The Bub in the Belly

The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss

2011-10-28T14:44:00.003+08:00

The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss was first published in 1945 and has never gone out of print. It was illustrated by the author's husband, Crockett Johnson (creator of Harold and the Purple Crayon, another fabulous children's book). Unfamiliar with its celebrity status at the time, I picked this up at a bookstore in New York City, attracted by the simplicity of the cover and the colours plus the line, "When you are very young, there are some things that you just know".

Sometimes called "the little book with the big idea", this simple story about faith is about a little boy who plants a carrot seed. While everyone tells him "it won't come up", he continues to tend to it patiently and lovingly with steadfast conviction and unshakeable belief until, one day, a gigantic carrot pops up "just as he knew it would". Little ones will enjoy the lesson that they can be successful if they work hard and believe in something, and not give up even when people are discouraging or skeptical.

The entire book is a testament to minimalism - at 101 carefully chosen words, it was one of the shortest picture book texts when it was first published in 1945. The illustrations are just as sparse and minimal yet nothing is lost - the confidence, hope and grace of the little boy is masterfully depicted. The whole book is done in carrot-like tones and colours, with the brightest colour being the huge orange carrot which appears at the end.

When asked how long it took her to write The Carrot Seed, Krauss always said “her whole life.” She had to pare the story down, again and again, until she got its essence. Johnson, who was himself bald, always drew bald characters or, in the case of The Carrot Seed, a child with a single hair. He maintained that bald heads were easier to draw than ones with hair.

In his essay, "Ruth Krauss and Me", author Maurice Sendak described this book as "that perfect picture book, The Carrot Seed, the granddaddy of all picture books in America, a small revolution of a book that permanently transformed the face of children's book publishing. The Carrot Seed, with not a word or a picture out of place, is dramatic, vivid, precise, concise in every detail. It springs fresh from the real world of children."

Ryan loves this book and sits quietly while we read it. When we get to the end, he always has a smile on his face and he usually lets out a quiet and satisfied "Wow."

Learning to blend letter sounds

2011-10-25T00:01:00.001+08:00

After Ryan learned the letter names and the letter sounds, he started blending the letter sounds to read simple words. To be honest, we did not expect him to start doing that until he was much older. He really surprised us when he showed us that he could.

Here, I'll share some of the items we have around the house that relate to blending. I would also say that, if your child is not familiar with the letter names and the letter sounds, please don't bother him with blending. He's not going to understand it, he's not going to enjoy it and he's just going to be stressed out and turned off.

I should also say that we don't sit down with Ryan and go through words with him. It happens spontaneously and naturally throughout the day while we are doing other activities. We don't have any structured lessons or anything like that.

Ok, the best thing to do is of course to talk, read and sing to your child as much as possible, to let him familiarise himself with the different sounds in words. I can't emphasise this enough - this is the best thing you can do and the thing that you should do.

Off and on we will sound out a word for him - for example, if we see a dog, we will talk about the dog, what it's doing, what sound it makes, whether it looks like our dog at home, etc. We will sound out the word "DOG" for him - /d/, /o/, /g/ and then we will blend the sounds for him. We do it both orally and also with written words when we see words in the carpark, at the supermarket, on the way to the playground, etc. We seldom do it while reading a story as it can be disruptive.

Sometimes Ryan will say a letter or a letter sound and I will build on that. So if he says "/b/!", I might say, "/b/ for ...?" He might say ball, then I might ask, "Yes, /b/ for ball! Any other /b/ words?" Then we'll go on and on for as long as he's interested.

We have "mobile" letters everywhere - alphabet biscuits, alphabet blocks, alphabet stickers, etc. All can be used to put words together. We also have a set of giant upper and lower case alphabet stamps.

We bought a DVD from Leapfrog called the Talking Words Factory. It's fun and it demonstrates simple blending in a way that is easy to understand. It is a sequel of sorts to the Letter Factory although you don't have to watch the first to watch this one. You just have to know the letter names and sounds. Ryan absolutely loves it. I should mention that it only teaches basic blending using word families so if you are looking for something comprehensive or if you prefer other methods of blending, this may not be up your alley.

Much much later, we bought another DVD called Letter Sounds by Rock 'N' Learn. I have to warn you that this DVD is quite "dry" compared to Leapfrog's entertaining material. It is actually for children 4-7 years old who are ready for phonics. If your child is not familiar with letter names and sounds, he's not going to last through the whole DVD. Ryan does enjoy it but he still much prefers the Leapfrog material.

We also have an iPhone app called Word Wagon by Duck Duck Moose. The blending at the phonic blending level is not as clear as it could be, but I think Ryan just enjoys fitting the letters into the slots. I would not recommend this for learning blending, but if your child already knows some blending, it's not a bad app. It also teaches letters and spelling.

In this photo, Ryan is playing with Leapfrog's Fridge Words Magnetic Word Builder. It was a birthday gift from a dear friend. We put it up as soon as we got it, when Ryan was still learning his letter names and sounds. It didn't get much love and attention until fairly recently. Anyway, as you can see from the photo, Ryan can use it to create CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant).

We have some simple books to help with blending. I won't mention them just yet, because we are not using them much. We are still doing our usual reading routine - reading aloud to Ryan and just enjoying the story and the pictures, and we'll probably continue with that for a long time.

That's about it, really. Although Ryan can read simple words (simple blends and some sight words), we are not really focusing on blending right now. We are still concentrating on early literacy and pre-reading skills, to give Ryan a solid and strong foundation for reading, plus we still believe that we don't have to rush into learning to read at his age.

Learning Letter Sounds

2011-10-18T00:01:00.001+08:00

While Ryan was learning the letter names, we would mention the letter sounds here and there, but he ignored us; he loved his letters so much. We let him take things at his own pace and, after a while, he started showing some interest when we mentioned the letter sounds. He then got into letter sounds very quickly and smoothly. Here, I’ll share some of the materials we have at home on letter sounds.

I should first say that I was able to teach Ryan letter sounds because I know them. I read both phonetically and by sight when I was a child, and in fact, mostly phonetically as I was phonetically taught more than one alphabetic language. If you want to teach letter sounds but are not familiar with them, do find out from a reliable source what the letter sounds are beforehand and make sure you have the correct sound for each letter, it may not be what you think it is. For instance, I hear many people say that the letter sound “M” is “muh”, which is wrong. The correct letter sound for “M” is “mmm” as in “This is delicious, mmm…!” The sound for “F” is not “fuh”, the sound for “V” is not “vuh” and the sound for “L” may surprise you!

At the moment, Ryan knows 26 letter sounds, one for each letter of the alphabet. However, some letters have more than one sound. For example, “C” has a hard sound, as in “cat” and a soft sound, as in “city”. You can teach more than one sound for each letter at one go of course, but we chose to do only one for now. We also did not teach sounds like “wh” and “ck”. We'll get around to all that in good time, no hurry. In the English language, there are approximately 36-46 sounds altogether (depending on which source you refer to). I would add that some sounds can have more than one representation, for example, the sound /k/ can be represented by c, k, ck, ch, or q.

Learning the letter sounds is not learning phonics. Instead, it is part of phonemic awareness, which is pre-phonics, it is the basis for moving on to learn phonics. I've put up a post to explain phonemic awareness. Put simply, all the letter sounds and sounds like "wh" and "ck" are known as phonemes and phonemic awareness is the ability to discern these sounds in words and to manipulate them. (Note that a phoneme is not the same thing as a syllable.)

Ok, let's get into the materials that we used with Ryan. I didn't take any photos, but have provided the links where I can find them.

Let me start with what we do in Shichida class. When Ryan was in the class for 1-year olds, we would sing a song called "The Phonics Song" (we still do it from time to time now in the class for 2 year olds). The lyrics go like this, "A says /æ/, /æ/, Apple; B says /b/, /b/, Bear; C says /k/, /k/, Cow; D says /d/, /d/, Dog" and so on. As the song plays, the sensei shows a picture of each letter and a picture of each object. The cards are not flashed; they are shown in tandem with the lyrics of the song (much slower than flashing speed). Ryan enjoyed this although we noted that there were some errors - for example, the sound for "M" is "muh" (which is wrong). I should add that the children are never tested on their knowledge of letter sounds in Shichida class. They just listen to and enjoy the song (of course they can sing along if they know it).

At home, I would definitely say that the best things we did were to read (a lot) to Ryan and to play a lot of games with letters and words. You've seen one of our games in this post. We use a few different sets of these alphabet/word/picture cards, which helps to keep things fresh and interesting.

I've also shown you the items we bought for letter names (see this post and this post). We use these items to play games with letter sounds, they work just as well.

The very first item we bought that was dedicated to phonics was actually this Phonics Desk from ELC. Actually we bought this much too early, even before Ryan learned the alphabet. We grabbed it because we needed to make up 7 items to qualify for a discount. Ryan was less than a year old then and he didn't appreciate it at all. We have not re-introduced it though, we've put it aside in favour of other games.

Learning letter sounds is an auditory process so, in addition to playing games with Ryan and talking/reading to him, we do use things like CDs, DVDs and yes, the iPhone/iPad, to deliver the letter sounds. He usually plays with these when we are unable to give him our full attention, like when I am driving or when I am busy with something. I am not fond of them. Nevertheless I have to give credit where credit is due.

One iPhone app which played a big part in introducing the letter sounds was the Starfall ABCs app. It wasn't available on the Ipad when we bought it but it is now. Ryan loved this app from the very first time he played it, and still does, and I do believe that he learned a lot from this app.

Another app which we bought for the iPhone was AlphaTots, which Ryan enjoys very much. We bought this many months after the Starfall ABCs app, by which time Ryan was very familiar with letter sounds and it was good reinforcement. The good thing is that it includes a lot of verbs. For example, for the letter "L", you get "launch" and for the letter "R" you get "recycle". There are also a lot of fun things for the child to do for each letter. For "K", he has to try to kick a goal! The app also has the famous alphabet song. It is now available on the iPad as well.

On the iPad, we actually didn't have anything until very recently when we bought Elmo loves ABCs, which has songs and videos for letters. Ryan loves this very much.

A very good DVD for introducing letter sounds is the Leapfrog Letter Factory DVD. After seeing the wonderful response to Leapfrog's Amazing Alphabet Amusement Park (which I mentioned last week), we snapped up all the Leapfrog DVDs we could find, including this one. Ryan watched this over and over again and still does.

