Snake and Ladder Game

I have been searching high and low for this floor puzzle ever since I saw it in this mummy blog.  And a few days ago, Lucas Mummy told me that she saw it at Sembawang Shopping Centre, so I rushed down to get it that night. :P

My boys were so excited when I took out this huge floor puzzle of Snake and Ladder. So me and Javier quickly fixed up the puzzle and start our game. All was going well when it was only me and Javier playing it. But later when Jayden join in our game, a mini war started…..he was very upset when we threw a bigger number than him and throw tantrum. Javier likes this game alot. But sometime I am very unwilling to play with the 2 of them. As I know both of them will fight and both of them wants to win. So I explained to Jayden about ‘sportsmanship’, and he seems much calmer after that when any of us reach the finishing point.Jayden throwing the die.

Bombay Toast

Bombay Toast?? Does it sound familiar to you? This is one of the dish which I learned during my home economic class during my secondary school days. Till now, I can still remembered it very clearly and I like preparing it for our breakfast. It is a very easy to and quick dish to prepare. Javier enjoying the toast. He is not a bread person, normally he can’t even finished 1 slice of bread spread with peanut butter. But he like this toast alot, and can eat 2 pieces.

The recipe is very very simple as follow:

Ingredients:

1)  Eggs

2)  Sugar

3)  Bread

Method:

1)  Beat the egg and stir it some sugar (the amount of sugar added depend of how sweet you want the dish to be)

2)  Coat the bread with the egg solution

3)  Heat up some oil, pan fried the egg coated bread

4)  Enjoy

Charity Dinner for the Old Folks

After a simple cake cutting at my brother’s place, we went downstairs for the dinner held at the function hall. Beside eating, there were great entertainment of songs sung.

We sing a song and he blow the candles…..

After having alot of fun playing in Go Go Bambini, we went to my brother place to clean up the kids follow by a cake cutting.Jayden and Glenda discussing about the cake, about which power ranger they like. :)

Fun at Go Go Bambini

Since today is Jayden birthday, we decided to bring my boys to GoGo Bambini for some fun activities. And I asked my nieces along to make it more fun for the 4 kids to play togather.

Located at Dempsey Road, Go Go Bambini have Singapore’s tallest indoor slide in their unique playscape which includes a flying fox, ballpits, tunnels, climbing walls and interactive panels. They use jungle theme and bright colours to make a vibrant and fun environment for kids to enjoy play and parties. (There were a total of 3 group of parties going on today) which resulted in an over-crowded playground.

Nevertheless, the kids have a really fun and enjoyable time there.The cute climbing walls make up of jungle animals.

A simple and sweet birthday celebration in Icreative

Well, it is not really not a birthday celebration as I did not prepare any cake or food. I just prepared some goodies bag for the kids and the teachers. But Teacher Jovin was so sweet to gather all the kids to sing a birthday song(actually it is 2 birthday song.. one in English and one in Chinese) for Jayden. Jayden and his Icreative classmates, of course not forgetting Javier and Gladys. Singing the birthday song and holding the goodies bag. :)

Javier and his JIE JIE

Javier loves Saturday and really look forward to it every week. You must be wondering why??? Because she can meet up with his cousin Gladys. He adore her, every time when we go out togather, he would sure be asking me “where is yu en jie jie” and when he finally see her, he would follow her everywhere. :)  A vey sweet picture of the 2 of them.

Jayden 5th Birthday Celebration in school

Finally the day is here… Jayden has been waiting for this day till he almost become a giraffe (wait until neck long already.. :P) Of course the dinosaur design cake was chosen by himself.

When we reached the class, the kids were just queuing up to go washroom for hand washing before their snack time. So we started setting up the cake and all the other barang barang. And of course, Javier was really excited to be here celebrating Jayden’s Birthday. He sat there waiting for the mini celebration to start. :)

Javier taking a picture with the cake.

