Alphabet Learning Afterthoughts

Finally, finally completed home teaching on the 26 letters in the alphabet. Hmm....it wasn't easy at all! All thanks for Tona and Serene for giving me inspiration on home teaching. I think I need to meet up with you 2 when I get back to give you guys a treat! =)

Let's see, I started on 1 Nov 08 and ended on 26 Jun 09. That's almost 8 whole long months! Wow! Hmm....I hope these 8 long months weren't wasted on Trisha. At least I know one thing for sure, she loves learning ABC cos everytime she wanted to do something I didn't want her to do, I'll say "ok let's go learn ABC" and she immediately dropped everything she's doing at that moment, rushed to the shelf where she knew I kept the teaching materials and craftbox and jumped up and down trying to reach for the craftbox, at the same time, chanting "learn ABC, learn ABC, learn ABC!" =) I'm so glad she has a thirst for learning. =)

Like I said earlier, it wasn't easy teaching her especially preparing the materials, trying to think of activities to make it interesting for her. I admit towards the end, I got a little "sian" about the whole thing especially when I couldn't think of interesting activities for that particular letter. I actually felt guilty about it when I taught her that few letters and wished I could make it more fun for her. Luckily, to her, she still enjoyed the sessions no matter how short (or boring according to me!) it was. Phew! =p

Eversince I started blue-tacking her art work on the wall, she loves to show it to Daddy whenever he came home from work. For instance, we made the skeleton X-ray the other day and when she saw Daddy downstairs walking home, she was shouting "Daddy, Daddy, hurry up, see, see, X-ray, X-ray!" I was so tickled by her. I'm happy to know that she's proud of her artwork and wanted to share with her dearest Daddy. =)

So now that our alphabet journey has ended and she can surely recognize all the letters whether in capital or small cases, it's time to progress to another level - phonics. I did try to teach using phonics but I was too lazy to do much research and basically just wanted her to have fun rather than really schooled her in all these. However, I think it's the time now. Besides, I believe once she starts her childcare sessions when we get back to Singapore, she'll be exposed to all these so I decided to start teaching her about phonetic sounds now, so she doesn't find it unfamiliar and lose confidence in not being able to follow. I chanced upon another mum's blog about teaching her 5 and 6 yr olds when they were younger and I'm inspired by her too. She's a full time working mum and she did so much for her kids! 真的很佩服她! 我要好好向她学习!

Anyway, I think I'll take a small break first and not go too deep into this new phonetics journey with her as yet. However, I'm pretty looking forward to it! =) Let's hope we have as much fun as we did in the past 8 months!