N has been on his school holidays since the first week of June, but I signed him up for some holiday programmes during his first two weeks, as I thought they looked interesting. We then headed back to Singapore for slightly more than a week, but now that we’re back in Jakarta, I thought it would be fun for us to do some homelearning together. We used to do plenty of homelearning activities when we were in Singapore, mainly because he was an only child back then, and I had the time and energy to come up with materials and activities for him. Since he’s starting K2 when school reopens (the school year begins in the middle of the year here), I figured we won’t have much time for fun learning activities, and asked him to choose two topics that he wanted to learn more about now. He picked plants for the first topic, so here we are!
Thankfully, our good friends at Raising Faith just did a homelearning module on botany, so I got many ideas and online resources from her. I showed the post to N, and asked if he would like to do similar paintings as F, but he said no, so I had to scroll through Pinterest for more ideas. You can check out my Pinterest board, All about Flowers, HERE to take a look at some of the other interesting crafts.
I happened to have ordered some flower crafts from Qoo10 when we were back in Singapore, and they were perfect for our homelearning theme. I personally found the round pot and its flowers easier to make, so if you’re planning on ordering some for your kindergartener, don’t get the square pots. N worked on the flowers, while I helped him to put the pots together, as it required some “sewing”, which he refused to try. I tried to maximise the learning involved in the crafts, by getting him to sort the parts of the flowers, and to count EVERYTHING, because you know, everything and anything can be a learning experience, right?
Flower craft from Qoo10
Working on the flowers
Counting and sorting
Done! (Meimei wanted to be in the photo too)
Decorating the square pot
Cheeky fella
Babies wanted to grab the pretty flowers
Next, I got N to work on paper plate flowers. I showed him two different types of flowers which he could create: one with petals and painted with watercolours, and the other painted with Do-a-Dot markers.
Making paper plate flowers
The babies wanted to “help”
Ready to be assembled
Two of the flowers he made
If you don’t know by now, I’m a serious bookaholic, in that I cannot seem to stop buying books, but the upside of that is that I usually can find at least one book on our bookshelf that is suitable for whichever theme we choose. Here were the books we read. (I know ‘Stuck’ doesn’t really count, but I had grand plans of getting N to draw a tree, then add whatever funny things he wanted to it, but he didn’t find my idea appealing at all. Pfft.)
Books related to the “Plants” theme
Reading
We also went around taking photos of flowers we saw, before I got him to work on the two sets of flower matching cards I found online. The first set is simpler, as he only had to match the pictures of the flowers, but many of the flowers in that set seem to be less commonly seen in Singapore/Jakarta. The second set required him to match the pictures and names of the flowers, which was a little more difficult, as he can’t really read well yet. I figured it wouldn’t harm to just expose him to the different types of flowers, and he had fun matching them all.
Taking photos of flowers
First set
Second set
I happened to have some dried lotus pods and pine cones (which I bought from this shop in Jakarta), and N was pretty fascinated by them.
Examining the dried lotus pod
N worked on the three-part cards on parts of the plant, flower, tree etc, but I didn’t push him to learn all the names, because I wanted to keep things fun. Originally, I wanted to get the Montessori puzzles on this theme, but they were so expensive that I decided to make my own version instead. I can’t find the link for the image I used anymore, but you can try googling for ‘Montessori parts of flower puzzle’.
Working on three-part cards
My version of the Montessori puzzle
Super pleased with himself for finishing the super simple puzzle *rolls eyes*
We collected some fallen flowers and leaves we came across, and I got N to take some of the flowers apart, so that he could get a better look at them. He taped them all onto sheets of drawing block, and also did a simple craft with the sticks that he has been hoarding. He wanted to make a tree with them, and I taught him to make fingerprint leaves.
Picking flowers and leaves
“Deconstructing” the flowers
Done!
Making fingerprint leaves
Done!
As part of the sensory experience, I took out some of my Young Living oils, and got him to smell them.
The oils
Trying to decide which oils were his favourite
Lastly, I brought him to a local flower shop, where he picked out some flowers for me (but I had to pay for them). The next day, we got some white roses, so that we could conduct a simple experiment. I wanted to put the stalks of white roses into coloured water, so that N could see how the flowers changed colours, but I only managed to get red, brown, and green food colouring. I thought it might work if we used paint for the other roses, but it didn’t. My friend said it’s because the molecules of the paint were too big to be absorbed. Interesting!
Flowers for Mummy
White roses for the experiment
Experiment Day 1
Even though it was quite a lot of work preparing all the materials, I honestly had quite a bit of fun during this week of homelearning. I’ve missed doing this with N, and I know it’ll be practically impossible when school reopens next week, as his school hours are pretty long.
Next up, insects!
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