Saturday, September 27, 2008

Simple Art Work

Big FAN need to work today, so I was left with two kids at home on a lovely saturday morning. Decided to do some art and craft with SMALL FAN. So, I took out some coloured construction papers, some plain flour and a glue stick. We have such fan doing paper craft project and SMALL FAN really enjoy it. Here's the beautiful art work that we did.

SMALL FAN gets creative after a while, this is done by him

Here's a vid of him, sifting the flour.



We then made some cup cakes in the afternoon and SMALL FAN help me to sift the flour (just like how he did it in the art & craft project) into the cake mixture and put raisins into the cupcake. Cool right....

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Educational Trip for Kids

Sigh...with Baby FAN stilling breastfeeding, I'm rethinking about bringing SMALL FAN overseas this year. So, decided that since I can't bring him oversea, I might as well make his days more interesting by bringing him to visit Singapore instead. Was searching thru the web for interesting place to bring SMALL FAN to in Singapore and was surprised with the wide variety.

Nature (Parks & Reservoir)
All the different parks and reservoir like:
  • Upper & Lower Pierce (I actually like this place, very nice and peaceful)
  • MacRitche
  • Hort Park and Garden Walk as a park connector in the Southern Ridges, a 9-kilometre long stretch of green spaces stretching from Mt Faber Park in the east to West Coast Park in the west
  • The Canopy Walk, a part of the Southern Ridges of Singapore, is located at the end of Pepys Road near the Reflections At Bukit Chandu heritage museum at Kent Ridge Park
  • Henderson Waves, Highest Pedestrian Bridge In Singapore
  • Bishan Park - just realised that they have a herb nursery and fruit nursery there, for Fruit nursery, they even conduct educational tour every 1st Sat of the month (check out more about the tour on this link
Nature (Farms & Wetlands)
There is a lot of small farms in Kranji area that are open to the public. Check on these websites for more details:
Kranji Countryside
Wetlands

You can check out the websites of these individual farms for more details:
Bollywood Veggies
Aero-Green Techology Pte Ltd
Fireflies Health Farm
Gardenasiakids Pte Ltd
Hay Dairies Pte Ltd
Hausmann Marketing Aquarium

Oh by the way, check out this blog, the blogger wrote a lot of post on the interesting places he has visited in singapore and beware, it's really a lot:
Seen this seen that

Culture
Can also bring kids to more cultural stuff such as concerts, theatre performance and even free performances at esplanade. Check out sistic and esplanade for more details. I'm planning to bring SMALL FAN to see "The Very Hungry Caterpillar at Victoria Theatre":
http://www.sistic.com.sg
http://www.esplanade.com

Can also visit museums, one free one is the Central Fire Station, planning to bring SMALL FAN there one day.

Tourist Attractions
Of course, not forgetting the tourist attractions like Sentosa, Jurong Bird Park, Zoo, Science Centre. I'm even considering bringing SMALL FAN for the Ducktours.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

A Gloomy Wednesday

It's a rainy day today and the weather was really cool and nice. But somehow, I just feel really gloomy as Big FAN, Small FAN & Baby FAN all caught the nasty flu bug from SMALL FAN. So, all three of them was coughing away. Small FAN seems to be getting better after taking his 3rd course of antibiotic although he still has a lot of phelgm (but at least he is able to sleep thru the night).

Baby FAN caught the flu really bad, was coughing and sneezing these 2 nights and she is refusing to drink milk as everytime she drink, her nose got block and she started choking and coughing....Poor girl, she is already so small (only 6.5 kg), now with this nasty flu, she is going to be even smaller. Yesterday, after a few attempt to breast feed her at night, I got really desperate, wake up at 5am and started to take out the the pump breast milk from the refrigerator, warm it up and feed her spoon by spoon. I think she managed to take 1 oz and started coughing again and refuse to drink anymore...sigh...Maybe like what my sis always say, I have to start praying for her to recover faster ;(

Brought her to a Doc on Monday and she was given 4 medicines, 1 for running nose & cough, 1 for lung protection, 1 for phelgm and 1 for fever. Poor girl, I need to force her to drink the medicine as she clamp her mouth shut. After the med, she got so tire that she just doze off while sitting on her walker. I wonder if the med is too strong for her...poor thing. 'm suppose to bring her down to the doc today as doc advise that she should be on the nebuliser if she is still coughing today. But I'm a little hesitate to put her thru such suffering, she is only 6 months old. I'm now hoping for the miracle of my breast milk to cure her....

