Getting Your Children Interested in Reading - Part II

Here's some great Nursery Rhymes books to recommend, your kids will sure loves it.

Counting



Nursery Rhymes with Activity Guide & Music Scores
 
My Baby FAN loves this book, having been singing it with her for the pass 3 weeks every day.
 

 
Seasonal Books
 
For Halloween

 
For Christmas

Talkers, Watchers and Doers

Yes, I borrowed another book by Cheri Fuller.  This time, it's called Talkers, Watchers and Doers.  Another wonderful book by her.  The book talks about how kids learn, some kids learn visually (watchers), some learn auditory (talkers) and some learn kinesthetically (doers), and how you can help your children to learn and study better by understanding how they learn.  As I read this book I began to understand why flash cards, which has receive so much publicity and worked on so many children, doesn't seems to work on my 2 kids.  Majority of people or kids learn visually, thus flash card works on them well.  But there is a minority of us who learn differently and I realised that it's true with my 2 kids.  My elder son is a Doer, he learns best when he is hands on. For example, in his childcare, his teacher told us that he is always the first one to raise his hand if they is any new projects that involved the hands.  He can't seems to sit still and have difficulty paying attention in class. Flash cards that involved only his visual sense bored him, so does reading a book.  According to Cheri, for such learner you need to involve his 5 senses to maximise his learning, she gave examples where a parent taught her kid's multiplication by asking him to repeat the rules every time he throw a basket ball.  This explain why I always have difficulty getting my boy to sit still and listen to me read storybook.  I normally has to play up the storybook, make a lot of funny actions before I get his attention.  As for my daughter, she will run away every time I what to teach her using flash cards. But she loves to sing songs and nursery rhymes, at 28 months, she can now recite about 20 nursery rhymes by hard both in English and Chinese.  She can also speak very well and she now speaks in almost perfect sentences.  Her teacher told me she is like a bird in class, talking and talking away.  According to the book, these individuals are auditory learners, they learn best by singing and listening.  This explain why my daughter like me to sing to her and read storybook to her, she can ask me to repeat the storybook again and again until she can recite it by heart.

I'm still half way through this book, but I'm beginning to understand and have an idea now how I can help my 2 kids to learn better.  For a start, am going to teach my girl alphabets and phonics using songs and dance instead of flashcards.  Let's see if my experiment works.

Another thumbs up for Cheri!  For parents who are struggling with their children's study, this is a good book to have.

Schools Start at Home

Ok, I have been really lazy with blogging lately, kinda got addicted to a game in facebook....sigh....

But I meant to pen this down, a book that I recently read and felt that it's a good one to recommend to all kiasu parents out there. It's called School Starts at Home: Simple Ways to Make Learning Fun (School Savvy Kids). The books wrote about skills that you should build in your child before they go to school and how you can inculcate this skills in them.  Skills such as reading, writing, maths etc and how you can build up their love for these skills.  What I like about this book that it's a really easy to read book and some of the tips quite practical and useful.  For example, to get your kids to like writing, encourage him to help you write your groceries list or write a list of presents he/she likes for your birthday.  I tried this on my son and he wrote quite a long list of presents.  A thumbs up to Fuller, am going to try borrowing her other 2 books:

Adding some fun in your food

One of the ways to get your kids to eat their food is to make it fun....here's some that I made for my 2 monsters.

Hong Kong with Kids - Hong Kong Disney Land Part II

Day 2 at Disney Land

Visited Tomorrowland

• Autopia - SMALL FAN likes this as he get to ride a real people size car
• UFO Zone - this is a water play area but hardly see any kids playing there, guess the parents, like us are all afraid of getting the kids wet
• Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters - Big FAN & SMALL FAN went for gun shooting, SMALL FAN doesn't seems to enjoy it
• Orbitron - the whole family gets to sit on a UFO as we go round and round and round like the Dumbo ride, well....as expected, SMALL FAN loves it
• Stitch Encounter (show) - we decided to give this a miss as the kids don't even know who is Stitch
• Space Mountain - it's an indoor roller coaster and Baby FAN is too small for the ride so Big FAN & SMALL FAN went for it, SMALL FAN came out saying he is scared and that he is not going in anymore...ha ha...  

Tomorrowland Entrance

UFO Zone

Autopia

SMALL FAN taking the wheels

A sample of the vehicle that SMALL FAN rode on

Went to Adventureland

• Festival of the Lion King (musical - 12.15, 2pm, 4.30pm, 6pm) - skip this as don't think my kids can appreciate it
• Jungle River Cruise (cruise) - a nice exciting ride down the river, SMALL FAN got scared a few times
• Raft and Tarzan's Treehouse (tarzan museum) - skip this
• Liki Tikis (Water Play) - the kids doesn't seems to show any interest in it.

Aboriginal Drums

Liki Tikis

Jungle River Cruise

View from the Cruise













Overall, wasn't very impress with the Tomorrowland and Adventureland, nothing much, can easily cover the entire 2 land in half a day. The kids really like Fantasyland, we visited it again on the 2nd day, my son never gets tired of Dumbo. All in all, I felt that Hong Kong Disneyland, although not as grand as the other Disneylands but generally, it was quite fun and we thought that it was manageable and provide a nice trip to fantasyland that is so near to us as compared to the other. We will definitely go back again.

Disney Hollywood Hotel

Here's a closer look at the Disney Hollywood Hotel that we stay in.

