Cooking - Nine Layer Steamed Cake (Kow Teng Kueh)

We've been watching the current popular TV serial "Little Nonya" and the show got me craving for kuehs. So taking advantage of the 1/2 day work today, I got a recipe from this trusty blog (of another fellow Singaporean living in HK) and tried out making "Nine Layer Steamed Cake". Mine ended up to be only 6 layers. Of course, I pulled T into the kitchen to help out and she definately enjoyed mixing the colours. The results were very satisfactory and as you can see hear, T needed no coaxing to finish her share.

BFIAR - Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear

The BFIAR manual arrived. Actually the difference between express and normal shipping is only 1 week, but cost more than 2 times the price. Hmp... I shall make a note to be less impatient in the future.

The BFIAR manual is not a curriculum, it gives alot of ideas of activities that one can do with a child when reading the recommended books with them. Although the manual does not specify the order of the books to follow, it had Jesse Bear activities first, so I thought I shall follow suit.

Once again I printed all the online resources from "HomeSchool Share" and did some with T. When reading the story, T was entralled by the butterfly. We made a trip to the park, but didn't find any butterflies to catch (do butterflies come out in winter?). I hope I will be able to find time this weekend to make a butterfly craft with her. On the page where daddy bear comes home, T attempts to hug and kiss the picture too. This is what she does when her daddy comes home from work. From this, I start to understand why these books are called living books.

Here's a pic of T being introduced to the letter B.
There are alot more activities that we haven't found time to do yet, as now after my office, travel time is much longer, and thus time at home is shorter. If anyone has ideas on how to be more efficient, pls feel free to drop a line.

Happenings - WK 52, 2008

We went to a carnival at Cyberport. It has been a long long time since I last jumped on these bouncing beds. Phew, it was hard work, but totally enjoyed chasing T around it.

This doll was purchased during my pregnancy and I am glad T likes it. It has been her companion in bed for the past 2 years and I hope they can build a lasting friendship for many more years to come. As such, this dolly is a triplet and the other 2 stays in the cupboard and get rotated when we wash them.

Happenings - WK 51, 2008

The stores nowadays are so smart. This toy shop actually puts out child size shopping carts for the toddlers to use. Here's T filling up her cart will books, CDs, and all sorts of toys. Unfortunately, this mummy is determined not to buy anything not on the shopping list and the sales ladies will have to put everything in this cart back on the rack.









We made a trip to Disneyland again. Unfortunately, daddy had to work that day and could not join us. This is the first time T was brave enough to give the life size Mickey a hug and kiss. In all our previous trips, she would only gaze from afar and squirm if Mickey were to come near her. Somehow, she seemed to have grown up so much this month.

Acheivements - Able to appreciate 2 hours of stage play

In our effort to expose little T to various forms of arts and music, we brought her to a childrens play + a ballet this holiday season.

I was a little cautious about how she would take it all in. If she would like it enough to stay in her seat for the whole show. So our first try was a childrens play. After all a play intended for children should be more lively and catch their attention better. I thought the the play was only 1 hour, but it turned out to be a 2 hours play with no interval. Surprisingly, T did like the lively story and was able to understand it (it was in cantonese). She was very focused during the 2 hours and did keep pointing things out to me as the story went along. "Mummy see, witch", "Mummy see, mum mum, yummy", "Mummy see, gor gor running", "oh oh... gor gor crying....". I was very happy to see her enjoying the show. When we went home, she even took out her broom and starting 'flying' around the house pretending to be the witch.

Her reaction to this canto childrens play gave me enough courage to bring her to a full lenght ballet. T has always seemed interested by dance and music and I was hoping that she will be able to enjoy this as much. The HK Ballet Company was performing "The Nutcracker" with a live Orchestra. We were fortunate enough to get tickets at such last minute. I told T about bringing her to watch dancing and she got excited. Once again, she surprised me by being able to appreciate for the full 2 hours, clapping loudly between each act, and even getting up to tap her feet along to the music towards to end of the play. On our way home, she kept asking me to dance. Mmh.... is it still to let her attend some ballet class?

I am so happy that T is able to appreciate such performance and am looking forward to having her accompany me to more shows in the future.

Next in the the pipe is "The Grafullo" play in Feb and UK Ballet Company performing Alice in Wonderland in March.

Children Book - My Magnetic Playhouse

The shopping bug has bitten me this season. I've been doing so much online purchases the past weeks. Most of the purchases were of course for little T. This is her favorite book this season.

