Contented Baby

Free Audio Books

2009-08-24T20:50:00.000-07:00

I just found this wonderful site with lots of children's audio books. Thought I put the link up here to share with everyone.

http://www.kiddierecords.com/

Can help to save some $$$ by downloading the audio files onto the MP3 player and let T listen to them.

HomeSchool - Shapes and Colour, 'Colorama'

2009-08-11T17:42:00.000-07:00

We've had this game at home for more than a year now. We've played with it randomly in the past, but I don't T got the hang of it. We took it out again this week and tried again. Seems that she now understands how the game is played and even attempted to cheat by trying to manipulate dice to help her win.

Its a good game to teach young children about colours and shapes and helps me to add another fun lesson on our homeschool curriculum rather than just rely on flashcards.

HomeSchool - Concept of time and routine

2009-08-10T23:23:00.000-07:00

One of the goals in T's homeschool curriculum for age 3 yrs, is to introduce her to the concept of time and have her maintain her own routine. I doubt I am able to get her to be able to tell the time on the clock at this young age, but I think she should at least be able to recognise the difference between morning, noon and night and what her responsibilities are during these different times of the day.

So I draw up this graphical time-table for her and posted it up for her in our home. She seemed to be very attracted to the idea and enjoyed looking at her photos on it. We went through the schedule together and she was able to tell me from the photos what she was suppose to be doing at the allocated time

Example : I told her that she is suppose to wake up every morning at 7 o'clock and pointed out the clock to her, then I asked her, so after you wake up what should you do? and pointed at the photo, she tells me go pee pee. I reply 'yes, go pee pee and poo poo, brush, teeth and wash face. and then what do you do?' and I point to the next photo. she says ' eating'. and I continue, yes, and after eating breakfast, what do you do? and she says 'go to school'

So we went through the whole the whole schedule until repeated a few times, after which , she can now recite the routine without being prompted.

I think its good to have the child's routine visible to them. I feel it really helps them to establish the ability to self care and instill some discipline. It's only been less than a week that I put this time-table up, and it already saved me a few arguements with T about night time shower and bedtime. I just tell her and when tried to escape from her night time shower. 'Its eight o'clock now, and mummy finished playing with you. What are you suppose to be doing now.' She walks over to look at her notice board and come back to tell me meekly 'shower and read story books'. Battle won, no arguement.

I intentionally used the graphic of the analog clock so that it can help to give her the concept of how to use the clock to tell the time and slowly as she learns to read the numerals and understands how long hand and short hand works, she may tell the time for herself.

Once again, pink was also picked intentionally, as this is still her favorite colour for now and perhaps can keep her interest in this time-table longer.

Achievement - Reasoning

2009-08-10T23:20:00.000-07:00

As mentioned earlier, T's communication skills have improved greatly recently. She has also gained at the same time the ability to reason (read : argue) back.

On this day, we were having lunch in a restuarant. For some reason, she wanted to take out her sunglasses and put them on in the restuarant. I refused her request, explaining to her that sunglasses (she calls them eyeglasses) are only worn outdoors to protect the eyes from the sun, and there's no reason to wear them indoors. She whined for a little repeating her wish to have her sun glasses. I then told her not to be so vain to want to wear sunglasses indoors. Her answer 'I am not vain, I want to be like daddy, he is wearing eyeglasses too' (daddy is a specky).

hmphrm.... I have to spend another few minutes to explain the difference between prescription eye wear and fashion sun glasses, before she said 'ah... OK lar.' and stopped asking for it.

I soooo luv to hang out with her

2009-08-09T18:47:00.000-07:00

I must say despite all the hardwork trying to balance full time work and being a parent, I am enjoying motherhood very much. I am absolutely grateful that my first born is a girl and she has a personality like T (let's hope I don't change my mind in 10 years time when she is a teenager)

I genuinly love to hang out with T (OK, I don't know if I will still say the same if I had to spend 24/7 with her. But for now, out weekend outings have been mostly fun.)

This Saturday, with the typhoon having just past by Hong Kong earlier in the week, the skies were blue and clear of grey clouds. We enjoyed ourselves so much at the beach the previous week, so we decided to go back there again. And it was even more fun this time round. Probably due to the typhoons lingering nearby, the waves that morning was HUGE. We literally got tossed around by the waves on the surf, and we laughed loudly each time it happened. T had great fun being chased by the waves. She would be playing on the smooth shoreline and then when she noticed a big wave rolling it, she would pick up her spade and bucket and RUN! shouting "Big wave coming!!". It was funny. Sometimes she manage to escape the wave, and sometimes the wave caught her and she would try to maintain her balance as the water wrapped around her legs. There was a few times that the wave was too big and strong and would push her over face down into the sand, but she soon got used to it and just stood up and wiped her face with her bare hands, spit the sand out of her mouth and continued to play again. We spent a good 2 hours just sitting in the surf enjoying the warm water.

_________________________________________

I guess what people say that 2nd pregnancy will make you fatter that the 1st one is true. I don't recall being so big at 6 months preggy with T. In fact, I think I only looked this big when T was 8 months in me. Anyways, this meant that my clothes don't fit anymore and time for shopping. Luckily, the summer fashion this season has many wide flora sun dresses. I could purchase cheaply 'non-maternity' clothings that can conceal my expanding tummy and buttocks.

Daddy was kind and patient enough to accompany T and I shopping this Sunday. Actually, it was kind of impromtu. We just went out for a Sunday lunch decided to pay a visit to the fashion street nearby the restuarant. T had lots of fun browsing through the shops with me. She was able to make comments on what clothes she thinks looks nice and what doesn't. (Ok, anything pink with lots of flowers on it looks nice to her). She even suggested a few handbags to me (probably cos the bags were hanging on a low rack accessible to her). We went home with a couple of bags in toll and had fun trying on the clothings at home. T even put on a short dress she picked out for me and started dancing and twilling around the house in it.

Happenings - Week 32, 2009

2009-08-05T23:37:00.000-07:00

T's becoming quite a chatterbox in the house nowadays. I think this can be attributed to her having her AhBeeJie all day 5 days a week to play and talk to her for the past 2 months. Its quite funny to hear her tell me all the things that happened to her in the day when I get back to work.

She's also in the phase of asking 'why, why, why'. Its not easy to always come up with an easily understood answer for her and I don't always know if she really understood. But when she asked enough of 'why' she will end the conversation with 'oorrr' as if she really got it. (and frankly, I'm relieved not to have to continue to answer the 5th or 10th consecutive 'why' in that series of questions on the same topic)

Now that she is able to communicate her thoughts much better, we also realise the importance of consistency in our teachings in the house. With her ability to ask why and vocalise what we are doing, we become more aware that she really notices the adults behaviour in the house and questions when rules are different for her than for us.

Example 1 : I have the habit of taking my multi-vitamins right before I sleep, so we have them in the bed room. One night T told me 'Mummy, dont eat in the bedroom, its dirty'. Once again, she was not wrong, I could only revert, 'yes, you are right, I'll eat it outside next time'.

Example 2 : When daddy or I am reading a book, or working on our computer, we will always ask her to quieten down. This evening, she was playing in her living area and daddy turn on his PC to watch a trailer, the sound from the PC was quite loud and distracted her from her play. So she walked up to him and said 'Daddy, not so noisy. I am playing'.

I start to learn more and more each day how having a child makes us want to become a better person.

My craving for cheesecake haven't ended, so we made this strawberry cheesecake together and I think I alone consumed almost half of this 18cm cake in just 1 day.

On Sunday mornings, we have a bit of time to occupy as we usually wake up before 8am and the english mass we attend starts at 11am (which means we don't have to leave the house till 1045). So what I try to do now is to occupy our Sunday mornings by having T with me in the kitchen busy making a late breakfast for daddy. This Sunday, we made 'doriyaki' (japanese pancake). She helped me along with making the batter, but the frying is too dangerous, so I have to let the TV keep her busy instead.

HomeSchool - Lower case alphabet matching card

2009-08-05T23:21:00.000-07:00

I recently made some purchases from www.thehomelibraryonline.com after reading some recommendations from the owner on her blog www.thedomusacademy.com She used 'Explode the code - wall chart activity' to introduce alphabets and phonics to her 3 yr old and I thought I would give it a try too.

The manual recommended to first let the child recognise the form of the letter before attempting to introduce the sound of the letter to them. This made sense. What's the point of learning F sounds like 'fer' and T sounds like 'ter' if they keep mixing up these letters anyways (Our T is mising up these 2 letter and a few others, but get say 20 of them correct mostly).

Anyways, after playing with the wall chart a few times, I found it cumbersome to have to take it out, hang it up, keep it afterwards. So I made a simple cardboard matching game myself and here's T playing with it. Pink is her current favorite colour, so I use pink to keep her attracted to her 'toy'.

Go ahead and make one for your toddler / pre-schooler too. Its a fun matching game and helps introduce pre writing / reading skills. To make the card more sturdy, you just have to laminate it.

I'll probably make another one for the upper case letters and also one for numbers 1 to 20 soon.

HomeSchool Planning

2009-08-05T21:10:00.000-07:00

To set the records straight again. We do not have the intention to fully homeschool our little T for the time being. However, we believe that we can do more as parents for a preschooler / kindergatener than solely rely on the rigid traditional school system.

It is not about trying to make her the smartest kid around, but our bigger concern is to try to cultivate her interest in learning and encourage self motivation. I always worry about the method and approach to learning/teaching and how it can influence a person for live on what education / learning is about.

Give an example. During T's year end review with her school teacher. Teacher disclosed that T does not boldly use colours in her drawings and looks very 'stressed' and always colour only in one area of the picture. She doesn't seem 'creative' and 'confident' enough to change her colours and colour outside of an area. I was quite surprise about this as T is complete opposite at home. She keeps changing colours, is very happy and makes a 'mess' of colouring all over the page. After a short discussion, we concluded that in school, teacher always reminds them to colour nicely / neating, try not to go over the line, so as a result, the colouring session becomes more demanding than simply colouring as you wish. That is why T then opts to just stick to one colour and only one area. On the other hand, during our 'toilet wall' painting sessions at home, there's no limit set on what she can draw and we don't judge her for quality of drawing / colouring. For me, at 2.5 years, I really don't mind if her apple looks like a triangle and a pink blob of paint is a pretty flower to her. I think at this young age, its more important to encourage them to continue to draw / colour, be bold to use all the different colours / mode of arts as they wish and when they are older we can slowly introduce the rules of the game. I understand that traditional schools are there to teach the child the rules of society, to conform and obey, to respect and not question authority, etc..., but there are other approaches to life too.

This is the main reason why we try to maintain some homeschooling activities at home, so I can have a chances to expose her to less traditional method of learning, encourage her to attempt to solve the problems and find answers by herself and also observe for myself her strengths and weaknesses. Being 1 to 1, I can adapt our materials and lessons to her learning style and making timely decisions to change our lessons to match her current interests (windows of opportunities).

