Puzzle craft

Waiting for the brother to end his tuition class can be dreadfully boring for a 5 year old. In order to kill that 1.5 hours of wait, I would often bring stuff out to entertain her. From books to coloring to worksheets, anything and everything!

 

Yesterday, we did something quite different and fun. Doll dug out my old purchase from Daiso and begged me to let her have a go at it. And I thought why not? We needed to entertain ourselves anyway.

 

 

 

If you have been to Daiso, you may have seen this peculiar looking product. It is usually located where the children items are.

 

It is actually a blank 25-pieces puzzle. We can personalised the puzzle by drawing our own pictures on it. I actually bought this puzzle long ago for my numbering sequence activity. (Yes, I was being overly eager. I bought one too many :P)

 

 

I numbered each puzzle for Doll who was 2 then, to learn her number sequencing. She just had to connect the puzzles in numerical order. More about this activity at this link.

 

 

Well, it was a good thing I bought extra because we had quite an enjoyable mother-daughter time. Each set comes with two puzzles (what a steal isn't it? For just SGD$2!). So, she drew on one and I drew on the other. This mama also needs to kill time you know?

 

She drew a picture of herself and me. I apparently have a yellow face. :I

She made a mistake with the green marker and I told her she could use her imagination to try to correct her mistake. She doodled and finally drew up a table (looks more like a cradle to me). But. I am happy she learnt that she could recreate something else over her initial mistake.

 

And ta-da! My cute penguin drawn by yours truly :D.

 

After ink dried, she took it out and tried to build the puzzles with her friend.

 

Now make a guess which of the two was the harder puzzle to piece up?

A little Garden for her

One of Doll's thematic learning at school was about garden.

She came home and bugged me to get her a garden. So I did.

 

 

 

Pretty?

 

Here's how I did it.

 

 

Materials needed:

 

daddy's old t-shirt (brown in color)

toilet rolls

 

basket

fake flowers 

(basket and flowers are from Daiso)

 

 

Cut out the shirt big enough to cover the toilet roll. Wrap securely the cut out shirt around the roll.

 

 

Cut out another piece of the t-shirt and lay it in the basket.

 

Stuff the wrapped toilet rolls neatly into the basket.

 

 

You may start your 'gardening'!

 

Stuff the flowers in between the rolls.

 

 

And viola!

 

Have fun!

Beside the Russian Dolls...

Beside the Russian Dolls, i have also these on our shelf.

 

 

This was inspired by my friend, Lynn! I dashed to Daiso after seeing this on her blog, Playhood & went on to buy these wooden blocks. But on purchase, i had NO idea what to do with it. :P Until now.

 

Stuck some stickers on them and numbered them. Babydoll had to line them up in sequence.

 

Melissa & Doug number puzzles.

 

 

 

Something every household can do. Sorting colored pegs!

 

Sorting & matching red/yellow Duplo blocks. 

Mini Australian Unit (edited)

Following our trip to Australia, i made a Australian theme unit for Doll this week.

 

I made a printable for doll to learn her numbers from 11-14. Just to make it more Aussie, i added Koala bears design on the cards. She had to match the cards. As she picks one up i say out the number to help her recognise and identify.

 

Another printable i made, counting Cockatoos! I  accidentally discovered that she can count (not just rote count) up to 4! I made her these cards to help her practise more. :)

 

 

 

I took out all our animal toys; animals that can be found in Australia such as the Kangaroo, Koala, Sheep, cockatoo etc. Babydoll is task to match the animals to the cards and the word labels. My aim is to help her in word recognition.

  

 

 

I also made her an easy Australian map puzzle. I printed the map on the website and cut out the shapes. I chose this map because each state is color coded so Babydoll could match by color & shape.

 

 

This is how it looks like when completed.

 

 

Some non-Australian activity on our shelf. A box of 'B's.

 

This box contained all the objects/animals starting with the letter 'B'.

 

There are a couple of mandarin activity tray on our shelf this week.

 

I discovered Babydoll has learnt to read some more Mandarin words on fruits. Hence, I made these cards to help her revise and reinforce what she knows.

