Lesson time - A

A few of my friends are very disciplined about educating their children and after seeing how it really isn't that difficult (materials readily available on the WWW), I figure I ought to attempt to spend some fruitful time with Kate. After all, I have been feeling terribly guilty about the amount of time she spends on YouTube watching videos and with my Fridays off, it's the perfect opportunity for me to use this day to do some educational engagement.

I think alphabets are a good and simple way to start and I searched for some worksheets for the letter "A". I introduced to her big/capital letter "A" and small letter "a". 

Colouring the letters. Kate's not that great with colouring nor drawing (nothing structured or that makes sense)  but I do see some slight improvement when I actually sit with her and watch her colour. She attempts to colour within the perimeters and I think this is some progress compared to mindless and wild stabbing at the paper.

I also found worksheets that featured "a" items (apples, alligator, ant and acorn) and the worksheet activity was to colour the largest/smallest item. Happy to say that Kate is able to identify large/small items quickly and is able to follow instructions to colour only that biggest/smallest item. 

This worksheet below was a bit of a waste because I could only use one row out of the rest of it - I didn't want to confuse her so I stuck to the letter "A". I still had her identify and colour in the right small letter "a" though - but this is a good one to use for revision, I reckon. 

My mom's been awesome and taught Kate colours, so when I do these worksheets with her, I constantly refer to colours. "Can you please colour this in (fill in colour)?" 

Ta-da! Mommy, you see I draw nice nice.

I'm so happy that I embarked and accomplished this short "lesson time" with Kate. Truth is, it really isn't that difficult and while I could have done a lot more way before this, I'm just happy that I began at all. Now that I've started, I'll keep at it! I also learnt a few lessons about identifying better worksheets and I hope that Kate and I will both enjoy ourselves. The lessons didn't take all that long but it's knowing that I've taught her things formally and being able to let her apply the knowledge she's learnt when I see opportunities when we're out and about. (Say, I see some huge signboard, I'll try to have her identify the letters from there) I also photocopied an extra set of worksheets so basically I let her attempt the same activity twice which was a great idea because she wanted to do more after we finished one set of worksheets and rather than introducing more new things, I let her re-do the same things; which I hope helped to reinforce what I was teaching her.

Yay! I'm so proud of myself (ok, I know this sounds lame me congratulating myself but I'm just so thrilled!) - and I'm looking forward to more such interactive and engaging sessions with Kate.

Another bonus was also seeing Kate show off to her father proudly her completed worksheets - "PAPA you see, you SEE!"


Heh