I realised these weeks when we try to pick up on the homeschooling that I lack a focus and direction on this topic. What we do is too random and ad hoc and I have no clue if the activities are age appropriate, if I am missing an important element to build a good foundation, if we are moving in the correct direction? As such, I also spend / waste alot time doing random research and getting distracted by all sorts of information that I think may be of interest, but might not really be useful. The conclusion, some proper planning needs to be in place so we can be more efficient and effective in our efforts.

So I put aside 2 whole days and seriously researched into preschool / kindergarten education. First was to find out what are the norm milestones for a 3-4 year old to reach, second was to think about besides these basics, what other 'stuff' to we wish T to learn during this time? Lastly was to organize the information in such a way so that we can make lesson plans and easily track and follow up on how we are progressing until we achieve the goals.

I gathered the info online from a variety of sites, reviewed, filtered and consolidated what I felt was reasonable for 3 - 4 yr old into the below charts. (I haven't figured out how to put downloadable files on blog, so if you are interested, you will have to print them or save them as photos). For curriculum planning and tracking, I referred to http://www.donnayoung.org/ and got some templates and ideas from her, made some customization and now I have a thin binder book to help me track our homeschool progress. If you are interested in taking a look at my homeschool planner book, drop me a line in the chatbox. With these tools in hand + my Montessori pre-school teaching manuals + the lovely BFIAR recommended curriculum for lapbooking, I now feel alot more confident that we will be able to have an enriching and enjoyable preschool home school experience at home. I also no longer spend alot of time browsing and researching like a headless chicken and wasting alot of time, instead, I just have to put aside a couple of minutes a day, or an hour on the weekend to plan ahead for next week's activities. Its been a great time saver (goes to explain why I have time to update the blog now)

By the way, we've worked on 2 more BFIAR books these weeks, stay tuned for post on them once we finished.

HomeSchool - Paper Puppets dress up

2009-08-05T20:54:00.001-07:00

Was surfing online for preschool activities and came across THIS. The dolls were just too adorable to give them a miss. We've seen similar items in shops selling at high prices. So I printed these free of charge and got the help of maid and AhBeeJie with the cutting. To make them last longer, I laminated all the pieces. Its fun to play dress up and pretend play slumber party, holloween, christmas etc... While doing so, we also talk about colours, enhanced vocabulary with the many different types of clothings (dress, skirt, trousers, shorts, boots, shoes, sneakers, slippers, etc...). Hold 2 way conversations. Can even re-enforce sorting skill and organization by catergorizing the clothings (all shoes together, all tops together, all bottoms together etc...) Hee hee... then later she can tidy up her wardrobe by herself.

See.... with a little bit of creativity, big lessons can be learnt in the midst of a fun game session

Happenings - Week 31, 2009

2009-08-05T20:16:00.000-07:00

Great weather, daddy's at work, lazy morning. What else better to do than hop onto a taxi and off to the beach to spend the morning. Its just wonderful that our current place is less than 15 car ride from the beach. This is something else that I will miss when we move back to Singapore.

Its the first time that T actually 'swam' in the sea. On all the other occasions we've been to the beach, she's only played on the sand or walked along the shoreline. It was big fun to sit in the water along the shore and giggle ourselves crazy whenever a big wave come and push us over.

The weather recently has been mostly great. On most Saturday mornings, we try to go for a swim and spend an hour or 2 in the pool. With the light breeze, sea view and warm water its a great feeling. After a few sessions T is now even daring enough swim around the pool independantly wearing her arm floats. She used to insist that I hold her hands in the water. Now that the Typhoon season is here, I hope we will still have good luck to have great weather on the weekend mornings.

Montessori - Practical Life Skills - Using Tongs

2009-08-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

Read HERE for a full description of this Montessori activity.

We reused things around the house to do this. Mini muffin tray, a bowl of peanuts (same pack as those we used for dry pouring activity we did a year ago), a pair of tongs.

Then I showed her how to use the tongs and instructed her to put 1 nut in each compartment, moving gradually from left to right, top to bottom. When she is done, she put the nut back into the bowl, then I instructed this time to put 2 nuts in each compartments, and so on...

See from the photo how focused little children can be when doing this kind of work.

To them it is fun work, in the process they gain:

- fine motor skill practise

- holding tongs properly >>> early practise to holding pencils properly (pre-writing skills)

- maths >>> counting 1, 2, 3....

- math >>> fractions, seeing how a bowl of nuts can be divided into so many small portions

- science >>> how to visual volume of the bowl of nuts changes as it gets separated into so many portions, and be restored back into the same bowl later.

Baking Feista, Cakes, Muffin and Cookies Galore

2009-08-04T23:55:00.000-07:00

I suspended all cooking activities with T for the past months, cos I couldn't stand the sight and smell of raw food (except sashimi, hee hee...). But we made up for it in the past weeks and were busily whipping up cookies and cakes a few times a week. Now my domestic helper starts to sigh whenever she see me taking out the kitchen scale in the evening. (She the one who has to clean up the mess in the kitchen after we are done)

Here is a Oreo & Raisin Cupcake recipe that T is able to manage quite well (with some help from me of course) and we made it at least 3 times already in the past 6 weeks. In fact, she loved the raisins so much, she now keeps trying to put raisins in all the cakes we make, even chilled cheesecakes.

Pound the Oreo cookies into little pieces.

Cream butter and sugar

add eggs one at a time (don't forget to remove the shell after child drops it into mixture)

Here's T whining about the sticky eggs on her hands cos she made a mess from trying to crack them

stir in flour

scoop out

into muffin cups

finish products

Here are some of the other cakes we made.

- Simple Chocolate cupcakes iced unsuccessfully to look like Kerropi. We made them for a colleague's birthday, this woman is crazy about Keroppi.

- Mixed berries muffins. Summer berries were on sale at the supermarket. Made these with rasberries and blueberries. I think I had about 10 of them in the last 2 days.

- Mickey and Minnie butter cookies. Time consuming, but all worth if it gets a smile from the girl

- Chilled mango cheesecake. Very tangy. Great for the hot weather. Half of the whole cake went into my tummy over breakfast and tea time.

We also tried unsuccessfully to do a batch banana muffin and chilled peach chessecake. Although they were edible, they looked horrible, so we didn't keep any photos of them.

Happenings - Week 30, 2009

2009-08-04T23:44:00.000-07:00

I had an school assignment due this week and I really needed to finish up on it. Daddy did me a favour and brought T out to Ocean Park lone ranger on Saturday so I can have the day quietly in the house to complete the assignment and submit it. We are really making good use of our Ocean Park annual pass. :-)

We also started to get back on track with our homeschooling activities, such as BFIAR unit, Montessori activities, culinery skills, etc... but I will make separate posts about them.

Candy, only after dinner

2009-08-04T21:38:00.000-07:00

I have to note this down before I forget.

We never really stopped T from having her candies and ice cream as long she has them in moderation. (OK, I have to admit, I have never been able to stop Daddy from offering them to her). Fortunately, T seems to have good self control over these things. Somehow, I feel this is in some ways related to our eating habits at home. We never force her to eat more than she reasonably needs to in her proper meals. If she tells us she has enough, and we see that she has had her reasonable amount of rice or noodles or whatever she is having for her meal, we let her stop. We don't insist that everything on the plate needs to be finished. If she has poor appetite for a day or two, she usually eats more later in the week. Now, even when she is having lollies, chocolate or ice cream, she will stop when she has had enough. I've never seen her gorge herself with them. In fact, after she has had her piece or two and feels that she has had enough, she will give the rest back to us and say "I have enough".

After she past 2 years old, we didn't stop her from having her candies and ice cream. But I do keep an eye to see that she doesn't have an over dose. However, we do make it a habit that she only indulges in them after her meals. If she asks for candy around meal time, I will always tell her "Sure, you can have your candy, but you have to finish your dinner / lunch first. After that, you can have all the candy you want." After some time, she becomes very familiar with the concept and only asks for her snacks after she has finished her meals.

This evening, she has finished her dinner and mine was in the midst of being served. She was sucking happily on her choco vanilla chuppa chup lolly. I haven't had a chuppa chup in ages and asked her if I could have some of hers. She paused for a moment and thought about it seriously (no joking, she really knitted her brows and think) and her reply was
"Er... OK, but you finish your dinner first OK."

I was embarrassed. But on the good side, I am also glad that she managed to think carefully about the action and responsed appropriately. Hopefully, this means that she is able to be responsible independantly.

Happenings - Week 28, 2009

2009-08-04T21:32:00.001-07:00

We received a mail in the post box. Time to renew your Disneyland Annual Pass it says. Mmh.... don't think so. But thanks for the reminder that our pass is about to expire, so off we went to Disneyland again.

With all these recent trips to Ocean Park and Disneyland recently, T has grown more aware of these funfilled places and actually wakes up in the morning requesting to go there.

Happenings - Week 27, 2009

2009-08-04T20:58:00.000-07:00

This week, I can truly say that discomfort of the 1st trimester is over and I really feel much more energetic and wanted to catch up with bonding with T. So we made several outings this week. Yippee for T.

Hiking at Lamma Island. Woke up on 1/Jul (Reunion Day in HK) and the weather was simply beautiful. Light blue skies and gentle breeze. Must say our humble apartment felt like a resort that morning. Won't it be a waste to stay home on a day like this. So we made an impromtu decision to go to Lamma Island and was out of the house in 15 mins (if we miss the ferry which leaves in 20mins, we will have to wait for 1.5 hrs, which would be smack bang mid noon). Had to make a sprint between the taxi drop off point and the ferry pier, but yes, we made it in time. So nice to hike across half of the island in the gentle morning sun and breeze. By noon we reached the beach which was on the other side of the island and of course, T had no problem convincing Daddy to buy her a sand play set on the spot too.

On the weekend, the weather was beautiful again. Somehow, the humidity of tropical summer is a little late this year. So off we went to Ocean Park again. This time, we even managed to catch a seal and sea lion performance. Her favorite attraction must still be the huge aquarium. She waits for the turtles and sharks to come around and snaps away with her camera.

Montessori - Sensorial - Sound Boxes

2009-08-04T20:07:00.000-07:00

Click HERE for full description of the activity.

Once again, I found it too costly to purchase the authentic Montessori material, so I made my own.

- Containers pack of 6 purchased from $2 dollar shop. You can use any suitable small containers that you have at home. Just make sure that they all look the same.
- contents, all free. Found from things around the house.
- tray to hold container purchased from $2 shop.

A good thing about making your own sound boxes is that you can change the materials in the box whenever you wish to adapt to the abilities of your child. It is always good to start off with something easy that makes distinctively very different sounds, then slowly increase the difficulty by changing the contents of the boxes to produce more similar sounds.

