Building Lego

Knowing Ari's passion for trains, one of our friends gifted him Thomas the Train Lego set as a departing gift. He presented that to Ari before we moved to Sydney from Japan. Ari and I started building the train while we were in Japan and only completed it in Sydney. It was a tedious task and requires patience to put together the tiny parts. Since Lego's patent expiration, it is mesmerizing that some companies making such detailed building units that definitely emphasizes on improving fine motor skills. It was a very long project but definitely worth it. As he grew, his passion for building Lego blocks became prominent and we often allow him to build something interesting. He loves building houses, car park, cars and trains. 

Introduction to solar system

We have kids books on solar system, and Ari can name the planets orbiting our sun.
During one of our walks, my husband pointed to the evening sky and showed Ari the half moon. We tried to explain to him on why we could only see the half-circle instead of the usual full circle moon. We tried to crumple some paper and shine flash light on it to explain to him the position of the sun, earth and moon that gave the effect.

Soon after, Satya ordered a simple model online and it arrived some weeks later. Aritya and I, made it as an afternoon project and built the model from scratch. I showed him the instruction manual and made him build the model. Soon after, the model of the moon, earth and sun was completed and he was very happy with the result. After some explanation, he was able to understand that the moon orbits around the earth, and the earth orbits around the sun. As I made a full circle around the sun, I explained the months completing a full year at the end of the circle. I even used a torch light to explain about day/night and the season. Thanks to our travel experience, he was able to grasp the time difference between continents. He is proud of his model, he also brought it to his daycare for his show and tell. His teacher was mesmerized and explained to him that it was indeed a good model and he was able to explain it to his peers.

Building train tracks

Kids love train. When we lived in Japan, our apartment faces a train station and Ari loves watching train since he was a baby. He loves train rides and whenever we go for a walk and if he heard the sound of a moving train, he will stop doing whatever he was doing and look at the passing train. Because of his passion, we've got him some train tracks and he started building some simple tracks with at least two stations naming them after his favorite stations. When we moved to Sydney, I brought along some these tracks and with some addition of tracks from ikea, his passion of building tracks continued till this day. Following are some the tracks that he had built. Most kids would love building tracks and this may be one of their favorite activities.

Fun with microscope

My husband Satya and I invested in a simple light microscope, so that our son can use it whenever he feels like checking the microscopic views of the samples that he had collected. The purpose of the microscope is to intrigue his curiosity on how some small things look like when we magnify them. He was often fascinated to look at the fibers of some magnified thread, leaves and feathers. We have also scooped some pond water and have him look at it to check out the microbes. This is an excellent way to teach your kids why it is necessary to wash their hands after playing with dirt. Recently, my son and I also explored the microscopic views of oil, onion, turmeric and tomato sauce. We attached my phone on the eye piece of the microscope to capture the images of our specimens.

Microscopic view of oil mixed with water

Microscopic view of unfiltered water

Microscopic view of turmeric mixed with water

Gardening and learning about plants

My son, Ari has been fascinated with how plants grow. So he often asks about seeds and where does trees and plants come from. So, we teach him about seeds and how the roots and leaves sprout from it. We even tried planting tomato seed and when they started sprouting, we showed him the roots and the leaves. The tomato plant did not survive the cold temperamental weather, and so we plan to plant it again in the summer.

We often visit our local library, and during one of the visits, they gave away some money plant stems. We took it back home and put it in a glass of water. Several weeks later, root sprouted out and then a tiny leaf sprouted out. Weeks later, roots have grown and our plant has now 3 new leaves. This is surely one of the easiest activity and kids will surely enjoy and learn about plants.

Mathematics for early learners

Just posting the link on Australian Mathematics Competition for enthusiastic problem solvers.
We try to introduce mathematics to our kid at early age to familiarize him with numbers.
Suggestions include teaching numbers since young, he could initially count up to 100 and expanding his knowledge on numbers. Whenever we go shopping, we expose him to the prices and try to teach him the decimal points. We also teach him the decimal points while checking his height and weight. We gave him a measuring tape to let him check the height and width of things around him. While he explore, we introduce him the units of measurement such as meters and grams. Another fun ways of teaching numbers are while cooking. I show him how many cups of rice are needed for cooking. And how much sugar to add to make a cake. We can expand further by asking how much sugar we need if we need to make 2 cakes.

Invest in a board and write up numbers and questions for your kids to solve. We teach our kid simple arithmetic and every now and we write up some questions on the board and let him solve it whenever he feels like it.

We can even teach arithmetic while travelling on cars or trains. We give him an equation and ask him to keep the first number 'in his mind' and calculate the solution by adding or subtracting the other numbers using his fingers.

Board games such as Sum Swamp is a great example to teach your kids arithmetic. As his interest grew, we introduce negative numbers and fraction as well. Once he has grasped simple arithmetic, he can count with negative numbers as well.

Then, we move on to multiplication. You can arrange numbers by 10 and ask him to list the numbers in tens. This is how I thought him multiplication of 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10. Another great way to teach multiplication is by using beads. We can ask kids to arrange beads of fours and ask them to solve some questions.

I always bring my son to buy groceries, and there I teach him the prices of vegetables and fruits. I also expose him to discounts and unit price of each items. Teaching kids the many types of coins and cash is a great way of teaching numbers too. I often ask my son to solve problems using coins. For instance what is 20 cents plus 20 cents? Is it the same as 20 cents plus two 10 cents?

There are plenty of ways to teach kids mathematics. If we integrate mathematics with everyday life, it will be easier for them to grasp and perhaps master the skills in the future

Little Explorer's Introduction

This blog is meant to list the activities and experiments kids can do to expand their horizon and to expose the inner scientist that they naturally are. Specifically, I will post blogs of activities I have done with/for my son. We hope with this blog, parents can get ideas on fun activities to do with their kids to support their natural inquisitiveness