Boosting your kids immunity - Part II

SMALL FAN has been having running nose and cough, on and off for the past 3 months. Getting really tired of feeding him western drugs, especially antibiotic. So, today, we brought him to see a Chinese Physician at Serangoon Gardens. Doc say his lung is weak and body is more "cold", so need to take herbs to built up his lung and immunity. Do you know how much his herbs and medicine cost? $1300.... Can't believe it right? Let's hope he will get cure after taking these expensive drugs which is suppose to be consume everyday for 3 months....sigh....raising kids is getting so expensive nowadays....

Teaching SMALL FAN to read - Part II

Managed to think of a way to visually show SMALL FAN how to blend a word, see picture below.

As SMALL FAN is a very active kid, I can hardly get him to sit still to teach him, so what I did was to quietly paste the NEW WORD on the wall when he is in school or when he is taking his afternoon nap. When he wakes up, he will notice this new word on the wall and he will start asking me what is that? Then I will tell him, it's "U"......."P", "U"..."P, "U"."P", "UP". I think he still can't really see that "UP" form a word, but when I ask him, where is UP? He will tell me "U" & "P", "U" & "P". So he knows that "UP" is made up of "U" & "P"...so do you think it work? I'm hoping to introduce him to 3 letter words next week to see if he can get it...mmm...getting ambitious.

SMALL FAN celebrates National Day

SMALL FAN singing Happy Birthday to Singapore as the FANs celebrated Singapore's 43rd Birthday

Teaching SMALL FAN to read

Borrowed a book, Teaching Your Child to Read in just 10 minutes a Day by Sidney Ledson, from the National Library and got really motivated by it.. The books say you can teach a child from 2 years old onwards to read in less then 60 days. Thought I could make myself proud if I'm able to teach SMALL FAN to read. So, after reading the book, I diligently prepared all the necessary materials, practice pronuncing some of the letters and started SMALL FAN on the journey of reading.

This is basically what I did based on what is suggested by the book, although I modified a bit to suit my boy:

Day 1

* Print a letter "U" in an A4, using Arial Bold Font.

* I then made a dot to dot (from no. 1 to 10) of a letter "U" (modified it, original version just need the kid to trace their finger on the printed letter)

* Start teaching him the letter "U", not "You" but "Urg" as in "UP".

* Then I get SMALL FAN to trace the dot to dot of the letter "U".

* Then I paste both letter on the wall.

Verdict: SMALL FAN was really excited about the dot to dot, tracing it whenever he feels like it.

Day 2

* Did the same for letter "P"

* Then I made a play board (suggested by the book), see picture attached.

* I start teaching him to blend the letter "U" & "P" to made up the word "UP". Then I played the board game with him. I put jelly beans in each of the small cupcakes container and everytime he read the word correctly, he got a jelly bean. SMALL FAN was really excited about the jelly beans and diligent read the words.

Verdict: Hey...this seams to work, he likes it.

Day 3

* Taught SMALL FAN the letter "C" and then try to teach him to read "CUP".

Verdict: SMALL FAN was so excited about what coloured jelly beans to eat that he totally lost interest in the game as he can't wait to eat the sweet. So, the whole game became, what coloured sweet to eat.

Day 4 onwards (about 2 months now)

* Taught him more letters using the same tracing method. He can now recognise and know the sound of the following letters : A, B, C, U, P, O, T, G, I, H, R

* Give up on the board game as I have to struggle keeping his hand off the jelly beans and he can't seems to see the trick in blending the words.

Final Verdict of the method: Was successful in teaching him the letters and he still enjoy tracing the dot to dot and counting as he goes but blending words proof to be too difficult for him at the moment. So now, I'm stucked as I'm not sure if I should continue teaching him how to blend words as it doesn't make sense to him. Now, I'm reading up more from the internet on the proper way to teach blending....sigh.....looks like a proud mothers attempt has failed...

SMALL FAN's room is now full of alphabets....ha ha

Service Review - Tingkat Dinner

With 2 kids to take care of, I'm subcontracting my dinner to the home delivery company. I'm currently eating Tingkat Dinner from Kim's Kitchen. The food is quite tasty and the portion is quite good size and their soup taste good too.

Here's some of the other tingkat caterers that I had compiled with the recommendations and complaints I gathered from forums:

* House of Catering - no MSG, less salt and oil. But quite a no. of mums from Singapore Motherhood(SM) commented that the food is lousy, soup taste bland although one mom says she like it as it's not too salty - $195 for 2 pax for 20 days, unlimited cancellation

* Four Seasons - no MSG, less salt and oil. One mom claims that the portion is pathetic - $200 for 2 pax for 20 days w max 2 days replacement. I have tried their catering myself and I agree with the mom, the portion is really pathetic and the soup taste the same every day even though it's suppose to be different. I think they cook the soup with the same base and then just add the ingredients at the last minute.