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Happy Birthday in Bilingual

Teaching SMALL FAN to read - Part III

SMALL FAN knows all the sound of the 26 alphabets already although he sometime do forget 1 or 2. So I'm now teaching him 2 and 3 letters words and was thinking how I should do that when I stumble upon this blog Phonics & Reading where Tamarind wrote how she teach her kids phonics in a step by step way. I can't help noticing some similarity in her approach with mine so far and I'm going to make use of her blog to further develop SMALL FAN's reading ability.

Well, I found a way to introduce him to 3 letters words. After introducing him to the 2 letter words (see my previous Post). Then I form 3 letter words using the 2 words and paste it all over the wall. Then I printed an A4 paper with pictures on it (see picture on the right). Then I just paste it on the wall. SMALL FAN, being as curious as ever will point to a particular picture and ask me what is it. Then I will say the word, for example, "PAN". Then I slowly repeat the word and sound out the word slowly "Per + AN" "PAN". Then I ask him to pick out the appropriate words for those on the wall and paste it beside the picture. He really likes it and I'm really glad that he can actually recognise the correct word and pick it up by hearing the sound I produce. Also, I don't force him to do the exercise and leave him to decide when he want to learn it, so occasionally, he will go to the wall and ask me, "Mommy, what's this?" and that's where I start teaching. So, I very much let him lead his own learning this way...






I think he is getting the idea of words forming as I recently printed a picture of a SHIP for his usual art & craft and I write the word SHIP under the picture. He started pointing to the individual alphabet and say "Sss, Ha, I, Per" as in "BOAT". Ok....I was almost there...he knows the individual letter forms a word and still can't grasp the whole concept yet....be patient.




To help reinforce his phonics, I recently bought this book My Phonics Reader published by Pelangi at Popular Bookstore. It's a cheaper alternative to the Ladybird Series. Thought the picture was quite nice and the wordings are very simple and rhythmic, for e.g. Pat Cat sat on a mat. Tried asking him to read the words in the book and he was able to read the work "Cat". mmm...way to go SMALL FAN.

Home Cleaning Tips

Was happily blogging away when I suddenly remember I was cooking Baby FAN's porridge. Sigh...smell the "Chao Ta" smell, Baby FAN's porridge is burnt and the pot is now covered with soot. So, use my secret trick of salt and vinegar again to get rid of the burnt rice, without having to scrub. This is how it's done, pour water, vinegar and salt into the burnt pot and just boil the water. The burnt rice will just come off automatically. See pic below on before and after without scrubbing. I didn't boil it for too long, need to boil longer so some stain still there. The magic of chemical reaction when vinegar & salt is boiled, cool... (see pic of before & after)


By the way, here's more household tips that I gathered along the way:
  • To get rid of vomit or urine smell: spray baking soda water (i.e. baking soda + water) into the spot and let it dry, then just dust off the powder.
  • To get rid of blood stain: Quickly rinse with cold water and wash with shampoo. Never water it with hot water as it will fixed the stain. For old stain, I think hydrogen peroxide seems to work or rather the normal NTUC Bleach seems to work for me.
  • To get rid of Super Glue from your skin, use Nail Polish Remover
  • To get rid of Pen ink on Microfibre Furniture, just rub alcohol (or anything with alcohol in it like hand sanitizer, nail polish remover etc.) on the ink stain and then blow dry it to hair dryer on cool air.
  • To get rid of yellowish stain on your airport or water boiler, pour some lemon juice or throw a few pieces of lemon into the airport and let it boil. Then let it stand for a while and pour away the water. Walla, the pot is now good as new.
  • To get rid of grease and stain in your microwave, put a cup of lemon juice and heat it up for 1 min. Then let the oven cool then and wipe the stain off with a cloth. The lemon juice help to loosen the grease.
  • more to come..he he... will add on this list when I experiment with more.

