Happy Preschool Activities - Homeschooling - Bilingual Children - Parenting

Showing posts with label Preschool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Preschool. Show all posts

Thursday, 16 November 2017

Jelly Beans Rainbow Science Experiment

We have some jelly beans left from a party, so we decided to use them to make rainbows. This is an easy science experiment that you can do with your children. It takes less than five minutes to set up and they have a lot of fun exploring what happens with the jelly beans.

You will need

A bag of jelly bean
A white plate
A cup of warm water


What you do

  1. Arrange Jelly beans on the edge of the plate.
  2. Pour in some warm water.
  3. Wait and observe what happens.
  4. After the colours meet in the center, take the jelly beans out and observe what has happened to the jelly beans. 


What They Learn

  1. Children learn how to use and practise skills in the scientific method which is a techniques for investigating events, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting previous knowledge. They make observations, ask questions, make hypotheses, make an experiment and draw a conclusion. We didn't expect Mr Four to do all those steps in the scientific method but he actually did. He observed when we put jelly beans in the water, made a hypotheses about which colour would appear first, did the experiment, gathered the data and drew conclusions.
  2. Children learn about math in the experiment. There are patterns, colours, and lines. They observed how the colour travels, makes the shapes and creates patterns. Patterns can be found everywhere, it can help predict and can be used to solve problems. When children practise how to look for patterns, they also practise both mathematical and scientific skills. 
  3. We can help children extend their learning by asking open-ended questions. This can encourage meaningful answers using their own knowledge and feelings. During the experiment, we asked Mr Four what would happen if we put water on to the jelly beans? What colour would appear first? Or where did the colour come from? 
Let's watch the video how they did the experiment!


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Saturday, 28 October 2017

Board Game With Preschool Children

A few months ago, we introduced Mr Four to play board games. We started with easy game, like snakes and ladders, then we moved on to harder game like monopoly. Because board games are rich in learning opportunity, the result of playing board games together is incredible. Mr Four has developed many skills in the past few months. Here are some examples. 

Following instructions. Children learn how to play a board game by following the instruction. They have to wait to their turn, roll the dice, pick a card, move the bit around the board, etc. There are rules in the games that they need to follow, the same as in real life. Board games allow children to experience rules, learn rules and negotiate with others when rules need to be modified.


Math skills. Counting the number on the dice, counting when they move their bits, adding numbers, reading numbers on the board, etc. Not every board game requires math, but a vast number of them do. Playing games will give children practice, improving their math skills and probable setting them up for STEM careers down the road.

Social and language skills. When we play games together we have to communicate with others, waiting, taking turns, and enjoying interaction with others. Board games offer opportunities for them to learn these important social skills. In real life, we are living in  a complex society. Board games can help children understand more about the world around them in much more simple ways and  within boundaries. 


Emotional skills. Some children play games very seriously. When Mr Four's piece fall down the snake, he feels very sad. When his piece goes up the ladder, he is very happy. Board games give a lot of opportunities for children to learn how to cope with these up and down feelings. Very young children, like Mr Four, sometime feel it is very important for them to win (and sometime we let them). Later on we try to play with "fair play", children can develop sense of fairness and it is ok if they don't win all the time. 

Family bonding time. What children want most is to be with you and spending time together. They want you to take pleasure in them, play with them, and listen to them. Board game is a perfect solution for this. We spend time together, we talk, we laugh and most of all we have fun!
It's very important to choose the age appropriate board game for children. Very young children tend to have short attention span and limited motor skills. Choose a game with simple rules, easy to understand and play and meet with their interest can give them hours of fun family time. 

What is your favorite board game? Ours is Peppa Pig Monopoly Junior. Let's see how we play it on the video. 

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Sunday, 24 September 2017

Painting with Balloons

Painting is visual art that children can learn and develop their natural imagination, problem solving, sensory and motor skills. Today we are using balloons instead of paint brushes. Let's see how we do it.

You'll Need

Water paints
Different size balloons
Plastic plate
A piece of paper.


What We Do

  1. Put some paint in the plate. We use three main colours, red, blue and yellow  to start of with. 
  2. Put a balloon on the paint, then stamp it on the paper.
  3. Use your imagination and make anything pictures you want.



What They Learn

  1. Painting can be very messy, but that is how they learn. Children develop their sensory skills through their sensory messy plays. They can explore new textures of paint, paper, balloons, etc.
  2. Painting requires motor skills to manipulate painting equipment. They use their fingers to move the balloons around the paper to create what they want. This is how they learn how to take control of their world.
  3. Painting let children express their thoughts, ideas or even their experiences. When Miss Two did her painting, it looks like a blob to me. But she said it was a butterfly. So it was a butterfly!
  4. Children learn about shapes through painting. Pressing balloons on to paper create circle shapes. What can you make from circles. 
  5. Children learn about colour. They learn that if they mix two colours together, they create a new colour. Because we only use there main colours, red, green and blue, Mr Four needs to mix red and blue together to make his favorite purple colour.


Our children had so much fun (making a mess) and couldn't resist to use their fingers to finish their painting! Let's see what they have made!