3 Parts card

So what is 3 parts card? To make 3 part cards, you need to have 2 sets of cards, the first is a picture with a label the second is the same picture but the label is cut off to make 2 cards. They can be used in a variety of ways. What I did with Javier was:

1)  Put the 6 master or control cards (the ones with pictures and labels) on one side, on the other side, randomly put the other picture cards with the label cards on the other side of the area.

2)  I took one master card,  and tell Javier what it is.

3)  Next I would say to him “can you find a picture like this?” Javier finds the matching picture, put it below or next to the master card.

4)  Point to the label, sound it out and then read it clearly, and ask, “Can you find the word for this picture?” and Javier would find the label and puts the word below the picture.

5)  Continue with the other cards.

Initially when we first do this activity, Javier need helps to find the label to match the cards. After trying for 2 times, he can do it by himself. Under the sea 3 parts card

Jayden Birthday preparation….

Speaking of Birthday… Jayden is just a few days away from his 5th Birthday. This year we decided to have just a very simple celebration at home, whereby we would only get a cake, instead of the yearly ordering of buffet.

So what about his school celebration??? All kids look forward to the school celebration! And so do Jayden!!!! So I decided to make a little more effort in Jayden school celebration as this is the 1st time that Jayden is celebrating in Hope Kindy, he was all excited about it. Beside getting a cake from Prima Deli, I have also prepare goodies bag filled with home-make cookies.

And I am so glad that my SIL can come over to help me with the cookies baking! :) It was quite tiring and took us almost 3hrs plus to complete the task of baking 100 cookies.

Homeschooling week 25th & 26th (Part II)

Let’s Learn Maths - We did a few activities to re-inforce on the number recognition.

Activity 1 : Numbers Matching GameJavier is able to count the number of object and relate to the number now. (but sometime he still need some assistance from me)

Homeschooling week 25th & 26th (11-24 October 2010)

Since this is a very long post, I decided to split into 2 parts to shorten the lengthy post. Sometimes I get very lazy to update our homeschooling progress, as I need to edit so many pictures and trying to recall the detail to include in the post. Nevertheless, here is what we did for the past 2 weeks.

Homecooked Dinner 26.10.10

This is our dinner for tonight. It is quite simple to prepare, as the Stew dish and the soup were cooked earlier in the afternoon. For the egg and the soup dish, I got the idea from a food blog, just that I omit some of the ingredients from the original recipe.

Colour and Shape Sorting

Javier received a Colored Assembly building block from his preschool during Children’s Day. This toy have been sitting in a corner of the house collecting dust until tonight!!!… Javier took it out and decided to make some good use of it. Actually I find that this is a good toy to teach the kids about colour and shape and also not forgetting fine motor skill. Javier was very patient and concentrate fully in completing the task of sorting the different colour pieces into the respective coloured pole.

Our Homecooked Dinner 25.10.2010

Its seemed quite sometime since the last post of my homecooked food. Well, I decided to write a post on tonight dinner because I would like to share one of the NEW dish which I have cooked.As usual, vegetables is not one of Jayden favourite dish. But at least I am seeing a big improvement in Javier’s diet. He is more willing to eat vegetables and fish now.

Our dinner @ Happy Kampong Seafood

It was a last minute decision to have a dinner with my hubby family. As usual, we are late for our dinner appointment.

We frequent this place quite often and it really serve good food.  Happy Kampong Seafood is located in a coffee shop somewhere near the road junction of 81 Jalan Malu-Malu where they are a lot of terrace/semi-detached house.

During Weekends, the place is always packed with food diners. I liked it here as the food is nice, the service is good and most of all, there is tanks and tanks of fishes, crab, lobsters… to keep my boys occupied.

Singapore Science Centre

Our Sunday Part II .. ok… here it goes….As soon as we arrived at Singapore Science Centre, the boys were immediately attracted by the huge moving dinosaur. Who wouldn’t? Alot of visitors were busy snapping pictures with the dinosaurs while kids were fascinated by it.

