LeapFrog Learning DVD Set and Home Activities

Recently I bought the Leapfrog Learning Dvd set from SMH BP at a very affordable price. I had first heard about these educational dvds when i attended the workshop organised by Playschool.net in August on Homelearning made easy. Pauline from Playschool.net talks about inroducing phonics to children and the benefit of how it will help them in their pronunciation and reading in future.
Thereafter, i went to read up some of the reviews in amazon.com and was convinced that this is the type of educational learning product that is worthwhile to splurge on for HY and baby #2.

The set comes with 3 Leapfrog DVDs : Letter Factory,Talking Words Factory and Let's go to School as well as 26 Flash cards.
Currently, I am only showing the first DVD in this series which is the Letter Factory. And in this series, HY is being exposed to visual as well as the phonics pronounciation of each letter of the alphabets. Even Daddy is attracted to the show. Usually i will try and watch it with HY so that I could learn the pronounciation too. But if I need to do some cooking or housework, I will take it as a chance to do whatever i need as he is fully engrossed in the show for the full 35 mins. I am generally pleased with my purchase as i could see that HY enjoys the show very much.

Home Activities

I have started HY occasionally on some home activities after he had passed his 1 yr old birthday. I am trying my best as i am now in my 3rd trimester and very often I do feel very exhausted from working full time and handling some household chores.

I am not an expert on home schooling as i am still learning alot from other mums and constantly reading other mom's blog to get ideas on what to teach my own child. I have to frequently remind myself not to be overly ambitious when it comes to teaching HY as i want him to benefit from these activities by learning something from them and at the same time be able to bond with him.

Most of the mummies had suggested to spend not more than 15 mins on home activities but i will usually stop only when HY lose interest or become distracted or i needed rest.

1) Flashcards - I am trying to do more of these flashcards for him based on topics like things around the house, colours, shapes, alphabets etc.

2) Media - I found some interesting nursery rhymes, children's songs, Dr seus on the Youtube, phonics teaching at online websites such as http://www.starfall.com/, Children's application on the iphone like flashcards, memory games, songs, e-books.

3) Educational Dvds -  Leapfrog learning dvds, Hi-5 series, Sesame street, baby tv series.

4) Motor Skills development - Use of the spoon to scoop objects, stacking of objects, Matching of objects etc

5) Games /  Hands-on Activities - Exposed him to lowercase alphabets and uppercase alphabets, recognising numbers.

6) Outdoor fun/play - We had visited the Zoo and fidgets, the indoor playground. We plan to bring him to the beach for sand play, water play, botanical garden, science centre, bird park etc after we are more settled with baby#2.

Whenever i have the time or when im not feeling so tired, i will engage HY in a mix of activities. He could be watching an educational show and then i will let him have some hands-on activities after that.





HY playing with straws and thread - motor skills