This cute book opens up to show the interior of a house and have magnets of household furniture, a family of 4, pets, etc... It comes with 4 small books inside with short stories of the family and T and I will use the dolls to play the story out.

T has lots of fun playing with the mummy and daddy dolls making them do all sorts of funny things in the house and talking to them.

Acheivements - My Birthday Banner

I came home to a nice surprise on Friday. T has made me a lovely birthday banner.

(PS. I am also thankful to my domestic helper for coming up with such a wonderful idea)

HomeSchool - Christmas Activities

Christmas this year a alot more fun. T understands better what is going on and wows.... at the sight of Christmas tree and beautiful decorations. She's also been singing carols all day long. We handmade Christmas cards for family and friends. ( I have to be less ambitous next time. A toddler doesn't have the patiences to cut and paste 50 cards, and neither do I). We also made a few paper christmas trees that she can carry around.

BFIAR - My books have arrived

The BFIAR books from Amazon arrived!! Had to pay double for the express shipment, but it is worth it to have these books before Christmas. We opened up the box immediately and T and I sat down to flip through each one of them. I asked her if she like her Christmas present and she said yes. I stayed up on Sat night to read all the books. My favorite is "If Jesus came to my home". I also realised that some in the BFIAR list are out of print and extremely expensive, I think I will skip those few titles for now. Now I shall have to wait patiently for the teachers manual to arrive for a different supplier.

We also continued with our activities for "Goodnight Moon" by reading rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle" and colouring.

Rosaryhill beach outing

We had a school outing to the beach on Sat. It was fun to see a whole beach full of 2 year olds. I finally get to see some of the other parents and watch how T plays with her classmate.

Happenings - Week 50, 2008

This week has been a wonderful week and every week should be like this one. Alot of the events are worth a mention in their own post, so I am separating them.

I took a day off on Monday to spend time with T. I cuddled her back to sleep in the morning and she slept till 11am. We lazed on the safa and watch the Rugrats movie together. After lunch, we visited daddy at the Cyberport film site and played for a short while with this cute little boy. (for some reason, his dad let him run around with no pants on)

T took her nap on my chest for about 1 hours and we headed off to Ikea for some window shopping and it was back home for dinner.

I suffer sore arms for carrying her for so many hours, but still totally enjoyable (thank God for the beautiful weather). I realised that I missed her so much the past month and that we should arrange more days like this one.

BFIAR - Goodnight Moon, Activity 1

We started on our first BFIAR book this evening with our "Goodnight Moon". We read the book together then went around the house looking for items mentioned in the book, such as telephone, red balloon (we did have balloon, so we used a red ball instead), mittens, toy house. When we reached the toy house, T got distracted and ended up playing with the toy house.

I will have to research on the internet for activities before my books from Amazon arrives. In the meantime, ideas from experienced BFIARers welcomed

Googled during lunch hour for "Goodnight Moon" activities and found THIS. I've printed everything on this book and can't wait to start. :-)

HomeSchool - Five in a Row program

I have just purchased little T's Christmas present from Amazon. Feeling inspired after reading MamaHomeSchool's blog entry on BFIAR program and reading up on the site, I felt a motivation that this program is something that both T & I would enjoy. Unfortunately, they can no longer ship internationally from the FIAR site, so I resorted to purchasing their recommended selection from Amazon. However, the gift is not just the set of books, but more importantly the time that mummy will spend with T to execute the activities recommended for each of the book.

Montessori - Sensorial - Colour Tablets

I made my own modifications on this Montessori activity as the real learning aids were too costly. A set of Ikea colourful plastic cups (no cost, had them at home for years), a pack of coloured popsticle sticks for HK$5 from stationery shop.
Activities :
1. sort the tray of sticks into the correct cup (as shown in photo.
2. take out only 1 cup and ask child to pick out the same colour sticks from the tray.
Here is a link to an official Montessori site for this activity : http://www.infomontessori.com/sensorial/visual-sense-color-tablets.htm

Achievements - Various Nov'08

I Love T for what she is now. It may be the terrible two phase, but on most days it is the terrific two for me and her. These are her recent achievement :

Practical Life Skills :
She picks out her own choice of clothes and shoes
She puts on her own socks and shoes
She takes of her own socks and shoes and puts them next to the shoe rack
She tells us when she wants to pee / poo. (We don't use a potty, so she still needs our help to put her on the adult toilet seat)
She wipes herself clean after she pees (we have to follow after to make sure it is really clean)
She brushes her own teeth (we have to do a second round to make sure it is really clean)
She wipes her own face with face towel
She applys her own face cream (California Baby calendula cream)
She applys her own lip balm
She takes off her own jacket when she comes in the house and puts it neatly on the sofa