Friday, September 19, 2008

VCD Recommendation: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Bought this video from wonderbox.com Ok, it's a really really old video, so have been contemplating if I should by it for SMALL FAN for quite sometime. Have been reading up reviews from Amazon on it and it seems really good. Reason I was looking for this video is that I happen to download this Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Song from Youtube for SMALL FAN to see. It teachers A to Z in a very fun and catchy tune and SMALL FAN loves it alot. That's why I thought I should go and invest in the entire VCD instead of playing it for him in youtube.

I must say, it's a good buy although I felt it's a tad too expensive, I pay $10 for the VCD and $8 for delivery from Wonderbox as I can't seems to find the video in any of the bookstore in Singapore. SMALL FAN loves the VCD, he watch it continuously for 3 times on the first day and subsequently, he will still ask to watch it. I watch the video with him and I thought the tune are all very catchy. But it's a pity the video was quite short, only 4 stories. SMALL FAN says he want to turn into a butterfly after watching the video, so I guess he learnt that a caterpillar turns into a butterfly and a tapode turns into frog from the video.

By the way, here's the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom song from Youtube.


Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Book Review - Cooking For Kids by Pancy Seng

Bought this book during one of the popular book sale, another Asian style cook book. Although the recipes was for kids, I personally felt that it's not as healthy as I would like it to as it contain quite a lot of fried food. But some of the recipes seems quite interesting like Cream of Mushroom Soup with Puff Pastry, Japanese Beancurd Pocket Salad, Rice Omelette etc. I must confess I have yet to try out any of the recipe in this book as I'm not sure if it appeals to my SMALL FAN.

Potty Training - Part II

Recently, SMALL FAN likes to wait until he is really on "high tide" before he dash for the toilet. So he wets his underwear and pants and leave traces of urine on the floor as he run. Has been scolding him and reminding him to go to the toilet but doesn't seems to work. My mum-in-law says that it's a passing phase, a lot of toddler went thru this stage. So, for now, I'm training my patient and waiting for this phase to pass :(

Sunday, September 14, 2008

VCD Recommendation - Mr Men in the Great Alphabet Hunt

Met up with 2 friends last week and we were chatting about homeschooling kids and started talking about videos and show that we play for your kids. Suggested to her this particular video from Little Learners "Mr Men in the Great Alphabet Hunt". I bought it during one of the weekly sales at NTUC Fairprice Extra at Ang Mo Kio Hub, I think it cost $9.90. A really good buy as SMALL FAN loves to watch it. The video show Mr Clever's journey in looking for all the alphabets from A to Z. Along the way, he met different Mr Men and introduces different objects and stuff starting with the various alphabet and of course, they also teach you how to pronounce the different alphabet. They have a really chatchy tunes that goes like that "Arh for Apples, Ber for Bouncing Ball, Ker for Cakes but Mr Greedy ate it all...."

It didn't occur to me how useful this VCD was until I started showing SMALL FAN some alphabets and he recognises their sound without me telling him, so it looks like he did learn from the VCD. He can evens say "J for Jelly".

Vaccination - Ouch!

Baby FAN got her last 6-in-1 jab last Friday. Brave girl, she only scream "ah" and that's all. Doc say she is the small and brave one...hi hi... She also took the rotavirus medicine, that's her 3rd dose. Last time, SMALL FAN only needs to take 2 dose. Doc says this is the new vaccination that helps to prevent her from many more strand of the rota virus. Poor kids nowadays like taking more and more medicine.

Now have to decide when to give her the pneumococcal jab....SMALL FAN had his at 10 months and only require a booster at 1.5 years old. Doc says Baby FAN can have a jab anytime now. But I was wonder if I jab her earlier, she will needs to take 3 jab instead of 2.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Book Review - Hearty Congee by Amelia Liang

For Asian mums like me who is getting tired of cooking the same old porridge for your baby, check on this book. They have 58 dishes of congee of different types, right from the cantonese style to those with chinese herbs to those normal day to day congee. I have personally tried cooking Beef Congee with eggs, Lotus Roots Congee with Red Dates, Oatmeal porridge with raisins, chinese yam with frog, frog congee with lily bulb etc for my SMALL FAN before (when he is less picky).

