E for Elephant

This week has been kind of topsy turvy, with AA having a bad stuffy nose, and relatives visiting from Melbourne. The letter of the week was E and we did E for Elephant. Tot Club started as usual with the greeting song, which EV clapped along with a smile. We then did the feely card, writing the number '8' together. We sang the 'Elbows Everywhere' phonics song and EV had great fun knocking elbows with mummy.  

The images for the Ee A4 sheet where elephant, eleven, eye, earth and eel, and we wrote the words for each image after they were pasted. Besides elephant, I focused also on the words 'eleven' and 'eye', getting her to repeat the spelling of each word letter by letter after me. We also did the prompting for 'elephant'. 

Art
The colouring task of the day comes from 1+1+1=1's Animal ABC printables. At one point, she tested her gripping ability by colouring with two crayons. I let her do it for a while as part of her self exploration, and when she stopped, discreetly passed her one crayon to hold. I must say, she's got a pretty good grip.

The next art piece was from Jann's class. This elephant paper craft required colouring of the ears and trunk, before pasting to a blue envelope. EV really enjoyed the process, and of course, the end product. What's touching is that EV kept saying 'Mummy colour', so this paper craft is really the fruit of both our labour.

Chinese
Recently, I bought a set of the 我会读-幼儿启蒙读物 (Wo Hui Du) Level 1 series for kids between 1-5 years old. I had gone through book 1 on 'My Family' once or twice with EV. During the session, I had the book just beside me, thinking I would go through it again if she was in the mood. EV definitely was. When EV saw it, she immediately said 'Chinese, Chinese!'. Seeing her keenness in that area, I went through that book with her, instead of doing the maths activity I had planned. The first phrase was 爸爸 and EV said it as soon as she saw the page. Despite having just seen it once or twice prior, EV clearly recognized the characters and was able to recite it from memory. It was quite a heartening experience for me. EV is showing interest in Chinese, and picking it up!

Maths
Using a numbers sheet from 1+1+1=1's Animal ABC printables, I got EV to count using buttons. We did 1 to 10 first, and also traced them. Later, she practiced her hand and coordination skills by putting the buttons back into the bottle, by pouring the buttons from the bottle cap.

Music
We sang Skidamarink, and I did the actions. EV loved it, and kept asking me to repeat. By the third time, she could follow the actions, and jive to the tune.