For CDs, I played a Letterland CD in my car for a few weeks. Let me clarify that we do not depend on Letterland (or any other system of phonics) to teach Ryan. We do, nevertheless, have that CD and a few Letterland books (Ryan just picks out the letters, he doesn't bother about the characters). The CD was fun and Ryan even sang along to some of the songs, but on its own, it was not instructive in terms of relating to letter sounds. We were just listening "blindly" in the car. I mean, the "A" song goes "Annie Apple, she says /æ/, she says /æ/, she says /æ/, Annie Apple she says /æ/, she belongs to Mr A" (to the tune of London Bridge is falling down). Err, fun but, like I said, not very instructive without using the Letterland books. Ryan listened to that CD for weeks, but he still does not know who or what Annie Apple or Bouncy Ben is. If you use it with the books with the pictures of the characters, it will be much more meaningful.

Subsequently we got a Leapfrog CD as part of this set we bought online. The songs were familiar to Ryan because he had watched the DVDs from where the songs were taken. Ryan loves it! This CD includes songs about letters, numbers, and math concepts.

I did not bother buying an alphabet wall chart. In my view, many alphabet wall charts are not helpful for teaching letter sounds. They simply present words that begin with the particular letter, not necessarily the phoneme that the letter usually represents. For example, you usually see xylophone or x-ray for the letter "X" but I would prefer Ryan to learn the phoneme "ks" as in fox. Ryan does come across x-ray and xylophone when we read books but that's all right because the words appear in context. Please read this article which explains it further.

Last but not least, we read and read and read aloud to Ryan, plus we sing lots of songs!

Phonemic Awareness

2011-10-17T22:29:00.001+08:00

I want to note down a few things about phonemic awareness, for my own record. Hope it is informative for you too, if you are teaching your child phonemic awareness at home.

[These notes are extracted from "Phonics from A to Z - A Practical Guide", by Wiley Blevins, 2nd Ed.]

Phonemic awareness is the understanding that a word is made up of a series of discrete sounds. Each of these sounds is called a phoneme. This awareness includes the ability to pick out and manipulate sounds in spoken words.

Phonemic awareness is not the same thing as phonics. Phonemic awareness deals with sounds in spoken words, whereas phonics involves the relationship between sounds and written symbols. Phonics deals with learning sound-spelling relationships and is associated with print. Most phonemic awareness tasks, on the other hand, are purely oral.

Phonemic awareness help children learn to distinguish individual sounds, or phonemes, within words. They need this skill in order to associate sounds with letters and manipulate sounds to blend words (during reading) or segment words (during spelling). Many children have difficulties with phonics instruction because they haven't developed the prerequisite phonemic awareness skills that other children gain through years of exposure to rhymes, and songs, and being read to.

Phonemic awareness training provides the foundation on which phonics instruction is built. Thus, children need solid phonemic awareness training for phonics instruction to be effective. For example, phonics instruction that begins by asking a child what sound the words sit, sand, and sock have in common won't make sense to a child who has difficulty discriminating sounds in words, cannot segment sounds within words, or does not understand what is meant by the term sound. Children must be able to segment and auditorily discriminate /s/ in the words sit, sand, and sock before it makes sense to them that the letter s stands for this sound in these wrtten words. In addition, children must be able to segment the sounds in a word such as sit (/s/ /i/ /t/) in order to spell the word. Once children gain a basic level of phonemic awareness, and formal reading instruction begins, this instruction increases children's awareness of language. "Thus, phonemic awareness is both a prerequisite for and a consequence of learning to read." (Yopp, 1992)

Research has shown that explicit phonemic awareness instruction increases reading and spelling achievement among preschoolers, primary grade children, and students with learning disabilities.

There are five basic types of phonemic awareness tasks or abilities, which are:

Rhyme and alliteration (and assonance) (done orally although you can use picture clues)

Rhyme. Example: I once saw a cat, sitting next to a dog. I once saw a bat, sitting next to a frog.
Alliteration. Example: Six snakes sells sodas and snacks.
Assonance. Example: The leaf, the bean, the peach - were all within reach.

Oddity tasks (phoneme categorisation) (done orally)

Rhyme. Example: Which word does not rhyme: cat, sat, pig?
Beginning consonants. Example: Which two words begin with the same sound: man, sat, sick?
Ending consonants. Example: Which two words end with the same sound: man, sat, ten?
Medial sounds (long vowels). Example: Which word does not have the same middle sound: take, late, feet?
Medial sounds (short vowels). Example: Which two words have the same middle sound: top, cat, pan?
Medial sounds (consonants). Example: Which two words have the same middle sound: kitten, missing, lesson?

Oral blending (done orally)

Syllables. Example: Listen to these word part: ta...ble. Say the word as a whole. What is the word?
Onset/rime. Example: listen to these word parts: /p/...an. Say the word as a whole. What is the word?
Phoneme by phoneme. Example: Listen to these word parts. /s/ /a/ /t/. Say the word as a whole/ What's the word?

Oral segmentation (including counting sounds) (done orally) (this is critical for spelling)

Syllables. Example: Listen to this word: table. Say it syllable by syllable. (ta...ble)
Onset/rime. Example: Listen to this word: pan. Say the first sound in the word and then the rest of the word. (/p/ ... an)
Phoneme by phoneme (counting sounds). Example: Listen to this word: sat. Say the word sound by sound. (/s/ /a/ /t/) How many sounds do you hear? (3)

Phoneme manipulation (best done using letter cards)

Initial sound substitution. Example: Replace the first sound in mat with /s/. (sat)
Final sound substitution. Example: Replace the last sound in mat with /p/. (map)
Vowel substitution. Example: Replace the middle sound in map with /o/. (mop)
Syllable deletion. Example: Say baker without the ba. (ker)
Initial sound deletion. Example: Say sun without the /s/. (un)
Final sound deletion. Example: Say hit without the /t/. (it)
Initial phoneme in a blend deletion. Example: Say step without the /s/. (tep)
Final phoneme in a blend deletion. Example: Say best without the /t/. (bes)
Second phoneme in a blend deletion. Example: Say frog without the /r/. (fog)

In addition to these five task types, phonemic awareness exercises include phoneme discrimination (speech perception) activities, which also help children to focus on specific sounds in words. For example, the child may be asked to listen for vowel sounds in words.

Some ideas to keep in mind:

Don't stress written words or letters unless your child can readily identify the letters.
Keep the tone fun and informal. Avoid using the activities as assessments. It is important that children be engage in playing with language, not concerned about being assessed. Respond favourably and enthusiastically to their attempts.
Model! Model! Model! Continually model for your child how to accomplish the various phonemic awareness tasks. And provide corrective feedback. Much of the learning occurs through this feedback.
Provide lots and lots of language experiences. Read, write, and listen to stories. Provide a print-rich environment with multiple experiences of language.

At present, Ryan knows one phoneme for each letter. In addition, Ryan can also listen out for the phonemes in words. For example, Ryan can tell me whether the word “boy” starts with /b/ or /g/ (he can also tell me whether it starts with the letter B or the letter G – hey, a little bit of phonics there!). He can identify the recurring phoneme in an alliterative sentence such as "bad boys break beds before bedtime". Plus, he can do simple blending of phonemes and he can substitute phonemes to morph a word into a different word, like "cat" into "hat".

Reinforcing the Alphabet

2011-10-14T00:01:00.022+08:00

It was only when Ryan started voicing the letter names that we found out that he knew them. Before that, we never tested him - for example, we never asked him to point to the letter "A" or anything like that. When we knew that he knew the letter names, we then gave him materials to reinforce his letter recognition. I'll share these materials in this post.

These are the items that we used. I am by no means suggesting that everyone must use these items and I am not suggesting that you should not use other items. Neither am I suggesting that you must do things the way we did. There is no magic formula. How you teach your child and what you use is entirely up to you and your child, your preferences and your circumstances.

Ok, again, I stress that Ryan had already learned all the letter names by this time, ie. we did not use these as our first tools to teach letter names. Having said that, we didn't draw a line between these "stages", we still continued to use the items in yesterday's post and we still have most of them out on the shelves for Ryan to play with even now.

First up, the iPhone app. We only had one app when it came to letter names, which was "Fish School" by Duck Duck Moose. This is a fantastic award-winning app which introduces letters, numbers, colours and shapes. I'm sure most parents on the iPhone will have this. Ryan played the alphabet song over and over and over and over again on this app. We installed it when Ryan was about 16 or 18 months, can't recall exactly. Ryan didn't really get into the app until a few months later actually, because we did not give him much time with the iPhone until he was about two years old.

We don't have any apps on the iPad for letter names (we do have some for letter sounds, but that's for a separate post).

We have many many many alphabet stickers - flat ones, foam ones, puffy ones, glittery ones, even those used for scrapbooking. Ryan uses them freely in his artwork; he will select each one, call its name and place it wherever he chooses. Stickers can seem a little wasteful so I always try to stock up when I come across very cheap stickers.

Over at his nanny's place, Ryan's nanny gives him foam letters to play with. She says that he arranges them everyday in straight lines as he lovingly calls each of the letters by name and that he gets upset if anyone messes up his work!

When we are out and about, we look out for letters in our surroundings. Ryan will yell out the letters as and when he comes across them, on the street, in the car park, on the restaurant menus, on the buses passing by our car, etc. Usually he is the one who points them out to us.

Ryan also started showing us that he understood how to construct letters. One of our pre-dinner activities while waiting for our food to arrive at the restaurant, is for Ryan to construct letters using everyday items, like coins, chopsticks, straws, pins, toothpicks, eating utensils, anything really. He also likes to make letters using his arms. This is an "V" and below that, an "X"!

A few months after his first birthday, we started gradually introducing letter sounds, which he enjoyed. We still continued to give him the opportunity to reinforce his letter names and letter construction whenever he could, and we still do.

In June this year, I bought these plastic magnetic letters, upper and lower case. I got them dirt cheap at a Popular Bookstore sale. Ryan loved these and played with them a lot (especially matching up the upper and the lower case letters!). Interestingly, he preferred to play with these letters on the floor. He was not as interested when I stuck them on the magnetic board. He wanted to touch and feel and handle the letters.

I bought them thinking that Ryan could start building words with them. In fact, I bought two sets of the lower case letters so that he could build words like "Mummy" and "Daddy" and "zoo". I showed him "Ryan" and "Elmo" and a few other words using these plastic letters, and that helped him to see that letters make words and have meaning. The first few times I did try to talk about the letter sounds, but he was not interested so I stopped that and I just constructed different words to show him.