We spent a good 10mins just letting the kids standing there looking at the dinosaur. Javier was telling me he is scared of it, yet he is moving nearer and nearer to it as times ticked by. :P

Our Sunday goes like that (Part I)

The unbearable heat and the really bad haze make us drop all the plan of going outdoor activities. So after cracking my brain of any fun places, I decided to bring them to Singapore Science Centre since they have never been there before.

But before we pop by there, we decided to have our lunch at a food center at lakeside. I reckon it must be quite a popular food center, it was so crowded and we have to wait almost 10mins to get a table.

While my boys went exploring nearby, they ran back and told me they found a pineapple plant. I was asking them ‘are you sure?”

And here it is, the mini pineapple plant. It is so mini and cute… it is the first time I see such mini pineapple.

Magnetic Alphabet Activity

This activity is one of the boys favourite. I have draw outline of the letters on a drawing paper, Javier like to put the magnetic alphabet on it. Recently I make use of this magnetic alphabet to teach Javier words.

Learning colour in mandarin

Since we are on the theme of Rainbow for these 2 weeks. I introduced some Chinese word for colour to Javier. Beside that, we also did some hand stamping on the different colour sheet. After stamping a few colours, he refused to lend me his hand anymore. :P So I just painted the colour on the colour sheet while he looked on. After showing him the word cards for a few times, he was able to pick out the right card (most of the time) for the individual colour sheet when I presented him with 2 word cards to choose.

Taekwondo 5th Lesson

Jayden is still deeply in love with his Taekwondo Lesson, he would not miss it for anything. Today I decided to bring a coloring book to keep Javier occupied, so that he won’t be running all over the place. While I can take some rest sitting down.

And I think I make the right decision, at least it keep him occupied for a good 30mins. Javier and a little boy doing the colouring.

Our Lunch @ Swensen Northpoint

After the concert, we make our way to Northpoint Shopping Centre for our lunch at Swensen. We seems to order too much today.. I was so full after the meal and feeling so sleepy.Drink was served first, and of course the boys cannot wait to drink it.

Hope Kindergarten Concert 2010 – Our Colourful World

Finally our wait is over… today is the day of the Kindy Concert. :)When we reached there at 9.20am, the concert hall was already very packed. So we din managed to get a place to sit on the ground floor, so we got to make do with the seats on level 2. Nevertheless, the view was still very good!

Javier New Found Interest

Recently, Javier seems to have found a new way of passing his time… which is coloring. Perhaps it is due to the influence by Jayden, he loves coloring now. Whenever he is free, he would digged out his color pencil and book.

Rice for Scooping

It has been some time that we did this activity… so I decided to let Javier have a go today. Actually he was feeling very cranky as I did not let him watch his DVD, but I managed to divert his attention to this activity. Soon he was enjoying his rice scooping, and totally forgot about wanting to watch TV. Materials needed: Rice, Scoop, Ice cube Tray.

你留意过你的父母吗？

在Facebook读了这篇文章，觉得非常感人。所以决定跟大家分享。。。

如果你在一个平凡的家庭长大，如果你的父母还健在，不管你有没有和他们同住——

如果有一天，你发现妈妈的厨房不再像以前那么干净；
如果有一天，你发现家中的碗筷好象没洗干净；
如果有一天，你发现母亲的锅子不再雪亮；
如果有一天，你发现父亲的花草树木已渐荒废；
如果有一天，你发现家中的地板衣柜经常沾满灰尘；
如果有一天，你发现母亲煮的菜太咸太难吃；
如果有一天，你发现父母经常忘记关瓦斯；
如果有一天，你发现老父老母的一些习惯不再是习惯时，就像他们不再想要天天洗澡时；
如果有一天，你发现父母不再爱吃青脆的蔬果；
如果有一天，你发现父母爱吃煮得烂烂的菜；
如果有一天，你发现父母喜欢吃稀饭；
如果有一天，你发现他们过马路行动反应都慢了；
如果有一天，你发现在吃饭时间他们老是咳个不停，千万别误以为他们感冒或着凉，(那是吞咽神经老化的现象) ；
如果有一天，你发觉他们不再爱出门……
如果有这么一天，我要告诉你，你要警觉父母真的已经老了，器官已经退化到需要别人照料了。如果你不能照料，请你替他们找人照料，并请你请你千万千万要常常探望，不要让他们觉得被遗弃了。

Chye Lye Restaurant Fish Head Curry

Chye Lye restaurant located across the Road from Sembawang shopping centre serves great fish head curry.

