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The Perfect Square by Michael Hall activities

The Perfect Square tells the story of a square who made the best of whatever happened to him and eventually found great contentment being the square that he was. A wonderful read for not just children, but adults as well, a reminder that no matter what happens to us, we make the best of the situation and find our own happiness as the square did eventually at the end of the story.

Now here’s what we did for this interesting book – not as comprehensive as my other posts on literature-based learning though! 🙂

We tried to replicate the story to see if we could re-create the square in those ways in the book.

We did this activity over a few days as it requires quite a bit of time and stamina.

Using a piece of drawing block, I cut out 6 squares and got her to paint them in the colours the square appeared on the book.

We used water colours so that we could get a softer feel and blend of colours

For younger children, this would be a good time to teach colours apart from just doing the painting.

Completed squares in the process of drying

The Perfect Square by Michael Hall activities

The squarish book and our paintings

Using the hole puncher for the first time

Arranging her shapes she cut out from her square to form the picture in the book

Done!

More fine motor skills involved – tearing the square into pieces

drawing in the details found in the book

Fill in the missing words with the stickers provided

Pasting in the missing words

Our completed version

Vocabulary

These are the words/ phrases I found that needed some explaining/ revision:

‘shattered’, ‘babbled’, ‘torn into scraps’ vs ‘shredded in strips’, ‘ripped’, ‘crumpled’, ‘wrinkled’, ‘confining’, ‘rigid’, ‘cramped’

Extension activity:

Piet Mondrian-inspired art:

I pasted black tape on half a sheet of drawing block, set up the colours that Piet Mondrian used in his famous work, and got her to view examples of Piet Mondrian art on the tablet, leaving a sample next to her so that she could focus on her task.

Painting squares and rectangles

The completed piece of art which is now the cover of her A4-sized scrapbook where I stick the pictures and paintings she does in school and at home.

Other ideas that you can tap on after reading the book (for younger children):

Days of the week – you can re-read The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle as well for reinforcement
Colours
Shapes
Story sequencing – ask the child what happened to the square on the various days and what the square became as a result.

Hope you have fun!

View our other literature-based learning posts if you’ve found this useful! 🙂

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Save a child today – support Global Handwashing Day

Clean hands save lives.

No, I’m not just talking about deadly strains of the dreaded Hand Foot and Mouth Disease (HFMD) or the pain the disease inflicts on both children and adult alike.

One of the notices I received this year from my girl’s preschool

Nor am I exaggerating the importance of washing hands.

For me, washing hands has always been a matter of hygiene and my hope to keep germs away so that my children remain healthy.

Lifebuoy handwash kills 99.9% of germs in just 10 seconds

Washing hands after a night cycling practice

I have never thought that such a simple action of handwashing can save lives, until I chanced upon this:

UNICEF estimates that diarrhoea kills 1.1 million children every year, and pneumonia-related illnesses take another 1.2 million child lives. Handwashing with soap prevents disease in a more straightforward and cost-effective way than any single vaccine. (Source: UNICEF, italics mine)

We are blessed to be in Singapore, where we have clean sanitation and we live in a clean and green environment. We are in a situation where it is difficult to even fathom that handwashing can have such a huge impact on lives, and yet there are more than 2 million children – over 80% of these deaths occur in South Asia and Africa – who do not live to celebrate their 5th birthday, many of which could be saved by a simple act of washing hands with soap.

Every year, Global Handwashing Day (GHD) – an initiative by Lifebuoy – is celebrated on 15 October in over 100 countries around the world. This is done to raise awareness about the benefits of handwashing in a bid to save children’s lives and promote a global culture of handwashing with soap.

For five consecutive years now, Unilever, through its Lifebuoy brand, has sought to bring hygiene education through school programmes to children across 10 countries in Africa (together with Millennium Villages Initiative) in the hope to save young children from potentially fatal diseases caused by poor hand hygiene.

This year’s GHD message is – Help a child reach 5, by pledging on Lifebuoy’s Facebook page.

With every pledge, Lifebuoy will commit to teach a child hygiene education through PSI, a Unilever Foundation Partner.

One at a time, we will help these children reach their 5th birthdays.

We have all heard of the starfish story:

Source

Let us try to help make a difference to a child’s life today. The difference you can make is not just improving their lives because by pledging today, you are giving them the best gift in life – life itself.

The pledge will not cost you a single cent, but it would mean so much to a child out there. Do you have time to spare to save a child’s life today?