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Monday, 14 August 2017

Spinning Top: Preschool Activity

Spinning top is a fun way to learn the concepts of motion, symmetry, and balance. Making their own spinning tops helps them to explore how does it work. What happened if you put the pencil to the side or place the cardboard on the top of the pencil. The process can help them develop basic scientific skills, start an hypothesis and test it out. Let's make one together. 

You will need

A Piece of Cardboard
A Circle Object to draw a circle with
A pencil
A pair of Scissors
Crayons to decorate


Let's do it

  1. Draw a circle on a cardboard by tracing the circle object. 
  2. Use the scissor to cut the circle out. Be careful the scissors are sharp.
  3. Decorate.
  4. Make a hole in the middle of the cardboard, put a pencil through the hole. 
  5. Spin!

What do they learn from the spinning top?

  1. Children can improve their fine motor skills. Twirling the stem of the top using the their fingers help them develop pincer grasp and dexterity. These skills can also benefit children with writing skill later. When they write, they need to manipulation and use the pencil with one hand.   
  2. Children can learn physical science by observing the top spin, or wobble. A spinning top is designed to spin rapidly with its rotational inertia. Don't worry, we haven't gone that far with Miss Two and Mr Four yet.
  3. Tops are designed to be symmetry, which is a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. Symmetry can be found in many areas, mathematic, physics, chemistry, biology, architecture, visual arts, music, and much more. Learning about symmetry can help them understand 
  1. Making their own spinning tops helps them to explore how does it work. By providing them choices, they can try different way of making it. They can try making it big or small, using short/long/big/small pencil for the stem, or decorate it however they like. They can also try with different designs, what happened if they put the pencil to the side or place the cardboard on the top of the pencil. Then they can observe how their tops spin. Does it work? What are the colour of the tops look like? Mr Four found out that if he put the cardboard too high on the pencil, it didn't spin very well. The process can help them develop basic scientific skills, start a hypothesis and test it out.
Let's watch our children made spinning tops.


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Wednesday, 9 August 2017

Coloured Milk Swirling
Preschool Science Activity

We did an interesting science experiment with in the kitchen, coloured milk swirling. The experiment was very easy. We only needed a few basic ingredients that you can find in the kitchen to do it. We would see some very unusual chemical reactions took place when we mixed milk, food colouring, and a drop of dishwashing liquid. Preschooler might not understand the chemical reactions but they had fun observing and mixing colours. 


You will need

Full cream milk
Food colouring 
Detergent liquid 
A bowl
A Cotton Swab


What you do

  1. Pour some milk in a bowl.
  2. Drop in some food colouring.
  3. Use cotton swab, tip a bit of dishwashing liquid in the middle of the colour drop.
  4. Watch the colour swirl.

How it works

Milk contains water, vitamins, minerals, proteins, and tiny droplets of fat. A basic fact of science, water (polar molecules)  and milk fat (non-polar molecules) do not mix together. Detergent liquid is our emulsifier, the soap molecules in the detergent work as a bridge between polar water molecules and non-polar milk fat molecules. During the bonding time, the food colouring molecules  are bumped everywhere, providing and easy and fun way to observe the invisible chemical reactions. 


Preschoolers might not be able to understand those chemical reaction at the moment. The activity provided them opportunity to observe what happen, manifest curiosity, which are stepping stones to discovery in science and technology. Now it is time to enjoy. Let's watch the experiment with our children.


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Monday, 24 July 2017

Balloon Rocket
Preschool Science Experiment

Balloon rocket is an easy and fun way for children to learn science. For our preschool children, we do not really talk about physic theory behind how it works. However, they did a lot of observation which is a basic skill for a scientist. Mr Four actually came up with how did it work. We talked about the direction that the rocket would go, how to do make it go farther, etc.


I found a lot of balloon rocket projects that attach a balloon to a straw on a piece of string. As preschool children, this method didn't work very well with them. They tend to like just to blow the balloon up and let it go. Sticking an inflated balloon directly to a straw is hard to do. Plus, they can't keep  it blown up and let go as a balloon with sticky tape on tends to blast too easily. So we came up with a solution.  


What you need
  
A balloon
    A long piece of string
   A straw
   Sticky tape
   A pair of scissor


What you do
  1. Tie one end of the string to a heavy fixture in the room such as a chair or door. Thread the other end of the string through the straw and pull it tight. 
  2. Tie the loose end to another fixed object, keeping it tight. 
  3. Attach a balloon to a straw, as shown in the picture above, then attach it to the straw on the string. 
  4. Blow up the balloon.
  5. You’re ready for launch! Let go of the balloon and watch it fly across the room.


For toddlers like Miss Two, she had fun blowing up the balloon and let it go. Blowing up a balloon is a great way to practice mindfulness of breathing, how to center in on their core and use their lung capacity to breathe more powerfully. For preschoolers like Mr Four, observing the balloon go along the string helps them understand more about natural cause and effect. And most important thing is fun. They learn best through play, don't they?



Watch our children playing balloon Rocket.


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