As for videos, after we put away the YBCR videos, we generally didn't watch videos until Ryan was about 18 months old, when he started watching Hi-5 and then a few months later, Sesame Street. When he was a little past two years old, I felt that we should emphasise lower case letters a little more so I shopped around and bought this DVD from Leapfrog called The Amazing Alphabet Amusement Park, which he enjoyed tremendously. The video teaches letter names and pairs up upper and lower case letters. It also teaches what rhyming words are. This was the thing that sparked his "hobby" of matching upper and lower case letters. Even now he still loves watching this and singing along with all the songs.

He does have a Sesame Street video called "What's the name of that song?" which was (and still is) one of his favourite videos when he was about 2 years old and a couple of clips on that video are about letters. One is an alphabet song sung by the divine Patti Labelle. It is AMAZING. This is not the well-known Twinkle Twinkle Little Star alphabet song - it's a bluesy, soulful tune with the muppets chiming in gospel-style. Ryan loves it! Sometimes he screams and shouts the letters out, as if he were watching the diva live in concert. I love it too and I scream right along! Please check it out on Youtube!

We also have the LEGO DUPLO Play with Letters set which has the letters of the alphabet printed on the blocks. We got it at a promotional price at Toys "R" Us. We have a few other LEGO DUPLO sets, but this is the only one we have that is alphabet-themed. You can see them in action in this post. We started playing with these just a few months ago, after we got back from our trip to USA.

Recently also, we got him this book called "How to Build an A" by Sara Midda, which comes with 11 foam pieces which can be used to construct letters, and he enjoys that too.

I mentioned in yesterday's post on learning the alphabet that Ryan enjoys the book, "Colors, Numbers, Letters" by Leo Lionni. We bought it when he already knew his colours, numbers and letters so the first time he saw it, he "read" the whole book aloud. He still enjoys it. Here's a recent video of him "reading" it, which I posted yesterday as my book review.

Ok, I think I have covered everything. Next time (probably next week) I will cover the items that we used to introduce letter sounds.

Colors, Numbers, Letters by Leo Lionni

2011-10-13T22:43:00.001+08:00

We picked up this book at the bookstore because it passed the Ryan test on the first reading - he read the whole book on his own, while we were still at the bookstore! How could we not buy it?

That is really the best review I can give you, so here's a video of Ryan reading the book (at h8ome).

Learning the Alphabet

2011-10-13T00:01:00.021+08:00

Today I want to record the items that we used at home to show Ryan the alphabet. I can't recall exactly when but most of these were introduced when he was just under one year old.

These items were only for introducing the letters and their names. I have not included the items we have which show words and letter sounds - like A is for Apple and B is for Boat. The items in this post merely show him what is an A, what is a B, etc.

The first "item" we used was probably the alphabet song. You know how it goes, to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I do have one issue with it and that was the part that went "LMNOP". All the sounds are crushed together. So I usually sing it a little differently when it got to that part. Actually, there are lots of other alphabet songs that you can use, just pick up a CD at the children's section. I should add that, in Shichida class, for the children who are 1-2 years old, we sometimes sing an alphabet song (very much like the famous alphabet song, just slightly different at certain parts). We sing it while pointing to each of the 26 letters printed on a sheet of paper.

This was probably the first "toy" we used - an alphabet/abacus frame. Richard would have Ryan on his lap every night and he would tap each letter in turn as he sang the alphabet song to Ryan. He would do one or two rounds each time, and then they would move on to play with something else. There are images on the reverse side of each tile so Richard also goes through those with Ryan, to keep things interesting. After a while, and when Ryan started talking, Ryan started pointing to some of the tiles on his own and saying the letter's name. Now of course he can name all the letters on his own and this item has been packed away, waiting for the next little cutie to come along.

I came across the frame by accident. I was actually looking for something like an abacus (you can see three rows of balls on the other side (blue, green and red) if you peek between the rows on the lower left of the frame). To be honest, I was more persuaded by the price than anything else - it was only a few dollars. It's made of plastic, probably made in China - yes I know about all the dangerous toys that come from China, but I knew that Ryan would not be having much skin contact with this sort of toy and he certainly wasn't going to put it in his mouth, so I felt it was not an issue.

Ok, next item. This is a wooden alphabet board. There are wooden letters which fit on the board which I didn't bother to fit for the photo. At present, we've put the board away and we keep the letters in a small container which we sometimes bring along when we go out for meals. When Ryan was still learning the alphabet, the letters were always in their places on the board and all the little images are covered, so you just see the letters and it's not as distracting as it is in the first photo. In fact, we never bothered with the little images.

What Ryan did with this was the obvious - he fit all the letters onto the board. That was it. I guess it gave him a sensorial experience and familiarity with the shapes. As he fit each letter, we would sometimes say the letter's name out aloud but not always.

These are the letters. The thing that persuaded me to buy this board (apart from its low price) was that it had both the upper and the lower case letters, remembering that it is very important to introduce the lower case letters, in addition to the upper case letters as the lower case letters are encountered more frequently in everyday life. I did not like the font used though - the lower case "a", "g" and "a" are not my desired shape (see the bottom row of letters in the photo). Ryan didn't have any problem with them however. As he grew more familiar with the letters, he would use them without the board, and his favourite thing to do was to match up the upper case letters with their lower case partners.

Next is this wooden train, made up of letters. All 26 letters are represented, plus an engine and a caboose, and you can hook each one on and off in any order. Ryan loved this and we still keep it out for him to play with, even now. The advantage (although I did not realise it at the time I bought it) was that Ryan could see both sides of each letter. As the hook on each letter is only on one end (the other end being the eye for the hook), he learned that there was a correct side and a wrong side (for letters like B, D, E, etc). Again, I didn't spend much on this, it was quite cheap.

The last item I will show was a Christmas gift (in 2009) from a friend. This comprised a set of wooden letters and a corresponding set of 26 cards, made by Plan Toys. Each card has, on one side, a picture of an animal which name starts with that letter. There is an empty space on the animal which the wooden piece can sit on. The other side of the card shows the plain letter (which is also the same size as the wooden letter) and there is a dotted arrow line showing how the letter is written - you are supposed to trace the letter with your finger following the arrow.

Ryan didn't love this immediately, he took a long time to get into it. I guess it was like a duplicate of some of the items above, which he was already playing with. Plus the pictures on the cards were not that appealing, I think. In fact, when he did play with this, he preferred to play on the plain side of the cards, although we never bothered to do the tracing, just the matching up of the wooden letter with the card. Anyway, this toy slowly gained acceptance and now Ryan pulls it out quite regularly to play with, sometimes he plays with the cards (both sides); other times he doesn't bother with the cards, he just holds the letters in his hand or lines them up on the floor and says their names.

Around the same time that we introduced the Plan Toys set, I also introduced cards with textured lower case letters. You can see what this looks like at this link (I did not buy it through this link though. I bought it off the shelf from a local store). The intention was to get him to trace the letters with his finger, in the order and direction that he would eventually write them. This is what is done in Montessori when they work with sandpaper letters. Ryan did not like these - I think this activity was too restrictive and too advanced for his age so I packed it up after two or three tries. I re-introduced these cards later, and he was much more receptive. I would think that you can try when your child is, at the youngest, 18 months, and even then, when you start, don't ask the child to do the tracing, just show him/her how to do it and leave it at that, until his/her interest is sufficiently piqued and he/she starts to reach for the cards on his/her own.

As for books, we felt that there was not much point buying a book with pages that simply had A, B, C, D, E... etc. So, we didn't use any. After Ryan was already familiar with the alphabet, we did pick up two alphabet books, because by that time, Ryan absolutely loved the alphabet so we wanted to get some books that he would enjoy. One is the famous "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" (by Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault with illustrations by Lois Ehlert). We bought this fairly recently and have only gone through once or twice with Ryan. The other one is Leo Lionni's board book, "Colors, Numbers, Letters". Ryan read the whole book on his own the very first time he saw it - there are no words, he just named all the colours, numbers and letters. Great book, I will post a review soon.

I should add that we do not have an alphabet chart on the wall at home.

Before I pen off, I want to mention that, in the beginning, I had the intention of teaching letter sounds first, before teaching the alphabet. I was concerned that Ryan wouldn't want to learn the letter sounds if he had already learned to refer to the letters by their names. My fears were unfounded - Ryan learned the letter names first and had no problem with the letter sounds subsequently. Now, in addition to reciting the alphabet by letter name, he can even do it by letter sound! In fact, when reading up on this, I came across an ex-Montessori teacher who said that she had one student who learned the letter sounds without learning the alphabet and he was so demoralised in pre-school when he discovered that his peers all knew the letter names. He felt out of place and all this negativity affected his ability to learn the letter names, which frustrated him even more. Thinking about it, even if you don't teach letter sounds at home, it's all right because children will get that done in school, but you have to teach the letter names at home, because that's not done in school (the students usually already know the letter names).

All right, that's it. Maybe next time when I write on this subject, I will write about the items we used to introduce letter sounds.

Customised ABC book by Richard

2011-10-12T00:01:00.002+08:00

Last year in Shichida (Oct to Dec 2010), we were given this A4 book. The cover says, "MY FIRST DICTIONARY". The pages inside were blank except for a small square at the upper right corner where the letters of the alphabet appear, one letter per page (upper and lower together).

For each week, we were to find and paste pictures on each page showing words starting with the relevant letter. For Week 1, we had to do this for letters A and B; for Week 2, it would be letters C and D, and so on. In class, the books will be passed around and the parents would input all the words to their child.

That term, Richard accompanied Ryan to class so Richard was in charge of this. He was quite hardworking at it - he always made sure that the homework for each week was done in time for class. He reported that he always got compliments on "his" book from sensei (which I think motivated him to keep up with the good work). He also said that, some weeks, the other parents didn't do their homework with the result that everyone had to share our book!

Anyway, this is how it looks inside. Richard chose caterpillar and clown for Cc, and donkey and drums for Dd.

I left the task completely to Richard - he didn't consult me or ask me my opinion at all. I usually flipped through the book only when we were on the way to class, and sometimes it was quite amusing to see what his choices were. Here are some of the more interesting ones.

Gg for Gruffalo.

Mm for McDonald's (we usually hang out at McDonald's after Shichida class).

Rr for Ryan (what else?)

Ss for Spongebob.

Xx for an x-ray of Homer Simpson's head.

Yy for Yoda!

Oh wow, my baby can read!

2011-10-06T00:01:00.001+08:00

Ryan has started to read.