Happenings - Week 26, 2009

2009-06-29T18:13:00.000-07:00

Once again sorry for the 6 weeks laspe in lack of posts. Blogging is kind of at the bottom on my list of priorities right now. With only 24 hours a day and my biological need to have at least 8 hours of continuous sleep each day to stay functional, it is tough to find time to blog. This is roughly how my time is shared each day

0630 - 0700 : wake up, get ready for work
0700 - 0800 : bus journey to work. Make use of time to study and prepare assignment for diploma I am currently doing
0800 - 1700 : full time job at work. Use lunch hour to have a quick lunch and rest of the time to research and prepare homeschool activities for T.
1700 - 1830 : bus journey back home. Make use of time to study and prepare assignment for diploma I am currently doing
1830 - 1915 : have dinner and bath
1915 - 2045 : do all sorts of activities with T
2045 - 2130 : night bathe for T and reading in bed
2130 - 0630 : sleep.

I know, I know. I should just get my lazy ass out of bed stay up till midnight after T sleeps to do my own stuff. But with such a condensed day, I just don't have the energy to get up and do anything else. For the weekends, its usually also jammed packed with doing all sorts of things with T around the house and out.

Again, if anyone has any tips to improve my schedule, feel free to advise.
____________________________

One good things about T is that I rarely had any separation issue from her when I leave for work. (OK, her separation axiety about going to school is another story). Since she was a baby, she rarely cried and whined when daddy and myself have to leave her at home to go to work. She always sends us off with a big hug and kiss. Nowadays, if she get up before I leave the house, she will bring over my bag, and open the door for me. This morning, she opened the door for me and I was in a rush so off I went to press the elevator button. Guess what. She calls after me to say
"Mummy !!! come back here so I can give you a big hug" awww... ok, so what if I will miss the bus and be late for work. What can be more important than a hug with my girl.

School is officially out and the summer holidays are here for all the kids. I haven't had enough time to plan what to let T do during her long hours at home. This week, I just randomly printed some tracing worksheets, activity worksheets and colouring pages off the internet to keep her busy.

:-( bad mummy. Must make a better effort at this.

Joint reading session

2009-06-24T18:36:00.000-07:00

Now that T has started to self read, I can have time to catch up on my own reading too. Starting last night, our bedtime routine changed to be like this :

- maid would help to get her ready for bed. IE, brush her teeth, put on diapers, change into pyjamas.

- I will be sitting on the bed wait for her reading my own book at the same time.
- when T is done, she will come to bed and sit next to me with books of her own choice
- surprisingly, last night, she just quietly started to read by herself and did not disturb me reading my book (so nice).
- so we sad there for about 30 mins each reading our own book.
- when she's had enough, she turned to me and asked me to read to her which I gladly obliged.

It was such a nice experience. I hope we can continue this routine.

Children's Book - Love You Forever

2009-06-23T19:24:00.000-07:00

This book was recommended by a fellow Sep'06 mummy more than a year back. In fact, it was her mother who gave her this book as a present. We had this book in our house for more than a year now. I recall, when I attempted to read this story to T last year, she was not very interested in it. Not in the text (probably too long for her then) and neither in the illustrations. So we kept the book aside as I found it to be a very meaningful and lovely book and didn't want her to ruin it or ruin the experience for her by forcing her to listen to it.

Just this weekend, we took this book out again and read it together. This time, she is able to appreciate the illustrations much better and was able to 'discuss' about why baby shouldn't be sitting and playing on the toilet floor. She had a bit of difficulty trying to understand where the the baby / boy go towards the end of the book, why is there a man in the story instead. I had to explain to her about how people and she will grow up.

I think she appreciates and understanding the deep love of the mother for the child and vice versa, cos as we read the story, she would cuddle close next to me and put her arms around me and ask me to put mine around her.

We've been reading the book everynight at her request for the last few days and would repeat it 2 to 3 times each night. Since young, I have been holding her finger to follow/point to the words as I read along so re-enforce in her concept of reading/writing from left to right and the rhythm of reading each word/sentence. Last night, I noticed that she is able to trace the words very well. Her finger will stop as I pause and slow down when I do. In fact, we managed to read through the whole story with her pointing / tracing accurately to the written text.

After 3 nights, she can now also read part of the book by memory.
Example (she recites the part in italics) :
The mother rocks the baby "back and forth, back and forth, back and forth",
Singing I love you forever
I like you for always
As long as I'm living
My baby you'll be

This book will definately be a keeper for us.

BFIAR - Caps For Sale

2009-06-22T00:16:00.000-07:00

Now that my MS has improved alot, we made an effort to continue with our BFIAR homeschool program. I must admit BFIAR is a great program to start off with for little children younger than 4. There is nothing academic about it (unless you intentionally make it so). There's plenty of fun activities recommended in the manual and loads more that you can find from the web. Once again, just be very observant and sensitive to the needs of your child and add a bit of creativity to customise the activities to make the learning experience one that your child will love.

Once again, we used the resources from HomeSchoolShare site and printed out this find the item sheet. It's a little like "Where's Wally". T has to find all the items listed at the side of the sheet on the colour picture and circle them out. Surprising, she did very well and found all of them quickly. I noticed she enjoyed this activity and must make it a point to self make some more activities similar to this one.

We did some colouring activity here where she various medium of art. First with crayon, then with water colour. She doing the watch colouring, she started off nicely painting each cap a different colour. But somehow towards the end to decided to get abstract and started to splash colours randomly all across the the page.

Here we did some maths counting activity. On an earlier occasion, I attempted to introduce T to counting and numbering using this . It was too difficult for her to relate the quantity in the picture to the number dots. Somehow 3 bears and got nothing to do with 3 black dots, so why should they be the same? (this is what I decipher from her expression). So I gave it some thought and used Caps for Sale story to re-introduce sequencial counting to her. While reading the story, we were already counting the caps and monkeys in the book, so monkeys and caps are something very close to her heart now. I made out our own worksheets for her to match the correct number of caps to the monkeys. I made it a point that the 'lenght' of the the monkeys and caps were the same so that she increament of number is visual to her and this game is self correcting. (Eg. 1 monkey = same lenght as 1 cap, 5 monkeys = same length as 5 caps. If she matches a wrong number of caps to monkeys, she will have a cap with no monkey or a monkey with no cap). After a few rounds of me explaining and helping her along, she can now easily match correctly up to number 5. So knowing that she can now count accurately and not just blindly recite the numbers (which she does very well), we moved on to do something a little more difficult. The second worksheet (from HomeSchoolShare) requires the child to count and write to number. Since T has yet to learn the numerals and I don't intend to teach her that yet, I adapted it and asked to to draw the same number of circles as the monkeys she counted (similar concept - 1 monkey - 1 drawn circle, 4 monkeys = 4 drawn circles). With the laid foundation, she understood it easily and enjoyed drawing the matching number of circles.

Here we made a paper plate monkey mask and had a good 30 minutes of fun just chasing each other around the house. As you can see here, T is wearing a red cap pretending to be a monkey and I was the peddlar who had to run after her shouting "Give Me Back My Caps".

Some other activities that we did included :

- stacking a whole lot of caps on our heads and walking around the house shouting "Caps for Sale, fifty cents a cap".

- doing another print out worksheet which matched action verbs to the correct picture (Sitting, Jumping, etc... action words mentioned in the story). When learning the words (actually T knew all the words already), we played out each action exaggerately.

- T pretending to sleep and I hid the caps around the house and she has to find the caps around the house.

There are still alot of other activities that can be done with this story such as :

- making monkey bread

- introducing the concept of money

- learning about different domination of money

- learning about different types of monkeys

- learning about different types of hats and their uses....

there's so much so much that I am not able to list all here right now.

For now, I think we (or me) have had enough of this story for now. We shall try to move on to another story (target to do 1 story every 2 weeks) and maybe revisit this this one when T is older.

Achievement - Reading by own self

2009-06-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

I feel very proud and comforted to know that I have successfully cultivated a reader. I hope T will maintain this love for books. We have been reading to her daily since she was born (OK, maybe not every single day, but 8 out of 10 is good enough for us). Her nightly routine goes like this. Evening shower at about 8:30pm, brush teeth, change into diapers and pyjamas and reading on the bed before lights out at 9pm. Nowadays, even if we don't sit and read with her, she will spontaneously go to her room and take out her book after she finish her shower. She sits by herself and starts 'reading' out loud to herself. Its really very cute to see this. She is not able to recognise any word yet, but she recalls the storyline of the familiar stories. If she pulls out a book that we have yet to read together, she will 'make up' her own story by looking at the pictures. I think the BFIAR program has played a part in why she seems more keen in reading at last few months as compared to the earlier 2 years. All the BFIAR storys are truly living books and the activities and animations that we do with each story cultivated her strong interest in each of them. The Green Pocketbook has been her favorite for 2 months and she has been asking for Caps for Sale everyday this month.

Montessori - Practical Life - Buttoning

2009-06-21T23:23:00.000-07:00

Rosaryhill School includes some Montessori activities in their curriculum. They have taught T how to button her own cardigan. I have seen T being able to finish all the buttons on her cardigan and she is also able to button her own pyjama when she is in a 'good mood'.

Unfortunately, as usual, when I whip out the camera, she becomes easily distracted and refuses to cooperate to put on a 'performance' for me.

Singing "Jesus Loves Me"

2009-06-21T23:17:00.000-07:00

This is one of the reason why I prefer to put T in a Catholic school. They get to learn how to pray and sing nice songs. This song actually has a series of action that goes along with it. I've seen them perform it in school, but did not manage to get T to repeat the actions at home.

Montessori - Sensorial - Mystery Bag

2009-06-21T21:35:00.001-07:00

This week, we tried for the first time the Montessori Mystery Bag activity and it was loads of fun. Read HERE for a full description of this activity.

We started off with the most familiar items that T loved. Her colourful threading beads that she has been playing with for the past year. These beads were 3 dimensional and all the basic shapes were there (there was even a fish shape).

Getting Ready :

Display all the diffrent shapes out and name and feel with eyes closed each one. (We had ball/circle, cube/square, triangle, star, heart, fish)

Activity 1 :

To start off simple, I put just 1 item in the bag without T knowing what it is and she will have to feel it and tell me what it is. We keep repeating until we finished all the shapes.

Activity 2 :

I put all the items in the bag and ask her to feel and bring out only the item that I call for. This is more difficult and requires more focus to get it right.

This activity refines her sense of touch and requires her to be focused in order to feel the correct shapes. We started off very giggly and she kept wanting to peep into the bag. You can repeat the activity introducing the name of the shapes in different language, but we didn't do that yesterday since it was our first try at this and I didn't want to spoil the fun.

HomeSchool Activities for the past weeks

2009-06-21T21:08:00.000-07:00

Finally the 1st Trimester is over and I am feeling more 'normal' now. We tried to get our homeschooling back on track. Here are some of the activities that we have done over the past weeks.

Sorting beads by colour.

The same set of coloured beads can be played in several ways. In this game, I made the first colour sequence and T has to repeat the same sequence using the remaining beads.

We continued practising finger dexterity with this threading toy. I noticed her fine motor skills are pretty good for her age and she does enjoy this threading game. I made her a necklace and she made me one too. We wore it around the house for the afternoon.

