Fish Tank

With the summer holiday started, and the goodbye get together rally, we havent been doing much on classroom for he past month. Yuta is asking to go back working with his classroom again so we are slowly picking up the momentum again. However we still continue with our reading routine. We have been reading alot about food chain, bugs life cycle and solar system. This is simple fish tank that i made out of the packing box from a baby doll i bought for Ai. The size and design just perfect for a fish tank, no further cutting required. Cut out some fish pictures and stick fishing thread at the back of fish picture then tape it onto the carton box. We collected those broken shell and coral from the beach when we visited cancun last time. I think the crawfish is not suppose to be there but Yuta just wanted to put him in the tank. We use this fish tank model to explain of food chain in the sea. Sharks eat medium size fish, and medium size fish eat smaller fish then small fish eat plankton/plant.

This is how much we can do in a day

This is how much we can do on a day when yuta doesnt go to school. Started out with the shaving cream colouring. Yuta doesnt like getting his hands on the cream and prefer to just use brush. I like this activity because they can do it together but really have to supervise and watch Ai because they look so colourful and yummy she tried a few times to feed herself with the shaving cream. This work lasted for about 45minutes overall. After that Yuta wants to watch some tv, so it was tv time and i went fix the lunch. In between they will just bring out some random toys and play together. After lunch, went bike ride at the driveway and a little bit of digging and bubble at the backyard.Planted some cucumber seeds. Thats how the cucumbers look like for him. He asked about what happened to our tomato and cucumber. We had our tomato and cucumber last summer and when started to get some tiny fruits of tomato and cucumber on the plant , we made a trip back home and we came back they were all dead from the cold weather. We always have no luck with plants and it was rather hard to plant here in Houston (at least for me).When tulip started coming out, they didnt make it to bloom because i will too hot already here.

After the outdoor energy buster, it was time to nap. Before dinner is fixed Yuta requested to do some work, so i let him do the skeleton puzzle printed out from here. There is a small picture of the skeleton for him to refer to. He has difficulties putting up the left and right hands, might need put some indicator on them. After he finished then asked him to feel bones on his body and explain briefly about bones. can you feel skull?etc. I have a floor puzzle of human body and he likes it so much. glad that i got that puzzle for 0.50 from a garage sale.

One of his favourite book.

Then we called off the day and dinner is served. Im not sure if it was enough for a day lesson for a 4 year old but it was definitely enough for me.

More on colours

Yuta hasnt got enough of his colour changing work. After the did our first presentation , he wanted to show daddy what we did, so did the same thing again with daddy after dinner.The next day after school, he asked to do the same work, so we did it and some extension to that.

This time i gave him the primary colour, blue, red, green and white and show him how the colour

changes into a lighter shade by adding white to it. Also explaining about darker shade with adding some black.

He would prefer to do it on liquid rather than paint, so i gave him 3 primary colour again and let him work around. Im glad at the end of the work,he told me, "mommy, this is Green, and this is Dark green, they are same green but different". Nice intepretation,i like it.

Gotta hurry with my making of colour tablet.

Starting out slow

Today is our official first classroom day. Im trying to start things slow, means starting with something Yuta is familiar with is good. We started our line time with the "days of theweek"song, but he surprised me with the spanish version which i cant sing along. So,that was my lesson of the day. We started out with pouring water, " the water work" he calls it. He is very familiar with this and has quite a good control in doing this work, so i make some addition to this work. Pouring into an ice cube tray,and using a dropper to suck it back from ice tray to pitcher.

He keep on asking me about "changing colour" work,which we did long time ago. In extension to the water pouring, i gave him some different colours,to mix around and show him what colour changes into what colour and get him to record down the result.

Drawing out the observation.

The result

Later in the day we did more practical life, scrubbing table.

Perhaps he has done this in school but this is the first time i seen him doing. He is expect to put away all his dishes in the sink after meal(still need reminder), with some luck he will volunteer to clean up the table spill on the floor after meal. I think by montessori standard, he should be able to do this without any reminder but im just taking it slowly.

Squeezing out water from a sponge practise.

Squeezing out water from wash cloth practise

Later he took out his japanese writting booklet for first time. Im surprised that he could actually write quite well with the japanese character eventhough that was his first time drawing japanese character compare to the alphabet. I guess is probably Japanese character is made up of few strokes where by alphabet always have only 1 or 2 only continuous line that needs better control and motor skill.Anyway grandma will be very happy to see this picture.

Wrapping up the day. He still wants to do more but it was just too much for me for today.