Given a word, he first sounds out the letter sounds and then blends the sounds to form the word. So for example, when he sees the word CAT, he will say "/k/, /æ/, /t/ ... CAT!"

It was such an amazing and thrilling feeling for Richard and me when we first saw him decoding words. Just like when he took his first steps, it was a hugely significant moment. Our son had become, irrevocably, a reader! We were so very happy for him!

Richard and I also felt a huge sense of accomplishment. Unlike learning to walk, which required very little from us, Richard and I have been very involved in Ryan's early literacy journey, from the day he was born. We have been reading lots and lots of books together, doing pretend play, learning the alphabet, learning the letter sounds, having conversations, singing songs, re-telling stories, learning how a book works (including letting Ryan chew on it and turn the pages). We also play a lot of games with words and letters - remember this post? And yes, we did use some iPhone and iPad apps and some DVDs and, I hate to say it, these gave Ryan an extra boost.

As a result, Ryan knows his alphabet, both upper and lower case and he knows the regular letter sounds for each letter. He knows how to isolate the letter sounds to identify the first letter of a word - for instance he knows BOY starts with B, because he can isolate the /b/ sound at the beginning. He knows how to spell the words: LOVE, FOX, BOX, RYAN, ELMO, NODDY, ZOO, MOON, CAT, DUCK and a few more, which showed that he appreciated that a group of letters formed a word (to me, that did not mean that he could read, only that he could recite the letters in the correct order - yes, I'm hard to please). He also knows how to form letters using things like sticks, straws, coins and by manipulating his fingers and arms.

For the past few months, Ryan has been OBSESSED with letters and numbers. Out of the blue, he will yell out some letters and numbers, or letter sounds and words, because he just likes hearing them. Two nights ago, he was saying letter sounds - IN HIS SLEEP. I heard him say "/k/, /æ/, /t/"! Hahaha!

I know he was saying letter sounds because, earlier that same evening (Tuesday evening), I wrote the word "cat" on our little chalk board and he said, "/k/, /æ/, /t/ ... CAT!" I didn't think that was unusual, because he knows the word "cat" and he knows all the letter sounds in the word. So I wrote another word using the same word family ("hat"), and he did the same thing, breaking up the sounds and reading the word correctly. I wrote another word and another and another and he decoded them all without any difficulty - cat, mat, sat, fat, rat, pat, hat, bat. I wrote out words made with other word families - fun, sun, gun; big, pig, fig; and he sounded all of them out confidently! I was so excited - I told Ryan that we had to fetch daddy and show him! When Richard came, Richard wrote the words and Ryan read them all out again! We were all so excited!

The next day (yesterday), I spoke to Ryan's nanny and I told her that he was saying letter sounds in his sleep. She chuckled and told me that he loves to say letter sounds all day. I mentioned that he could read a few words and you know what she said? She said, "Of course! He can read many words!" I was flabbergasted! She also said that she had taught him the days of the week and the months of the year and he could read all of them! Oh my! She was so proud of him - she said that she only needed to show him anything once, and he would remember it. Gosh.

Anyway, when we got home, we went through some words again. Here's a Youtube video of it (about 3.3 minutes long). You can hear Ryan sounding out each letter sound before he puts them together and declares what the word is. I love it when he says "What's next?" at 1:28 of the video!

How to Build an A by Sara Midda

2011-10-05T21:17:00.002+08:00

Ryan is into letters and numbers right now - he talks about them all the time. I bought this for him recently and it was an instant favourite.

I saw this in a store in Singapore (Motherworks at Great World City) and recalled reading a positive review about it on the internet, so I snapped it up. I assume you can get it at the usual bookstores too and, interestingly, it is also available at The Metropolitan Museum of Art Store.

The book comes with 11 sturdy foam pieces and a mesh bag to store the pieces in. As the title states, it shows you how to build an A (using the foam pieces). And a B and a C too. Every letter from A to Z in fact.

Hmm, I suppose even if you don't buy the book, you could make the pieces yourself? But then, you wouldn't have Midda's book with all her quirky illustrations! Each page introduces a new letter and is illustrated with Midda's miniature people, who are shown comically hauling and heaving the pieces into place.

The only drawback is that the pieces don't fit together nicely. For example, for the letter 'B', the vertical piece isn't long enough to accommodate both of the semicircles. These have to be overlapped.

Nevertheless, once Ryan understood that it was not like a jigsaw and you could put one piece on top of another, he had no problems at all. He even built the lower-case letters (the book only shows how to build upper case letters)!

I usually do book reviews after we have been reading the book for a long time. This book, we have been reading for less than a month and I don't know how long it will be before it stays on the shelf for good. Nevertheless, I thought that I'd write about it because Ryan loves it so much, even if it is turns out that it is for just a while. Just last night Ryan took Richard by the hand and ordered him to build the letters with him. He told Richard, "A-B-C, You, Me!" Richard said it was the first sentence that Ryan had ever spoken to him!

Pin the shape on the board!

2011-10-04T00:01:00.003+08:00

Here's a game which we made for Ryan, which you can make too!

We bought him a large piece of white styrofoam (1 inch thick) and cut out various shapes for him to lay out on the styrofoam. Then he sticks pins into the shapes! It's as simple as that!

This game is good for finger training (fine motor skills), shape and colour recognition, counting, sorting, and exploring texture. Ryan builds up and learns how to control the strength in his fingers - which he will need for writing. He also strengthens his powers of focus and concentration. Of course it promotes creativity too - Ryan can make different designs and patterns!

Richard and I cut the shapes from thin foam. You can cut any shape you like - no need to limit yourself to squares and triangles, although we had a lot of those as they are easy to cut. We cut our shapes free hand - no need to be precise about it!

We bought push pins/thumb tacks, in various colours and designs. Yes, they are sharp and no, Ryan did not prick himself. Not even once. He was able to aim for and pick up an individual pin, twirl it around with his fingers on one hand and hold it in the right position to drive it into the styrofoam. Don't worry - you child can do it too!

You can see from this photo that the white thumb tacks with the flat heads actually lie with their sharp ends pointing upwards.

No problem!

Three pieces of foam in that photo there - Ryan learns to adjust his strength - more strength needed!

We let him place the pieces and stick the pins wherever he wanted and it was interesting to see where he placed them - sometimes he put the pins in little groups on a foam piece, sometimes just one pin on a foam piece; sometimes huddled together, sometimes spaced apart; in a line or in a curve, sometimes standing straight up, sometimes at an angle. You can see also that he sorts the pins too, sometimes by design and sometimes by colour. Sometimes he even matches the colour of the pin with the colour of the foam shape!

Here's a short Youtube video (just over 2 minutes) of Ryan pinning. This was filmed the first time we introduced this game. You can hear Richard and Ryan discussing the colours and the shapes on the board. At the end of the video, you can hear Ryan say "Amazing!". He also says "Rainbow" a few times - because the final product is so colourful!

The next day, Ryan asked to play the game again! We had to buy more pins!

The cost involved was quite low - the styrofoam piece cost less than $3 and the foam sheets were also less than $3. You can get a box of pins/thumb tacks for about $1-$3.50 depending on quantity, design and where you buy it from. We used a LOT of pins because our styrofoam piece was so big, but you can go with a smaller piece. You can use cork board if you prefer a tougher surface - we're going to do that next and teach him to use a hammer!

Notes on Shichida - Part 13: Pre-lessons (Image Play examples for 2 years old)

2011-10-02T00:01:00.031+08:00

Here I'll share with you some image play examples that we have done in class. Remember, the class examples are limited because there aren't many props in the small classroom and we need to keep the activity short. Take them as ideas for image play at home which you can improve on and expand at home. Remember also, and as I explained in Part 12, don't just hand your child some toys and ask him to play by himself. Get involved, guide him along and make it a multi-sensory experience.

When Ryan was less than one year old, we did very simple pretend play in class. For example, sensei would show him pictures of a panda and what the panda likes to eat. Then he was given a picture of a panda and told that the panda was hungry. He was then asked to pretend to feed the panda some leaves.

Another example for babies: the sensei showed him a series of pictures and told a story. Then she showed each picture again and Ryan acted out the story (with my help). For example, the sensei showed a picture of a calm sea and she said, "The sea is calm, it's a sunny day, we're sailing out to sea in a steady boat". So the babies pretended they are in a boat on a calm sea. They listened to the seagulls calling, the waves lapping, they smelled the sea, they felt the warm sun. Then another picture was shown - the sky is dark, there is lightning - the sensei said, "A storm is coming, the rain falls down, the boat starts to rock from side to side." The babies rocked from side to side, they hid from the rain, they heard the lightning clap. Then the story went on - the storm subsides, all is well, suddenly a shark appears in the water, everyone is scared, but the shark soons goes away and everyone is relieved" and so on. The little babies followed the story with the appropriate reactions. (Of course, at this stage, the parents play all the roles.)

When Ryan graduated to the class for 1 year old and above, the pretend play was more detailed. As the children are still at an early stage of training so, to help them along, we show them a lot of images and give them some props and materials to play with. Some of the scenarios may be unfamiliar to them - you may want them to pretend to go on a picnic but some of the children have never been on a picnic so they would not know what to visualise in their minds. The images and pictures will help.

When Ryan moved up to the class for 2 year olds, we added on the imaginary story.

For Ryan's current level (2 years old), these are some scenarios which we have done for pretend play and imaginary story.

Picnic and Campfire

Tell your child that his family and friends are going on a picnic and after that to a campfire. Show a series of pictures to explain the steps to take to prepare for a family picnic. Ask him to pretend to pack for a picnic. Give your baby some 'cakes', some cups and sheets of sponge in various colours to act as bread (white), lettuce (green), tomato (red), cheese (yellow) and ask him to make sandwiches. Once the sandwiches are done, pack them all into the container and go on a picnic! Use some cardboard to make a pretend campfire. Stand around the campfire and sing and dance around the campfire to the song, "If You're Happy".

Lucky Draw

Prepare a poster showing prizes for the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth winners, eg. a car for the first prize winner, a computer for the second prize winner, etc. Prepare individual pictures of each prize as well. Show your child the poster and say we are going to have a lucky draw. Give your child a ticket stub and ask him to put it into the lucky draw box. Draw the numbers, call them out and give out the prizes according to the prize poster. (Ryan got first prize for this one - hahaha!)