We tried to practise some writing skills with this set of Kumon cards. We did succeed in 'writing' all the alphabets. However, personally, I don't fancy these cards that much for the following reasons :
1. the marker included is too fine/thin for a 2.5 yr old proper handling
2. some of the picture for the alphabet were too confusing / difficult.
3. the cards didn't show clearly the proper directions have the stokes the alphabet should be written in.
I think I shall soon be making my own cards.

Acheivements - Bilingual Conversations

2009-06-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

After 9 months of chinese immersion at the preschool, T's conversational cantonese has improved remarkably over the past 2 months. She will now voluntarily speak in cantonese to daddy and continues to converse in english with me. I am nicely surprised that she can make her own direct translations at times.

Incident 1 -
T : Mummy see, I 'dirty cat'.
Me : huh? what is dirty cat, there is no cat here.
T : see, my mouth, dirty cat
Me : there is no dirty cat in your mouth dear
T : (getting a little frustrated) Mummy, I eat ice cream, see my mouth, dirty cat. Tissue please.
Only at this moment did I get it. Dirty cat = cantonese direct translation "Wu1 zhuo1 mao1", meaning dirty person.

Incident 2 -
T was drinking a packet drink and it was almost dinner time. I asked the maid to take the drink from her. Both Daddy and I were present. She complains to us (individually) immediately. She looks at Daddy and complains in Canto about the maid taking her drink and right after turns to look at me and repeats the same complain in English.

Thank You Rosaryhill Teachers

2009-06-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

The school year finished 3 weeks earlier due to the H1N1 swine flu scare. All pre-schools and primary schools in Hong Kong have been closed since 8/Jun and the official school year should have ended at end of June. The summer classes may also be cancelled if the health situation doesn't improve.

T has been having a blast of time at home as AhBeeJie is at our place everyday and the 2 of them gets along really well.

We went to school this weekend to collect her year end report card and T made thank you cards to give to her teachers as a show of her appreciation.

Achievements - 16 piece jigsaw puzzle

2009-06-21T20:06:00.000-07:00

We've had a few boxes of jigsaw puzzles in the house for more than a year now, but T never seemed really interested in working on them alone. I noticed that she got impatient very quickly and gave up easily on this task. I let her be, thinking her time will come.

Admittedly, when I started reading that other children her age are working well with puzzles, peer pressure got me thinking that that I should 'encourage' her to work harder at this.

We took out these boxes of puzzles again and I sat down with her to start off with the 4 piece puzzles, slowly up to 6 piece. In the beginning stages, she would understandly get upset when she cannot fit a puzzle and throw a small temptrum when I refuse to do it for her. We will have to patiently give her hints and tips on how to go about finding the correct pieces and surprising, after a few sessions over the last 6 weeks, she managed to finish a 12 piece puzzle by herself last night and complete a 16 piece puzzle with a few verbal hints from me.

Once again, this experience just re-enforces the message that it is ever so important to stay observant to your child's needs and provide the neccessary stimuli to help them. It is not about pressuring them into the standard of the societly, but more about just gently introducing and exposing them to areas of interest and be able to adapt teaching method to their individual requirement and make the whole learning experience enjoyable.

On this jig saw puzzle experience, T has changed from one who will just throw puzzle pieces on the floor 6 weeks ago, to the child who asks to do more puzzles last night. In fact, when she asked to do the 16 piece puzzle, I explained to her that it be too difficult, but she retorted : "No, Mummy, I can do it". So we tried and she did it.

The next page on the puzzle book was a 20 piece puzzle. When she looked at it she told me "Mummy, I think this one is too difficult for me". I am very pleased that she is willing to push her own limits and knows when to stop when she had enough.

Hong Kong Disneyland - We are a family

2009-06-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

I've lost count of the number of times we've been to Hong Kong Disneyland, but hey, we have got to make the most out of our annual passes right. Anyways we were there again at the end of May and this incident is definately worth keeping a memorable record off (pity no one was able to take a photo of it).

It was time for the fire works and we stood on Main Street enjoying the show. Daddy was carrying T and the 3 of us were standing close, swaying to the music. Out of the blue, T wrapped her arms around us, pulling our heads closed in right next to hers (left arm around Daddy's neck, right arm around Mummy's neck). She held us tightly next to her head touching head, one of us on each side. In those precious few minutes, I could really feel we were the only possessions in the world she loved and she wanted to share this moment of her enjoying the fireworks with us. I hope this bond will last forever.

My First Portrait

2009-06-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

Frankly, I've never been much of an artistic person and my really no good at art and craft work. I am rather clueless when in comes to teaching T arts and craft. Thanks to all the online resources available, I am able to get some tips from more talented people.

T has recently been rather keen on drawing. I usually let her doodle whatever she wants to rarely guide her or give her instructions on how to go about doing it. I think it was our domestic helper who have been practising with her on how to draw a simple face.

This is the mummy and daddy she drew one evening. I know many kids her age can draw much better, but hey, I'm satisfied for now.

1st Trip to Ocean Park

2009-06-21T19:20:00.000-07:00

Actually we live only 3 bus stops away from Ocean Park. I still haven't figured out why we didn't make a trip there till last month. That was T's first trip to Ocean Park. On the Saturday morning, we woke up to beautiful weather and my MS seemed to be a bay for the day. Daddy suggested why not go to Ocean Park. It was 9:30 in the morning, we finished our breakfast and we had 1 hour to pack, change and leave to house by 10:30 (the park opens at 10:30). The weather was really nice. Warm, but not too hot, dry and windy. As we arrived early, the crowds were not there yet and the queues to the attractions and rides were relatively short (10 - 20 mins). We took our time in the gold fish musuem and deep ocean aquarium. T had a great time taking photos of everything she saw. Lunch was at a sea view restuarant where we had a great view of Repulse Bay (about 15 mins taxi ride from our home). I will certainly miss the beaches and view of Hong Kong when we move out. By 1 pm it started to get hotter and T was noticably tired out and needed a nap, so we headed home for a cold shower and nap time.

The Budding Cinematographer

2009-06-21T02:33:00.000-07:00

These are some creations from our budding photographer. She has inherited our 1st digital camera purchased some 7 years ago. Last year we finally upgraded our digicam even though the old one was working perfectly fine. We kept our old camera not knowing to sell it off (probably no buyers since it is really OOOOld), or to give it away. Then it dawned upon us that since T is always wanting to handle our new camera (no way ! we already had to send it for maintenance once cos she damaged the lens mechanism), we might as well let her have one of her own. After a few days of practise and dozens of spoilt pictures (never mind if she keeps taking and taking, easy to delete away) her technique improved alot and she has learnt to aim accurately at her target objects and wait for the right moment to push the button. Now this camera is part of her personal possession, place on her shelf so she has free access to it anytime she wishes and she knows how to ask for our help when the battery runs flat.

Antz Attack !

2009-06-21T02:23:00.000-07:00

T's kind of a clean freak. She wipes her hands after every piece of chip cos she can't stand the feeling of the sandy salt on her fingers. Her teacher gave her a Distinction grade for cleanliness on her report card.

For some reason she's also aquired a fear for ants recently. Summer is here is ants are a common sight around the house. Whenever she spots one crawling on the floor, she freaks and runs to Daddy and anyone one else in the house and screams "Ants, ants, catch the ants !!!" and she will jump on the sofa and refuse to let her feet touch the floor until the ant is caught and put away.

I have no idea where she got this fear from but I certain hope that it will go away soon.

My Neighbourhood Buddies

2009-06-21T02:03:00.000-07:00

I think very kid should have some neighbourhood buddies. In the current society, it is a norm that our front doors are kept closed all day and we don't know our neighbour's name. How I miss the good old days when all the kids on the block would gather at the void deck every evening and we would play hide and seek or police catch thief with a group of 10 or more running all 13 floors of the block.

Gor Gor Felix and Boobie are T's neighbourhood buddies. We live in the same block and every evening after dinner, T will have about an hour of play time at the lift lobby with Felix and Boobie (not to mention enjoy the free air con at the lobby). At times we will have play dates at each others place.

Unfortunately their family will be moving away soon, and so will we at the end of the year. Hope we will manage to keep in contact after we move.

Dramatic Arts - Pirates 77

2009-06-21T01:42:00.000-07:00

We watched a Cantonese children during the Easter holidays that I haven't post about.
This is a new play written and performed by the local children's performing arts group PIP.

'Pirates 77', the latest production by the PIP Theatre Kids, highlights their yearly 'Be Positive' theme. Given the current social situations and the associated challenges that demand us of optimism, 'Pirates 77' presents its timely tale about living on fresh courage. The educational, high-quality children musical thus would appeal to a family audience,

Story Background of 'Pirates 77'
'There is nothing better than traveling - except traveling as a pirate,' says the Pacific turtle.
As one of the world's most notorious gangs of pirates with a track record of victories through generations, the Dragons have spread fear across oceans and lands far and wide with their speed, cleverness, cunning and brutality, leaving a mark on the history of navigation. Having lived off the riches of their ancestors for centuries, the Dragons, now at their 77th generation, has exhausted their legacy and face an inevitable downfall despite their extravagant appearance. Humiliated by the retired seagull, despised by the old mermaid and with no more than five loaves and two fish left for their last supper, the head of family decides it's time for the Dragons to return and make the world tremble with horror again. Their target: the oil tanker.

Tonight, in the darkness of the rough sea, the 77th-generation Dragons take over the oil tanker with their super powers. They open the tank, only to discover...
'Pirates 77' is the latest children's musical by PIP Theatre Kids in 2009. Like 'Villain Village' and 'Moon 7.5', it is an educational and entertaining spectacle in which a tale of riches, hardship, courage and nautical adventure is told with the liveliest and most imaginative means on stage - an excellent chance for grown-ups and kids to gather for a cheerful boost of courage in the face of the adversity and anxiety that surround us today.

Frankly, both T and I didn't like the play. I literally feel asleep halfway through it and thankfully AhBeeiJie was there to keep an eye on T who kept asking to leave about 30 mins into the show. We did manage to sit patiently till the end of the show and left as soon as the curtains were dropped. I think the storyline is too heavy for a young child to understand, the costumes and stage was not all that attractive.

I think thats enough dramatic arts exposure for the last 6 months and we shall take a long break before attempting to go watch another one.

Christmas Presents - I LUUUUve books

2009-06-21T01:27:00.000-07:00

This is an extremely belated post but due credit must be given even if it is late. Auntie Christina (my only sister) mailed over a big parcel from Aussie land with lots and lots of books. All of them are Christian books and very nice ones. There's even a cute little backpack for me to use to go to Sunday school. Thank you Aunte Christine !

Let's play more

2009-05-05T04:07:00.000-07:00

My MS is good on some days and bad on others. I days when I don't feel so tired, I try to do some simple activities with T at home. Here's T having a go with the Montessori cylinder blocks.

She's pretty good when its just 1 block, but when 3 is put together, she has yet to finish it.

