Fun ways of teaching - self designed apps.

These days I am trying to use some fun ways to teaching, apart from the regular one on one sessions. For one, work times may not happen daily due to time constraints or other commitments. Or sometimes Tuhina (or even me) may not be in the best of moods to sit through a formal one on one session. Tuhina likes laptop so I tried using that area of interest to work of some of the skills that are on maintainance or already introduced in table top session. I prepared some power point slides with animations to teach/revise a few concepts like colors, shapes etc. Pretty much like educational apps but with a few advantages -

• they run on the laptop which give a bigger area and is easier for my daughter to touch and respond, who has poor eye hand coordination.
• they are custom designed keeping in mind her current level and her strengths. And they can be updated/modified to accommodate new changes and reduce predictability.

These presentations come handy when Tuhina is tired to work after full day of school and I still want to engage her in an activity without stressing her out. I pair them with some nursery rhymes or educational song videos to keep it fun and engaging. 

Here are some of the self designed apps (i like calling them so. however i know they are just ppts :) )

1. Teaching colors - Here I have added sounds on transition to get Tuhina's attention (she wanders off and the sound helps her to focus back on the the laptop. I have changed to orientations of circles in slides from horizontal to diagonal to let her focus on the entire area. As she is not able to work with mouse yet, she touches the selection and I click to highlight when she makes the correct selection.

2. Teaching numbers - Just started with numbers and so included only 1 and 2. I plan to update as she progresses with numbers.

Apart from these, I also tried ppts for shapes, genders and categorization. With this, I am seeing good results as Tuhina's interested in the apps is maintained. Probably will change the look and feel of slides once she has mastered one set or her interest starts fading. For now it feels good as the learning is not limited to 45 mins of table top work.