I especially like their explanation on the purpose of the different chinese herbs, for example, ginkoo helps to reduce phelgm, lily bulb helps to norish lungs etc. But I must warn that it's quite an expensive book for just congees.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Book Review - Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron

For mum who has just started cooking baby food for your babies and wanted to cook from scratch, can check out this book. This book will tell you exactly how to cook, how to keep it, for how long you can keep the food etc. For example, how long can you keep a pumpkin once it's cut? How long should you cook brown rice, with how much water, how to freeze it, for how long you can keep it? etc..It also list the nutritional content of the food and provide you with a lot of healthy recipes like baking french fries, making breakfast cereal (from scratch) etc. But I must warn that the recipes wasn't very tasty to me but it's really natural and healthy.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, starring SMALL FAN and his xylophone


Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Cool Blogs - Activities to entertain your kids

Here are some cool blogs that contains loads of activities that you can adapt to entertain or even homeschool your kids:

Websites - for the Lefties

Was searching on websites on how to teach my maybe left-handed boy to write when I stumble upon these huge list of websites for the lefty, check it out:

Teaching a Lefty to write

Well, I'm teaching SMALL FAN phonics and part of the requirement of the teaching is for SMALL FAN to learn to trace the letter using his hand. After observing him for a while and checking with my mums, sis and hubby, we think that SMALL FAN could be a lefty. Well, the dilemma came, should I teach him to trace the letter using his left hand or right hand?

As a modern mum, I would probably say, that I should let SMALL FAN lead and since he prefer his left, then teach him to write using his left hand. But, after ploughing through websites (check on my review section on some interesting websites for lefties) and teaching kids to write, I realised that teaching a lefty to write is different from teaching a right-handed person (like myself) to write, the orientation is all different. As a start, instead of asking him to put his writing book straight and write, for a lefty, he needs to tilt his book 45 degree so that he can see what he is writing. Also, for different letters, the stroke is different, for example, if we write "T", a right-handed person will write a straight horizontal line from left to write, follow by a straight vertical line from top to bottom, but for a lefty, he will feel more comfortable writing a horizontal straight line from right to left, follow by the straight line etc.

I also found out reading articles from the net, the many difficulties lefty face in school... Sigh... Teaching him to write the "right" way means that he will have a smoother journey in school, but it will not be second nature to him...I'm at a lost???? Maybe I should try teaching him to write in both hand and hopefully train both his left and right brain...ha ha..

Monday, September 1, 2008

Book Review - A Healthier Diet for your Baby

This is a very old book which I borrowed from the Singapore National Library. Tried finding it from amazon and some books website but can't find it anymore. A very colourful book with lots of pictures of the food. What I like about this book is that it give a very good introduction of the different food groups like green vegetables, white vegetables, protein, meat etc and the are mostly those local vegetables that we can find in Singapore. They also provide a step by step guide on the food to cook from baby to toddler, the asian way. For example, silver fish rice gruel, steam pumpkin cake, kway teow soup etc.. And a 16 days meal plan. Highly recommend those asian parent, who like me, would prefer to have your kid eat chinese food with you, rather then having to cook a separate western dish. This is how a page looks like:

Book Review - Asian Parenting Today by Jennifer Hor, Ho Ai Ling and Jocelyn Oo

Highly recommend this book for asian new mothers. It's very easy to read as it's mostly in point form! But what is most important is that it included a lot of asian cultural practices and issues for us to consider and best of all, it provide baby meal guide "asian style". It's not easy to find a book that provide meal guide for asian baby, most of the book I read are "ang mo" style like puree avocado, puree potato etc, this book have meal like Kway teow soup, Mee sua with fish etc for baby...cool. Oh and one more thing to add, it also include asian nursery rhymes, not the incy wincy spider rhymes but those in chinese and even cantonese and hokkien. Here's one in cantonese that really cool (my mum-in-law also sing for SMALL FAN)

Tim chong chong, chong chong fei. Fei toe nai chee long.
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