Home-SU-Cool

Ian turned 6 last week! EXPLORATION DAY We went out with the 5BoroHSing group in NYC to the Queens County Farm Learnt about the bees, and I'm the one who's thoroughly intrigued by it -By exclusively feeding a baby bee royal jelly and nothing else makes it a queen bee. Wow. -The organization of the bee colony is AMAZING!! -Bees suck up pollen and store in their pockets by their legs, go back to hive, regurgitate out to the house bees and the house bees spit back into the cells, flap their wings so it evaporates and there is honey. MAN! How much work was involved in my teaspoon of honey everyday!!!! -Without bees, we'll be without 1/3 of the fruit supply!!!!!  Made a candle out of beewax Walked around the farm a little

PRESCHOOL The land, sea, air categorization game . I like it... 1st GRADE We did charting. Thank you Auntie Y and Uncle W for the gummy bears! We did more charting that are not in the pics and our library books didn't arrive yet, so we read some from last week SCIENCE: Planets The books didn't arrive too, so we'll continue on planets next week. I found A LOT of good resources on the Learning Page However, you can see that we need some "reteaching" about the planets (they are 8 now, Pluto is out) and also the year of our universe (this number is according to Big Bang and Evolution theory). Listen to the WONDERFUL teaching here about how our universe is young (listen to the "Young Universe" talk) While  you're there listen to "Check it out" too. It's very cool BIBLE NOTEBOOK We are having a lot of fun with it. Ian really likes this part. We tried to do more medium and not just drawing I love it that for Tower of Babe...

Finally get to do a review on the Toddler and Kindergarten versions of Teach Me (because today Colleen graduated to K version)! I did a r eview on the 1st Grade app , loved it and Teach Me people sent me promo codes for the younger versions. Really appreciate that. Here are my thoughts on the younger versions (with some updates to 1st) and my look at the different apps. First, how different are they? The toddler version has only stickers as rewards, which made sense for they would have no idea how to "purchase" things, it'll be hard. The kindergarten version has stickers and coins, which can purchase stuff for aquarium (which is what they love the most anyways) but not shapes. Also the kindergarten version has multiple choice answers, while 1st grade has the TeachTech (I LOVED this the most!) writing. Toddler - alphabets (upper and lower), counting, shapes, colors, phonetic sounds K - simple addition/subtraction, phonetic sounds (to complete a word), sight words 1st -...

I am a full-blooded Singaporean. It means I learnt my mother-tongue along with English since a babe. In my case, it's Chinese Mandarin. I read/converse/write fluently. That is why I have a passion in teaching my children to converse/read/write in Chinese as well.  Word Tracer is a wonderful teaching aid in this process! Thank you, Nanaimo Studio , for the promo code for review! After trying it out myself and with my children, here are my thoughts Love: flexibility You can have A LOT of options: to have the word there or not, to have sound or not, to have grid or not, to even add in your custom list of words to learn. Love: A VERY good guide The star and numbers to lead in the writing of the words are PERFECT for little children (in my case, this is a 6 year old who has written SOME Chinese words already). The word is big, and it's rather forgiving. The last app I tried needs you to be exactly in the right spot, which is real hard for kids. My child used the guides witho...

Here are what we did this week: PRESCHOOL We started reading from Picture That! Bible I really really like this bible We wrote some letters We did some Math 1st Grade MATH: Measurements We read the Measurement books. I like Stuart Murphy (of course) and Inch by Inch We did a lot of measuring and comparing I used this worksheet (that was meant for preschool yet good for this exercise) Measured with gummy and ate them measured with paper clips Measured with crayons measured with feet. (this btw, is a construction of a boat, according to the architect). Homeschooling peeps need LOTS of cardboard and tape, I realize. We did some English We read on Volcanoes for Science Showed him about magma pushing out of the volcano (using a tube of toothpaste from the airplane) Did a book (I love this ! a pity it cost $10.95 now, I got it for free)

I think I forgot to document lots of happenings this week...but here are some of the things we did: Place Values fo r Math Using the 100 chart to learn about place values We read through the whole creation account...Ian, all by himself. I really like the Bible Reader. Him too. We did pattern blocks which sometimes we forgot. We read books on the Sun and Moon. (I really like the Nancy Tafuri, What the Sun sees and What the moon sees) We also played some iPad apps, with the preschooler trying out the new Teach Me. I'll be doing a review soon.