This magnetic playhouse is one of T's favourite toy in recent months. She takes it out quite often to play. This day, I recall an episode in Desperate Housewife where the children in school were requested to draw pictures of their family and they ended up portraying embarrassing images of their family.
I couldn't help feeling that we must be doing something right in our family when I see T playing with her toy family. She puts mummy and daddy sitting on the sofa and 2 children sitting on mummy's and daddy's lap.

HomeSchool - Big & Small

2009-05-05T03:38:00.000-07:00

I can't emphasize how important it is for parents to whole-heartedly play with their child and be attentive to them when they are playing. In the past week, I noticed that T was confusing "BIG" with "Small". She would ask me for a piece candy and says she wants a small piece. But when I give it to her, she would point to a bigger piece in the packet and say no not this one, I want a small piece. And so I realised that she got her concepts wrong.

I printed some picture cards off the internet to show the difference between BIG & SMALL. We made 12 sets of pictures, each with a big image and the same image in small size. We took out a big & small plastic bowl and we sorted the picture cards into the correct bowl. As we put the card in the bowl used the "Montessori Three Period Lesson" to re-enforce the concept of big and small.

"Three Period Lesson"
1st Round -
Mum says : This is a big flower, please put the big flower in the big bowl. This is a small flower, please put the small flower in the small bowl. (Repeats this sequence till the all cards are completed)

2nd Round -
Mum says : Which one is the big flower, can you please put the big flower in the big bowl. Which is the small flower, can you please put the small flower in the small bowl. (Repeats till all cards are completed)

3rd Round -
Mum takes a card and asks : What is this?
T replies : Big flower !

HomeSchool - Sticker Book

2009-05-05T03:03:00.000-07:00

What is it with young kids and stickers. They just seem to love stickers. T received some sticker books from Auntie Christine for Christmas and we had plenty of fun with them. She also enjoyed the Kumon "Let's Sticker and Paste" books. I recently found some nursery worksheets in a local book store. I must say, some of these worksheets really scared me. They expected 3 year olds to be able to identify chinese characters and spell some simple english words. Well, I definately didn't get these books, as I did not see myself being able to teach her at this young age to write and spell.

After digging in the pile, I managed to find something more fun. It was from a Taiwanese publisher. It was a colourful sticker book which helps kids identify colours, shapes, patterns, sequencing, etc... I think this is something both T and I would enjoy and we did. Its easy to take out this book every evening and just do 1 - 2 pages of the activity with T.

Random Photos

2009-05-05T02:42:00.000-07:00

I finally found enough energy to sort out our photos.
Here are some random pictures that we took the past 2 months.

Happenings - Week 13, 14, 15

2009-04-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

Sorry of the lack of post, these past 3 weeks has been soooo tiring with all the changes going on in our lives.

Firstly, our domestic helper is on her vacation so we are left to fend for ourselves. I started with some big ambitious plan of getting up early every morning to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner using our slow cooker, thermal pots and electronic rice cooker. The strategy was that I prepare the raw food every nite before going to bed, wake up early in the morning and put them to start cooking in the 'smart' cooking appliances before leaving for work. Then HB can just scoop them out from the pots for lunch and dinner with T.

I even spent half a day researching for easy recipes.

Haha... like real ! It worked for 1 day and that's the end of my great big plan.

I was so exhausted at the next day that a big bad flu bug got the better of me. This bug was really big and bad. It had our whole family coughing and feverish for a whole week. I took MC from work, but couldn't do much at home except sleep. Lucky for us HB was the stronger and was still able to take care of T and I. We had to visit the doctor 3 times that week to get more medic and leaves. Due to my present condition, I avoided taking the medics and just relied on bed rest to get better. T took her medics and took about 10 days to recover. We let her skip school and stay home those 2 weeks as she was coughing incessantly and having a running nose too.
It was so tiring to have to clean up her vomit from the bed after her chokes on her night bottle. I think we changed our bedsheets and blanket cover almost every night that week.

It was also these 2 weeks that my MS became stronger. I wouldn't use the word worse, cos it is really nothing compared to when I was carrying T. With T, it was morning, day and night sickness. Puking several times a day and feeling down all day long. Really can't complain much this time. Was feeling perfectly OK until 2 weeks ago when appetite dropped and mild urges to throw up occasionally. It was only made worse when it was coupled with my constant coughing. Whenever I cough, the urge to throw up became stronger. I guess the flu virus + the MS peak during 6 to 12 week was a unlucky combination.

As such, we were really unable to do much at home the past weeks. No outings, no homeschooling, no activities. We were just 3 lazy bum bum, sitting in front of the TV all day long and taking 2 naps a day. Cooking was minimal, as I also can't stand the sight or smell of it. We ended up catering most meals. Both T and I lost a bit of weight.

T is now fully recovered. She is no longer coughing. I still cough at night (makes it really difficult for our bedtime stories). Our domestic helper is back and she is such a god bless and the kitchen and toilet is clean once again. I pray that my MS will start mellow down and I can regain my appetite and energy and restart our homeschooling.

On the bright side, I have managed to make a new arrangement at work. By re-structing the department, I can now transfer out some responsibilities, start and finish work 1 hour earlier, cut down travelling time by half and reach home by 6:15pm. YIPPEE !!!

Happenings - Week 11 & 12, 2009

2009-03-22T18:57:00.000-07:00

These 2 weeks had been super busy with work with preparations for year end closing, so we were not able to do too much at home. No new games or homeschool activities were introduced since I didn't have time to prepare any.

On 11/Mar it was the Parent Child Activity Day at Rosaryhill School. It means 1 parent can join the child in class that day. I took the afternoon off to attend and it was really worth it. We were really able to sample the full curriculum of a normal school day for T. I must say that after attending this day, I am more sure that we have made the right choice for her school. For the 2 year old pre nursery class they don't do too much of academic stuff, but there were lots of music, dance, story telling, craft work, etc... I really enjoyed the 3 hours spent there. It was great fun to see the little children play together and I even could chat with the other kids in T's small group during craft time.

That weekend was our office stock take so that means no time to spend with T.

Just last week we had lots of foreign visitors to our office, so that means lots of late night for me. Almost didn't see T until Thursday night. I think we really missed each other. She was like a baby koala on me the whole evening, but we made up for it over the weekend.

One of the best time to bond is our shower time. We would sing in the tub, scrub each others back and play with the suds. I hope our next one will also be a girl so the 3 of us can squeeze in the tub together.

We also had a playdate with a Singaporean boy on Sunday. Augustine and his family lives in the same estate as us. His daddy teaches at the Singapore International School. We made choco chips cookies together. Again, I was too focused on the kids and my hands were too dirty to use the camera, so no photos. Sorry.

Bento - Week 10, 2009

2009-03-08T21:21:00.001-07:00

This was the bento I prepared to much on during the interval of the ballet performance. T ate 1 piece of Mickey origini and 2 piece of sushi rolls. The flower carrots when unappreciated

Happenings - Week 10, 2009

2009-03-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

AhBeeJie, T & I watched another full lenght ballet on Saturday. It was the performance of "Alice in Wonderland" by the English National Ballet. The show was really colourful with lots of characters and sets. T was very excited when the show started and kept trying to talk to me about scenes. It was until the usher came over and 'shh' her that she kept quiet. Still I think she did pretty well for a 2 year old. Next on the list is a Canto children play and Swan Lake Ballet in April.

T & I made these together on Thursday night. I purchased a Mickey cake mould when shopping for bento stuff and T just loved the looks of the cake.

I did not manage to take any photo of the process as we were too focused on getting the cake in the oven by 9pm so T can wash up and go to bed.

She can only see them baking in the oven and had to wait till the next morning to have them for breakfast.

HomeSchool - Animal cards

2009-03-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

Following up on our trip to the zoo last month, we worked on the theme of animals these 2 weeks. We watched some videos about animals and talked about them. I home made some animals matching cards to play with. I found photos (I realised that it makes more sense to work with real photos than cartoon pictures when learning about stuff) on the internet of various animals and paired them by adult animal and baby animal. We also printed the name on the adult and baby animal at the bottom on the photos (Eg. kangaroo vs joey, cat vs kitten, cow vs calf). This way, T can learn a few more words and when doing the matching. She has to be more observant on the similarities of the animals (a kitten looks very much like a tiger cub without its stripes) (the size, shape and colour of a hippo and rhino loost very alike too) Daddy plays this matching game with her too and they will learn the cantonese names of these animals. All 3 of us enjoys this name alot. Again I am a proud mummy when she says "Hippopotamus"

Rambling : I really felt very "auntie" when I was trimming the self laminated cards on my bus ride home. But kept telling myself its better to make use of the time on the bus journey despite the stares from the onlookers, rather than to take time off with T just to cut and trim these cards.

Our Quirky Moments

2009-03-08T20:42:00.000-07:00

Our quirky moments. I think we will become best friends. (Reminder to self : Must not let the mother in me ruin this)

Achievements - speaking in complete sentences

2009-03-05T01:25:00.000-08:00

Here's 3 short sentence that she said recently when her Aren gor gor (cousin) took her favorite dolly.

"Hey, what ya doing"
"That's my dolly"
"Give it back"

Here's some 4 syllabus words that she been saying (but not accurately though)
"Alicelator" = escalator

T has a bit of domestic goddess trait in her. Whenever she gets bored at restuarants she will take out piece of tissue and start cleaning the walls and furniture. This evening she was happily wiping the mirrored wall in the restuarant, out of the blue, she used the same wet tissue and attempted to wipe her face. Appalled, I managed to stop her in time and explained to her the tissue is dirty after wiping the walls and she should not use the same piece on her face. She replied with a simple loud "DISGUSTING".

faintz.... the diners from the other table looked over. I could only take it in stride and replied calmly "Since you know its disgusting, please don't do it again". She replied OK.

Bento - Week 09, 2008

2009-03-02T18:21:00.000-08:00

Seems like making cute lunch boxes is a up and coming fad in Singapore. A few of the Sep'06 mums have been talking about bentos on their blogs and these cute lookings things just give a new meaning to 'eye candy'. Thanks to the links that Joon put on her site, I was able to read up on how to 'Bento' and pluck up enough courage to give it a try.

First feeble attempt was for Saturday's lunch. Must say it was a disgrace. Won't even bother to call it a bento. It was more like types of food thrown together in a lunchbox and decorated with plastic picks and cut outs. While.... T did eat up the 4 apple stars I cut out using out cookie cutter.

Being upset with the disgrace of my first attempt, I put more effort into making a dinner bento. This bento was for my 10 yr old niece. I figured I needed more encouragement to carry on and was sure the 10 year old would give me more recognition for my hard work. (more truthfully, the 10 yr old was more attracted to cartoon characters). With a little threat, AhBeeJie did finish up the whole Bento. Yeah !!! (I blackmailed that I won't make her another Winnie the Pooh bento if she doesn't finish everything in this Hello Kitty one)

As a side joke, my domestic helper was 'whining' as I made the bentos. Too much mess to clean up after. I hinted to her my office lunch box should look like these too and she told me she will have to wake up so early to do them that she will probably be half asleep and end up pouring washing detergent into the food.