When we arrived at around 7:30pm, the place was still quite crowded. We ordered a fish head curry and Spare Rib (排骨王). The serving was quite small, should have order another dish. After placing order, we realise that the roast chicken is a very popular dish, almost every table have it. The food is ok, if you like fish head curry, can give this place a try!

Colour Pattern

I have found a more interesting way to teach Javier about colour patterning. He is not very good at it yet, I got to give him some hint when he is doing it. But at least he is showing interest in it as he can actually placed the lego pieces onto the board. :) We did 4 sets of pattern for our 1st Lego patterning session.. I don’t want to overwhelm him too much. While doing this math activity with him, he is also sharpening his fine motor skills as he need to grasp the small Lego pieces and slot in into the board.

Fun and Sushi!!!

Seems like we are travelling across the causeway quite often for these few weeks. :P I like to bring the kids to JB Jusco as there is a indoor playground in the shopping itself. Me and D would take turns looking after the kids while we take turns to shop around.

We have our dinner at Sushi King before we bring the kids to the playground. The food was not fantastic but anyway we managed to filled up our stomach with all the sushi!

Javier @ 32 months

Reading: I am glad to see that he is so in love with reading now.

Social and Emotional Development: He still says he doesn’t want to go to school every morning. When I asked him why? He would still answer me ‘no need’. ????? But when we reached his school, he will happily run in himself and waved goodbye to us. ?????

Another thing surprise me is that he knows almost all his classmate name, but not his 2 teachers’ name. Hmmmm… let me wondering… did he purposely tell me the wrong teacher’s name?????

K1 Maths Question?

Hmmm.. I was figuring and pondering whether this is really a question that a 5 year old kid can solve by himself. Is this type of question a norm for K1???

Nevertheless I did tried to explain to Jayden how to solve the problem… but he seems to have question marks all over his face?????? I guess I got to try harder… :(

Btw this question was taken from his K1 math homework.

Atlantis City Indoor Playground

Nowadays the weather is getting so hot… I really cannot imagine going to any places with no aircon. We wanted to bring the kids to some place which is fun and yet cooling. So we decided to bring them to the indoor playground, Atlantis City at Delta Sports Complex.

Playground and more Playground!!!!

It was truly a day of playground… after my boys woke up from the nap. We brought them to the playground near our place. (You see, both my boys have abundant of energy.. in order for us to have a peaceful night making sure that they sleep early.. the solution is PLAYGROUND!)

Berries 1st Test

Jayden took his 1st Chinese test at Berries last Thursday. It was a surprise test, so no preparation was done. And I am really proud that Jayden did quite well for the test.

Update of Reading Progress

Currently Jayden is still reading book 11a, but he is almost completing this book. This is certainly a long journey since we started reading this series, but I am glad I started this reading program with him. :)

Impromptu Play date with Lucas

It was a last minute decision to pop by my messy place for a play date. :P  I really enjoyed seeing the kids playing together. Lucas is such a demure boy as compared to Javier who is so rough!!!. But nevertheless, the 2 of them play well together. :)The 2 of them were busy zooming around the house in the kiddy cars.  

Just an normal afternoon

After doing some homeschooling with Javier, since we still have some time before we pick Jayden. I brought Javier to the park opposite our place. He was so excited to see the sandy playground, but I din let him play there as our time is quite limited, and playing there would get him very messy!!!!

So we proceed to the other part of the playground instead. And over here, Javier was busy climbing and sitting on top of all the hippos.

We went JB again!