Visit to Jurong Bird Park

Give your child a cardboard camera and tell him that he and you are going to the Jurong Bird Park today. Show a series of pictures about his visit, it may be a picture of the birds, a picture of the ticket booth, a picture of the restaurant at the park, etc. At each picture, ask him to take a photograph of what he sees. Next, give him a blank photo album with captions for each photo. Give him the pictures and ask him to insert each picture next to the right caption.

Magic Laptop

Fold a card into two to make the laptop. On the bottom half, draw the keys A-Z, the space bar and the "Enter" key. On the top half, paste a transparency or a plastic sheet to make a pocket where you can slot in pictures. Show your child various pictures and make up a story with him. Tell him that he has to type the story into the computer and when he does so and presses enter, the picture (eg, banana, octopus, car) will appear on the screen. When he is done, ask him to type in his name.

Skiing

Show your child a series of pictures about a skiing trip for the family. Make two skis with two sticks for him to ski and let him pretend to ski all over the room.

Butterfly

Show pictures of a butterfly flying around, show the grass, the flowers and the sky. Ask your child to pretend to be a butterfly. You can dress him up in a butterfly suit or wings. Or you can give him a big plastic bag and ask him to fly it around. Put pictures of the grass, the flowers and the sky on the wall and ask him to fly towards them. Or let him hold a picture of the butterfly and fly the picture instead.

Folding napkins

Use pictures to show how to fold napkins for the restaurant. Show him step-by-step. Let him practice and do it himself.

Taking Pictures At The Zoo

Show your child some pictures and tell him that he and you are going to the zoo today. Explain that, at the zoo, he will see animals like monkey, rabbit, lion, etc. Put up pictures of the animals and give your child a cardboard camera and ask him to take pictures of the animals. After that, give him small pictures of the animals and tell him that his pictures have been printed. Look through the pictures with him and get him to name the animals again.

Four Seasons

Show your child flashcards of the four seasons and describe what the four seasons are and what happens in that season, eg, flowers bloom in spring, etc. Now give your child individual pictures of the four seasons and give him an activity for each season. For example, flowers bloom in spring, so for spring give him some flowers to pick and arrange in a vase. Summer is when the sun is very hot, so give him an empty bottle to pretend to put on sun block. Autumn is where the trees shed their leaves, so ask him to rake the fallen leaves. Winter is when snow falls, so he can play with some cotton balls and pretend he is playing in the snow.

Let's Be Superman

Show pictures and explain - Why must we be Superman? (to save people, to become strong, to fly...). Make a cape (you can use a red plastic bag). Then use cardboard to make the front of Superman's costume - make sure you include Superman's S sign and his shorts! Tie a string on it and hang on your child. Tell the child he is Superman. Carry him and fly him around the room!

Making Japanese Rice Balls

Prepare three white triangle shapes for the rice ball and three black strips of paper for the seaweed. Show a series of pictures to show how to make the rice ball in a few simple steps: First, scoop the rice, then gather the rice into a ball, add in a plum, make it into a triangle and add in the seaweed. Now ask your child to make three rice balls following the steps. When he is done, he can pretend to eat it.

Feed the fishes

Make a pond using an old shoe box - put in a picture of a pond and some fishes into the box. Crush some coloured paper into small balls and ask your child to feed the fishes.

Buying and Eating Ice Cream

Take out a box and say you are an ice-cream seller. Ring the bell. Take out a cone, a cup and a piece of bread and ask your child how he would like his ice-cream to be served (eg. in a cone, in a cup, on a slice of bread). Then scoop the ice cream (coloured furry balls or shaving cream) and name the flavours as you scoop. Then ask your child to pay you for the ice-cream and after he pretends to pay, pass him the ice cream and he can pretend to eat.

Exploring Under The Sea

Show your child pictures of sea animals and paste pictures of the same sea animals all over the room. Make diving goggles with cardboard and blue plastic over the eye area and ask your child to put them on and explore under the sea. Point out the various sea creatures to them as he explores.

Various scenarios

Ask your child to roll a dice. On the dice, there are a few activities like visit the notice board, go for a shower, visit the shopping mall, raise the flag, tie the ribbons, pluck the apples. Put up pictures of the relevant activities. Once your child rolls the dice to do that activity, carry out that activity with him.

Detective Dog

Introduce a character called "Detective Dog" - show a picture of a dog (eg. a cartoonish dog with a magnifying glass!). Explain that he is pursuing a suspect called "Slippery Fox" - show a picture of the suspect (a cartoonish fox that looks very suspicious!). Show a picture of the neighbourhood and explain that Detective Dog has been searching all over the neighbourhood for the suspect. Where is he? Put up pictures of various spots in the neighbourhood - the playground, the library, the train station, etc. Each picture has a slot in which Slippery Fox is hiding. Ask your child to help Detective Dog to go around the neighbourhood and look for Slippery Fox!

Notes on Shichida - Part 12: Pre-lessons (Image Play)

2011-10-01T00:01:00.003+08:00

In this post, I will outline the usual image play games that we play: (1) stick image (basic image training), (2) orange card image training/"after image" training; (3) pretend play; and (4) imaginary story.

Basic image training (also stick image training)
This is the base for all other image training so you should do this before all other image training. Do this at home, everyday, before you do the rest of image play. We do not do this in class, as class is only once a week. If your child is under three, he can do it in your arms.

a) "Let's lie down on the floor. Close your eyes. Pretend that you are sleeping. A person who fell asleep doesn't open eyes, doesn't talk and doesn't move. Well, you are doing really well!"

b) "Let's take deep breaths. Exhale slowly and deeply, and flatten your tummy. Now, let's inhale and let your tummy swell. Make your tummy like a big balloon. When you are breathing slowly like this, you are becoming very calm and relaxed. All bad energy is leaving your body and good energy is coming in. There is no tension in your body or in your mind and it is very easy for you to image." (Repeat this breathing a few times).

c) "Let's image that we will become a stick. When I say 'Now!", tighten all your muscles and imagine that your body has become a very hard stick. Ok? Now!" To tell if the child is visualising the image well, touch his limbs to see if they are tensed up and hardened.

d) "When I say "Now!", your body will become soft like cotton. Ok? Now!" The child will relax.

e) "Now, you can see a red balloon. Imagine well! Once you can see it, raise your hand. Ok, put down your hand."
f) If your child can see red, have him visualise a yellow circle, then a blue circle. Then ask him to visualise other images - "Now the blue circle spreads and turns into a lake. Then it turns into a swimming pool."

g) "Now you turn off everything and you are coming back to the room when I count 1-2-3. 1-2-3! Open your eyes slowly. Good! Welcome back!"

Orange card image training/"after image" training (4 years old and above)
I have explained this in Part 11.

Pretend play (any age)

Pretend play is straightforward - the child can be a teacher in the classroom, an astronaut fixing his rocketship, a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, a mouse hiding his cheese, or a tree swaying in the wind.

Mind you, it is not the usual pretend play. In this game, we are not focusing on creativity, motor skills, language skills or social skills. Our aim here is for the child to be able to create an image of the scenario in his mind and to be able to change that image as he likes.

For older children, you can do image play by getting them to close their eyes and visualise the scenario in their minds. Here's an example:

a) "Let's lie down on the floor. Close your eyes. Pretend that you are sleeping. A person who fell asleep doesn't open eyes, doesn't talk and doesn't move. Well, you are doing really well!"
b) "Let's take deep breaths. Exhale slowly and deeply, and flatten your tummy. Now, let's inhale and let your tummy swell. Make your tummy like a big balloon. When you are breathing slowly like this, you are becoming very calm and relaxed. All bad energy is leaving your body and good energy is coming in. There is no tension in your body or in your mind and it is very easy for you to image." (Repeat this breathing a few times).
c) Now, let's imagine being a butterfly. You are becoming a butterfly now. Your body is getting smaller and smaller, and now you are a butterfly.

d) Flutter your wings and fly.

e) You can open your eyes slowly and see a corner of the room. You can see a flowerbed.

f) Now you can see many yellow tulips. If you see them, raise your hand. Ok, put down your hand.

g) Fly to the flowers and suck nectar from them. You can taste very sweet and delicious nectar. Can you tell me how it is like?

h) Now you are coming back to your seat. Close your eyes. When I count to three, you will come back to yourself. 1-2-3!

For younger children, they may not understand how to do all that so we don't do pretend play this way. Instead, we show them some pictures and images of the scenario beforehand and we give them materials to play with to help them along and to strengthen the mental images that they create in their minds. For example, if your child is going to pretend to be a firefighter, you can show him a picture of the firefighter's uniform, the fire engine, the fire, the equipment a firefighter uses, etc. Then you can give him a task to carry out as if he is a firefighter. Guide him along, ask him questions, so that the images in his mind are strengthened. Don't just hand your child some toys and expect him to pretend play by himself.

Make it a multi-sensory experience, in terms of input and output. For example, for the input, if your child is pretending to be a butterfly flying about in the meadow, you can burn some lavender scented oil. Or if he is pretending to be a rockstar at a concert, give him the right music. If he is pretending to be a teacher, ring a bell for recess. For the output, try to get him to talk (if he's a waiter, get him to tell you what's on the menu), to touch (if he's pretending he's at the seaside, ask him how the sand feels between his toes), to smell (if he's pretending to take his bath, ask him how the soap smells), to feel (if he's a bird in the sky, ask him if he feels happy or scared), to see and to hear (if he's an astronaut, ask him what he sees and hears in outer space). All this will help to strengthen the images in his mind.

Imaginary story (2 years old and above)

This is basically the same as pretend play, with one difference. In pretend play, your child pretends a real-life scenario. In imaginary story, the story can be as fanciful as he likes and you let your child imagine what to do. Here's an example:

a) "Today we will play in a story world, the world of imagination. Let's lie down on the floor. Close your eyes. Pretend that you are sleeping. A person who fell asleep doesn't open eyes, doesn't talk and doesn't move. Well, you are doing really well!"
b) "Let's take deep breaths. Exhale slowly and deeply, and flatten your tummy. Now, let's inhale and let your tummy swell. Make your tummy like a big balloon. When you are breathing slowly like this, you are becoming very calm and relaxed. All bad energy is leaving your body and good energy is coming in. There is no tension in your body or in your mind and it is very easy for you to image." (Repeat this breathing a few times).
c) "Now you are in a quiet wood. This is where beautiful animals and gnomes and fairies live. A pretty squirrel comes your way and looks up at you. You say, "Hello, Mr Squirrel." The squirrel smiles and says, "Hello, welcome to our woods!""

d) "What is going to happen? Your image can take you anywhere you want and do anything. Remember what you see and tell me what happened when you come back. I am going to stop talking for a while. Enjoy your images!"

