Organizing Our Learning!

It had been a pretty busy week for me! I was unpacking our stuff, sorting them, clearing away old stuff and planning our learning journey for the next 3 months. The Shichida way of planning our term calendar every quarterly year has rubbed off on me and I think it will stay for life. It might be tedious right in the beginning but things settled down and move on smoothly for the next 3 months. If you asked me, it is worth the effort. It helped me to get into gear quickly; when I feel lazy, I will refer to my schedule when I cannot think of anything new to do with the kids.

Kiasu mummy syndrome when it comes to teaching the kids? Maybe. But I know deep down I just want to help them enjoy learning as much as possible. I don't want to reach a stage when we feel stressed and have to cramp our learning. So now, I try to cater to their learning needs as much as possible. At least it is within my means now. Another reason is that I will try to abstain from tuition as much as possible as I want them to be independent learners. One way to become such is being able to think critically as well as to read. Reading is one of the most important tools to open our gateway to lifelong learning. How to do it in an interesting way? Well, I am still finding my way around. :) Last of all, I enjoy doing it! For children, life is about play and learn right? So why not schedule it so it will be more fulfiling?

Anyway, here is a general preview of what I do every 3 months:

1) I refer to old lesson plans and see what I did and what I had not done
2) I put those that I had not done last quarter into the new lesson plans so that I will try to do it again. I did not follow some activities due to lack of time or simply because they are not ready/not interested.
3) I looked at the new books I had brought along this time and make sure we read these books every week. This is to make sure every book is accounted for :) I read Oxford Tree Series, Berenstein Bears Series and I just bought some Dr Seuss books from Amazon recently.
4) I will also just repeat some activities for reinforcement as they do not know yet. For example, it is taking me sometime to let Ko learn phonic sounds because she is just not very interested.
6) The first month schedule will be done more briefly as I intend to research more on what to teach them this "semester" during this first month. I just needed a general plan to kickstart first.

White ones are for Ko while Blue ones are for Imm so that it is easy for me to differentiate.:) I do this so that I can personalise their learning as I know what they like to do or not so good at. I know some kids already know their phonic sounds and letters by 2 years old but I will just keep trying other activities with Ko for her to pick it up at her pace. Learning A and B has been in her learning schedule since 1 year old.. sometimes I try not to compare as I know Imm already knows his alphabets and numbers at 2 years old. Trying :)



I then packed the books and activities into these 4 boxes. Every start of the month, I would remove and add in the new books.


Then I also packed my cupboard and made sure that every activity has a "home" so that it saves me time rummaging in the cupboard. I don't want to 海底捞针.