Learning from the iPad2

I have noticed that Baby is more keen to learn Mandarin than English. When she has the iPad with her, she prefers to go to kids learning apps that teach in Mandarin. She will repeat the words after the iPad 'talks' to her. She learns her colors, numbers, body parts and other general things in Mandarin from the iPad, which saves me $$ from sending her for tuition :D

"ar ser san..."

Fun Ways Of Learning To Tell The Time From The Internet

Alycia is still not very good in telling the time, especially when the long hand points to other numbers other than 12 and six. It's partly my fault. I haven't been teaching her how to. I have been too Baby C-centered for the past 18 months.

Anyway, I did a google search on websites that provide games to teach kids how to tell the time and found a few websites with very interesting ways of teaching time-telling:

http://www.teachingtime.co.uk/clock/clockres.html

http://www.teachingtime.co.uk/draggames/sthec1.html


http://www.apples4theteacher.com/clocks.html








But Alycia wasn't very interested in this game. She prefers other educational games from Starfall.

My mil recently bought Alycia and Sherilyn each a very nice watch from Hong Kong. I think the watch would be a good motivation for them to learn how to tell the time. I'll just have to make them go to these interactive time-telling websites more often to get themselves familiarize with the clock. Learn to tell the time or no Starfall for them both!

Alphabet Board Puzzle

I bought this alphabet board puzzle for Sherilyn more than 2 years ago, when she was 2+ years old. She liked it a lot and learnt her ABCs through playing with this board puzzle, apart from all the educational VCDs. 2 weeks ago, I fished out this board puzzle and introduced it to Baby. She was fascinated with the colorful ABCs but she got frustrated when she did not know how to put them into the right slot. I tried to teach her but she was a tad impatient and threw them all over the floor!



Perhaps it's still too early to introduce her to board puzzles and jig saw puzzles. I'll just stick to books, flash cards and VCDs in the meantime.

Baby Loves Her BumbleBee Educational VCDs

I bought a set of BumbleBee educational VCDs for my 2 older gals 4 years ago. 2 years ago when my 2 older gals got bored of the VCDs, I had wanted to give those VCDs away as I did not plan to have #3 but as fate has it, God had blessed me with my sweetie-pie... and now, I am recycling these VCDs and find them so useful.

Here is part of the set of BumbleBee Bee Smart Baby Vocabulary Builder:

... which Baby absolutely loves. These days, she can sit still on her highchair and get really, really engrossed and focused on the TV for at least half an hour and sometimes even an hour whilst I spoon-feed her formula milk. Whilst she's all soaked up in the program, I'll quickly shove the spoonfuls of milk into her mouth lol! She has learnt quite a number of new vocab and can say out a handful of words whenever she sees the picture of the object shown on TV.

Apart from this series, BumbleBee ABCs and 123s are also in my stash of educational VCDs collection. My 2 older gals learnt their ABCs and 123s from these BumbleBee VCDs, as well as from Barney's. If you want your toddler to learn their ABCs and 123s in a fun way, I'll recommend BumbleBee and Barney. Well, they worked pretty well on my gals.

Teaching Baby C Colors

That's how I teach my sweetie-pie colors. First I show her the card, for eg. a flash card with the color red, then I show her something from our house that is red in color - her cup. She loves this card-flashing session and it's one way of keeping this restless baby still on her high-chair during meal times. Another very good mode of teaching her colors is through the Baby Bright VCD (It's A Bright First Year, for 3 months - 2 years old). She loves this VCD too. My 2 older gals loved this VCD as well when I bought it for them 3 years ago and they are still loving it now (though they are a little too big for the VCD now).

Baby C Loves Watching 'Your Baby Can Read' VCD

Baby C engrossed watching her favorite VCD. Read on here.

Early Literacy Program For Toddlers

Both my older girls have always liked reading as I’ve inculcated the habit of reading in them since they were very young. Alycia and Sherilyn are very attracted to books that are colorful, filled with pictures and they especially like books that have activities. Though Alycia and Sherilyn love reading, they still cannot read a book on their own yet. While searching the internet for a reading program for toddlers today, I found out about Funetics, a literacy program developed by top educators, incorporating research-proven instruction based on phonics teaching and theory.

Funetics is an early literacy program that parents can use to teach their pre-school children (for ages 3 - 7 years old) to read through engaging games, activities, songs and fun. Funetics cover pre-reading skills such as color recognition, spatial relationships, shapes, cardinal and ordinal number concepts, identification and printing of letters, consonant and vowel sounds, word families and sight word recognition. Several concepts are usually combined in each lesson and concepts are repeated and reviewed frequently. Each lesson comes with a set of colorful, engaging worksheets that are used in the games and activities.

I am very impressed with the learning program and have requested for a free trial. Hopefully, Funetics will ship the products to countries outside the U.S.