Happenings - Week 09, 2009_Rosaryhill Games Day

2009-03-02T18:06:00.000-08:00

It was the Rosaryhill Kindergarden Games Day on 25-Mar. I recall my own games day on our primary school and they were very fun memories. It was exciting to wait for this day to join in such innocent fun again. I love seeing T's classmates and all the little children playing together.

It was not competitive at all. I guess the kids were too little to compete in sports. The school organized several stations have interactive physical games (throwing bean bags, transferring toys, etc...). Every child just did them at their own pace, no worries about how and what the team next to you is doing.

Once again, T was a little slow to warm up to the crowd and the noise, but we did manage to complete a few exercise together. By noon, the weather was too hot and both T and I were starting to feel lethagic and worn out. She practically dropped the tools on the track and walked off when she had enough of it. Poor mummy could only apologise and run after her.

We went back to the shaded podium and sat down for drinks and snacks. At this time her Japanese classmate's mummy took out an authentic Japanese kiddy bento and ooo.... what was inside was so cute. Seeing an authentic japanese kiddy bento in real life by 'real' mummy made me decided that it is something I can try to.

Happenings - Week 08, 2009

2009-03-02T17:50:00.000-08:00

Singapore airline had promotional fares and our family made a weekend trip back to Singapore (S$900 for 3 pax). T did rather well on the flight. I think she has gotten used to travelling now. She is most eager to pull her own small luggage. We put her water bottle, snacks, toys in there. This time, she asked to carry our passports helps us pass the paperwork to the counter staff at all stations. She received alot of smiles as she dragged her luggage down the aircraft aisle to our seats.

It was a very short trip, but we managed to spend some quality time with the family. We even managed to squeeze in a visit to the zoo on Sat morning. Met up with September babes Ari and Cay. Thanks Bren for taking time out to meet up.

This was T's first trip to the zoo. I think she had a wonderful time looking at all the animals. She surprised me when kept quiet on occasions and just listened out to animal sounds and asked me what they were. I didn't think she was able to be that attentive. She also asked for our camera and took some photos of tigers and leopards by herself.

Now that I have learnt how to take the bus from mum's place to the zoo, I am sure we will go again the next time we are back.

The Lost Generation

2009-02-15T23:17:00.000-08:00

This is an amazing video. We should all take a look and re-think the priorities in our life.

Happenings - Week 6 & 7, 2009

2009-02-15T21:54:00.000-08:00

We went to watch the play "The Gruffalo". Found this play quite 'abstract' as the costume was really minimal and required alot of imagination from the kids to identify the characters of the mouse, owl, Gruffalo, etc... It was a 50 min play and T started to get bored after about 30 mins, but she managed to stay seated with minimal fussing. I think she prefers watching dances. Really regret I didn't manage to get the tickets to UN Ballet's performance of Alice in Wonderland. Well, we are on the wait list. Hope someone will call soon.

AhBeeJie was doing her homework in our house one evening and had this posture and look on her face. When she left, T did her painting and replicated the same posture. Reminds us once more that we must be ever so careful what we do infront of little children.

Saw a show on TV about local Taiwanese food. They talked about a "black pepper pork bun" and it sounded so yummy. I flipped through my recipe books and found a simple recipe and had T help me make them. We made a dozen and hubby and I finished all of them over the weekend.

BFIAR - The Big Green Pocketbook, Part 2

2009-02-15T20:52:00.000-08:00

This is the lapbook and activities that we did for 'The Big Green Pocketbook'. We haven't finished all the activities yet, so we shall be adding more into this lapbook as we go along.

We had the day trip to Lamma Island and bought T her own 'pocketbook' to put her 'memories' in. Its been 2 weeks now and she still like this bag and brings it along when we go out on the weekends.

Identified the names of the things that the girl in the story had in her pocketbook. Show T what a real calendar looks like and explained its use. (but I don't think she understood).
Asked her to recall the things the girl had in her bag and let T put it into her 'paper' bag when she recalled them correctly.

Coloured scoops for ice cream and had lots of fun 'eating' them.
1. identify colours
2. count numbers
3. concept of addition and subtraction as we 'ate' the ice cream and 'refilled' the cone
4. proper manner, as we asked daddy and helper if they would like to have some ice cream

Coloured paper cut outs of a box of crayons. Tried to identify colours. T still cannot name colours. Also did these :

1. pairing the same colour
2. hide and find the crayons
3. counting the crayons

We identified some things that were green and painted them. I assisted her using the scissors to cut our the pictures and she pasted them in the book.

We can probably make a little pocket in this and continue to insert pictures of green coloured things as we find them in our daily activities.

Since there was so much green in this book, I got the idea teach T how to make green colour. We squeezed a blob for blue paint and yellow point into a ziplock bag and she squashed it all around and see how it gradually turns green (I think there was too much blue, cos our green turned out very dark)

We also went to the bank on a weekend and she got to see the bank teller counting the coins she saved.

I had the idea of bringing her to the laundrymat and asking the lady there to show her how the rotating clothes hanger works, but I haven't got round to doing that yet.

BFIAR - Jesse Bear , Lap Book

2009-02-15T19:56:00.000-08:00

Here is the lapbook we did after we completed the Jesse Bear recommended list of activities. Most of the resources were taken from "HomeSchool Share".

We cut and paste the good that Jesse bear had for his lunch. I did the cutting, T did the pasting on the paper plate. We learnt the name of the food. But T is still confused between apple and pear.

Here's the hide and seek bear bear game. We coloured the bear face together and I 'laminated' them by taping them with sticky tape cos the paper tend to get torn easily with our rough play.
Learn name of colour.
Learn counting the number of bear face.
Learn prepositions

Recall what did Jesse bear wear in the morning. Recognise red and blue colour

Introduced the letter B. T cut out pictures of things that begin with the letter B. (boat, baby, bath, bear, ball, beach, butterfly). We also sang a letter B song that she learnt from her school.

Talked about the different kinds of clothings that people wear on different weather and did some colouring and pasting.

Played dress up with paper puppet and coloured the puppet's clothings together.

Learnt some rhyming words, but I don't think she 'got' this one. It was more just naming the picture card for her. Maybe we will revisit this activity when she is a little older.

The above are the activities that we managed to do. Here are some other ideas that came to my mind but I never got around to doing them.

Go to the market and shop for the food that Jesse bear ate. This will let the child see and taste what the real food is like.
Do a print painting with the good. Eg. sprouts should give a pretty print.
T really liked the picture of Jesse bear catching the butterfly. I really wanted to do a butterfly craft with her, but just never managed to find the time to prepare the materials and do it with her.

BFIAR - The Big Green Pocketbook

2009-01-30T09:15:00.000-08:00

I think we are almost done with Jesse Bear and had to choose a second book to start. The second book in the manual was The Little Rabbit, but the story itself didn't interest me very much. I must admit that I do find it a little straining to try to be discipline and keep up the BFIAR homeschool work. In order to maintain my motivation, I needed a story that is more fun to read and play along. Therefore, I choose The Big Green Pocketbook. This story is about a little girl's day out with her mummy. T and I go out quite often. This is something that we can relate to and talk about. The girl in the story doesn't have a name, so I named her T. We enjoyed reading the book together and talked alot about her journey, all the places she visited and T was very interactive during our nightly reading sessions. I think I made the right choice to continue with this book as No. 2.

It so happened by coincident that we spotted a really cute handmade handbag in a little back alley shop on Lamma Island. I couldn't resist getting it for her. I hope her liking for this bag will last and it will be one that you can use for months (hopefully years) to come. So here is her own 'pocketbook', she happily carried it for the whole Lamma trip (as you would notice in the photos) and manage to store a few souveniours in her bag (just like the little girl in the story). We let her keep her boat ticket in the bag and I shall keep this ticket to include in her lapbook. We even visited a costume jewelry shop and she walked out with a little beaded ring (girl in story had a keychain).

Outing - Lamma Island, Hong Kong

2009-01-30T08:59:00.000-08:00

It was beautiful weather today. We slept in till after 10am and seeing the bright sunshine and clear blue sky we decided impromtu to make a day trip to Lamma Island. Its so nice to have a relaxing day, taking a boat ride, strolling on the beach, looking into small curio shops and not having to hear the hustle and bussle of the city.

Hope this good weather will last the whole weekend. Perhaps we might make another day trip to the Maipo Marshland.

I love this 2 pix of father and daughter just silently enjoying each others company.

Achievements - Reciting the sign of the cross

2009-01-30T08:03:00.000-08:00

BFIAR - Jesse Bear, What will you wear_Part 2

2009-01-28T15:50:00.000-08:00

We are taking it real slow with our BFIAR homeschool program. I find it real tough to rush home from work, squeezing in time to do some activities and trying to get T to sleep by 9pm. This week we played paper puppets and dress Jesse bear up. We later sat down and coloured the cut out clothings. We also played hide and seek the bears. We cut out some bear face prints and I hide them around the house and T goes to look for them. She learns to listen to instructions such as "on top of", "behind", "under", etc... What's more fun is when she ask me to close my eyes and she hides them for me to seek. We had a good 45 mins of giggles playing this.

Happenings - Week 04, 2009_Chinese New Year 2009

2009-01-28T15:05:00.000-08:00

We handmade some Chinese New Year cards. This time round we were more realistic and made only 10 cards for her classmated and teachers in school. I also choose a craft that required less work (less cutting and pasting). The dot dot painters that we bought during christmas came in very handy when we painted gold and silver fruits for the mandarin orange tree.

It was Chinese Cultural Week at school and that means that they have to wear a traditional chinese outfit for each day. I love having girls to play dress up with.

Happenings - WK 01, 2009

2009-01-05T02:27:00.000-08:00

One of T's favorite breakfast food is "Ma Lai Koh". Found this easy recipe from Aunty Yochana's site and we tried it out together. Yummilicious !

These days T is also able to hold a simple phone conversation. In the past, she used to turn mute once the phone is put next to her ear, but now, she is able to ask "Mummy, where are you", "Mummy, Mickey on TV". So cute. Now I can really call her from the office and hear her voice.

Montessori - Practical Life - wearing coat

2009-01-05T02:19:00.000-08:00

Learnt this trick from a Montessori book and couldn't wait to teach T how to wear her jackets by herself. Once again, she picked up the technique really quickly.

Cooking - Nine Layer Steamed Cake (Kow Teng Kueh)

2008-12-31T08:32:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-30T20:01:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-30T19:52:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-30T19:08:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-30T18:32:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-30T18:05:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-14T20:54:00.001-08:00

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

2008-12-14T20:20:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-14T20:11:00.001-08:00

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

2008-12-14T20:06:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-14T19:48:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-10T07:51:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-10T00:30:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-09T17:27:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-08T23:57:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-08T23:32:00.001-08:00

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

2008-12-08T23:06:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-08T22:45:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-08T06:46:00.000-08:00

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.

