Our little playgroup is moving on to learn about farms and animals, and I think we had a very promising start to the new theme this week.
Mummy C, the host for this week’s playdate, set up an entire farm scene for the children to play with. Noah woke up really early this week, so we were the first to arrive at her place, and he had the luxury of playing with the farm for quite some time. He was, as usual, most interested in the farm vehicles, and played with them whenever there were lull periods.
Checking out the farm scene (He zoomed in on the farm vehicles immediately!)
Close-ups of the farm scene
After everyone had arrived, we settled down to sing the Welcome song. Mummy L did a quick recap of the colours and shapes we’ve learnt, then introduced two new colours (black and white) as well as a new shape (heart).
Orange aeroplane
Yellow duck
Pink bear and Green cup
Black and white panda
Heart
Mummy C read Margaret Wise Brown’s Big Red Barn
*, and I must say that I actually liked it a lot more than
*. The kids were all very busy trying to point out the different animals as she read the book!
Big Red Barn
In line with the farm/animal theme, we made animal masks for the craft activity! I’m really very impressed with Mummy C, as she always has such creative ideas. She printed out some materials for the masks, and even cut out the holes for the eyes on the paper plates. I don’t know which link she used, but I found a similar one here, if you are interested in making your own animal masks. I like that she used paper plates instead of the regular A4-sized paper or drawing block, because it’s a lot sturdier. The uneven surface does make it a little more difficult to attach the parts of the mask, and we found it easier to use double-sized tape instead of glue, for this. She also provided us with coloured tongue depressors, which are broader than ice-cream sticks, to be stuck onto the paper plates, as handles for the masks. Definitely a lot better than using rubberbands and trying to make the children wear the masks!
The mums were the ones doing most of the work
Mummy C brought out a mirror so that the kids could look at themselves with their masks on
Guess who?
The completed masks
For snack time, Mummy C baked some bread, Mummy L baked some cheese biscuits, and Noah ate… only the grapes. Sigh. He then quickly declared that he was, “All done!” and went off to play with the farm vehicles again.
Munch munch
Mummy J read a Chinese story about animals and friendship, but Noah was obviously lost after a while, and started wandering around the house. The Chinese song we sang after that was a familiar one for all the mums, so we were better able to guide the children in the singing and simple actions.
Chinese story time
We continued working on sorting shapes and colours for Practical Life Skills, and I think all the children seem to have gotten the hang of it, as they were able to complete the sorting quite quickly.
Sorting
Because it was raining, we didn’t manage to go to the playground, and ended our session with two action songs (‘It’s a Great Thing to Praise the Lord’ and ‘Six Little Ducks’), followed by the usual Goodbye song.
“Quack, quack, quack!”
It was really tough taking the group photo this week, because we wanted them to hold their masks as well, so erm, this was my best photo of the little ones.
Group shot!
*This is an affiliate link, which means that if you buy the book after clicking on this link, a few cents from this sale goes to Noah’s book fund, at absolutely no cost to you.
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