Entertaining your kids with household chores

Was reading a book about getting your kids to help you with your household chores and felt that I should be doing that now since SMALL FAN is getting better at listening instructions. So today, SMALL FAN give me a good idea to get him to help me with the chores, he say that he wanted to clean his cars (actually he just wanted to play with water).

This got me thinking, since he wants to clean his car, I might as well get him to clean up his toys, it has been a while since I last clean it. So I got a pail, pour it with the soapy water that I use to bathe him(trying to save water), give me a cloth and ask him to wash his toys and dry it with a cloth.

Meanwhile, I got some free time to mop the floor. It kept him occupied for a whole half-hour. After that, I have to stop him as he started to play with the water instead of washing the toys. By then, I have finish mopping the floor except for the area that he was playing in. What a good way to keep SMALL FAN occupied, give myself some time to do some chores and get him to help me do chores...

Will be thinking of others chores that I can start giving him... :)

By the way, here's what you need to get him cleaning his toys:

• a pail of soapy water
• a small towel to dry the toys
• a floor mat to absorb all the spills
• lots of washable toys
  

A Visit to Hort Park

Brought SMALL FAN to Hort Park for our morning walk last Sunday. It's quite a nice place, got a lot of flowers and water features with special themes to see. SMALL FAN likes to look at those water fountains and the small caterpillar-like insects crawling on the ground. It's a nice relaxing walk although I would recommend that you go there really early as it gets really hot after 10am since there is not much big trees to keep you sheltered.

Main Entrance area:


Playground:


Special Theme Corners:




Plant Sale Area:

Christmas Cookies

Tried making some healthy cookies to see if I can use this recipes again for Christmas. The cookies tasted really good but somehow I think I put too much eggs (I use 3 small eggs as I felt that the egg I bought was really tiny), so the dough was really too soft to cut-out shapes, got so frustrated that I ended up just making it into round one. But I think I will try again next time using less eggs and maybe less sugar as I thought it tasted a little too sweet for me, especially if I want to decorate it with icing for Christmas.


Christmas Cutouts Cookies
original recipes from allrecipes.com

• 1 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 teaspoon lemon extract
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (I did not put this)
  
• 3 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups oatmeal

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly grease baking sheets.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Blend in the eggs, lemon extract, and vanilla extract. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda in a separate bowl. Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, beating continually. Stir in the oatmeal.
3. Roll the dough out onto a lightly-floured surface to about 1/8-inch thickness. Cut dough into shapes using cookie cutters and arrange them on the prepared sheets.
4. Bake in the preheated oven until edges begin to brown, 10 to 12 minutes. Allow to cool on a cooling rack before frosting.
   

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Brought SMALL FAN to see THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR AND OTHER ERIC CARLE FAVOURITES on Saturday. He enjoyed it and was hooked on the show for the entire 45 minutes. There was a total of 3 stories told: The Little Cloud, The Mixed-Up Camelon & The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It was in a form of puppets that glows in the dark. The entire show was puppeteer by 3 persons wearing in black. Personally thought it was a very simple concepts and props but it works quite well and I think all the kids there really enjoy it.

Well, although both BIG FAN and I thought it's quite expensive (we bought the circles seats causing $25 each, including SMALL FAN), but I think SMALL FAN really enjoy it and it's a good experience for him, so guess it was all worth it. Initially we were still worried that he can't seat still or wasn't interested in it. So we can now start planning to bring him to other such events.

SMALL FAN first self compose song "E E O"

SMALL FAN made up this song himself while playing with his toy piano.

Singing Baby Girl