Social Skills :
She is still shy of strangers and prefers one to one outings rather than big groups
She opens the door for me when I ring the door bell
When she sees me resting, she asks me "Mummy are you tired?, let's go sleep"
She will voluntary give me a big hug and kiss and say "I love you"
She brings Daddy and me our shoes before we go out. This morning she offered to help me wear my shoes.
She can make simple decisions, such as what to eat. We went out for dinner last weekend and I asked her what she would like to eat. She went "err.... (thinking facial expression) noodles!". Then I asked her with pork or chicken, and she went again "err... chicken!". So we ordered her soupy chicken noodles.

Academic Skills :
She is able to recite 1 - 10 in English, Mandarin and Cantonese
She is able to name basic shapes
After 2 months of school, she can now converse in simple Cantonese and recognises that she speaks to me English and Grandpa in Cantonese
She is able to name facial parts in English and Mandarin (eyes, ears, mouth, etc...)

Her little achievements :
Teaser -
How to do carry a bucket of fried chicken, a 6 pack beer and a chair all at the same time when you have only 2 hands.

Answer -
Little T is able to go to the kitchen (after permission is granted) to get her own snack / juice. At times she brings her stool along to help her reach the higher shelves. Last weekend, she took her stool and got both a snack and a pack of juice. Ha ha.... this time she has taken more than her little hands can manage. She kept dropping things when she tried to hold all 3 items, stool, snack and juice in only 2 hands. I watched from a distance to see what she would do. I saw her stand still for a moment to think, then decided to place the stool back down on the floor, put the snack and juice on top of the stool and carried it like a tray out of the kitchen. A smile of triumph on mummy's face.

HomeSchool - Educational Programs - QiaoHu

A few months ago, daddy chanced upon this Taiwanese children program on the internet. We downloaded a few episodes and T enjoys watching it very much. There are many action songs (involving both parent and child) on this program and T and I will play along when to the music. Amazingly, T seems to have picked up quite a bit of mandarin from watching this show. I try to let her watch an episode every day (when she doesn't insist on watching Disney playhouse).

I have tried to set Sat & Sun as mandarin day, but find myself tuning to full English before lunch. Must make a note to work harder on this.

Word of comfort is that school teacher tells us that T is able to understand what mandarin teacher tells her at school. (Every Monday is Mandarin day in school)

HomeSchool - cut and paste shapes

As a continuation of her newly learnt skill of using the scissors, I printed out some cut and paste activity from the web. We cut up the shapes together, and she will apply glue and paste them onto the worksheets. She has no problem to match the correct shapes. She is able to name correctly most of the shapes. ( I am a proud mummy when she says "trapezoid"). But we will have to work harder on naming the colours.

I have a video clip of her doing this activity, but will have to resize it before I can load it up here.

Montessori - Practical Life Skills - Using Tongs

As T gets older, her attention span gets shorter and she has less patience. I tried to train her patience and concentration with this beans sorting activity. At the same time, she also practises her hand muscle coordination as she learns to use the tongs to pick up the beans. She was excited to use the tongs and stayed focused for about 15 mins until daddy came out and turned on the TV. This activity trains the following :
1. concentration
2. fine motor of the fingers
3. practical life on how to use tongs
4. sensorial when differentiating the types of beans

Happenings - Week 45 - 49, 2008

Sorry we've been missing in action for the past month. I've been extremely busy at work and have been working late nights and long weekends. Finally the office move is over and year end budgets have been submitted. Time to take a breather and spend time with the family. I took a day off today to spend quality time with little T (no school for her too). Truely enjoyed every second of it. She has grown so much this past month and is talking so much nowadays. Once again it's my regret that I have missed part of this change. But here's what she has been up to this month.

She wakes up at about 8am every morning and goes down to get some fresh air at the playground.

9:30 is grocery shopping time and T will meet up with her mini Tai Tai friends to find the best bargins in the area.












After which she goes home for her bath and nap (from 10:30 to 12:00). Takes her lunch after she wakes and off to school at 1pm. (Thankfully she enjoys school now and come home singing me new tunes she learns)

I used to be the one to put her to sleep at night, but I have been working late last month so daddy takes care of it. I came home one night to find this hilarious sight.

And as I have to work most of the weekends last month, so Daddy and our helper will bring T out for shopping.