Yes, we went JB again…. but this time with my 2 little monkeys. Actually my main purpose is to go to the City Square Popular to get a series of Chinese story books. (Arrrgg… I realize that I miss one book…book 8!!!!) This set of books uses the same technique as Peter and Jane book to teach Chinese. Thus I was planning to use it to teach Javier Chinese. I also managed to get a step by step drawing book to teach the boys how to draw animals (This book was a hit with them!)

Water Play @ Water-Venture

It was a well hidden place from the bustling city…. It wasn’t until that I read from a mummy blog did I know about this place.

Firstly, the place was not crowded even on weekends, we have the water play area almost all to ourselves until another family joined us. :) The place was big, ample of space for my boys to run and burnt off their energy. Just that we reached there at the peak of the hot hot sun at 12pm.. but my boys did not mind one bit. Soon they were dashing to the water even before changing to their swimsuit.

Ikea Smaland

Hmmm… Whenever I sees so many kids queuing to get into this place, I would ponder and wonder… it must be fun inside since it is so popular with all the kids. All the while, my boys did not have a chance to go in, as Javier is too short… and Jayden refuse to go in by himself…. But not anymore! Javier is tall enough now!!!!!

So when my niece told me they would be popping by Alexandra Ikea Smaland. I was very eager to tag along. And I was right… Jayden was having a ball of time chasing and running with my nieces and other kids. He was practicing his taekwondo kicks inside as well.. which I warned him using my stare! :P to stop this act!

Little Javier was sobbing away when he went inside. Both my nieces were trying to pacify him and bringing him to play and even carry him to stop his crying. But I guess he was too scared to play since I am not allowed to accompany him inside. So he was ‘out’ within 5 mins he went in. :P

Sembawang Shopping Centre

After the school Orientation, we went to Sembawang Shopping Centre for our lunch before sending Jayden to his Icreative class. We have our meal at Wan Chai Hong Kong Tea Room.

Javier Pre-Nursery School Orientation

Javier would be going to another new school from next year, and hopefully he can attend this school all the way till K2. Judging from the conversation with the teachers and principal, and the materials and information of their Year 2010 event activities and curriculum, I am quite impressed by it. (And I hope that my decision to switch Javier to this school is right)

Some of the events and activities which took place this year are Bless and share Session where they invited the parents to the school to celebrate Mothers’ and Fathers’ Day together with the kids.(Engaged in the activities together enhanced family Bonding and strengthened the parent-teacher Relationship) Other events include Racial Harmony Day, National Day, Sports’ Day. Excursion is quite frequent with 1-2 trips per term.

For per nursery activities, it is as below:

• Story Time
• Reading Time
• Outdoor activities (Sand Play, Water Play, Outdoor Sheltered Playground, Art and Craft)
• Indoor Mini Gym
• Integrated Learning activities
• Directed activities
• Music and Movement
• Large and small group activities
• Chinese Class

Teacher Student Ratio: 8 : 2 (one teacher and One assistant)

The main worry for me at this moment is the transportation. I am quite confirmed that I would be letting Javier take school bus to school. But knowing that he will surely cry his heart out If I let him board the bus himself without me going with him. I really cannot imagine when that day comes… :( I constantly feel that I am being so cruel to him to let him take the school bus to school at such a tender age.

I am still cracking my brain over this problem…..:(

Homeschooling – 24th Week (23-29 August 2010)

This is a very long overdue post.. so long so that I have forgotten what I did with Javier. :P But I will briefly update it in this post on what we did for Letter Q.

Taekwondo Lesson

Today is the 3rd lesson. Jayden enjoys it so much that he wouldn’t miss it for anything. Even when he is feeling unwell, he will insists that he is fine just so that he can go for the class. And from Monday he would start asking me when is the next Taekwondo class. So you can see how badly he is looking forward to it! :)

The class would start with warm up, follow by splitting into different group based on the level and start the practice.The sprint after the warm up exercise. Jayden was like in a dreamland as all the kids were busy running. I simply cannot stand him and give him the eye signal and ask him to get ready to run! :(