any particular order. It is neither in the order easy to write nor in the order easy to read. My girl was introduced to the alphabets in a regular order by their names.

I really worried how to teach her the phonics.  I started with her name as most of the experts suggest. “Do you know which letter makes the sound ‘Jah’ as in your name ‘janani’?  It is ‘jjjjjjanani..Letter J.” Then I started telling her the first letters of names of our family members and friends. It’s worked.

 This is how our conversation goes,

“Janu, the first letter of your dad is ‘sssss saravanan’ Letter S.”

 “ Pattu, can u tell me the first letter of vinoth mama?”

“vivivi vinoth mama. Letter V”

“ What is the first letter of your friend Ajitha?”

“ Aah aah ajitha. ‘A’, A for Akshaya, Arjun”.

What is the first letter of ‘Sindhu Aunty?”

“ cccc sindhu Aunty. Letter C" (She pronounced the name of the letter)

“No.  its sssssindhu.  Letter S.”

I am very happy that she is showing the reading readiness now. 

As a continuation of these phonics activities, we had some more activities like small quizzes, alphabet Sound tray and object sorting.

For phonics quiz, I’ll ask,” which word starts with the letter ‘M’? Whether it is Monkey or donkey?” (I would stress the first letter to help her).

We had the miniature sets of animals, insects, reptiles, water animals… and I like to use them in alphabet object tray.  Here is our alphabet object tray for letter ‘B’.

If I don’t have any miniature, I’ll try to make them in my own using clay or paper.  Here, is some of my handmade miniature clay fruit set. I didn't bake it or boil it for long term use.  I don’t have patience. Instead, I can make it whatever I want within a minute. It’s so simple and my child also loves to create some of her own. No matter how it turns out.

I used to collect the old school books of our neighborhood children as we cannot buy those books in stores. My child love to name the pictures found in those books.  It doesn't matter how many books she owns, she loves those old books too. I cut pictures from some of those old books which we cannot use even more. I used to show the pictures, ask her to name it and ask the first letter of it.  To make it even more interesting for her, I asked her to paste those pictures in a small card after sorting it. (She loves to play with glue).  Here is our alphabet cards for Letter B,L and S.

One important think I want to share is I never drill my child in these activities.  It won’t continue for more than 10 minutes.  I never disturb her when she is in playful mood.  I want it to be child centric and I always do it the way she likes it.  According to me a child should not know that we are teaching her.  Instead, she should think she is playing something very interesting and mamma is entertaining her in a meaningful way. 

Exploring the Sense of Taste and Sense of Smell

Even though we spent lots of time for five senses activities, it was so fun and joyful. Most of the activities need my girl to be blind folded; she enjoyed it and asked me to repeat it with neighborhoods children. They shouted, enjoyed and filled our house with laughter and happiness. The sad part is I couldn’t click those moments as I was busy playing with them.

Today, I want to share the activities on last two senses: Sense of Smell and sense of Taste.

Sense of Smell

                Actually, whenever we go for nature study, when I cut vegetables like garlic, ginger, mint or cilantro or when I open a new bottle of coffee powder …. I will definitely ask my child to smell it.

In our backyard, a curry leaf tree and a neem tree are standing side by side. So, initially my girl was little confused with neem and curry leaf. I asked her to smell those leaves.  Even now, if she’s not sure she’ll smell it and confirm it.

 Tender leaves of mango, lemon and eucalyptus have the very nice and strong smell. So, I asked my baby to match the leaves and the fruits of mango, lemon and eucalyptus by smelling it.

Sense of Taste

In English, they are talking only about the primary tastes like sweet, salt, sour and bitter (sometimes they include the fifth taste umami also).  In Tamil, we have 6 tastes (‘Arusuvai’ in Tamil) namely sweet, salt, bitter, sour, pungent (hot) and astringent (almost like umami). I asked my child to taste the content of the six bowls and asked her how it tasted.  I could not click her beautiful expressions especially, when she tasted the lemon and bitter gourd.  Another wonderful activity was to taste the food while closing the nose. Seriously you can feel the difference in the taste when you can’t smell it.

Five Senses: Sense of hearing

Here are our Sense of Hearing activities.

What is inside the ball?

I took three plastic balls which can be opened and i put some materials inside.  Janani has to shake the ball and identify what is inside.

I used Rice, coins and chickpeas in each ball.

Matchbox string Telephone:

This is the activity I have been waiting for a long.  My husband made a matchbox string telephone and we tested it. The string should be as tight as possible while talking and It worked out very well. We can even use water cups instead of matchboxes.

When we talk into the matchbox, the sound travel through the string as vibrations and reach the other end.

Talk through a PVC pipe:

I gave a long PVC pipe and asked my little one and a neighbor boy to talk through it.  They made different sounds and enjoyed a lot. Then I poured a cup of water and asked them to talk through it. 

As sound can travel better in water, if we wet the string used in matchbox string telephone, it works very well.

Five Senses : Sense of Touch

As a part of our five senses activities, we did some similar activities on ‘Sense of Touch’ yesterday. 

Touch and say

                I placed few stuff before her and asked her to touch and feel the difference. She had to put the identical but opposite stuff in the paper tray after identifying it.

