Toy Shelf - Project

We decided to do a simple crafty project to start the holidays. I wanted to do something with construction paper and ended up making this cute little toy shelf. Later I sat out to write the materials needed at the back of the shelf. I like my teeny tiny shelf.

How I did it? Well, Take a large construction sheet and glue the ends together so they make a cylinder. Then flatten it so it makes a flat rectangle. Fold it in half again (a hamburger fold). On one half draw vertical lines at 1 inch intervals. Cut along the lines. Now make the paper into a cuboid and fold in alternate cuts so they make the shelves. Then insert square papers between the shelves to give a base for each shelf. Your beautiful toy shelf is ready for playing/display. You can decorate yours with wood pattern wrappers for wooden finish. Hope you get the idea.

Sorry, Mom forgot to take pictures step by step so the procedure may not be as clear... Click on the pictures to enlarge.

Time Telling - Game

Today in our club meet we played a time telling game. One pair has to act out the time and the other pair has to guess what time it is. Of the pair, the taller one is the minute hand and the shorter one is the hour hand. We took turns and had fun running around the clock. We practiced time to the hour with this fun activity. The 2nd picture shows me and my friend acting out the 12 O'clock.

Simple Clock Project

In our play it learn it club we did a clock project. A real clock with moving hands!

For the clock face we used a regular use and throw plate with some designs around the edge. Luckily mom chose a plate with a cute design that complimented the clock face - it has 12 grape pictures around the edge. Perfect for a clock. We then numbered the grapes with different markers. I followed a pattern. Then mom helped us clip the hands to the clock using a fastener. We then moved the hands and practiced time telling. The one that shows 4 O' clock is mine.

Practicing those moves

Today it is review time in my chess class. We used bear counters as markers to identify the possible moves of a knight. That strategy helped me visualise the moves. Amma gave me a quiz. I did well, ofcourse.

Infinity minus Infinity

We tweaked the Addition war and played subtraction war this morning while having our brunch. The variation is: Subtract the greater number from the smaller and compare the difference.
Oh, you know what, during the course of playing, we talked about infinity and how our joker can be considered as infinity. When we had a war and we both turned the joker at the same time, there came this interesting question: what is joker minus joker or as we say in our 'subtraction war world',
What is infinity minus infinity?
Mom said infinity and Dad said Zero.
We googled only to be left with more questions than answers!
Due to the lack of time to do the research & the scope of the subject, mom concluded that we will put that question in the back burner for now until I am old enough to understand the explanation. We just are going to assume that infinity minus infinity is inconclusive - could be infinity or zero or 'minus infinity'. (I dont really know what 'minus infinity' means however).

Addition War

Mom and I played war again tonight. Well not the exact war game but a slight interesting variation. Mom tweaked the rules a little bit to practice addition. I call it Addition war. Rules are as follows:
Each player deals 2 cards each and declare the sum. The hand with the greater sum wins the cards (I call them prisoners). In the event of a tie, we deal 2 more cards each and the greater sum wins the entire pile. We made it more fun by adding jokers and face cards to the deck. A joker skyrockets the sum and whoever has it captures all the prisoners. The face cards keep moving between the winners and the one who wins the cards finally gets the face card jackpot. Final winner is the one who has captured most prisoners. I captured one more prisoner than amma and I won. We will be playing the addition war Tomorrow and in the club too. I like this game.

Planet Talk

I almost forgot to brief you on our last club meeting. We played a game about planets. It is a question answer game about planets and the winner captures the planet he is on. I cant get enough of it during the club session so I dragged appa into it the same night and we played the game twice more. What I learnt? Oh many things but I forgot all of them, I guess. It was a little too beyond scope. So the facts went in space. ;) But the game was fun enough to play again.

Math war

Mom and I played a basic version of the game war, last night. We just used the regular playing cards that mom and dad set out for their rummy routine. It gave me a chance to shape up my 'greater than - lesser than' understanding. It was fun and simple - perfect for a relaxed evening to let the mind wander while you play the game as second nature.

Venn Diagram

Tonight mom and I explored Venn diagrams and the funda behind it. We compared ourselves with Appa and made a Venn diagram with 3 circles. We compared attributes like favorite subject, color, books, TV shows, hair length, mustache, food, residence etc. Later we used the Venn diagram to find our common interests and traits. I find Venn Diagrams to be superdy-dooper.

Kung Fu - My Stage Performance

Today is the 5th annual ceremony in our Kung Fu center. I was one of the students who performed on stage. The one with the white belt in the first 2 pictures is me. It was a nice experience to go on stage. Our masters then gave extraordinary performances. Lastly there was this amazing "Lion Dance" - we all enjoyed thoroughly. And guess what, next class i will be getting my next belt which is Yellow. Yahoo!

