Toys Lesson 7

Ahoy there! As you can guess from my greeting, we are still sailing into this week with our sea travels adventure!

We will have a mixture of old and new activities as usual. The old activities for reinforcement and the new to keep the interest going. We will be introducing the sea sounds listening puzzle this week as a active listening activity. This Listening puzzle helps the kids develop attention skills through:

- the combined use of visual and aural stimuli
- subject matter that is familiar and meaningful to them
- the use of a novel and playful format to convey the information

We will also introduce a new book If I had a Big Blue Boat, a boat that emphasize on sounds and sights found out on the sea. Reading together:

- fosters love of reading
- provides predictability
- introduce new words
- expands understanding of story structures
- promotes critical thinking
- encourages language play and creative expression

A personal note: there is nothing more important you can do with a child at this age than to read to him/her. Not only for all the benefits above, it also foster bonding between parent and child. I know that one of the highlights of my day is to tuck in bed with my kids and read to them. And we talked and talked...about all sorts of things. Today my son said to me...mummy, I need more hands to tell you how much I love you. I don't want any other mummy except you, even if the other mummy gives me sweets and lollipops, and allow me to watch TV all the time! :-) Now that is more precious than anything in the world......

Coming back to lesson plan, we will also be incorporating instruments in our story...which instrument can produce the sounds we can hear in the story? How do we make the sound of the rustle of leaves, or the flippish leap of fish? Ahhh....it will be interesting to get the kids to produce their musical story to this book.

I can't wait to see the home made boats you guys will be bringing to class. I know, from the home made instruments the last time, you mums and dads out there take the homework seriously and I truly appreciate the effort you take which helps make the class activities so much more enjoyable, interesting and meaningful. Let's see how our home made boats weather the storms in the class!

This week, we will be doing the Boatman's Dance during parent sharing time. Get ready our sea legs to dance together! See you in class! So long.....

Next week: Please bring a torchlight for each child. We need it during parent sharing time.