October's Theme

Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See.

Eric Carle is one of my favourite author for childrens' book. Therefore for the month of October, I read the Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle's classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? This is a great book because it is so repetitive and children loved it. We'd read it many times and it was amazing how quickly even some very young pre-toddlers respond to and "learn" this book. Eric Carle's art is simple yet vivid and the repetition in the words is so comforting and confidence-building. The simplicity of the book makes the children able to read themselves before they can actually read words.

This book consists of nine animals character. For the development of language and literacy, the toddlers' learnt to connect to the beginning sound by using sandpaper letters to the animals from the book. This acitivity enable the children to have further practise on the letters that they have learnt during our language session. We also have all the names of the animals posted on our word wall. Here the children are free to point and read the words whenever they want.

We played "I Spy" with them too. In this game, the toddlers as well as the pre-toddlers had to name or point to the things that we asked for. Here we played "I Spy" to introduce colors. Thus promoting development in mathematical area as well as language.

We also used bear counters for mathematical development. We did counting using the bears to match the number on the number card. Here the children would be able to connect symbols and volume. Besides counting, the children did grouping on colours too. The bear figurines were grouped together in their respective colour groups. Apart from grouping, we also did sequencing.

We have mounted the animals template which was coloured by the children. These cards were placed randomly on the table. The children then took turns to sequence the order of animals used in the book.

We made honey drinks for our cooking sessions. They poured amd stirred and eventually enjoyed their drinks. This activity encourages personal, social and emotional development as well as physical and mathematical development.

Trying to get the attention of a group of toddlers is every teacher's daily challenge. Therefore we always engaged them through the senses of sound and sight during our Learning Circle sessions. By incorporating these, we are able to capture the interest of the children. Last month, we sung the Brown Bear song. As we sang, we incorporate the movements as well as the sound of the animals.

The children loved this book. We had so much fun learning and exploring number, patterns, sequencing and many more. We can't wait to explore with the children for our upcoming November's theme.