Week 2: Spelling Words

I was quite dissappointed with the result of our week 1 spelling. But I guess it's because my kids find this activity as "something new" and they really have no idea what spelling is all about. And so this week, I am finding time to have some practice with them. Anytime I get the chance whether taking shower, playing games, free time etc, I would just ramdomly ask my K2 kids to spell a word from their list. I hope it helps!

Anyway, as the saying goes, PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT! So we will try and try.....

Here's our spelling for this week:

1. sad

2. care

3. happy

4. unfair

5. trust

6. work

7. park

8.walk

God Bless! :-)

NO = I love you

Today, as I was discussing Miserable Millie's love in the family, one of my students bluntly said "Teacher, I don't like my family!" I asked why? And he exclaimed, "Because they always scold me." I then took the opportunity to explain to children that most of the time, your mummies and daddies scold you because they love you. And that it is because they don't want you to be in trouble. Furthermore, I told them that sometimes NO means I LOVE YOU!

Mummy and daddy would sometimes say NO to our request, for example watching TV late at night. They would say no because you need energy in the morning when you go to school. There is a reason in everything, your parents doesn't just say NO because they want to. They say NO because they LOVE YOU! :-)

Then, we sang our song:

Love, love, love, Love, love, love

See how it grows, See how it grows

I love my family and they love me too

We love each other and it's plain to see

Love, love, love, Love, love, love

*to the tune of Three Blind Mice

Week 1: Spelling Words

Our spelling words for this term will all come from our story-based MISERABLE MILLIE.Please take note of our spelling words for this week.

1. family

2. father

3. mother

4. sister

5. brother

6. house

7. home

8. parents

God bless children!

Self-Help Skills: Folding of Clothes

I have been observing my students for quite sometime now each time they will take a shower and I noticed that many of them would still ALWAYS asked help from me in folding their clothes. It's okay to help and assist them but if it's all of them and they do it everyday then it's quite a headache. And so today, I took a few minutes of my lesson time to teach my kids how to fold their own clothes.

A general rule in teaching self-help skills is: DON'T DO THINGS FOR CHILDREN WHAT THEY CAN DO FOR THEMSELVES!

Hao Tian folding his clothes

Lucas is just so happy of what he can do by himself!

Nice try Renette!

Good job Alyssa! :-)

Wow Bing Heng can do it!

That's wonderful Shannon!

It was a joy to see the kids apply what they learned right away because that day when they went to shower, they all folded their own clothes!

Thumbs up to my K1 and K2 kiddos! :-)

Picture Talk: Using Language to Learn

Today I had picture talk with my K1 class. Our center of discussion are scenes from their Story-Based “The Hare and the Tortoise.” I divided them into four teams and each one was given a picture that they will describe and talk about. I gave the children 5 minutes to talk to their partners and then afterwards each pair was given 3 minutes to talk.

Hao Tian as he seriously share his thoughts

What do children learn in Picture Talk?

1. It helps children think and develop their creativity. Children love to invent stories and when they do, their imagination grows and that's when they start learning and become creative.

2. It helps them develop their self-confidence. When children are able to express themselves in front of an audience their self confidence increases. Something that is really crucial as they grow up. They love it when others listen to them and they learn how to respond properly as well.

3. It helps the children work with a team and talk to each other.

Group 1 - Sheryy and Shannon

Shannon was really into it! :-)

Group 2 - Bing Heng and Renette

Group 3 - Yun Xi and Crisanta

Javier is a little bit shy

Group 4 - Javier and Hao Tian

C'mon Javier, speak up! :-)

I was once a baby too!

Oh well, I just can't get over the fact that I am getter older and so for the fun of it I am posting my favorite baby picture! hahaha This shot was taken at my grandmother's house in the province. I was 2 years old then, leaning on my grandma's stereo. She took good care of me for a year because my parents where both working that time.

Life was so much simplier then.Sometimes I wish I've never grown but noooooooo,,, I love my life and what I have become by God's grace!

Thank you Lord! :-)

Fruity Day!

Every Monday is Fruity Day for AGAPE Kiddos!

Question is, why do need to eat fruits at least five to nine piesces everyday?
These ideas might stimulate your fruit consumption!