For younger children who might not understand all that, we do this the way we do pretend play - we set the scene by showing them pictures and images and then we ask them to act out the story. For example, two weeks ago, we did this in class:

First, sensei showed the class a picture of some Care Bears. She introduced each one of the Care Bears in the picture. Then she showed a picture of just one of the Care Bears - Good Luck Bear. She explained that Good Luck Bear has a four-leaf clover on his tummy to symbolise good luck. She said that Good Luck Bear gives good luck to all his friends. Then she gave each child a bear tummy (made of cardboard with some white felt stuck on it) which they tied around their bodies. On the bear tummy were six four-leaf clovers that could be detached (there was velcro on the back). Sensei told the children that they could go around and give out good luck to their classmates by giving out the four-leaf clovers. So the children went around giving each other four-leaf clovers. Ryan even gave one to sensei!

In Part 13, I will put up some scenarios that you can use for pretend play and imaginary story. I hope that gives you some inspiration to come up with more!

Notes on Shichida - Part 11: Pre-lessons (Image Play)

2011-09-28T00:48:00.000+08:00

Still on the topic of pre-lessons. Remember that there are four basic steps in pre-lessons:

1. calming oneself
2. deep and slow breathing
3. positive statements/suggestions
4. image training/image play

In the next few posts, I will talk about image training.

Image training is the most important thing in right brain education, because visualisation is fundamental to all aspects of right brain training, eg. Senses Play (ESP games), mental calculation, speed reading and photographic memory. Image training trains the children to visualise and to represent something mentally, and to capture and hold that image. A child or adult who can visualise with perfect representation an object from the physical environment and who can mentally change this image at will has perfected this function.

For adults, there are many ways to do image training. Professor Shichida talks about training using actions, training using audiotapes, ESP games (after visualization), dream control method, life energy training (‘kiko’), aura viewing training, use of paramemory, sun viewing method, image training with candles (like Henry Sugar!) and "after image" training.

Let me explain "after image" training. This exercise is for the parents and for older children (4 years and above). Shichida encourages parents to develop their right brain so that they can influence their children via "the radar effect". Shichida says that, if there is a child who is able to perform computer-like calculations, or has demonstrated telepathic abilities, etc., it has been found that the children around him are also able to do similar things. If you bring a child who has not been able to demonstrate any of these abilities into the group, that child will soon be able to do similar things as the rest of the group. This effect is called “the radar effect”.

Ok, this "after image" exercise uses an orange card with a small blue circle in the centre. All Shichida parents are issued this card at the Parents Education seminar. You can use other images too, once you understand how it is done.

Breathe deeply, relax your mind, and stare at the blue circle for 30 seconds. Then, close your eyes and you will see the "after image". If it disappears just tell yourself, “It will reappear.” And it will. Initially, the "after image" will be in opposite colours, that is, the blue circle will appear orange. With further practice, you will eventually be able to see the blue circle in its correct colour in your "after image". Continue practicing until you can CHANGE the colour and shape of your "after image", for instance, a red circle, then a green square. When you reach that stage, you should be able to see images spontaneously (you can see a free image). The objective is to see yourself in an image. Then you can visualise yourself getting a hole in one in golf!

For children, Professor Shichida recommends the following games for image training:
1) Return to the womb;
2) Become a teeny tiny person;
3) Pretend play;
4) Imaginary story;
5) Stick image; and
6) Orange card image training.

The ones we use more often are (1) stick image (basic image training), (2) pretend play, (3) imaginary story, and (4) orange card image training/"after image" training (for children who are four years old and above who can verbalise their thoughts). These are fun children’s games which involve imaging and visualisation. I will explain these in the next instalment.

Notes on Shichida - Part 10: Pre-lessons

2011-09-24T17:23:00.002+08:00

We are going to rewind. Before you do Senses Play, you should do the pre-lessons. In class, pre-lessons are done at the start of the class (after the greeting and introduction), before Senses Play. Pre-lessons should be done at home too, at the start of the home practice session.

Pre-lessons are very important. They help the child to relax, to switch over to alpha wave and to focus on the session. There is little point in having the session if the child is not relaxed and in a good mood. The pre-lessons comprise (1) the energy ball game; (2) blowing game; (3) making positive statements and suggestions; and (4) image training. I will explain the first three in this post and image training in the next post.

Let me explain the energy ball game first. When adults try to relax and focus themselves on the task at hand, they usually close their eyes, breathe deeply and slowly, get rid of negative thoughts and think positive thoughts to motivate themselves. We tell ourselves, "Close your eyes, get rid of negative distracting thoughts, focus and tell yourself you can do it!" However, the young ones may not understand how to do all that. In order to help them, we play this game.

The game has two parts. First, we rub our hands together and pretend to gather good energy into a big ball, lift it high and let it shower down on us to wash away all the bad energy. Then, we rub our hands together and make another energy ball, but this time we pretend to pack the good energy tightly into a ball and pretend to eat it so that we are filled with good energy.

Here's a Youtube video of Ryan and me playing the game.

After the energy ball game, we give our children a big hug and tell them, "I love you." Make other positive statements like, "You and mummy are one in our hearts" and positive suggestions like, "We are going to have a lot of fun!"

I have heard comments from parents that the energy ball game seems unorthodox or spiritual or supernatural. Actually, it's not at all. It's just a game for the children to play along, to put them in a good frame of mind for the class and to concentrate. Now that I have explained the purpose of the activity, you can even modify it or do something else at home, according to what is suitable for your child. If your child can understand what to do - to breathe deeply, relax, focus and put himself in a positive frame of mind, then that achieves the purpose. Just make sure to tag on positive statements/suggestions and then do image training - these two are very important.

After the energy ball game and positive statements/suggestions, we do blowing games. As explained, adults can relax themselves by breathing slowly and deeply for a while and focusing their minds (meditating). For the younger children, they may not understand when you tell them to take slow and deep breaths or they may simply not know how. This activity helps the children to do deep breathing.

In class, we use blowing toys to play this game. I'll show you our homemade ones which are similar.

The first one is supposed to be an octopus! Just goes to show - don't worry that your handmade material looks unprofessional - it doesn't matter! Hahaha! Here, Ryan blows on the tentacles (the green tassels).

A jellyfish (don't worry, Ryan took some time to figure out what it was too). I wanted to re-do it but when I showed it to him, he started blowing on it, so I let it be. Heh heh.

A boat with a sail that you can blow on.

A bird on a perch. The bird swings when you blow on it. I cut the whole thing from one piece of paper.

Next one is a seal, spinning a ball on its nose. I made this by pasting two sides of the ball on a satay stick. The satay stick is inserted into part of a straw at the back of the seal. Hold the seal up, blow on the ball and watch it spin! This straw-stick model can be used for lots of things - an aeroplane with moving propellers, a sun/moon combination, a weather vane, etc.

This is what I did with the rest of that straw. I threaded a string through it and tied a button on one end to keep it in place. On the other end, I stuck a butterfly. Hold the straw, blow on the butterfly and watch it flutter!

Again, this straw-string model can be used for anything - hang a small pom-pom, a kite, a bee, an aeroplane, a bird, etc. It can be a two-dimensional or a three-dimensional object. Anything that moves easily.

Here's a fly that you blow away from the watermelon slice. The fly is attached to a plastic strip that is also attached to the watermelon slice.

In the next example, I drew a book and cut a slot in the middle. I inserted a piece of paper into the slot to make a page and decorated the book with pictures of monsters which I cut from a piece of used gift wrap. Ryan has to blow the page upwards to see what's underneath!

Other examples - a dog with floppy ears that you can blow up, a helicopter with moving rotor blades, a house with a chimney or a train engine (use black strips of paper/plastic for smoke and blow on the strips), etc. You can even use something that doesn't move at all - like a picture of a hot apple pie. Actually, the examples are endless.

After the blowing game, we do image training (pretend play/imaginary story), then the "Which One?" games and then the "hot" card game.

At home, you must do the pre-lessons if your child is above three years old. If your child is under three years old, you can choose to skip the pre-lessons if your child is already happy and relaxed, as the right brain is usually still dominant at this age, although it is still better to do them. It depends on the situation and the individual child. If your child needs some help to focus, then the games will help. Also, some children may have already started receiving a lot of left brain input before they turn three (especially in Singapore) - these children may need more help to switch over. In class, we do the pre-lessons at all ages, even with the babies - some children may need it, some children may not but since we can't customise the class routine to fit the individual child, we just do it in every class. If your child attends the weekly class, it's also good to do the pre-lessons even if your child is under three, to maintain the routine.

Do blowing games at home if your child doesn't know how to do deep and slow breathing or if your child is particularly hyper. Please do not worry about making those little blowing toys that we use in class. In class we change the blowing toy every week but at home you can repeat the same thing in subsequent sessions. It's just something to help your child breathe deeply and relax himself. You can use a piece of tissue paper or a feather and blow it across the floor. You can use a handkerchief. You can even just hold up a picture of a hot cup of coffee and ask your child to blow on it. I would not suggest blowing bubbles or blowing a musical instrument or even a lighted candle - the child may get too excited and want to continue playing with the bubbles, etc.

After the pre-lessons (including image training which I will explain in the next post), you can proceed to Senses Play.

Good Night Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann

2011-09-19T17:08:00.001+08:00

Written and illustrated by Peggy Rathmann, this book has won multiple awards including ALA Notable Children's Book for 1994, Bulletin Blue Ribbon 1994 and Horn Book Fanfare 1995 selection. Almost wordless, the story is told through the rich illustrations. An unobservant zookeeper is doing his nightly rounds when a cheeky gorilla steals his keys and lets the animals out. The animals all follow him home and the zookeeper's wife sorts everything out.

I asked Terri to buy a copy for us from overseas and since we received it, we have read it over and over again. The book is available locally but I was not in a hurry because I was afraid that it might be another "Goodnight Moon" and, at that time, I was not enamoured with Goodnight Moon (I've since become a firm fan). Comparing the two, they are both fantastic books, the difference is that Goodnight Moon is more sedate and quiet, while Good Night Gorilla takes you on a hilarious escapade.