Happenings - Week 44, 2008

2008-11-02T07:24:00.001-08:00

I bought some food cutters from Japan earlier this month and used to them cut T's pancake this weekend.

We made another batch of steamed milk cupcakes on Sunday. I can see her getting more confident around the kitchen, improving her muscle coordination and eye judgement skill with all the pouring, sifting, stirring etc... I am hoping to let T try things out in the kitchen every weekend. (Not sure if I can find enough energy to persist)

This year's Halloween is alot more fun! Well... reflecting on the earlier post of excessive buying, I decided to let her wear the same costume as last year. We organised a little toddler party at the void deck with a few other kids from our block. We made Jack-O-Lantern cookies, blue berry muffin & agar agar. The other families brought some other food. We enjoyed ourselves so much and the kids were making so much noise that it attracted some other families to look down their windows and decided to come and join us too. The party only ended at 9:30pm, as it was getting too late to be noisy in public.

Happenings - Week 42 & 43, 2008

2008-10-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

I was out on business trip, so daddy was the one updating me on what T is up to.

She enjoys hanging on poles.

The geometric shapes book has become T's recent favorite game. She has learnt how to use semi-circles and quarters to assemble a complete circle.

Reflections - Excessive Shopping

2008-10-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

The last 2 years have been years of excess. We (more accurately, I) bought too much clothes, shoes, bags, hats, etc... for T. I realise that this cannot continue as it is simply too wasteful. This photo is to remind me of how overboard I have been.

More than 20 pairs of shoes in 24 months. Hey, that comes down to less then 1 pair a month. Not so bad hor...

If you are wondering what is T wearing, its her halloween costume.

Culinery - Steam Milk cupcake

2008-10-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

T practically made breakfast for us this morning. I found this really simple and healthy cupcake recipe and T made them this morning.

steam milk cake

(PS. I weigh out the ingredients, she pours into the bowl, stirs with whisk, and spoons into the cupcake mould. I then help to put into the steamer)

They are so yummilious and easy to make that we made a second batch after dinner using homemade soy milk.

Acheivements - Using scissors

2008-10-26T08:25:00.000-07:00

We bought T a set of plastic kiddy scissors for quite sometime now, but only saw her interest in using scissors recently when we spend time in the kitchen together and had to cut open bags of flour, sugar, etc.... Took this window of opportunity to teach her how to use her plastic scissor. I think it is good training for the fine motor skills and not to mention practical life skills.

It is very difficult to take good video/photo of T doing stuff, cos she gets easily distracted once I pull the camera out.

Happenings - Week 41, 2008

2008-10-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

This is the 2nd week of school. But as there are some public holidays this week, there was only 3 school days. T is not handling school so well and both she and I are kinda stressed about the situation. Will blog about it later when things hopefully take turn for the better.

On the brighter side here's what we have done at home this week :

We have progressed to play with 2 sets of Montessori cylinder blocks at the same time. I am amazed by how she tries to simplify the problem by first completing the easiest set, before moving on to work with the more difficult one.

Recently, T has a craze for Minnie Mouse. So this weekend we made Minnie cookies. She had a blast playing with the flour, dough and cookie stamps. At one point she was powdering my neck and face with flour.

It is so amazing how children learn by just observing. I wanted to teach T how to gurgle and rinse her mouth, but didn't have any idea how to show her what goes on within the closed mouth. Anyway, after 2 weeks of drinking tap water, she finally figured out how to spit out the water instead of drinking it. Here's a clip of her rinsing her mouth and washing her hands after eating.

Monterssori - Video on Early Childhood Education

2008-10-10T02:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a short clip by the AMI explaining a little about the Montessori philosopy

Useful Weblinks

2008-10-10T01:34:00.000-07:00

I realised that for the past 2 years, I had spent alot of time researching and reading up on childcare. Here is a list of some informative sites (thank God for blogs, cos I got most of them by reading other mummies' blogs)

I have not had the time to read all the sites yet, so some may be better than others, but all contain somewhat interesting and useful information.

I hope that by sharing this list here, that I can help others save time scouting around for similar information. I will try to update this list with any new finds I am lucky enough to chance upon.

Montessori Activities:
http://www.maitrilearning.com/downloads.html
http://community.webshots.com/user/madarajo >>> photo album
http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfsjy/mts/_link.htm >>> Jenny Yen’s album
http://www.montessori-materials.com/price_en.asp >>> materials made in china for retail
http://www.infomontessori.com >>> AMI guide
http://www.montessoriforeveryone.com/Cultural-Materials_ep_61-1.html
http://montessorimom.typepad.com/montessorination/
http://www.joymontessori.net/ >>> good site, Malaysian teacher, with pics and examples
http://www.pcdevelopers.com/montessori-at-home/default.aspx?c=33
http://www.michaelolaf.net/
http://members.shaw.ca/montessori4all/info.htm
http://www.mymontessorihouse.com/my_montessori_house_at_home.html
http://www.montessorimaterials.org/index.htm
http://blog.montessorimom.com/
http://www.montessori.edu/
http://www.montessoriforeveryone.com/Cultural-Materials_ep_61-1.html
http://www.montessorimom.com
http://lapazfarm.homeschooljournal.net/some-montessori-activities/

Other HomeSchool Approaches :
http://simplycharlottemason.com/
http://homeschoolinformation.com/Approaches/charlotte_mason.htm

Toddler Craft :
http://www.expertvillage.com/video-series/280_toddler-craft-activies-video.htm
http://www.free-printables.com/mini-book.pdf
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/Lapbooks_at_HSS.php
http://www.abcteach.com/directory/fun_activities/crafts/sewing_cards/
http://lapbooksbycarisa.homestead.com/TotSchool.html
http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/homeschoolfun/
http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/
http://www.mathusee.com/primer.html
http://lapbooksbycarisa.homestead.com/TotSchool.html
www.toddlertodder.com
http://www.lib01.com/bg000011.htm
http://abcteach.com/directory/basics/abc_activities/preschool_tracing_pages/
http://belladia.typepad.com/crafty_crow/
http://www.fastq.com/%7Ejbpratt/education/theme/earlychildhood.html
http://thelittlefeet.wordpress.com/
http://www.thehomelibraryonline.com
http://singaporehg.byethost13.com/
http://www.home-school.com/GetStarted.html
http://www.beginningwithbooks.org/guidelines.html >>how to choose good kids books
http://www.3moms.com/html/home.asp
http://www.expertvillage.com/video-series/280_toddler-craft-activies-video.htm
www.freekidscraft.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVPNyXJb09E
http://www.shirleys-preschool-activities.com/preschool-training.html
http://www.dltk-bible.com/
http://www.kinderkorner.com/abc.html
http://www.coloring.ws/t.asp?b=m&t=http://www.coloring.ws/abc/a-ant.gif
http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/Themes/Chicka_Chicka_Boom_Boom/index.shtml
http://www.childfun.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=66
http://mrsalphabet.com/letteroftheweek.html
http://www.preschoolexpress.com/alphabet_station.shtml
http://www.first-school.ws/activities/alpha/b/bee.htm
http://www.mrsmcgowan.com/reading/letterpoems.htm
http://www.fiarhq.com/fiarold/catalog/before.html
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/Lapbooks_at_HSS.php
http://www.fastq.com/%7Ejbpratt/education/theme/earlychildhood.html
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/how-to-draw-channel.htm

Blogs on toddlers (with activities) :
http://mommytaught.blogspot.com/
http://chiahfamily.wordpress.com/
http://lingsum.livejournal.com/
http://artfulparent.wordpress.com/
http://pilgrimparent.wordpress.com/category/activities/
http://chickadeee.blogspot.com/search/label/Art%20Projects
http://artfulparent.wordpress.com/
http://belladia.typepad.com/crafty_crow/

Phonics / Reading :
http://www.starfall.com/

Web Award

2008-10-04T23:52:00.000-07:00

This is a long overdue post.

Thank you June for giving this blog the Brillante Weblog Award. I hope the blog can continue to live up to your expectations, and I will try to come up with more ideas on childs play.

By accepting this award, I'd have to..

1. Put the logo on my blog. (done!)

2. Add a link to the person who gave me the award. >>> http://der-nen.blogspot.com/

3. Nominate 7 other blogs and add links to the blogs I nominate. (I realise by doing this so late that most of the mummies blogs I read have already been nominated. So I now resort to nominating the food blogs that I read)

4. Leave a message for my nominees on their blogs. (pending)

Useful Tips - What to put in a diaper bag

2008-10-04T22:59:00.000-07:00

Some friends have asked me what do I put in my diaper bag, so this blog is for them. My diaper may look bulky, but till now it has never failed me and I am glad that there were times I was able to offer a spare dress, some medications, shade, wind etc... to other babies.

This is what I have in it. (starting from left, and going up, down)

1. my check list, cos forgetful me will probably leave things out if I didn't have this check list

2. water bottle

3. tissue

4. wet wipes

5. toy bag

5. food bag

6. diapers

7. medication bag

8. travel first aid kit

9. clothings bag

10. handheld fan

11. plastic bag

12. baby carrier pouch

13. umbrella

Clothings Bag :

1. a long sleeve shirt / jacket, in case it gets cold

2. diaper cloth, can use as 'blanket', or clean up mess. Once I had to use it to wipe up T's vomit in a bus (very convenient)

3. underwear (now that sometimes we will go out diaperless

4. a change of clothings

5. small hand towels

Toy Bag :

1. travel doodling pad

2. stickers (absolute life saver, don't leave home without them)

3. storybook

4. MP3 player (I've loaded children songs in it so T can listen and sing along when she is bored)

5. pens / pencils

6. crayons
7. notebook, for paper to scribble/colour on

Food Bag :

1. Container holding wet face towel. Good to wipe down sticky face, body, etc...

2. Scissors, to cut up food

3. cookies

4. packet of juice

5. dried fruits

6. 2 sets of untensils (very often 1 set end up on the floor)

Medication Bag :

1. plaster

2. lip balm

3. soap to wash utensils (in case both sets drop on the floor)

4. antiseptic cream

5. sun block

6. moisturiser (calendular cream)

7. hand sanitizer (rubbing type, no need to use water)

8. insect repellent

9. comb and bands to tie hair

First Aid Kit : (we bought this pre-pack from pharmacy, though it might be good to have just in case)

1. Insect repellent wipe

2. Antiseptic wipes

3. plasters

4. bandage guaze

The remaining space in the bag will hold my wallet, handphone and camera. In the winter months, we usually have to use a bigger bag so as to put the coats inside.

The above is just my own modification. Here is a list that we copied from a baby magazine when T was just a newborn and we just kept modifying the contents to suit our own needs.