* Neo Garden - less salt and oil but got little MSG. Quite a no. of mums from SM says their portion, normally the 4th dish are quite pathetic. - $190 for 2 pax for 20 days, max 2 day refund

* Buffet Paradize - less salt and oil but got MSG. A few mums for BayB Supplies (BS) recommended them - $200 for 2 pax for 20 days, unlimted meal replacement

* Le Xin - no MSG, less salt and less oil. Vegetable dishes limited and soup taste bland - $195 for 2 pax for 20 days, unlimited days of cancellation

* Kim's Kitchen - Got MSG. Quite a no of mums from BS recommended their service. - $170 for 2 pax for 20 days. I'm currently using them, the food portion is quite good, food is tasty but I don't feel thristy after eating. However, one thing I don't like is they delivery the food quite late, around 6.45pm to 7pm.

* Mei Hao - less salt and oil. One mom in SM using them, found the food not bad. - $180 for 2 pax for 20 days.

* Jia Le (used to be Redleaf) - less salt, less cholesterol, less MSG. One mom in BS using them, found their food not bad. - $170 for 2 pax for 20 days.

* Jessie Catering - less salt and oil, but got MSG. So far reviews for them seems quite good. - $160 for 2 pax for 20 days

* YLS - less salt, oil and MSG. - $180 for 2 pax for 20 days with max 2 days refund.

While searching for tingkat service, stumble upon this interesting services provided by Mealstations. They actually prepare the ingredients for you (that is, chop the carrot, cut the meat etc..) and give you the recipe, so you just need to cook. Quite cool, right? But the cons is that you need to go to their place to cook.

Cool Websites to entertain your kids

Was looking at websites to see if there is any interesting activities I can do with SMALL FAN or keep him entertained at home and stumble upon these cools sites.

Family Fun.com (http://familyfun.go.com/printables) - have quite a lot of printables maze and puzzle for you to print and play with
Printables for kids (http://printables4kids.com) - have quite a lot of printables maze and puzzle for you to print and play with
KABOOSE (http://resources.kaboose.com)- lots of printables activities as well as online games for kids and even for moms
Making Learning Fun (http://www.makinglearningfun.com) - themetic activities from drawing to art & craft that you can print and do with your kids, I have made quite a lot of trucks and cars with SMALL FAN from this website.

For those who are keen on bible related activities, can check on this website:
Danielle's Place (http://www.daniellesplace.com/html/games.html#)

Book Review - Teach Your Child to Read in Just Ten Minutes a Day by Sidney Ledson

Read this book and thought it was quite an easy to read book and the author make it sound so easy to teach your child to read using a systematic phonetic approach. I'm really motivated to get my hands in teaching my boy after reading it.

Look out for my blog post to find out it the method works for my boy or not.

Breasting Woes

'm currently totally breast feeding my little Baby FAN, been trying to get her to drink expressed milk from a bottle but without much success. So, have been reading up forums to find out how other mothers deal with this issue. I'm surprise that a lot of mothers who have followed the lactation consultant's advise to fully breastfeed the baby for the first month faced this issue of having the baby reject the bottle after that. So, my advise for new mom to be, that unless you intend to look after the baby yourself and be stuck with her for who knows how long, introduce your baby to the bottle as soon as you can. Don't worry about nipple confusion, they are smarter then you thing, they know what to choose. The only thing is that you have to dilligently pump your milk every 2 to 3 hours to keep the supply going.

Now with Baby FAN latching on, I can't seems to go anywhere without her for too long. I will need to watch the clock when I go for my grocery shopping, will need to rush back in 3 hours time so that my Baby FAN won't get hungry....sigh....I'm still trying hard to get her use to the bottle as I'm planning to bring SMALL FAN for an oversea trip and don't intend to bring Baby FAN as she is still too small....so please pray for me that Baby FAN learnt how to drink from a bottle soon....sigh.....

By the way, for moms out there like me, here are some suggestions that I gathered from mums from forums on how they get their baby to drink from the bottle:

• Go Cold Turkey - staff the baby for a few hours and then offer her the bottle when she is really hungry
• Mom, Get Out! - Get yourself out of the house and have someone else fed your baby, as they can smell you from miles away, so you need to be out of sight so that the baby knows she got nothing else to drink if she refuse the bottle
• Sleepy time - breastfed the baby, when she is drowsy and sleepy, switch to milk bottle, slowly shorten the breastfeeding time
• Shake Baby Shake - sit on a bouncing ball or shake the baby with your leg when bottle feeding her, I think the shaking is suppose to distract her
• Sit up or Face front - face the baby forward or sit her up so she can't see who is feeding her
• Playtime - let her play with the bottle so as to get her familiar with it
• Others - feed her with a spoon, try introducing her to a drink cup