Stuff on the tray: Oyster and a clam, pompom and a rubber ball, wet and dry papers, hot water and a small ice cube.

Feely or mystery Bag:

                Feely or mystery bag is a great sensory activity to develop the kids’ sense of touch.  I took a basket and put some objects (Well known to my little one, that’s important) in the basket.  I blind folded her and asked her to take the object what I said.  She had to touch and find the object and took it outside.  To test her, I put a marble, rubber ball and plastic ball of almost same size and asked her to take it one by one.  She found it correctly.

 She loved this activity and asked me to do it in the evening also.  As a slight modification, after blindfolding her I gave her few objects of similar shape and size like bangle – cell tape, ball –lemon, pencil-sketch, eraser-sharpener --- and asked her to identify what it is.

                When I gave her the lemon, first she said that it was a ball. Then she pressed it, smelled it (sense of smell) and said, “No. It’s a lime or lemon.” (Activity for sense of sight).

This is really a great activity for young children to concentrate and play.

Five Senses : Sense of Sight

‘Five Senses’ is a great theme for preschoolers. Children learn about the world around them through the 5 senses. We started doing our ‘5 senses’ activities from yesterday.

The first theme is “Sense of sight”. A research article says any person any time actually uses all five senses in an interaction and the dominant Sense Organ is the Eye constituting 83% of the interaction.  I first started with naming the parts of eyes - eye balls, eye lashes, eye lids, eye brows, pupil and Iris. Then, we did lots of activities on sense of sight.

Look and Say

I gave my little one a set of objects and she had to look and tell whether it was tall/short, long/short, fat/thin, clean/dirty, shiny/dull, big/small, full/empty,inside/outside ….  I think, this would also help her to learn the ‘opposites’

.

Look and find the odd one

Then, I gave her a handmade worksheet to look and find the odd one. 

Look through a magnifier

Magnifier is her favorite tool.  I gave her the magnifier to see how different the objects (such as sand, stone, grass and small pictures in the book) are when we see with or without magnifying glass.

Look through a 3D glass

Fortunately, I had a 3D glass which came with the Tamil Weekly- ‘Anandha vikatan – 3D Special’.  My little one loved it.  She saw 3D wall papers in internet and asked me to open many 3D animal images.

A flower Rainbow

Activities on sense of sight will not complete without some colorful activities.  We collected some flowers from our backyard and made a rainbow.  Collecting flowers in rainbow colors itself is a fun activity and it is also good for color recognition.

Science: Parts of plants

When kids create something related to what they study, they’ll remember it.  Today we studied about plants. So, we created a paper craft to indicate the various parts of a plant.  I cut the shapes of stem, branches and leaves from a green paper and asked Janani to make a plant using those paper cuttings.  We used thread for the roots and rose petals to make a flower.

  

Very happy about the final outcome.

Nature Study 1: To the garden, to the garden, we are walking down....

It’s been raining since yesterday.  It’s hard to keep my little one inside the house for hours. She started asking for an outside walk.

Whenever she is bored, she would ask, “ Amma, Shall we go for a walk?” .  When we step out from our house, we would sing, “To the garden, to the garden, we are walking down”. One of her favorite songs.  If we go to the river bank, it will start like this, “To the River, to the river we are walking down.  In the river you can see…”

In Charlotte Mason approach, nature study is the base for science, math, art and language.  As per Charlotte Mason, a child has to spend several hours outside every week for nature study.

I have been taking my child outside since she was 10 months old.   Believe me; she started telling the names of most of the flowers, trees, vegetables and birds available in our place by 3 years old.  I don’t believe in flash cards for teaching kids.  Nature study is the best way to introduce our environment.  For nature study, you can take your child to anywhere like, river, pond, beach, Neighborhood Street, farm fields…etc. Even when we go out on bike ride with my hubby, whenever we see something new to my child, we’ll stop there; spend few minutes for our child to observe it.  That’s how she was introduced to goose, ducks, donkeys, pigs, king fisher……  

Back to the story.  So, when there was a slight gap in the rainfall, we had a walk around our backyard. My father is maintaining a coconut grove with a wonderful garden. Though it is not a well organized one, you can find almost all the common fruit trees of TamilNadu that includes banana, guava, Mango, Jack fruit, Lemon, Mosambi (Sweet lime), pomegranate and other trees like coconut, goose berries, Teak wood, Eucalyptus…..  From this garden only my daughter learnt the names of flowers like jasmine, Hibiscus, Rose, Oleander, Periwinkle, chrysanthemum, 4’o clock, cosmos,Mary gold, zinnia, Thunbergia (King's mantle), Clittoria (butterfly pea)…

Today’s task was to collect the flowers she would see on her way. She grabbed her magnifier and a bag for collecting flowers. During the nature study, the child has to lead. She has to see the beauty of nature. She has to hear the birds' sound. She has to touch and feel the different texture.She has to observe,learn and explore. So i just followed her.

Watching the Ant colony; “What will happen, if the rain water goes inside. Shall we cover the hole?”

“Amma, Pumpkin is a creeper. Why it is climbing?”

