Music and songs

Music is a form of communication that can enrich a child's life and support learning of other subjects.


For example, songs are a great way for children to hear how words can start or end with the same letter sounds and how words rhyme with each other.


Why use songs?
There are many songs about many different subjects.

Songs teach information in a way that is easy for children to remember.

Repeat and repeat

Repetition is a must.  It helps children learn concepts and new skills.


Our worksheets offer different ways for children to learn the same material.  This is to ensure that children can get the repetition they need to learn while still having enough variety to keep them interested and engaged.

All worksheets will include instructions.  They are easy for young children to learn, and they support the development of oral vocabulary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Math

Math or mathematics is the language we used to talk about quatity, shape and pattern.

Our curriculum includes worksheets that enhance the number sense, shapes, measurements and patterns.

 

 

What is number sense?

Number sense is the ability to relate number symbols to the amounts they represent.

 

When children are learning the meanings of the number symbols 1, 2, 3 and so on, they are actually learning several different ideas at the same time.

 

Research has shown that it is highly recommended that children first learn the concepts of addition and subtraction by combining or separating groups of objects.

 

 

 

What is shape?

Knowing the names of common shapes is typically a child’s first experience with geometry, but it’s just the beginning.

 

What is spatial sense?

It is recognizing how objects relate to each other and to the viewer in terms of shape, size, location, and position.

 

 

 

What is measurement?

Young children can get a head start on measurement by learning comparison word pairs, like more and less, tall and short, big and small, long and short, as well as near and far.

 

 

 

What is pattern?

Learning to recognize patterns gives children a big boost toward learning every branch of mathematics, from counting to algebra.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

World around us

As children grow, they want to know more about the world around them.  They want to learn about the things they see around them.

Our curriculum starts with things that are close to your child, and moves outward as the levels progress.

 

 

Since children learn differently, the same concepts and vocabulary words are introduced in several different ways.

 

 

 

Arts and colours

Drawing, colouring and paintings are ways children try to be creative and show others how they see the world.


Children should have many opportunities to work with the visual art elements of line, shape, and color.

Our curriculum is designed not only to develop your child’s visual-art skills, but also to teach or reinforce other subjects because different children learn in different ways.

Nursery Curriculum

Nursery Curriculum includes these topics

Reading:
Uppercase Alphabet A to Z


Math:
Numbers 1 to 15
Circles
Squares
Triangles
Rectangle
Diamonds
Stars


Art and Colours:
Red
Blue
Green
Yellow
Orange
Purple


World around us:
Getting dressed
My body
The market



This curriculum focuses on important basics in the four subjects.  This helps your child establish a basic foundation of knowledge he or she can build upon with confidence and success.

 

Pre-K Preschool Curriculum

Pre-K Curriculum includes these topics

Reading:
Letters A to Z
Upper Case A to Z
Lower Case a to z


Math:
Numbers 1 to 20
Circles
Square
Triangles
Rectangles
Diamonds
Stars


Art and Colours:
Red
Blue
Green
Yellow
Orange
Purple
Brown
White
Black


World around us:
Weather
Plants
Sports


A curriculum is designed to help your child be well prepared for kindergarten, whether he or he is enrolled in a preschool.

 

                  

Early learning experience

Early learning experts agree that a successful kindergarten experience can make all the difference for the remaining years of a child's education.

Knowing more helps to ensure your child has that advantage.

Kindergarten Curriculum

Kindergarten curriculum includes these topics

Reading:
Alphabets
Basic phonics
Words
Word families
Sight words


Math:
Numbers 0 to 100
Shapes
Addition
Subtraction
Patterns
Telling Time


Art and Colours
Colours
Shades of colours


World around us
The four seasons
The Earth
The Moon
The Sun
The Planets

 

Reading

Reading


As your child learns to read, he or she is combining many kinds of knowledge and skills.


What does reading do?
It includes understanding what the words are saying.  This is called comprehension.


How to help your child?
By talking to your child about the stories in books.
By asking and answering questions.

All these will help your child develop the habit of paying attention to what the author is communicating.


Two types of reading experiences
Reading alound
Shared reading


Reading aloud objective
To find pleasure of a good story
To learn about something
To increase oral vocabulary



Shared reading objective
To look at the words together as you read
To involve the child in reading
To develop the child's ability to recognise letters and written words

Sight words

Sight words

These are words that children can recognise when they see the words.


There are certain words that appear often in every simple books which your child should recongise as sight words.


How to improve?
Through books, worksheets, and other activities.
By practising, your child recognises more sight words.