When I first read the book with Ryan, Ryan would call out the names of the animals that he knew best - the gorilla (Ryan calls it the "gowawa"), the mouse, the elephant, the giraffe and the lion. After Richard started reading the book with him, they started a game of "Spot the banana" in each scene. This came about because Richard was so tickled at Ryan saying "nana!" so he kept pointing out the banana so that Ryan would say "nana!" over and over again. Now that Ryan is getting on with his speech and vocabulary, Richard points to each of the seven animals (including the hyena and the armadillo) and Ryan dutifully identifies each one in each scene.

This one's a keeper, for sure.

Matching letters to objects

2011-09-16T00:01:00.001+08:00

Here's a Youtube video (about 7.5 minutes) of a game that Richard and Ryan have been playing.

The game is simple - Richard shows a card with a picture of an object and Ryan selects the card with the letter corresponding to the first letter of the object's name. So, for a picture of a cat, Ryan selects the card with the letter "C". He connects the two cards (they are like jigsaw pieces) and arranges them neatly on the floor.

On the back of the cards is a set of capital and small letters (upper and lower case), eg. the capital "B" links up to the small "b". When we started playing with these cards, Ryan used them to match up the capital and small letters. It was only recently that Richard came up with the game in the video - this is the third or fourth time they are playing it. Ryan could match up all the cards the very first time they played this game.

Notes on Shichida - Part 9: Senses Play ("Hot" Card game and more "Which One?" games)

2011-09-13T21:20:00.002+08:00

The "hot" card game is easy to practise at home as it is very simple and requires very little preparation. In class, the "hot" card game is played straight after the "Which One?" games.

Present two cards of the same size and colour, about the size of your child's hand. On one card is the picture which you want him to find - this is the "hot" card. The other card is either blank or has a different picture. For example, one card has a picture of an aquarium with many fish and the other has a picture of an aquarium with just a few fish. Or one card has a picture of a hexagon and the other card is blank. Note that the blank card should never be the "hot" card. It doesn't have to be fancy, you can draw a simple picture or shape, you can use stickers or you can cut out a picture from a magazine. If you have the linking memory cards for two year olds, you can use those too.

For example, in the set in the photo below, the "hot" card can be the zebra. Show him both cards and tell him the zebra is "hot". Place the cards face down on the table and shuffle them around. Ask your child to rub his palms together and feel the cards by placing his palm on each of the cards. Ask him to find the "hot" card. You can do this a few times with the same set in the same session.

Ok, now back to "Which one?" games. In addition to the ones I showed you in Part 7 and Part 8, I wanted to show you three examples which are a bit more creative. These were done in class and from these, you can see that we don't always use paper scenes, and also that there are many ways to ask "Which One?". I hope these will give you more ideas to come up with different and creative games of your own at home. Remember that, for home practice, you don't have to rely on paper scenes that we use in class. You can use real objects instead.

Prepare a red and a green apple. Tell your child that the red one is sweet and juicy and the green one is sour. Hide one apple away. Ask your child to pretend to eat the apples and taste them. Then ask him to guess which apple has been hidden away. In class, this is done with a picture of a green apple and a picture of a red apple. One is hidden in an envelope with the word "taste" on it. Here, I'm showing you a picture of the apples with a paper bag but remember, you can use real fruit at home.

Next example - take three ribbons of different colours and connect them end-to-end to form a line. Put it all in a tissue box or a toilet paper tube and ask your child which colour will emerge from the box/tube first. After he makes his choice, pull the ribbon out to reveal the first colour. Then ask what's the next colour and after he makes his choice, pull the ribbon out to reveal the colour. Repeat for the last colour.

This last one is a little tricky to explain. I hope the photo helps.

There are three snails with different coloured shells in the example. They are each paired up with a snail behind. Ask your child to find the pair with matching colours, eg. in this case, the green snail in front has a green snail behind it so this is the pair we want. Ryan did this in class recently (they did it with turtles). At home, you can do this with anything - you can use earrings or socks or crayons or Lego pieces, just hide one set under some cloth or behind a sheet of paper.

That's all for now. As always, keep it fun!

Notes on Shichida - Part 8: Senses Play in Class ("Which one?" games)

2011-09-03T12:31:00.021+08:00

In this post, I will share a little about how we play Senses Play / ESP games in Shichida class. I will go through the "Which one?" games.

The "Which one?" games are only one part of Senses Play. I will touch on the rest of Senses Play in another post. There are also some preparatory exercises that we do at the start of Senses Play - these are to relax the mind, to switch to alpha wave frequency, and to focus the child's mind - I will also deal with that separately.

Ok, so as I mentioned in Part 7, the "Which one?" games in class are limited - we can't for example ask what the next day's weather is going to be or what time is daddy going to be home. Also, the exercise has to be quick because there can be up to 6 children in the class and each child has to give his answer before the answer is revealed.

So what we do in class is to use images on paper to create the scene. I'll show you some of our homemade ones, which are similar to the ones we have in class.

In this first example, I show Ryan the first two pictures - the picture of the boy without the hat and the picture of the three hats. I ask him, "Which hat will the boy wear?"

After Ryan makes his choice, I will show him the answer. Whether he gets it right or wrong, he will receive lots and lots of praise for his effort.

For children in the 2-3 years class, sometimes we give two choices, sometimes we give three. Sometimes four, but rarely. So in the next example, I show Ryan the picture of the cave and the picture of the fish and the crab. I ask, "Which one is hiding in the cave?"

After Ryan makes his choice, I reveal the answer and, whatever his choice was, I give him lots of praise for his effort.

Sometimes it may be hard for the child to understand what you are referring to, so we give a little direction - in this example, the relevant part is shown but blacked out. The question would be, "Who is driving the bus?" and you can point to the blacked out part.

Here's the answer! Remember - lots and lots of praise for effort!

Here's another example of giving some direction. The question here is, "What is hiding in the sea?". The part of the head showing above the surface of the water helps the child to understand what you are getting at.

It's an octopus! Lots of praise for effort please!

This one is for precognition (like the first example) - which lily pad will the frog land on?

The right one! Praise, praise, praise!

Hope you get the idea. Remember that you should practise everyday at home with your child and your child should be in a happy and relaxed frame of mind. You can play games like the ones I mentioned in Part 7 or you can make paper scenes like the ones in this post. If you use paper scenes, try not to repeat them because if you do, then it becomes a memory game rather than a game to strengthen the right brain's senses. Keep the images clear and simple - don't make your child pick out some obscure object in the corner of a picture filled with details.

Happy playing!

Eggs on a tree Part 2

2011-07-19T22:03:00.002+08:00

Here's a Youtube video (6 minutes) of a fine motor activity that we did
a couple of weeks back. Ryan is hanging ornaments (wooden eggs)
onto a metal tree. If you're wondering what he's saying, he's naming
the colour of each egg as he picks up each one from the box.
He also says, "Oh! Sorry!" if he drops an egg.
He says, "Tree! Tree! Tree!" somewhere in the middle of the video.

I love it that he does a little hop and dance after hanging each one.
I especially love it when, after getting the eggs on the tree, he shifts
them around and arranges them, as if he is making an art piece.
At the end, he stands back with his hands on his hips,
gives his masterpiece an admiring and approving look and says, "Wow!"

I'd always thought that hanging stuff was a natural "skill".
Actually, it's not. It needs to be learnt.
Once Ryan got the loop onto the point, he needed to understand
that he could just let go and let gravity take over.
Of course, it's not a difficult lesson, he caught on pretty quickly.

Click here for our first Eggs on a tree post.

Playing with beads!

2011-07-14T22:56:00.003+08:00

Remember those beads that Ryan was using for threading? Since then, we've used the beads for all sorts of games - sorting by shapes and colours, counting, etc. We've also used them for much simpler games, like this one in this video (you may want to moderate the volume on your computer for this).

Great sensory activity and Ryan enjoyed it thoroughly!

To be honest, I actually planned a different activity, but when the beads landed on the tray and rolled around making all that lovely noise, Ryan started this game all on his own! All we had to do was hold on to the tray!

Now this is the activity that I had originally planned, which we eventually got around to on a different occasion. It's a fine motor activity. Ryan picks up each bead and places it onto one of the suckers on the suction pads. The hand-shaped pads are the size of his hands.

We have suction pads in the shape of feet and hearts too. Quite fun, although it's not a game that we play often. Definitely less exciting than the game in the video!

Freight Train by Donald Crews

2011-07-14T11:05:00.000+08:00

If I had to recommend a picture book for young children, Freight Train by Donald Crews would be one of my top choices. Whenever Ryan brings it out, he insists on that we read it over and over again at least five times, sometimes up to ten times!

There is no plot or story line. The book merely describes the different cars (in different colours) that make up a cargo train and describes the train's journey from country to city, day to night. There is limited text on each page, which makes it perfect for young children. Although the text does not rhyme, it has the rhythm of a poem when read aloud. The illustrations are simple and colourful. Sometimes the images are clean and sometimes they are blurred and smudged to show movement. On the last page, the train chugs out of view, Ryan loves to read the last word - "gone".

To be honest, I was surprised at how much Ryan loves this sparse book. To an adult (or perhaps just to me) the book seemed quite boring, as it does not actually tell a story. I then realised that that's where the magic of the book lies - it lets the child make up his/her own story, it inspires the child to wander off into his/her imagination where the train gets into all sorts of adventures, it fosters the child's natural creativity. The child's natural curiosity is piqued and they want to learn more about this exciting-looking train. Ryan can stare for a long time at the page where he first sees the entire freight train, who knows what he is imagining! That's when I realised that this book is pure genius.

The book was named one of 1979's Caldecott Honor Books. The popularity of this book led to a sequel in 2001, "Inside Freight Train", also by Donald Crews, which features fold-out panels so your child can see the inner workings of the train.

English Edudrama Show-and-Tell

2011-07-13T22:20:00.001+08:00

For English Edudrama last Saturday, Ryan had to present something for Show-and-Tell. I decided to give him something extremely basic and simple, so I packed these paper puppets for him.

I actually made them a few weeks ago for Ryan to play with at home. If you have Eric Carle's book, "Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See?", you'll recognise them. I traced the outline for each puppet from the book onto tracing paper, transferred the outlines onto drawing paper and coloured the animals with crayon and colour pencils. After cutting the shapes out, I taped a disposable chopstick to the back.

I had the idea to make them because we were enjoying the book so much and I wanted to use the opportunity to encourage Ryan to use more descriptive words - brown bear, red bird, yellow duck, etc.

As it turned out, Ryan didn't say much during Show-and-Tell, he was too busy "flying" the red bird around, but the other children loved the puppets and were eagerly shouting out each animal's name!