 

We are reading on colors (mandarin)! This is one activity to help speed up her learning.

 

 

This activity is still on our shelf. Well, it is somewhat Aussie, we did see these animals during our visit to Collingwood Farm in Melbourne! :P

 

Have a great week ahead y'all!

 

Link up to

 

DIY mini activity booklets.

We did little this week, been busy doing some other fun stuff! :P

 

But, in the midst of all the hectic schedule, i managed to make a little activity book for doll.

  

 

I made a mini alphabet activity booklet for the little one.

 

 

In this book, she has to match the small letters to the capital letters. I could make it a little more prettier, add a flower, birds and bees here and there. But i chose not to. I don't want to clutter it with too much 'noise'. I made it to be what it is meant to be. Also, i deliberately chose the capital and small letters to be in the same color (actually, i prefer it otherwise) to help doll match. At the same time, it works as a 'control of error'.

 

 

I packed the booklet into zip lock bags so that i can easily bring it along with me to entertain doll when we are out.

 

 

Another booklet, i made was on numbers.

 

 

Matching numbers. In this case, i deliberately chose the numbers to be in varying colors. I wanted her to match purely by recognising the numbers and not by color.

 

Laying out the cards for her to match is easy for her-no matter the number of cards we play. So i reckon these mini books would help to bring up the level of difficulty for her. She now has to search the page herself by flipping the book in order to look for the right match. I can see it is alittle challenging for her- good!

 

 

I also made some mini color cards (for easy travelling). Here she has the match the correct colored words to the cards.

 

 

Learning about big and small.

 

These are cards to help her visually discriminate big versus small. As she work on them, i can hear her say 'big frog' *match the cards*, 'small frog' * match the cards*. Oh, i am but a proud mama! *Beam*

 

I would love to share these printables here. But bear with me while i figure out how to share documents on the blog. So do keep a look out!

Some ABCS, 123s and colors!

Here's what are on our shelf for Babydoll:

 

 

Practical Life activity; scooping & transferring rice. (Picture of rice not included because I don't leave the rice in the bowl when shelved, i only take it out during actual work).

 

 

Matching animal figurines to picture cards.

 

 

A closer look of the cards i made.

 

 

 

Matching cut out numerals to sandpaper numbers.

 

Matching cut out letters to cards. Here she is revising the sounds of each letter. I deliberately kept the letters in a zip lock bag. She loves to open the bag, dig her tiny hands in and draw the items out of the bag.

 

She has typically learnt all the letter sounds. I don't think i can move forward yet because she hasn't given me te green light. While waiting, i am just letting her revise, take the chance to drill it deep into her brain!

 

More matching, this time, matching colored items to color cards. This week she is learning the colors, Black, white, orange and purple. 

 

This is still on our shelf. She LOVES this activity. I have up the cards and added 5,6 and 7 (because she keeps asking for 'more!').

 

I bought this so cheaply during my trip to Malaysia. She loves to poke each numbers out of the board and fit them back. As she works on this puzzle, i took the chance to name the numbers to help her recognise the numbers. So far, she already knows from numbers from 1-5, whoohooo!

 

I love that Babydoll is always asking for 'more! more!' during our activity time. It tells me she enjoys them and looks forward to our time together. :)

 

Linking up to:

Colors of blue & yellow

 

Oh babydoll! It is so hard to fit a teaching activity for her in our routine!

 

The best time is when sonshine is at school but she usually have her lunch and nap all the way till it's time to pick her brother up.

 

 

So i try to aim to do one, just one activity with her a day. I try to make it as short & quick as possible. This week, i taught her blue & yellow. She has no problems matching the colors, so i know she knows the colors. But when i asked her what color is something, her answer is always 'red!'. LOL! However, i played a high-5 game with her, asking her to high-5 the blue/yellow card and she got it correct. So i am trying not to sweat it about the 'red' answer. Since she does know her colors!

 

A quick and fun activity for her. I cut up blue and yellow straws into short strips & took out blue and yellow playdough. She poked the colored straws into the corresponding color playdough. She enjoyed this! And i was happy that it kept her well entertained for...10 minutes. :I