I recently started to teach my 4 year old son some Bahasa Malaysia because very likely he will be going to the same kebangsaan school as his sister. With K, I pretty much rushed her to learn the language in one year. Not a good idea. That’s why I told myself that I need to start earlier with kokoD. I think 2 years should be enough time for him to be sufficiently fluent in the language.

Anyway, current lesson is about “Rumah Saya” (My House). The lesson involves learning how to name the different rooms in the house e.g. bilik air (bathroom), dapur (kitchen), bilik tidur (bedroom) etc…. Here are four activities that I did with him:

  1. Sat down and had him help me draw out the plan to our own house. So he had to think what are the different rooms in the house and where they are located. After that I wrote down the names of the rooms on pieces of paper and he had to label the drawing (glue the words to the corresponding places).
  2. To add to his vocabulary, we talked about what people do in these rooms. I kept it simple by getting him to associated one word to each room. For example, tidur-bilik tidur (sleep-bedroom), mandi-bilik air (bath-bathroom), masak-dapur (cook-kitchen) etc…. After which I would write the name of the room on a blank piece of paper and had him draw out what he would do there.
  3. Did a word matching worksheet. He had to match the names of the rooms to the correct verbs.
  4. Treasure hunt. I stuck clues in the different rooms around the house. Each clue would tell him where to go to find the next clue. For example, “Pergi ke bilik air. Di atas cermin” (Go to the bathroom. On the mirror), “Pergi ke ruang makan. Di bawah meja” (Go to the dining room. Underneath the table.”) The treasure was what he likes best, a packet of Cheezels :)

These are just some learning activities that I want to share. You can use it to build your child’s vocabulary and reading skills. Use it to teach your child a second language, be it Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese, Spanish etc….