Our Room

Toilet

 Our Bed

TV that shows all the Disney Cartoons

 Cafe Bar

View of the Fireworks from our room

View from the top

Breakfast at the restaurant

Facilities at the Hotel

Pool

Cafe

Garden

Playground

Kids' playroom

Disney Land Hotel

On the last day of the trip, as we still have some time before the flight, we decided to hope over to Disneyland Hotel to take a look at how different is it compared to Hollywood, here's some nice picture of the place, generally, think that Hollywood is more for budget conscious travel who just want a nice and simple hotel to stay in while Disneyland is more for those who wants to really pamper the kids to a princess experience.

Lounge Area

The Enchanted Restaurant where you get to dine with the Disney Characters

 Garden

Kids' Playroom

SMALL FAN keeping his hand clean with the automatic hand sanitiser that is around every part of Disney Land as well as their hotels.















Well, that marks the end of our 5 days in Hong Kong, we really enjoyed ourselves and will definitely be going back to Hong Kong again.

Hong Kong with Kids - Hong Kong Disney Land Part I

Day 4  & 5

The long awaited trip has come, today we are going to Hong Kong Disneyland.  We will be staying at Disney Hollywood Hotel for 2 days.  The kids are really excited as we got up bright and early and packed our stuff while we say goodbye to the apartment that we have been staying in for the last 3 days. Then we took a shuttle service to Hong Kong Central MTR where we then take the MTR to Sunny Bay station, the journey took about 33 minutes.  Then we change to the Disney Resort Line where we are picked by the Disney Train.  Baby FAN fell asleep on the trip there but for SMALL FAN he was really really excited when he saw the Disney Train.

Journey To Disney Land

MTR to Sunny Bay

The Disney Express

On board the Disney Express













We reached Disneyland stationed and then took the Disney Shuttle Service to our Hotel, it's a short ride there and the kids are kept entertained with the Cartoons on mobileTV.  Once at the hotel, the hotel attendent asked us to pass him our luggages and give us a tag.  Big FAN then proceed to the hotel information counter where he purchase the entrance pass for Disneyland as well as rented a stroller for Baby FAN (cost us HK$60 for 2 day).   Big FAN bought the annual pass for SMALL FAN as we calculated that it was cheaper this way as the annual pass allow SMALL FAN to bring in an adult free and it only cost HK$560, while the day pass for adult was HK$350 and child above 3 was HK$250. As we are staying in the hotel, they have an additional promotion which allow us to go to Disneyland for 2 consecutive days while the day pass. Meanwhile the kids quickly got addicted to the lounge area where there is a TV with all the Disney Cartoons. After the necessary paperwork, we then took the Disney Shuttle Service and went to Disney Land for the entire half day.

Disney Station

Disney Shuttle Bus

Disney Hollywood Hotel

Kids keeping themselves occupied at the Lounge

Baby FAN's rented stroller












At night, after the fireworks display, we went back to the hotel to check-in, everything was a brisk and we where back in the room in no time. We took the room with a Parkview so we actually get to see the fireworks display at night on day 2 of the hotel stay as we decided to go back to the hotel earlier for dinner. The hotel was a simple and nice hotel with a nice touch of disney, they even gave the kids each a part of disney slippers to bring home as souvenir, I think we were definitely come back to this hotel again.

Disney Hollywood Hotel Lobby

Here's our itinerary at Disneyland:

Day 1 at Disney Land
Spend the entire half-day at Fantasy Land

• Cinderella Carousel (merry-go-round) - the traditional MGR that we used to love
• The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (ride) - a relatively excited ride for kids
• The Golden Mickeys (musical- 12.45, 1.45, 4pm, 5pm, 6.15pm) - Baby FAN doesn't seems to understand the show but SMALL FAN seems to enjoy it, they got really excited when Mickey, Goofy and Donald etc came walking down the aisle
• It's a small world (water boat ride) - a nice ride and we get to see characters of different countries
• Fantasyland Train Station (train around disneyland) - skip this ride it's a real disappointment, waited 45min for it but doesn't get to see anything much.
• Dumbo the Flying Elephant (flying Elephant) - SMALL FAN can't seem to get tire of this ride, he likes it that he gets to control the elephant going up and down
• Disney Philharmonic Magic (3D show) - SMALL FAN enjoyed the show but Baby FAN is too small to understand what is happening and the 3D glasses was too big for her
• Mad Hatter Tea Cups (tea cups ride) - The kids enjoy this ride, especially the trill seeker Baby FAN
• Sleeping Beauty Castle (take pictures with disney characters, 10.30am, 11.30am, 12.30am, 3.30pm, 4.30pm, 5.30pm) - this castle was quite small compared to the one we saw at Tokyo Disneyland though 
• Fantasy Garden - where you get to take pictures with the princesses

Disney Land Entrance

Mainstreet

A quick energy boost for the kids







































































Fantasy Land

Sleeping Beauty Castle

It's a Small World

Mad Hatter Tea Cups

Baby FAN trying out some of the mechandise

Cinderella Carousel

The Golden Mickeys

Dumbo the Flying Elephant

Fantasy Gardens

While catching the Disney on Parade at 3.30pm at Mainstreet

People waiting for the Parade to start

SMALL FAN enjoying his Mickey Mouse Ice-cream while waiting for the Parade

Baby FAN getting impatient

Then had our dinner at Cafe Corner - a very kid friendly restaurant

Corner Cafe

Look at the kids meal...yum!

All hands and mouths..EAT!













Stay and watch the Disney in the Stars fireworks display at 7.30pm at Mainstreet