For the largest part fruit consists of water just like the human body does
Like 80% of our body is water so does 80% of fruit consist of water!
If you think about it, it's logical for the human body to consume food that contains as much water as the body itself. The nutrition that meets that requirement is fruit. There is no other food than fruit on this planet that contains on average 80% water.


Fruit is 100% bad-cholesterol free
No doubt about this argument. Too much bad-cholesterol is not good for our bodies and fruit doesn't contain bad-cholesterol. Animal products like meat and dairy contain a lot of bad-cholesterol.


Fruit stimulates the memory
If you didn’t know yet: fruit is the ultimate brain fuel. Fruit has a positive effect on our brains. The way this works still has to be found out and many scientists are looking into it as we speak. What we do know is that if you consume fruit effectively, your brains can recall information faster and more easily. This is very useful information for people who are preparing for an exam.


The idea that fruit is an expensive nutrition
Did you always think that fruit was an expensive product? Take a good look at how much money you spend on other food. It could be worth something to replace some of those expenses with fruit. We think that fruit is the healthiest food on earth and therefore it is well worth spending our money on.



The miraculous healing effects of fruit
Spectacular stories about people that cured from uncurable diseases by a strict diet of raw fruits and/or vegetables are well known but do we want to believe them? We still don't know that much about fruit and its contents.


Fibers
We do know now that a diet with plenty of fibers helps against corpulence, high blood pressure, and other factors that increase the chance for a heart disease. The consumed amount of fibers maybe even a more important factor than the amount of fat that is consumed by people!
The food that contains these healthy (natural) fibers is.... right: fruit! (vegetables as well). The American Heart Association advises to consume 25 to 30 grams of fibers out of fresh fruits and/or vegetables. In practice this means: have five to nine portions of fresh fruits or vegetables a day.

Fruit makes you feel better
Several stories have told us about people that were frequently depressed and how they got out of their depression slowly but surely after consuming substantial amounts of fresh fruit on a regular basis. Eating much fruit can have a mysterious healing effect on human beings. Even better is to drink a lot of freshly squeezed fruit drinks on a regular basis. It will take approximately 30 days until you start to notice the effects. Don't forget to drink these smoothies 20 minutes before the consumption of other meals. This way the fruit will not ferment in the stomach and the nutritious elements can be absorbed by the blood effectively.


Ethical reasons to eat fruit
Fruit doesn't have to be killed and slaughtered before you can eat it. The fruits are just hanging there waiting to be picked by you!
This ethical argument (often used by vegetarians and vegans to not eat meat) claims that fruit is a non-animal food. Many people see animals, especially mammals, as living creatures just like humans. There are religions that say that animals have souls like us. The native Americans first asked the animal's spirit if they could kill it before they did so. Fruit has never been said to have a soul and thus can be eaten without causing any harm. Ethical or religious arguments aside, we think it's a shame that we as human beings don't eat much fruit when there is such an abundant assortment of fruits and vegetables available.


Fruit is the most natural food
When you see a piece of fruit hanging from a tree that tree is telling you something: "Eat my fruits and help me spread my seeds." That’s how nature works. Humans eat vegetables and fruits and consequently help the plants to spread. Humans use animals to work the land to grow the plants and trees that produce these fruits and vegetables. In more and more people's opinion this is the way it was all meant to be.


A human diet
A healthy diet should consist for a great deal of freshly squeezed fruit juices, raw fruits and vegetables.

Some tips:

A good start is to eat and drink more fresh fruits;
it’s as simple as that. Before you know it you will feel much better;
Don't forget to eat fruit on an empty stomach, not after other meals and;
inform yourself about the substances that our 'modern' food contains.

How to improve your child's penmanship/hand writing skills

This first week of classes, one of the main things that I am focusing on is my children's handwriting. And as I tried to review and make an assessment of their writing exercises, there are a few things that I took note of, those that need to be corrected! :-)

One that is very common to many of them is that they have NO SENSE OF SPACE and UNABLE TO FOLLOW THE LINE. It’s always bigger, smaller, wider or narrower. Words were all continuously written side by side so whoever would want to read it might not be able to understand right away.