In other news, I mentioned that, after the previous (Mandarin) Edudrama class, Richard and I made a windchime to help reinforce the words "feng ling" (Mandarin for windchime). Well, I pointed to that thing every morning and evening saying, "feng ling! feng ling!" and I recited the windchime poem in his Edudrama book whenever I had the chance. Well, I'm pleased to report that Ryan seems to have absorbed the lesson! He actually said (a mangled version of) "feng ling" the other day when I pointed out the windchime to him! I'm so happy that our efforts paid off!

I will try to think of a way to reinforce this week's Mandarin lesson, which was "qi qiu" (balloon). If you have any ideas on that, do share!

Notes on Shichida - Part 7: Senses Play at Home

2011-07-09T12:25:00.013+08:00

There are four things to bear in mind while doing Senses Play / playing ESP games:

1. Your child should be in a good, relaxed and happy mood throughout the activity.

2. You should believe in your child's powers of ESP. Otherwise, your skepticism will have an adverse effect on how you play the game with your child and how your child responds. Iin Professor Shichida's book, there is a report from a parent that when she did not believe in her son's talents, her son keep getting the answers wrong. He only got them right when she understood the theory of the right brain and believed in it. This is consistent with scientific research in ESP, which has found that people who believed in ESP scored positively on ESP tests while those who did not believe in ESP did not. If you are uncomfortable about ESP, I hope that reading Part 6 will ease your fears and help you to understand how fundamental it is to right-brain training as it is a basic capability of the right brain.

3. Exercise patience. It may take a while for your child to train up, at first he may only get one of out five correct, but keep at it with a cheerful and optimistic spirit, and in time your child will surprise you! If he gets it wrong, please no harsh words and do not feel or show disappointment. Accept that your child is a work in progress (remember Part 2?). Also, I have had parents ask me what to do when their child shows little interest in the activity or looks/walks away in the middle of the activity. I think there is nothing unusual about this, whether playing these games or doing other things - sometimes when I introduce a new storybook to Ryan, he loses interest after the first two pages. Love doesn't always have to be love at first sight. Just let it go, and try again another time with a cheerful smile.

4. Keep it fun!

The most essential ESP game is playing with Zener cards. Shichida parents in Singapore are issued two sets of cards and are asked to practise with them often at home. The set of cards we have are similar to Zener cards except that on one of them there is a hollow triangle - the original Zener card has three wavy lines. We do not play this in class as class is only once a week.

You can use the cards to play clairvoyance games, precognition games, telepathy games, and psychometry/hand reading games. Here, I will share with you how to use these cards for clairvoyance play.

1. If your child is over 3 years old or if he/she is not in a relaxed state of mind, you should lead him/her to relax, breathe deeply and slowly. Make positive statements about the activity and his/her ability to do it.
2. Place the five cards face up in a row.
3. Give your child another set of the five cards, face down.
4. Let your child place one card after another face down in row below yours such that the card he/she is placing corresponds to a card in the row that you placed. The goal is to match up the cards.
5. When your child has placed all five cards, let him/her turn over his/her cards to check if they match up to the cards in your row.

During the Shichida Parent Education Course, we watched a video filmed at an aviation academy in Japan where the trainee pilots were paired up. They played this game over and over, switching roles each time, one person arranging the cards and keeping score, the other guessing the order. And yes, they scored 100% each time. Why pilots? A heightened sense of perception results in an ability to predict danger and oncoming bad weather. In low visibility, the pilot can still navigate safely even though he cannot see through the clouds/mist/fog.

The Singapore Shichida parents' handbook provides some suggestions for more games that you can play at home. I have set these out below. Some are for younger children and some for older children.

Clairvoyance. Remember clairvoyance is the ability to know the identity of hidden things eg. cards, or to identify the color of balls in a box. It is different from telepathy, which is mind reading. The child is being clairvoyant as the mother herself does not know the answer, so the child is not reading her mind.

a) Identifying Cards

Line up 5 picture cards or game cards face down in front of your child and have him/her guess the card you point to.

b) Guessing What’s In The Box

Put one ball out of a possible 5 colours – red, blue, yellow, white and black - into a box, and from the outside without touching the ball, have your child guess the colour of the ball.

c) Matching Cards Memory Game

This is also a memory game. All cards are arranged in rows faced down. When it’s your child’s turn, ask him/her to open 2 matching cards. If he/she is successful, he/she can keep the cards, otherwise the cards are closed again.

d) Guessing While Blindfolded

When games (a) and (b) are done 100% successfully, try this blindfolded game. Have your child blindfolded and guess what object is being placed in front of him without him touching the object. Alternatively, have your blindfolded child guess and point to where Japan, Australia, America, Russia, etc are on a map placed in front of him. This is pretty advanced.

e) Catch Mummy

When your child can guess what is placed in front, play the game of having him/her try to catch you while blindfolded. After your child is blindfolded, ask your child to catch you as move away from the place you were standing before to a new position.

Next, telepathy, which is the ability to read thoughts. You will need to be able to visualise a clear image in your mind (not easy!) and your child will try to make a successful guess of what is visualized in your mind.

a) Animal Cards

i) You will need 2 sets of 5 cards, each with pictures of animals like giraffe, panda, elephant, bear or deer.

ii) Line up one set of 5 cards face up in front of your child and the other set of 5 cards face down in front of you.

iii) Take one of the cards in your hand, stare at it intensely until you see the image in your mind. Then ask your child to pick the matching card from his set.

iv) Do this 5 times.

b) Mind Reading

i) Mother and child face each other.

ii) Hold an image in your mind and ask your child to guess what it is. (Decide a category first eg. shape, colour, animal, vehicle, letter, etc.)

Then hand reading, which is different from clairvoyance in that the child is asked to touch the object with his hand and guess it.

a) Guessing the Colour of the Ball

At one side of a completely sealed cardboard box, make a round hole just right for a hand holding a ball to be able to pass through. Place 5 different coloured balls inside the box. Let your child put his hand into the hole and guess, without looking, what the colour of the ball in his hand is before drawing it out.

b) Card Play

In front of your child, lay 10 cards face down. Have him touch each card one by one and guess the colour of the cards. Animal or picture cards can be used as well.

c) Guessing What Is Written On The Paper

On a piece of paper about 2 square centimeters, write a letter of the alphabet. Wrap it up into a little ball and hand it to your child. Ask him to put the paper ball to his ear, or tuck it under his arm-pit and guess what’s written on the paper.

Precognition is the ability to understand the future with a concrete image that is more precise than intuition.

a) Guessing The Weather

Have your child predict the next day’s weather.

b) Guessing The Card

Have your child guess the order of the next day’s 5 cards and write his prediction down. The next day, mix the cards well and line them up face down. Let your child turn them over one by one and see if they agree with the order written down the day before.

Once you understand the concepts of clairvoyance, telepathy, hand reading and precognition, you can come up with your own games to play with your child at home or when the two of you are out and about. Questions like, which elevator will arrive first? or what shoes will daddy choose to wear later? are precognition games. Telepathy games can be as simple as hiding a snack in your hand and asking your child to guess which hand it is in, or hiding a toy under the blanket and asking your child which toy it is. Guessing which of the cupcakes you baked has an extra strawberry inside, assuming you can't tell either, is clairvoyance (or hand reading if he touches them). Simple and fun, the options are endless.

Of course, in class, it is less flexible as you are sitting in the classroom. In the next instalment, I will share with you how we do Senses Play/play ESP games in class.

Notes on Shichida - Part 6: The five senses of the Right Brain

2011-07-01T12:06:00.007+08:00

A critical component of right brain training is strengthening the right brain's ability to pick up and process information. In Shichida, this is done via Senses Play, which means playing sensory games tailored for the right brain, also called ESP (extra sensory perception) games.

ESP refers to the ability to obtain information through ways other than our five physical senses. While some people think it is something supernatural, according to Shichida, these "extra" ways are simply the five natural senses of the right brain. Every person is born with this natural ability.

In Part 4, I mentioned the theory that every object in our universe emits vibrational waves and that the cells in our bodies can resonate with these waves, receiving information about the object. Professor Shichida says that the right brain processes wave information into five types of images: visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory and tactile. Therefore he describes the right brain as having five internal senses of perception, just like the left brain has five physical senses of perception. As an example, when the teacher sends a mental image of ice cream to the children (using telepathy), the children scream, “Cold!” or “Tastes like ice cream!” The children feel and taste the ice cream with the senses of the right brain.

Some parents are apprehensive when they find out that there are ESP games in Shichida and I know there are even parents who want "right brain" programmes that do not have ESP elements. This apprehension stems from a lack of understanding about the right brain (which makes me wonder why they want a right brain programme in the first place). I doubt that any programme which omits training the senses of the right brain is truly providing right brain training as the resonance and visualisation function is the most fundamental faculty of the right brain.

Somewhat inconsistently, parents who are resistant to ESP accept that a baby in the mother's womb receives information about the environment outside the womb. When they talk to the unborn baby, rub or tap on the belly, or when they play music to the unborn baby, they believe that the baby receives this information. Yet, an unborn baby cannot feel with his skin, hear with his ears, see with his eyes, smell with his nose or taste with his tongue. Shichida tells us that the baby uses the senses of the right brain, which he calls the ESP function, to receive and process this information.

The Singapore Shichida parents’ handbook says that ESP is now known as HSP which is "Heightened Sensory Perception". I'm not sure that the two are truly the same but really, it doesn't matter what it's called. Don't get fixated on labels and names. Just take it that the goal is to strengthen the five senses of the right brain to allow sensory information to be processed and analyzed more thoroughly and deeply, which will contribute to creativity, intuition, sensing implications and attention to detail. This means your child will pick up information which most other people are unaware of.

ESP includes the following aspects (in Shichida, we focus on the first four):

1. Clairvoyance - the ability to gain information directly from an object. It's like "looking through" a locked box or a sealed envelope to tell what the contents are.

2. Telepathy - the ability to gain information from another person, to tell what the other person is thinking.

3. Precognition/ Prescience - the ability to know in advance what is going to happen, eg. some animals know when a storm is coming.

4. Psychometry/ Hand reading - the ability to gain facts about an object by touching it, eg. guessing the colour of the ball in your hand without looking at it.

5. Telekinesis - the ability to move objects or to change objects without physical touch, eg. Professor Shichida tells us of parents who reported that their children were able to switch on the television without touching it.

Remember, there is nothing supernatural about this. It's just waves and energy.

In the next instalment, I will give you some examples of the games we play to strengthen the five senses of the right brain.