Chart Practice

These days it has become a routine at home for all 3 of us to play some card games as a family before going to bed. If amma and appa play rummy or if we all play crazy eights or 'go fish' I am the one who keeps the scores and I do the chart too. That reinforces my understanding of charts. And I do this out of passion myself - mom never prompted me to do so. :)
Well, for Today's game session, I won 5 games out of 6 in Crazy eights. That is I pocketed 5/6th of the games - hey there come my fractions!

Fractions again

We (Appa, Amma and I) were talking casually this morning and out of nowhere we found ourselves talking about fractions! Then slowly one thing led to another and looks like I learnt a little about comparing fractions. Kudos to Appa (dad), as he is the one who made it a point to put it down on paper. The work was little messy so we decided to do a fair copy and scan for upload. We now have plans to do a lapbook on fractions in the near future. Amma said she would allocate some exclusive time for me to do advanced topics apart from our regular club meets. YAY!

Turkey Time

Our Thanksgiving day project at school is to decorate a turkey picture and mount it on a chart. I used painted wooden spoons and feathers and shiny pipe cleaners and ofcourse crayons to dress up my turkey. I call him "The Clowt". Stop rushing to your dictionary, you won't find it. Now for the meaning.. He looks like a clown and he is a Turkey. So why not call him the "Clownt". Get it?!

Money Matters

Today in our club, we did a lapbook on Money. It will be a nice reference once completed. As my fellow clubmates are learning money for the first time, it is mostly revision for me. But I like it. Mom is going to add extra elements to my lapbook to match my level.

First we made a shutter fold out of an ordinary file folder.

Then we made 4 accordian books. Each book will have 3 flaps/tabs. On the first tab we pasted the coins (2 for each type - showing head and tail).

On the next tab, we wrote the name of the coin. On the 3rd tab we wrote the value of the coin.

We put a 1 dollar bill in a ziploc and stapled it in such a way that we can flip over the bag to see the other side of the bill.

My fellow clubmates pasted 4 more mini books on the left and right inner folds. Each book will give out clues of a coin on the cover and the answer is written inside the book.

For example:

* for a Penny, the question will be: I am copper and brown..Who am I?

* Nickel: I am thick and fat. Who am I?

* Dime: I am little and thin. Who am I?

* Quarter: I am big and bold. Who am I?

I will be adding these and couple more extra elements to my lapbook to match my level. I have to decorate the front cover. And may be add a money game somewhere in the book. Can't wait for the next session of "Play it! Learn it!" club.

Halloween Parade 2008

That's me as the Ninja Turtle, Raphael. And there goes my Kung Fu Step.

Chess Lessons

Mom is giving me Chess lessons at home. I cant wait for the next session. She is not letting me play until I learn a bit more. Waiting is the hard part here. :)

Self Project for Tally marks

Yesterday, I ended up doing a self project that helped me practice tally marks. Just like that I was drawing horizontal lines using a new ruler that I bought. Then I drew some vertical lines and a grid was formed. That gave me an idea to fill the squares with numbers. I then thought why not represent each number as tally marks. When I was done, it was a 5 by 6 grid with numbers and tally marks from 1 to 30. I can really see a pattern emerging..Mom and I discussed how the ones place in each column has a pattern and counting by 5's etc. We are yet to scan the page. Mom was amused by the fact that this whole project was my very own idea..

Money Game

Today in our club we played a simple money game. The rules are pretty darn simple. Each player gets a gameboard of his own. He has to decorate the game spaces with a coin of his choice - a Penny or Nickel or Dime or Quarter from a pile of coins. Mom also made it a point that we got to say the value of the coin each time we place it on the board. Here are our pretty boards all decorated with coins - a gold fish with pennies on the scales, a silver fish with dimes on the scales and a nickel/quarter path.

"Play it..Learn it" club

Mom started a learning club - we named it "Play it, Learn it". The members get to play educational games once a week. We meet at my home. Yesterday a group of us played "Turtle Treasures" - a math game and "Sentence Racing" - a new word game.

Charts

Mom and I played card games like Memory Match, Go Fish, Crazy Eight, Yesterday. And I recorded our scores in a chart. We also played Rummy - well mom made the rules really simple so I get the hang of it. Card Games and Charting made the day very interesting in spite of my fever. Dad also joined us for some sessions and we ended the day with CoCo Crazy - another boardgame. I won!
Mom is yet to scan my charts for upload.

