珠的幸福世界: Thematic Learning (Weather)

Recently Jiale has been asking more questions about things around him. Hmm, or maybe not really ask questions la, given his limited verbal skills :p More like he seems to take notice of more things around him, e.g. he points to the clouds and goes '?' (Don't ask me how I know it's a '?' cos I just know la.) He points to the rain and says '雨' (rain). I wonder if he feels perplexed about what these are and how they come about. Can't do for a 2-year-old to feel perplexed! Haha. So I have started to be more systematic in our homelearning activities, and thematic learning seems to work best for us now.

I read up on thematic learning and it seems that the way it is usually done is to choose a theme and then incorporate many subjects into the learning activities. E.g. for a theme 'animals', the teacher (parent) will read books on animals, fiction for literature, non-fiction for science, maybe do geography too by learning about which parts of the world the animals live/originate, do craft work like a cat hand puppet, do math by counting number of bears, activity sheets like matching baby animals to their parents, field trip to the zoo, etc.

Mine is a very simplified version of this. I am not keen on parent-led craft work and activity sheets, at least not for now. Perhaps when Jiale is older, he might be more interested. Together with what I read about the classical method, I concentrate mainly on reading relevant books with Jiale.

Illustration using our recent topic on the weather:

Water droplets in the clouds

Fall down as rain

Borrowed some of the books from library. I do a catalogue search for the topic I have in mind. If there are many related books, I go to the library (while Jiale is in school) to browse and choose which ones are more suitable. If there are limited books, I reserve the book and I can just collect it from the library I want. I might also buy the book(s) if I think it's worthwhile, such as The Little Cloud by Eric Carle, since his books are generally good. The other books are what we already have at home, and of course the trusty talking encyclopaedia. For this topic, we are using 2 books - Sky & Earth and Nature.

This is a new learning corner I set up. Had thought of getting a front-facing bookshelf but did not want to take up excess wall space, as these bookshelves are usually quite high. So in the end, I just 3M-ed an IKEA wall shelf to the floor. In this corner, I put the books we read for the previous topics (Firefighter & Ballet) and the current one. It is a place where we tend to hang out often, as it is near the kitchen and somehow we often end up sitting around the area. There used to be a small table here but I moved it away. There is actually available space at the balcony but that's where Jiale usually hangs out alone with his trains and books. Somehow when I am free, we won't be there. So I decided to leave his 'private' space alone instead of 'forcing' my way in.

Learning corner

Actually the topic is a bit vague la. He has also been point point pointing to the sun so I just wanted to put all these 'things in the sky' into one topic. So our 'Weather' actually includes clouds, rain, wind, water cycle, sun, and day & night. (I am quite sure if he gets to see the moon more often, he would be point point pointing at it too.)

Shown here is how I tried to explain day & night to him, with a simple round light (from Daiso) and a globe. At his grand old age of 31 months, I am not sure how much he understands this round thing is supposed to represent the ground he is standing on. And I don't want to use DVDs/Youtube as far as possible. So we keep referring to the books where it's illustrated that the people are standing on the Earth, which looks the same as this globe.... and err, why the round light is the sun..? Haha, never mind, just explain a bit, can do this topic again when he's older.


Earth and the Sun :p

Thomas the Tank Engine is Jiale's favourite character, and it happens that one of his books sees Thomas and Percy going from day to night and back to day again. Just right! I used blu-tac to attach the train figurines to the globe so that Jiale could see his trains being cast in shadow (night) and in 'daylight' as they turn away from and toward the light. I feel pretty ingenious! *pat on the back*

Simple experiment to show him the water cycle. Some soil and water in a glass container. Left it in the corridor for an afternoon. Pointed out to him the water droplets that gathered on the underside of the lid. Told him that the water droplets that fell down were the same as rain.. Urmm, I tried la :p

Simple vocabulary. Googled for some images, printed them out, laminated, pasted velcro on the back. Not forgetting Chinese words too.

Cut out the strokes of the Chinese words from cardboard and attached magnets on the back. Wrote the word on the whiteboard and Jiale just had to put the correct stroke accordingly. For the four 'dian3' in the word '雨' I used our 'water droplets' : )

Also referred to this book to show Jiale how the Chinese words came about. This will also help him to remember the words more easily.

I will not intentionally do a field trip if I do not have a good place in mind. Science Centre is probably too chim for Jiale as of now. Since I try to bring the boys for a nature walk every week, I chose a place where he could easily see a large body of water and the sky, i.e. Changi Beach. It was a very sunny day with huge white clouds. I emphasized to him that inside the clouds was water. When the water falls, we call it rain.

OK, that about sums it up for our thematic-based homelearning. I shall blog about our future topics provided I don't feel too lazy about it :p