There are many word childre should recognise when they see them.  They are all around us, in the streets on sign boards and on bus advertisements.  Even though the words do not follow the phonics rules that they have learned so far, the children should recongise them.

For example,  when a child sees the word "you", he or she knows it represents the spoken word "you", withouth having to figure out from the sounds of the letters y-o-u.  This word that your child recognises is called sight word.

Knowing letter names and sounds

Knowing letter names and sounds


What is phonics?
To know how written letters represent sounds.


What research says?
Research indicates that learning the names of letters leads to rapid and accurate learning of phonics.


Thus, it is important for curriculum to include activities that support the learning of names of uppercase and lowercase letter.  Lessons should include the learning of basic phonics as well as word families and blending of consonant-vowel-consonant words, such as b-i-g or big.


Is learning ABC important?
Yes.  Every letter in the alphabet represents at least one sound.
Many letters can represent different sounds, depending on what words they are in.
For example, the letter "b".  "b" has only one sound but the letter "c" has two sounds as in cat and center.

Recognising sound in words

Recognising sound in words


Phonemic awareness is to identify the separate sounds in spoken words.

For example,
To find the similar beginning sounds and similar ending sounds in a nursery rhyme.
Take the popular rhyme -

Mary, Mary quite contrary. 
How does your garden grow? 
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.


How to develop phonemic awareness ability?
By using songs and rhymes
By playing games and puzzles
By practising and recognising the sounds in words



How to identify these sounds when reading?
In order to read, your child needs to identify the sounds in a word.
For example, what's the beginning sound in the word dog, the middle sound and the ending sound?
In other words, to identify the separate sounds in a word.


For many children, practising the ability to recognise sounds in words can make a big difference in how fast they learn to read.


How to practise phonemic awareness?
Doing things your child love to do such as singing and listening to songs.

Example, songs that use words with same middle and ending sounds but different beginning sounds.
Words like corn and horn.

Example, songs that have same beginning sounds but different ending sounds.
Words with "b" sounds in Little Boy Blue and "m" sounds in Little Miss Muffet.

Learning spoken words

Learning spoken words

The collection of spoken words that a child understands is usually called his or her oral vocabulary.

How to build a collection of spoken words?
By doing the following activities such as through using

• books
• stories
• songs
• rhymes
• games
• puzzles

How to further progress?
By using a glossary with definitions of words that are in child-friendly language, with illustrations.

All these will help your child get a clear undertanding of the meanings of the words.

When your child reads, he or she looks at the written printed words on a page.  He or she decides what spoken words the written words represent.  But this does not help the child understand what he or she is reading unless he or she knows the meanings of the spoken words.

The larger a child's oral vocabulary, the more words he or she will be able to read and understand.


How to increase oral vocabulary?
Each child is unique.  Each child learns differently.

The best way is to talk together about people and thing in your child's world through the above activities mentioned.

Using different types of learning materials available, this helps to incresease your child's oral vocabulary.  This is an important educational objective.

Be a nature detective

Be a nature detective


What you need
Camera



What you need to do
1.Go outside and take pictures of things you see in the garden or playground.
2.When you are home, write in your note book what you see.
3.What you can do to be eco friendly and how you can do your part.

 

Subject of a Verb

·       SUBJECT OF A VERB?

Verbs are doing words (e.g., 'to dance', 'to sit', 'to fly', 'to think') (See lesson Verbs.)

The subject of a verb is the person or thing that is doing the action.

Peter flies to Moscow on Tuesdays.
('Peter' is the subject of the verb 'to fly'.)
Helen's boss drinks like a fish during the day.
(Helen's boss is the subject of the verb 'to drink'.)

Weather or Whether?

·       DID THE WETHER SURVIVE?

If you can follow this sentence, you have a good grasp of weather, whether and wether:

The farmer looked out the window and wondered whether the wether would weather the weather or whether the weather would kill the wether.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transitive Verbs

·       TRANSITIVE VERBS

Verbs that take a direct object are known as transitive verbs. This is important because 'to raise' is a transitive verb, but 'to rise' is not. It is intransitive. It does not act on anything. This is the most notable difference between 'raise' and 'rise'.

I rose my eyebrows.
(The verb 'to rise' is intransitive. It cannot have a direct object. This example is wrong.)
My eyebrows rose.
(Here, 'rose' is not acting on anything.)
Watch the moon rise.

 

Pro?

·       PRO IS BAD?

'Proscribe' causes confusion because many do not expect a word that starts with 'pro' to have such negative connotations. (As a preposition and a prefix, 'pro' often means 'for' or 'supportive of'.)