“Spiral shape”

“Touch me not.  Where’s that ‘Horton’ Flower? See the millipede" 

Running to pluck periwinkle

 Naming the flowers

“Nature [is] the greatest of all teachers” 

 “Children should be surrounded with the things of nature which have their own educational value.”

                                                                                                                          -  Rabindranath Tagore

Sensory Play: Reptiles and Amphibians (With paper craft Lizards)

Sensory bins with various themes like farm animals, pond life, jungle, ocean and desert …are our very frequent activities.  Today, we made a sensory bin with a theme ‘Reptiles and Amphibians’.   As we don’t have any lizards in our miniature toy set, I thought of making it using paper.  Here is the tutorial of how I made a chameleon. 

Take a paper and draw one side of chameleon as shown.

Cut it. Let the tail be long enough.  

Using a toothpick or stick roll the end of tail.

Stick a black bindhi or glue a  mustard for eyes.

Cut a Thin red strip(split any one side) and glue it as the tongue.

Grabbing the insect using its long sticky tongue.

  

Lizards.  

I am not satisfied with the final outcome of the light color lizard.  The tail is not good.  So What, I said, “This Lizard lost its tail. Even if a lizard loses it's tail, the tail will grow and soon it will grow to its original shape and size.  Now only this lizard’s tail is growing.”

“Mmm.  I know this Ma.  That day, we read this in a story ‘can you give me your tail’.

Lizards have sticky legs too.

As Janani is only 4 years old, I just introduced the names of reptiles and amphibians and some simple facts.

Reptiles in the tub: Snake, Lizards, Tortoise, Crocodile, Alligators and Dinosaurs.

Amphibians in the tub: Frogs and Toads.

Reference:http://www.skiptomylou.org

Love you Ma

I don’t know, what drives me to post this. But, definitely I want to do it.

Today, when we are doing an activity, suddenly my little one kissed me and said, “Love you Ma.”  I was very happy . A little guilty too. I never said these words to my wonderful mom.

In many countries, parents are teaching their children to say, “Love you mom, Love you Dad.”   In our place, we don’t have such habit. My mom raised me and my brother to this level. She lives each and every second for our welfare. Even now, she comes to our house at 3.30pm by bus (My parents are living 8 Kms away from my place), tidy up my house, takes care of my girl ……and will go home in the evening. Whether it is a hot summer day or a  rainy day, she never fails to do it.

Today, my little one reminded me all these facts, taught me how happy a mother would be when she heard such a nice words.

Definitely, my mom won’t read this.  But, I want to say, “Love you Ma.”

Egg counting and Balance for Mathematics

My little one enjoys counting. Hence, I drew a set of bird-nest with some numbers (not in any particular order) written beside. I asked her to count and put the eggs (made of APF dough) in the nest. Within few minutes she finished it.  

Then, I made a balance to teach my kid about greater than, less than, equal to, addition and subtraction.  The balance was made using the available pain balm lids, ice cream sticks and a piece of thick sheet. After many trial and errors, I came up with a perfect balance.  Generally, my little one likes to play with the coloured pastas I made. It worked out very well.  She put pastas in both sides to balance it.

For the initial level I used only small numbers (The balance is also small). 

Pencil Shavings Art

My little one was given with a school project of creating a fish using pencil shavings. We made the fish using pencil shavings along with few other sea creatures.

But, when browsing through the internet, I found some more interesting ideas at martaltes. My little one started compelling me to make some human faces with pencil shavings hair. Just like me, she loves drawing human faces.we made the following by incorporating pencil shavings and art.

 My daughter loves this one very much (This is her work in my drawing)

Ice Age Play

Entertaining the kids isn’t an easy job.  We cannot let them sit before the TV always or we can’t make them play with their usual toys every time. One easy and inexpensive way to engage them for hours is frozen balls.

Fill the balloons with water , put small toys inside and freeze them to make frozen balls. Similarly, take different shapes of small bowls, fill with water and toys and freeze them.  You can add colours and sparklers to make it even more attractive.

I also used this play to introduce her some solid shapes like spear, cylinder, cubic and cuboid.

My little one was so excited to take her toys till the ice melts to release it. She named this play as ‘Ice age play’

Terrarium

I love terrariums and an article about a 50 years old terrarium drives me to try a closed terrarium. I think they are the best to teach kids about earth eco system. Our First Terrarium shown below is almost 9 months old. I watered the plant, the first day I planted it (First week of February 2013) and it is still growing without the need for watering.

This is our second one. I kept the bottle in a corner of a window. Hence, the plant leans towards light (Photo-tropism).  Terrarium is the best to teach about parts of a plant, transpiration and Photosynthesis process.

It is very easy to make a terrarium of your own with the following simple things,

A glass container

A small plant

Active charcoal

Handful of small pebbles

Soil

Active moss (optional)

Wash the glass container using mild soap and hot water and dry it.  Put the pebbles (Used for draining the excess water) then the charcoal (which keeps the soil fresh) then the soil.  Carefully place the plant. Just spray a little water and close the bottle. Keep the terrarium in indirect sunlight. Water the plant only if the soil is dried.