Babel School in Taiwan

Jedną z ulubionych układanek Ani jest puzzle liczbowe. Każda cyfra składa sie z odpowiadającej jej ilości kawałków. Teraz oczywiście czteroletnia Ania nie ma już najmniejszych problemów z układaniem tego puzzle, jednak rok temu sporo kłopotu sprawiały jej cyfry większe niż 5. Gdy już wszystkie liczby  są poukładane czas na ułożenie ich po kolei od 1 do 10:

Some time ago I came across a really nice floor puzzle - Alphabet Train Puzzle. Ania liked the puzzle right from the start, but beacause she was not familiar with the order of the letters in the alphabet it was taking her a lot of time to complete it and sometimes she would loose interest half way through. After she has learned most of the letters it became much easier for Ania to put all the pieces together. After a while I added "an extention" to this simple put-the-puzzle-together game. Ania was suppose to match the letter cards to the letters on the train. The puzzle not only helped Ania in learning the order of the letters in the alphabet, but it also helped her to learn the names of the animals on the puzzle. As you can see it's not that difficult to turn a simple game (or in this case a puzzle) into a teaching material. :-)

More and more often people ask me how do I homeschool a three year old.  What does a three year old do at home? Let's take a look at Ania's week, here are some of the things he was busy with: Making bubbles - it's a favorite of all the kids. I also use play-dough as a material for teaching letter shapes. This is first time Ania rolled the play-dough to write her name. Time for math - it was Ania's idea to combine two different math works. Polishing silver is also one of the favorites. After polishing the silvers it's time to set the table. :-) Working with so called Montessori Metal Insets is important in developing the correct pencil grip as well as good control over the pencil (drawing parallel lines). Very often Ania takes a piece of paper, rolls it into a tube and looks through it. That gave me an idea to make with her binoculars out of toilet roll paper tubes. Now she carries them all over house and looks through th...

Finally all the holidays, vacations are over - first it was Christmas, then trip to Hong Kong followed by New Year and a few days later a 4 weeks long ski holiday in Japan. When we came back it was Chinese New Year holiday which involved visiting family and receiving friends. Ufff! I feel like we've been away from our desks for almost two months! That's why now it's time to really start teaching and learning. Looks like kids are also ready for a more stable learning time. Yesterday was our first day in the classroom and they did quite a lot of work. The only thing I needs improving soon is the morning routine - it takes us far too long to start the school day. Yesterday I reviewed with Zosia what she has learned about kinematics in physics. She has made this mind map: This semester we decided that we would get a Chinese language teacher for Jas. Thanks to one of my Polish friends we found a very nice and knowledgeable lady. We met her yesterday and it looks like Jas...

Outside it's raining and temperature dropped to 20C. In Taiwan there is a very short window of time that we don't need to turn on neither AC nor heater. And the time is now! It's the most pleasant time of the year (of course when it's not raining). Not much is happening - just teaching and learning :-)    In the morning we read "Earthquakes" and discussed how we can prepare for them. After the March 11th disaster in Japan the subject of earthquakes is being brought up quite often in our house. Taiwan is one of those places that shakes and rattles almost all the time. In the afternoon we had visitors - Taiwanese cable news station, GTV 八大, came to interview Tim and film a news spot on homeschooling. If you would like to watch it just click on the video below:   While TV was here kids started putting a flag puzzle together: