Today, we read the book "Rainbowfish". I actually do not like the story that rainbow fish has to give his scales to other fishes to make them happy. But the pictures are beautiful.
For the activity, we did "colorful sparkling water" with baking soda, food color, and vinegar. Cele likes it and was excited to see bubbles when poured vinegar over baking soda and food color.
I got inspiration from the book "mouse paint". I got multiple different colors in bottles and let Cele mixing them together and watch the change of colors.
It's her first time playing with a "pour water" activity. She likes to pour water into bowls but not quite good at pour water into bottles with a narrow opening. She had a lot of fun and got brown color water at the end.
I don't home school Cele with Montessori methods but I like the idea that kids could play with different things that are used in daily life. I feel my kids have much more interest in them other than toys.
Today I customized the activity. We set up the IKEA kid's bookshelf together. Cele likes to do things by herself since we always tell her to learn to be independent. She helped me put the little wood piece into holes and tight up screws with the provided little tool. She uses the bookshelf as a bed for her kolas. Here's the photo she took. lol
Afternoon, she's not in good mood. So I prepared one of her favorite activities - playing dough. I let her choose colors and she picked yellow for her and green for me. I made up two dough balls and helped her rolled them flat. She made some small round cookies and pretend to bake it with the baking pan.
Today, we sang the color song together. I heard her sang the "picking apples" song alone which surprised me. I thought she has forgotten it. She has a good memory.
I didn't read the "freight train" book today. Instead, we read two books at the storytime before nap: "going to the sea park" and "Danny and the dinosaur". She's able to understand part of the story without explaining in Chinese. I started to ask her simple questions in English and she's able to answer correctly. She's into dinosaur stories recently. I asked her to search for the letter "o" and letter "a" on the books and she's able to finish it line by line.
After the nap, I set up a painting activity for her with just two colors. I gave her a brush as well as a sprinkling bottle. She enjoys to spray waters over color and watch the color being washed out. She tried to use both ends of the brush to draw lines, dots. And at last, started to draw with her fingers, whole hands. To make it messier, she pours the paint color all onto the paper.
It's a brand new week. I decided to switch to the week 2 learning plan "color". I tried to borrow "apple" books from the library but it cannot arrive on time. So I decided to switch to the next topic and it's a little boring for Cele to learn the same "ten apples up on top" book for two weeks.
This morning, I read the book "freight train" with Cele. She likes it a lot.
PS:
We changed to daylight saving on Sunday. Cele's daily schedule is affected by the change. She didn't want to go nap this noon and keeps playing and asking for stories. I told her two books and more short stories. I asked her to sleep but she's too excited to sleep. I wasn't patient enough to calm her down but just ask her to sleep since I have a meeting at 1. I feel not good. It's easier to lost patience and be tough. I should learn to talk to her, listen to her, and speak with more respect.
Things I learned today is less is better, less expect less stress.
I was excited for today's painting: drawing a spider net for Halloween and apple stamping.
She's okay with paint with apples but it's not her preferred way to paint. I prepared many colors and taped a spider net and a house for her to play. But, the reality is that she likes to draw worms, dots but doesn't like filling colors. At her age, she's still not got the idea of filling colors. She doesn't like the red color today and doesn't let me put red on her brush. She turned a little mad when I added red to her brush. But I didn't pay too much attention to her mood at the beginning. or in another way to say is that I did so many preparations which drove me to expect more on her, painting a good-looking picture. I found out she's quiet and not happy after I tell her not to throw color on mommy's cloth. I talked to her and tell her why not to do that. She understood but still not happy. I can feel that throwing color at me is the way that she expressed her unhappiness on something else. Might be she doesn't like me painting with red, might be she doesn't like to color the net, might be she doesn't like to way that red and green colors mixed together, might be that she feels stressed when I drew faster and more than her.
We paused this week's learning plan yesterday. I wanna give a break to her and play with something else together.
Today we back to "apples". I printed a big letter A on white papers. She shared one paper which is nice. I showed her the job is to paint dots inside the letter A. She chose the color she likes which is red and painted dots and a line.
The way that kids did the paint job is extremely different than how the grow-ups do. Looking at the pictures I draw and Cele draw. I feel her paint is much more interesting than mine. Her paint may not follow the rule that paints inside the letter, but it's unique and lovely(the long red worm. Yeah, she likes to draw worms, lol). I tried my best to hold myself do not tell her exactly what to do or force her to do follow what I did. I'm still learning how to draw with her in a way that encourages her and helps her build confidence.
Oh, at last, with no doubt, she painted her hands as well. lol
Today is Friday. I got time to play with Cele. Sweet.
We sang the "days" song together after breakfast. She's able to pronounce all the names of days and sang together with me. She likes the song, I should plan to add more interesting songs about the weather next time.
Poking apples is one of the activities I expected the most. I got a small green apple for Cele to play with. She doesn't know how to poke a toothpick into the apple at the beginning. It needs a little pressure to put it in. I taught her several times and she learned. I asked her does the apple look like a hedgehog. She said no. She said the apple looks like a sun. Yeah, that's interesting. I like it.
