Phoebe's Scrap Book

Since Term 2 of this year, I've introduced the concept of a scrap book to Phoebe. Initially, I wanted to do a recipe book with her but I thought that a recipe book might be a little restrictive while she can record much more activities in a scrap book. She likes to call it her scratch book and she would do the action of scratching whenever we're going to do some writing on it. I just want to use this means to encourage her to develop a love for writing and expressing herself. I also thought it is a good way for her to put her words into print. So whenever we have done an activity, we would record it down into her scrap book. It's like a mini MLEA book. Let me introduce her work to you :)


Front Cover and Back Cover

I bought an A4 size Biology book for her. To beautify it, we used a previous printing art work done by Phoebe to wrap the book up. We cut the letterings from magazines and Phoebe paste the letterings onto her scrap book. The photograph was a gift from Auntie Nia. She took the picture of Phoebe when we went to Genting last June. To enhance it further, Phoebe stuck some of her stickers on the cover page.


Phoebe wrote the sentence "I Love Mom" all by herself without any guidance. She could spell it all. Then she started drawing some shapes which I thought she must have learnt it from school. She was revising what she had learnt from school and demonstrated it in her scrap book. I have insisted that she had to write date on every piece of writing. It's good to cultivate date-writing habit.


We brought Phoebe to watch a Chinese performance, The Ugly Duckling. She documented it down. She was very excited about doing her scrap book. I did quite a lot of scaffolding, asking her many questions and sounding out the spelling for her. Initially, I had wanted her to write neatly on the narrow lines. Then I realised that she started to get tired and a little frustrated of rewriting, just to keep to the convention of writing on the lines. I suddenly realised that I was killing her interest in writing and the flow of her ideas became constipated when we get too meticulous in writing on the line. So I stopped immediately and allow her to just write down her thoughts without bothering writing on the line. She became enthusiastic about writing again and she even wanted to draw a picture of her sleeping position on the bed : Papa, Phoebe, Mommy and Reuben (and all her little toys). I'm glad that she's enjoying herself :)


We went to SKMC's Easter Party and Phoebe had a good time. We also invited our neighbour's little girl for the party. All the children received presents/ goodie bags. She didn't like spelling out her date "April" so I let her write her dates in numbers in the subsequent entries.


We went to a Pyjamas Party last year. This picture was taken FOC during the party. It has been on our piano, so I thought it will be better to stick it in Phoebe's scrap book rather than letting it lying on the piano collecting dust. Again, a lot of scaffolding was done, e.g. tenses - wear/wore and sounding out the spelling. She also refered to her previous entries for the spelling of familiar words such as "I, went, to, a and party". I did not spell for her but encouraged her to find these reoccuring words in her previous entries.

Phoebe's school took the children to a performance. Their school will usually organise one outing to watch a performance once a year. I wish they could organise more, but then maybe the school was sensitive enough to consider the financial constrain of some of the other children. Phoebe came back very excited about the performance. She told a little of it, in bits and pieces of information. She also had a big poster and her entrance ticket. She stuck it in her scrap book and I encourage her to write about it. Lots of scaffolding and questioning but a worthwhile piece of writing.

We made bread pizza in the March school holidays this year. So I thought it will be good to help her refresh her memory on the steps of making bread pizza. Hence we did a recipe. Some of the words are too big and long for her to spell e.g. pineapple, mozzerella cheese. Hence, to make it easier for her, I printed the words out and she could do some pasting. I was afraid that she'll be frustrated spelling the long words and lose her interest. Key : Not to kill her interest! She arranged the sequence of the pictures according to the steps. Then we wrote the steps down. She kept rereading the previous steps before she pen down the next. I thought it was very good because it shows that she is trying to get the flow of ideas.


Just recently, we explored the Gallop Stable. It was the first time Phoebe did horse riding so she wanted to document it down. There were some factual information in her writing this time. She was able to tell me that a horse lives in a stable and eats hay. In city Singapore, we hardly get to see a stable, so it was good lesson learnt.


Phoebe told me that she wanted to draw a picture in her scrap book. I told her, "Why not? Okay, what do you want to draw?" and she did this. I asked her, "why is there only one cloud in the sky?" She said, "Everything is only one in this picture. One flower, one sun, one cloud, one cookie, one apple, one carrot, one Phoebe, one Reuben...etc". Suddenly, I had an idea. I told her, "Wow, you have one in everything. It's like a poem. One sun, one cloud, one cookie... Why don't you write it down because when you put all the words together, they sound so good." So Phoebe wrote her first poem and we named it "One Story". I asked her if she wants to call it "The One Poem" but she said she prefers calling it a story. Hence I respected her decision since afterall, it was her work, she was the poet and the auther. :) So ta-dah! Phoebe's first poem "One Story".

So here's Phoebe's scrap book. She loves doing her scrap book and she loves to read what she has written. She is able to read all the words she had written in her scrap book. She's very proud of her own work and her scrap book is very precious to her. I'm very proud of my little girl too! :)