Course for the trainers.
One of the major dreams that I would love to achieve after obtaining a certified psychologist qualification is to be trained as a Montessori trainer under the AMI organisation in Italy or Amsterdam. Little that I know, in Malaysia, MCRI (Malaysian Child Resource Institute ) also offers a similar training programme called ‘Training the Trainers Program’. The future trainer graduates after 7 months under the tutelage of local and MWEI coordinators.
In the mean time, there is a currently a course running (started in December) and will end in June. I’ve featured some information regarding the course here for future consideration.
Letter Formation.
It is important that a child holds a pencil the correct way and this habit should be cultivated from as young as 2 1/2 years old o younger. The earlier the better.
Show the child the ‘tripod’ or pencil grip using the thumb and first two fingers. A little bit of force or persuasion might be needed in the beginning if the child doesn’t do it properly.
The Roman letter formation is also another activity a child will learn at school, making sure they learn the correct formation from the beginning too. And for this we use the sandpaper letter in a Montessori classroom, emphasising on using the first two fingers when tracing the small letter alphabet.
Pre-writing activities are essential tools to prepare a child for formal or actual writing, and should be introduced to children as young as 18 months and above. Several suggested pre-writing activities are as below:
- playdough
- finger phonics
- air writing
- pencil work in work book (\/\/\/\/) or (|_|_|_|_|_)
- hair gel tactile bag
- sandpaper letter
- tactile paint table
- interactive white board
- chalk board/white board
And hence, I must remember to prepare the playdough with the children next Monday!!
Letter Sounds.
There are 26 letters in the English alphabet, but 42 main sounds. Spelling and reading is easier accomplished, when the letter sounds are applied rather than trying to memorise the word as a whole.
Therefore, children should learned letter sound first to help them blend or put the sounds together to form words. Names of each letter can follow up later.
A linguist can better differentiate the short and long vowel, and the long and short sounds made by certain digraphs (sounds written with two letters), such as oo and th. I am also yet to master this later stage of the phonics.
By the way, on a similar note, the Jolly Phonics team is back in action again, at the same hotel in Kuala Lumpur, with similar one-day courses. So, if you are interested, contact Ros/Cynthia at:
Extrazeal (M) Sdn Bhd, Registration Dept, 88 Jalan SS 24/2, Taman Megah, 47301 Petaling Jaya, Selangor D.Ehsan, Malaysia.
(T) 603-7880 0118/0119 (F) 603-7880 0128 E-mail: ezeal@tm.net.my
Volunteer At A Library.
Daphne Lee, a columnist for The Star newspaper, operates a children’s library at Kuala Lumpur, and needs volunteers to manage the library. Below is the information of the volunteers’ work scope:
We need volunteers to run our library at Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman.
Details
Length of Commitment: Six months (minimum)
Time Involvement: The Library’s opening times are …
Tues to Sunday - 9am to 8pm
Monday – 11am to 5pm
However, the time you choose to spend helping at the library is flexible and can be tailored to suit your schedule.
Responsibilities:
- Cataloguing books.
- Wrapping books.
- Checking books out and in.
- Enforcing fines.
- Shelving.
- Explaining membership rules to the public.
- Maintaining order of the different shelves and sections.
- Removing all bookmarks, paper and litter from books and shelves.
- Sorting and evaluating book donations, and separating possible collection additions and sale material from non-usable donations.
- Helping with booksales.
Training will be provided.
Interested? Email dramprojects@gmail.com or call Daphne Lee at 016-328 1513.
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The Dram Projects
016-328 1513
Dyslexia workshop.
This is another notice on special needs education, retrieved from Early Years Childcare Forum:
If you are interested in knowing more about dyslexia and related learning disability, the University of Nottingham (Malaysian Campus) in partnership with Hils Learning are organising the following:
“Falling Through the Cracks”
Conference (28 Nov 09, 9am – 4pm) Fee RM250.00
Workshop (29 Nov, 9am – 4pm) Fee RM450.00
Both sessions Fee RM650.00
Contact: Tel. 03-6203 0029 or 012-307 6590
Email: enquiry@hislearning.com
Buy books buy books.
Received this notice in my mailbox today:
The Big Bad Book Sale is Back!
The Big Bad Book Sale (organised by Big Bad Wolf Books) will be on from 26 November to 2 December 2009.
The sale will feature more than 200,000 books and magazines at at prices ranging from RM3 to RM20.
The books on sale will be brand new and include many current and popular titles.
The Big Bad Book Sale
Date: 26 November – 2 December 2009
Venue: Level 3, Amcorp Mall (former cinema lot)
Time: 10am – 9pm
Language development.
Early communication is linked closely to cognitive, behavior and social skills in children’s lives. Hence, the radical changing patterns of children between two to three years old.
A toddler (two-years-old) is experiencing emerging speech, and their mood pendulum, frustration and impulsiveness can be quite challenging. A year later, this same child with good speech development, is likely to be more cooperative, calm and less inclined to get frustrated easily. Increased speech can actually improve behaviour.
Another 4-year-old child may display behavioural traits of a 2-year old, if language is not yet developed. Therefore, it is also rational that we examine a child’s language level when examples of unwanted behaviour are displayed. Providing star chart might be pointless; boosting a child’s vocabulary and language proficiency could be beneficial.
In order to read and write, it is helpful if the child has a good level of speech. This means adults must talk to children more frequently, read story books to them and free storytelling with props whenever possible. And when children learn to read, it would be really effective if the Phonics method is being used when teaching them English.
Recently, I attended a full day Jolly Phonics course in KL, Malaysia. This course uses synthetic phonics and multi-sensory method to teach children to read and write English. The 5 basic skills for reading and writing, as presented by Jolly Phonics are:
- Learning the 42 letter sounds
- Learning letter formation
- Blending
- Segmenting
- Spelling tricky words
I had a wonderful time revising the English sounds with two energetic trainers from Australia. Thank you Tina and Celeste!
Creativity workshop.
If your children are 7-13 years old, and you are cracking your head and pulling your hairs thinking what they ought to do during the year-end school holidays, stop those self pain-inflicting actions, and shove them to Uncle Bugs’ creative workshop.
Uncle Bugs is one of the members in my writer’s group (writing for children). He is a cheery fella and an award-winning inventor. During this coming school holidays, he will be conducting two workshops at Bangsar Village and Wan Utama, on how to invent gadgets using recyclable material a.k.a junks.
Visit Uncle Bugs’ blog for more info.
A short note.
I certainly welcome readers who wrote in asking for suitable schools around their living areas. Can I also urge you all to state at least your email address so that you can be contacted directly and promptly, when a responder is able to answer your pleas, resulting in speedier q&a process, especially when looking for the almost-perfect school for your children?
Lee Havis – Montessori Convention Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2009
I received this ‘gift’ in my mailbox. The audio is quite fuzzy but the content is pretty exciting and totally mind-opening!
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Montessori Centenary 2007
Mario Montessori
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