HomeSchool - Paper Puppets dress up

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

Thank You Rosaryhill Teachers

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

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.

My First Portrait

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.

HomeSchool - Sticker Book

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.

Happenings - Week 6 & 7, 2009

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.

HomeSchool - Christmas Activities

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

HomeSchool - cut and paste shapes

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

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

Achievements - Drawing

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.

HomeSchool - Wall Painting

Inspired by Ling and the artwork that she let's Sophie do (another Sep '06 baby), I gathered the courage and let T try out wall painting. She and AhBeeJie had great fun painting on our bathroom walls. I am still undecided if I should leave the 'creation' on for a whole week before showering it off and starting all over again.

This is another activity that I would highly recommend mums to try out with their toddlers. It can keep them occupied for 30 - 45 mins, the mess is confined to the bathroom and its really easy to just use the shower to wash the paint off the walls and give the child a bath at the same time.