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Alicia used to dislike Mandarin but she’s started to pick it up a bit more readily. I thought it was time to revisit some of the learning aids I made for her earlier so that’s what we did since about two weeks back. 🙂

I got her to remove all the chinese word cards from the bilingual learning aids (for colours) and I got her to repeat the chinese words after me. I placed paper clips on each of the chinese word cards and she’d do the fishing using the fishing rod from the fishing learning aid I made for her earlier. After she ‘caught’ the card, we’d read the words together again before she placed it back on the cards (on the wall).

Look at the happy girl, learning Mandarin! lol.

One of her strange poses… with the fishing rod in her hand

蓝色!

红色!

橙色!

绿色!

I shan’t bore you with more photos, but I’m sure you can see how happy she is doing this simple activity from the photos! 🙂 *happy mummy*

Learning to count with ice-cubes

Alicia doesn’t really like numbers or math for that matter… so I try to vary the way I teach her how to count.

Here’s an activity I did with her about two weeks ago: counting coloured ice-cubes.

What you need:

ice-cubes in two colours (colour of ice-cubes are up to your preference: I had 6 blue and 6 red ice-cubes)
a couple of scoops
two big bowls or two basins
a rag (just in case)

Set up the activity as shown:

Besides the obvious fun the tot derives from scooping ice-cubes (read: improving fine motor skills) and counting ice-cubes as your tot scoops each one over to the other basin, you can also give specific instructions to your tot such as ‘scoop a blue ice-cube for mummy’ or ‘scoop two red ice-cubes’.

Questions you can ask (for math):

(after scooping 2 blue ice-cubes and 1 red ice-cube)

‘how many blue/red ice-cubes are there (in the new basin)?’

‘how many ice-cubes are there altogether?’

(after scooping 1 or 2 more ice-cubes)

‘How many ice-cubes are there now altogether?’

You can get your tot to touch ice-cubes as well for the tactile experience.

Once the ice-cubes start melting and the colours start to mix, you can talk about colour changes (science).

Weird pose!