FOR WHOLE DAY TRIP :
Diapering & Clothing

6 diapers

wet wipes

tissue

changing pad

diaper cream

2 change of clothings

plastic bag for soiled items

burp cloths

2 - 3 bibs

2 - 3 face towels (1 wet in container)

blanket

hats

Feeding

pre-measured formula

bottles with water for mixing

hot water flask

bottle of plain water

jar food & spoon

packets of snacks

plastic bib

pacifier

teething rings

Toys

comfort toys

small books

Safety & Emergencies

Band aids

hand sanitizer

umbrella

common medication

cell phone

money

house keys

FOR SHORT QUICK TRIP
Diapering & Clothing

3 diapers

wet wipes

tissue

changing pad

1 change of clothings

plastic bag for soiled items

burp cloth

face towels

Feeding
pre-measured formula

bottles with water for mixing

hot water flask

bottle of plain water

jar food & spoon

packets of snacks

plastic bib

pacifier

teething rings

Safety & Emergencies
cell phone

money

house keys

Happenings - Week 40, 2008 - 1st Week of School

2008-10-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

T officially started real school this week. Somehow, this time round I am much calmer than last month. I took the whole day off on Monday to be with her. She was pretty excited and happy putting on her uniform, waiting for the bus, lining up to go to class, etc... It was at the point that the teacher took her over and closed the classroom door that she realised I will not be in the class with her and she started wailing. How my heart ached at that moment. Nevertheless, the wailing seemed to have stopped after about 15 minutes. I waited patiently in the canteen for school to finish so that I can see her again. I am glad that the teacher tells me with each passing day, T cries less. Monday was for about 15 mins, Tuesday was for about 5 mins, Wed was a public holiday and Thursday was a for about 3 mins, Friday the school was closed. The good thing is she is still willing to put on her uniform everyday and go to school. I am glad that I could take time off to be with her in school, to wait for her and to reassure her that once class is finished, mummy would be just outside the classroom waiting for her.

We ended the school week by bringing her to Disneyland on Friday.

HomeSchool - Shapes & Colours

2008-09-28T04:30:00.000-07:00

We got this book from Popular. Its great as it does the following :

teaches shapes
teaches colour
trains spatial skills

Here's T putting circles on the drawing card. I think this is also a good introduction about following dotted lines. In future I can print dotted lines pictures for her to draw on.

Homeschool - Threading Beads

2008-09-28T04:13:00.001-07:00

We've had this set of toy for quite some time now, but it is only recently that T successfully thread the beads through the needle. In the past, she really had trouble trying to coordinate her fingers to thread through with one hand and pull down the bead with the other. This is good training for the fine motor skills and coordination.

(see the new rack behind. Its really testing my endurance to see my whole living room gradually turning into a playroom)

Happenings - Week 39, 2008

2008-09-28T03:17:00.000-07:00

I think we've managed to raise a reader. I love it that now T and I can actually go browse bookshops together. I can safely leave her in the children section and go read my own stuff.

As you would see below, our little 'classroom' is getting crowded with too much toys. I noticed that it makes it difficult for T to access her books and toys when things are stacked on top of each other. Finally we ended up throwing away some more old furniture to make space to an additional shelf for T's things

Isn't it a funny sight to see a grown man riding a baby tricycle. They had loads of fun going round the house

For some reason, T is more keen to self feed when she's outside. At home, she would insist on having cartoons and will only open her mouth and not move her hands.

Happy Birthday!!! You are 2 years old

2008-09-19T09:16:00.000-07:00

Last year we planned well in advance for T's birthday. I took a whole week off work and we spent a few days in Hong Kong Disneyland. She had Mickey Mouse bringing out her birthday cake.

This year, work was very busy in the office. Initially I wanted to take the week off again to spend quality time with her. However, I have important meetings this week and cannot absent myself and had to spend the whole week preparing for the meeting instead. Thus, no time was left to spend with, nor plan for T's birthday.

I thought about making her a cake with her last night, but got off work too late. This morning my helper handmade a birthday poster and pasted in our living room. I felt guilty of not doing more as mother. This is only my second year as her mother and I am already starting to get complacent.

I was uneasy the whole morning, feeling very guilty about not making a bigger effort to do something for T's birthday. After the last of the meetings ended in the morning, I made up my mind and took the afternoon off. Rushed to the supermarket, picked up some ingredients, made some calls to invite HK grandma & grandpa, & AhBeeJie's family over for dinner to celebrate together.

Here's the birthday cake I made for T which she helped to decorate

Since we are not into throwing big parties and inviting friends over, I made some extra personalized cupcakes for T's playpals in the block and we went door to door to deliver them.

Although it was really a last minute impromtu birthday celebration, I think T really enjoyed helping to decorate the cupcakes, wearing party hat and playing with the balloons.

Dear Darling T, Thank you for choosing us to be your mummy and daddy.

Achievements - Drawing

2008-09-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

T seems to have grown very fond of doodling. Over the past week, she started to draw intentionally and will tell us what she is drawing (never mind if it actually looks like the item or not). She will say "Mummy, see... circle", "Mummy, see.... apple" , "Mummy, see... ice cream", etc....

I asked our helper to let her paint this afternoon since T did not have a chance to paint for the past week. I was nicely surprised by how 'nicely' T has started to paint. Notice the difference in the wall painting she did last month and her drawing this week. You can see that she is no longer just scribbling or brushing mindlessly, but really making out individual items (whatever they are) with care and intention.

I must make it a point to include creative art time into her new weekly routine.

Happenings - Week 38, 2008 (Back in Singapore)

2008-09-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

This has been another eventful week. We took a long weekend and went back to Singapore to visit Great Grandma & Grandma.

I was in a rush on Wed morning to get ready to go to the airport express, check in luggage, get boarding passes and head off to work. (Hong Kong has a city check in facility which is just next to my office where one can check in their luggages, get their boarding passes and not have to worry about anything else except make it to the gate by boarding time. I usually check in my luggage in the morning, and go back to work before taking the night flight back to Singapore)
T woke up as I was taking my breakfast. I told her nicely that mummy's busy and in a rush this morning, so she needs to go brush teeth and wash face by herself. We need to hurry up to go to the airport express station. Surprising, she replied "OK" and walked to the bathroom, took her stool, got up next to the sink and really took out her toothbrush to brush her teeth with water (she haven't learnt how to squeeze her toothpaste). I watched her silently from behind and didn't want to distract her, so I didn't take a photo/video of this.

This is the first time T will get her own seat on the flight, she is no longer considered an infant. We got her her own pull along luggage for this trip. She was very happy to be responsible for her own hand luggage and pulled it by herself all the way in the airport and even down the aisle in the plane to her seat. It was a good way to keep her occupied and not ask us to carry her.

Wed
- T pulling her own luggage at the airport

- enjoying her fries while waiting to board at the gate

Thu
- the new statue of liberty?? (or plea for aircon or at least the fan pls after shower to keep cool and dry....)

Fri
- initially we planned to go to the zoo on Friday with some other Sep '06 mums and babes, but was rained in instead. Bren was nice enough to offer us to meet up at her place instead. Here's T, Arianne & Sophie playing peekaboo on the sofa. Its really nice to see how Sophie and Arianne plays with each other. Hope T can join more of such gatherings in the future.

- T & A drawing

- We planned a very relaxed schedule this trip, mainly meeting friends in the morning, visiting Great Grandma in the late afternoons, and back home to get ready for bed by 9pm. This allowed us time to take buses and MRT instead of always relying on taxi (not to mention that taxi fare in Singapore is really getting expensive)

Sat
- we visited great grandma every afternoon, thank you to all the lovely sisters and volunteers who take care of the aged there. It is also heartwarming to see the joy that little T (or any other child for that matter) brings to these lonely old people by tiny actions, such as shaking their hands, waving hi, blowing out a flying kiss, etc... It really got me thinking about bring T to do volunteer work when she is a little older and immune system is stronger.

Sun
- Grandma was busy the whole of this week helping out with the fund raising at church. T joined her on Sunday at the street stall to sell handphone ornaments.

- read so much about Fidgets from the blogs of other mummies. Finally made a trip down there this afternoon. I found some of the slides rather scary (too high and fast for me), but apparently T thought nothing of them and after 1 try out with me carry her, she just went off and repeated by herself

Mon
- our flight back got cancelled and UA put us on Thai airline with a 1 hour stopover in Bangkok instead. So we ended up having authentic Thai food in Bangkok for lunch.

- T was getting better and better at pulling her luggage along, I will highly recommend parents travelling with toddlers to get them their own hand luggage as it helped me to keep her walking orderly and out of mischeive in the airport

- thanks you hubby for patiently joining us in all the 'boring' visits during this trip

2008-09-06T23:05:00.000-07:00

Little T attented real school on Tues & Wed this week. Daddy was the one who accompanied her as I was away on a business trip. These 2 days left us with alot to think about.

T has been mostly a well behaved child. We adopt the Montessori approach at home, so we don't have many noisy toys and T rarely throws tantrums or scream. Her toys are well organized and she has now learnt that she neats to tidy up after she plays. We are really blessed with a well behaved child.

However, the noise in school this week seems to have made T a little uneasy. Don't get me wrong. Some parent have commented that perhaps we don't let T mix with other kids enough, but I don't think that is the cause. T already attends playgroup 3 times a week, but the ambience is also well managed thanks to the tight control of the teacher and she totally enjoys playing with the kids there.

From what Daddy has described to me, some of the kids in school seems to be less under control. Kids crying and screaming, some parents shouting at children. Toys being thrown around. Daddy said there was one child pinching and poking T and the child's mother just stood and watched. Daddy had no choice but to pull the child's hand away from T. I think T's personality is just more docile. She is used to a calm environment and prefers having one to one or small group conversation rather than vying for attention by been loud and rowdy.

We are having second thoughts about whether we should let T be more rowdy too? Allow her to throw tantrums and throw her toys about? Teach her how to 'fight' with others?

But observing her the past 2 years, I don't think this is her personality. She is warm and affectionate to people she knows well. She is a little more wary and cautious of strangers. But isn't it the same with us adults. I have no doubt about her intelligence. She may not be academically inclined, but she definately learns skills at an amazing pace. We have been so happy with having a child like her, so calm, mature and reasonable. So innocent yet cheeky. So understanding of our feelings, knowing when to and not to do things. I can walk the pavement with her without holding hands and won't have to worry about her running into the street. She cleans up after her own spills and puts her own dirty laundry into the laundry basket.

Do we really have to 'change' her to behave like the other kids so that she won't be labelled as 'anti social' and 'slow' ?

I recall when reading the 'The Absorbent Mind' written by 'Maria Montessori', that it was commented that most visitors were surprised by how quiet, calm and organized the children in the Montessori school was. It is surprising that after so many years, some people still find it strange to see such a young child that is calm and quiet. Someone even told me that this is unnatural and that perhaps we are too strict with her.

I hope I have made the right choice by bringing up my child the Montessori way.

Happening - Week 36, 2008 (Induction Day at School)

2008-09-06T22:37:00.000-07:00

2 & 3 Sep was the induction days for the pre-nursery class of 08 / 09 school year. It is with deepest regret that I cannot attend these with T due to work commitment. This is something that I will regret for the rest of my life.