Kumon Awards Ceremony

Today was the 2008 Kumon Annual Awards Ceremony. And I received Advanced Student Honor Roll Awards for both Math & Reading from the Former Mayor of Cupertino, Kris Wang. Trophies as award is not all..for my parents bought me a remote control truck as a reward. Can this day be any better!

My First Poem

I wrote a poem Today. I hope to write more in the future.

My Dream
What a dream!

I have no hair.

It's not fair
What a mare!

10 Different Ways to Watch a DVD

Place Value Fishing

We played a Place Value Go Fish game. If you know go fish, you know this game. The idea is to match a number with its expanded notation. ie say a card reading 524 will make a pair with a card reading 5 hundreds 20 tens 4 ones. The one with most number of matching pairs is the winner. Use some index cards to make the card deck. We have plans to introduce many variations of the game and we will be exploring them one by one. Hope you like it.

My Very Own Design

My Train

A train from my imagination.

My Own Addition Game

Usually its mom that invents games but this time I turned the tables. I came up with a cute idea for an addition game all by myself. I laid down the rules and mom played with me Today. I named the game "My Domino Uno". The game goes like this:

Make a pretty gameboard as shown above. Use a set of dominoes and couple of play pieces. You are all set for the game.

The objective of the game is to reach the finish first. Players take a set of 5 dominoes each from the face down pile. They take turns and use up their dominoes to move spaces. The sum of the number of dots on the domino is the number of spaces you should move. For example, if your domino piece has 5 dots on top and 3 dots on bottom half, then you get to move 5+3 = 8 spaces. I added some funky rules to make it more interesting. The blank domino is the wild card (I borrowed this wild card idea from UNO and as a courtesy named the game Domino UNO) and using the wild card you can defeat the opponent and make him start all over. If you have to move more spaces than that are needed to reach the finish then you have to trace back your steps for the extra spaces - like climbing down the tree on this gameboard. It was hilarious when the opponent slips down the tree and 'go bananas'.

Let me know if you like my game.

Oh, yeah mom's 2 cents: you can use the same game to practice multplication too. Just find the product instead of the sum from the domino piece. What a 2-in-1 game!

Defeat Me - Multiplication game

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We made up a new game called "Defeat me" to practice my multiplication facts. We practiced just one table. But the board is versatile for all tables.

To play the game, you need to make a gameboard something like shown above. And have some play pieces and a dice.

The rules are very simple. Each player takes turn to roll the dice. He has to shout the multiplication fact for that number and move that many spaces. If he accidently calls out the original number or got the fact wrong, he has to go back that many spaces. He can defeat a player if he lands on that player. The defeated player has to restart all over. The one who reaches finish is the winner.

I defeated mom twice (pic.1 & 2 were taken when I was defeating her) and she defeated me once. (And I cried when she defeated me.) But overall I liked the game and I cant wait to play the game for the next table. Try it you will love it.

Find Mr.X - a math game

It has been a while that mom and me engaged in active homeschooling. But Today during lunch, we played this interesting game Mom invented to refine my arithmetic understanding. I named the game "Find Mr.X". We picked up 12 lego blocks and I divided them into 2 parts 7 and 5 each. Mom will randomly take away some 'X' number of blocks from any of the group and I have to guess Mr.X. I scored all the time. Mom is as always very proud of me. Mom says, it will make me 'see' Math than simply doing it by theory.

Tamil Academy Graduation Day

It is so cool to graduate with a trophy and certificate - I am moving on to the next level in the CA Tamil Academy. I am so thrilled. Mom & Dad are so happy for me.

I like to spell english words in Tamil - it is so funny. :)

Spring Concert 2008

We (my class) gave a spring concert for parents. Mom and Dad came and they
were so proud to see me perform. We sang 4 songs of which one is "we appreciate you" to acknowledge our parents.

Turtle Treasures - Math Game

Mommy moved her focus to Math again. She came up with a new game to help me think in terms of 10 & 5. She believes it will be a foundation to add/subtract easily.

I cannot reap the benefits right away. But Mom is sure it will help me to calculate faster. Lets see. ;-)

Our Earth is a .. Magnet!

My personal choice of gift for this birthday - A magnet set to compliment my science experiments on Magnetism. I got a jumbo Horse Shoe magnet, 3 bar magnets, 2 magnet wands, a lodestone, a compass and a can of iron fillings to experiment with. And another magnet set that has few experiments with more magnet marbles, iron chips, disc magnets and a math facts key chain. It is very thrilling. And do you know, our earth is actually a giant magnet?!