teewuivay's blog

Updates

doudou has grown so much in recent months.

By recent months, i mean since i started my no pay childcare leave last July. It's been about 9 to 10 months since i've stayed at home and i shudder at the thought of going back to work this july. let's see what the princess is up to these days:

- she's able to speak in sentences now

- she's more fluent in mandarin

- she's able to detect changes in people's expressions (i.e.: Mummy is angry... mummy is tired... mummy is sleepy... mummy is not angry anymore...)

- she's learnt to jump jump jump!

- she can peddle the tricycle

- she recognises numbers and could count (putting numbers to actual quantity)

- she's able to recount what happened (especially in school. but i have a sneaky feeling she makes up most events or exaggerates them)

- she can hold on to the monkey bar for a good 3 seconds

- she can (almost) do a forward roll

- she can feed herself (well, almost... except that she chooses what she wants to eat so i end up feeding the last few crucial spoonfuls.)

- she's weaned off her pacifier about 2 months back. we took about 2 days and she's off it TOTALLY! yipee!

- she recognises (to my dismay), princesses, barney, dora and thomas the train. i was especially upset with her ability to recognise the princess as i had never in my life told her what a princess was. we've deliberately left out storybooks and tv programmes (of course) like snow white, cinderella, sleeping beauty etc... and never bought her dolls that depict princess-hood (whatever you call that). but she's able to point to the barbie doll and tell me she's a princess. so.... never ever belittle peer influence...

And to make myself feel worse, i actually bought a barbie doll water bottle for her. Double whammy to motherhood!

Lapbooking: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

We're very much into lapbooking these days.

It's known as a trans disciplinary way of teaching but to cut the long story short, it's very much similar to the concept of scrapbooking and consolidating learning into themes and quantifiable materials. We did 2 lapbooks so far and going on to our 3rd one. I've got the photos for our 1st lapbook based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle:

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Normally, a lapbook could either be literally based or from any topics or subjects that a child desires.

I would usually include the following for dou's lapbooks: 

1. art and crafts sessions based on the chosen theme

2. math: usually number recognition, counting, puzzles or categorising things

3. science: very simple facts that she can remember

4. english: word recognition, following a story etc...

5. music: try to find songs that have the same theme 

The first picture is the art and craft that we did. We used this opportunity to revise our colours, shapes (circles and triangles) and cutting (of the straw) skills. In the 2nd and 3rd photos, we did our number recognition exercise. I cut out the numbers printed on the caterpillar's body, then laminated them and stuck velcro. In this way, dou could revise her numbers as and when she wants (which she did recently...).

We also had a simple foldable book on life cycle of a butterfly and one other activity to match pictures to words. (based on what the caterpillar ate on a saturday that made him sick)

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The last activity is a hand eye co-ordination activity.

I would read the story and dou would string the pictures below through a string accordingly. This also trains her ability to listen out for words and story progression. 

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And finally she drew her version of the caterpillar:

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Z's birthday!

We celebrated Zachery's birthday recently and these are the photos we took.

Dous didn't take her nap that day and it was a miracle she managed to stay very much awake throughout the event!

I think it was because she had all the children around her to play with...

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cny celebration

On Nian Chu Xi, Dous went to her da bo (Tw's elder brother)'s house for our nian ye fan.

Didn't manage to take many photos as we were busy eating and taking care of dous.

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On Chu yi, the gang went to ah ma's house. Check out the smiles on Dou's face as her ah dang played with her...

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On Chu san, we went to swee leong's (tw's secondary school friend) house and dous had a great time drawing and running around the huge place!

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And finally, we visited gan mummy, xiuhui aunty, gwen jie jie and glenn gor gor. dous didn't want to go home at the end of the trip...

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we're back on vox! gong xi fa cai!

We've gone MIA for so long on vox because:

1. my vox page went haywire and i can't post anything for the longest time.

2. we couldn't download the photos and videos from our camera but we've got this fixed so here we are ta dah! back on cyberspace!

First and foremost gong xi fa cai and happy new year to everyone!

Dous had a wonderful CNY this time round probably because she is much more mobile and vocal these days.

We started off the celebration by having our reunion dinner with ah ma, ah gong, yiz and ah dang at the rotating restaurant aka prima restaurant. The food was heavenly (and so was the price) hahaha... but nevertheless it was worth it cos ah ma said that this was the best reunion dinner she has ever had. hmmmmm...

Here's ah gong and ah ma who were very excited about the casino behind us in the background:

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And our forever cheery and enthusiastiyiz and ah dang:

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As well as the 3 of us...

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Dous also took some shots with yiz... Don't they look alike?

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And with her mummy dearest:

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And finally a family photo. But too bad the waitress had shaky hands so the photo came off blurred...

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