 

 

 

The meaning of Precede

PRECEDE CAN MEAN OUTRANK

Occasionally, precede can mean to come before in rank.

Example:

Within the noble ranks, each peer is graded according to the date of receiving the peerage, but peers of England (prior to 1707) precede peers of Scotland (prior to 1707).

(The word 'precedence' derives from 'precede' in this meaning.)





 

Principal and $

PRINCIPAL AND MONEY

When referring to a loan, the principal (or principal sum) is the original amount of a debt or investment on which interest is calculated.

Lead as a noun

LEAD

The confusion arises because the noun 'lead' (rhymes with bed) is spelt identically to the verb 'lead'. (The noun 'lead' is of course the name of a soft heavy toxic metallic element.) As a consequence, some writers use 'lead' when they mean 'led'.

To add to the confusion, 'lead' (rhymes with bead) also exists as a noun. A dog's lead, for example. Therefore, you have to rely on context.

Take the lead.
(Without context, it is impossible to know whether 'lead' in this example rhymes with bead or bed.)

His Her Its are possessive adjectives

POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVES

The words his, her and its are known as possessive adjectives.

·       There are no apostrophes in any possessive adjectives.

·       This is another 100% rule.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Insight (singular) and Insights (plural)

NOUN

 

 

It has two forms: insight and insights (plural).

Yours NOT Your's

YOURS NOT YOUR'S

The word yours is known as an absolute possessive (others are ours, his and hers).

There are no apostrophes in any absolute possessives. This is another 100% rule.

Who's = Who is? or Who has?

·       WHO'S = WHO IS OR WHO HAS

If you cannot substitute the who's in your sentence with either who is or who has, then it is wrong.

 

Whom = Whom

WHOM = HIM (A NEAT TRICK)

Substitute 'whom' with the word 'him'. If that part of the sentence still makes sense, then 'whom' is almost certainly correct.

Sarah gave the tickets to whom?
Sarah gave the tickets to him. (< sounds ok - "whom" is correct)

('Whom' and 'him' are never the subjects of verbs. They are said to be in the objective case. This is why the trick works.)

WHOM = THEM

In order to perform this trick for plurals, you will have to substitute 'who' with the word 'them'.

The witness saw four boys, one of whom had a limp, leave the shop.
...one of them had a limp... (< sounds ok - "whom" is correct)

Who = Who

·       WHO = HE (A NEAT TRICK)

Substitute 'who' with the word 'he'. If that part of the sentence still makes sense, then 'who' is almost certainly correct. (These are from the examples to the left.)

He paid for the meal. (< sounds ok)
("Who paid for the meal?" is correct.)

...he lives in the hut... (< sounds ok - "who" is correct)

...he is in charge. (< sounds ok - "who" is correct)

...to he? (< does not sound ok - "who" is wrong)

'Who' and 'he' are always the subjects of verbs. They are said to be in the subjective case. This is why the trick works.

WHO = THEY

In order to perform this trick for plurals, you will have to substitute 'who' with the word 'they'.

I met the people who were on the plane.
...they were on the plane. (< sounds ok - "who" is correct)

That = Which

THAT = WHICH (WITHOUT A COMMA)

Here is a quick summary of when to use a comma with which (and who):

Comma After. If the clause (shown in bold below) is required to identify whatever it follows (car in this example), then there are no commas.

The car which I drove on Tuesday has been sold.

The car, which I drove on Tuesday, has been sold.

Use That If You Want. If you think the word 'that' sounds better than 'which', then use 'that' (provided there are no commas).

The car that I drove on Tuesday has been sold.

No Comma After. If the clause is just additional information, because whatever it follows has already been identified (John's red Mustang in this example), then use commas.

John's red Mustang, which I drove on Tuesday, has been sold.

GRAMMAR CHECKERS WON'T HELP ON THIS ONE

Grammar checkers do not understand what has been written. They perform a 'mathematical' grammar check on writing. This is why they are rubbish at determining whether there should be a comma before which or who. Many checkers encourage you to use 'that', and if you don't, they offer you the with-comma version. This relies on your knowledge or instinct to get it right. It may also cramp your style as it does not offer the non-comma version.






 

E is for envelope

E IS FOR ENVELOPE

Use the 'e' in 'stationery' to remind you of envelope.

Stationery or Stationary?

STATIONERY IS THE CULPRIT

The most common error associated with this pairing is writing 'stationary' instead of 'stationery'. It is very rare to see it the other way round.

This error occurs because many are not aware that the word 'stationery' exists.