Another observation is that there are letters and numbers that were written inversely. The most common are letters S, J, K, B, D, P and numbers 7, 9, 6, 5 and 3.

inverted letter S

inverted number 7

inverted number 9

inverted number 3 and even the position of number 13 is incorrect

Others would write lightly or heavily to the point that the child's paper gets ripped. The children were also so used of having a lot of erasures, the work then when it reaches to teacher looks very untidy.

Now, there is really nothing to worry about if your child writes in any form such as what I have mentioned above. Those things ARE COMMON to children ages 4-6 years old. Most of the kids do not really understand what these letters and numbers are for. They simply know that it's interesting and that adults look at them all the time. What we simply need to do is to correct our children nicely.

As for my class, what I usually do is check their handwriting exercise right away and talk to the kids one by one the soonest time they submit their work. I mark their papers in front of them and tell them what they need take note of, which ones need correction and then ask the said child to repeat his/her work if needed. I also do letter-picture association if the child learns much faster visually. For example, to someone who would always write the letter "S" inversely, I would draw a snake on the board and ask the child to trace the shape using his/her finger. Then each time he/she would write letter S, he/she would remember the snake and how it looks like. Picture-Letter association is very effective!

Now it would also help if we will have some sort of exercises for our eyes. An EYE EXERCISE FOR BETTER VISUAL HEALTH! :-)

Try this one:

Can you find 10 differences in these two pictures?

How about this one:

Can you match the shapes on top to the exact same picture below?

Good visual descrimination helps us from getting confused. For example when we read the word "was" and "saw", we will know that it's totally different from each other even if they have the same letters. Puzzle games are good ways to help developed visual decrimination.

There are a lot of different exercises to improve our visual information processing skills like PERCEPTION, TRACKING, FOCUSING AND EYE TEAMING.
For more exercises, I would like to encourage you to visit this website below. The exercises they share are all FUN and I am sure your child will learn a lot.

http://www.eyecanlearn.com/#Memory

ENJOY!

And I said I will never be late:-(

It's first day of school 2010.

I woke up and looked at my clock. It's 10am! WHAAAAAATTT?????? My gosh! *panic mode*
My shift is at 10 and I woke up at 10! OMG! And I promised myself that I will never be late for the 1st day of school 2010. I prepared quickly and targeted to reach the school in 30 minutes. I took a cab and my oh my, just when I was really in a hurry, the cab driver went round and round Tampines area looking for St 81! Grrrrr.....

Oh Lord, please don't let my whole day get ruined because of this. May all the bad stuff end now. And God answered. Nothing awful or unwanted ever happened after that. My class went well. I have so many things in mind for my class this year. And I will really try my best to make each day productive for each of them.

I am sure God will grant the desire of my heart because He loves my little children and I love them too! :-) Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." Matthew 19:14

New Pledge of Allegiance

*received this from my mail today! Awesome!

What a brilliant, brave kid!

BY A 15 yr. Old SCHOOL KID IN ARIZONA

New Pledge of Allegiance
Since the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord's Prayer are not allowed in most public schools anymore because the word "GOD" is mentioned, a kid in Arizona wrote:


NEW School prayer:


Now I sit me down in school

Where praying is against the rule

For this great nation under God

Finds mention of Him very odd.


If Scripture now the class recites,

It violates the Bill of Rights.

And anytime my head I bow

Becomes a Federal matter now.


Our hair can be purple, orange or green,

That's no offense; it's a freedom scene..

The law is specific, the law is precise.

Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.


For praying in a public hall

Might offend someone with no faith at all..

In silence alone we must meditate,

God's name is prohibited by the state.


We're allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,

And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks...

They've outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.

To quote the Good Book makes me liable.

We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,

And the 'unwed daddy,' our Senior King.

It's 'inappropriate' to teach right from wrong,

We're taught that such 'judgments' do not belong...


We can get our condoms and birth controls,
Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles..

But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
No word of God must reach this crowd.


It's scary here I must confess,

When chaos reigns the school's a mess.

So, Lord, this silent plea I make:

Should I be shot; My soul please take!

Amen


*Jesus said, 'If you are ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you before my Father.'