The Ugly Duckling Chinese Performance

Phoebe has been to quite a few English Speech and Drama performance. She loves to watch live performance. To cultivate her interest in Chinese, we enrolled her in a Chinese enrichment class in Tien Xia. It's not the best place to put her in because I thought their syllabus is a little too difficult for her and the class size is big, 9-10 children in a class. But still, we put her in that Chinese class for the second term, just to get her some exposure.

We did not know of any Chinese Speech and Drama performance in the past, so when I found out that there was a Chinese performance for children, entitled The Ugly Duckling, we did not hesitate to buy the tickets. The performance was in Victoria Theatre. The story was familiar but with a little more meat in the plot. Phoebe loved the performance. She was very captivated, except that she kept asking me what had happened. I had to translate to her all the time! Oh dear. I think I should expose her to more of such Chinese performances and activity to cultivate her interest in the language. I forgot to bring my digicam that night, so at the end of the show, the whole cast came on stage and they posed with the children for photo shots. If I had my digicam, I would have tell Phoebe to go on stage to get a picture too.

We went home and did a follow-up activity. She cut pictures of the brochure and stuck in her scrap book. She also wrote something about the performance. Of course, I had to spell for her. But I'm glad she is able to do a mini MLEA project. :)

Don't Forget The Lyrics

After being in school for almost three months, Reuben has learned his goodbye song pretty well. He has got the lyrics, tune and rhythm right. However, the accuracy of his utterance needs to be improved. But I'm not at all worry about that because children's utterance will get clearer as they grow older. Right now, can you decipher the words he's singing about ? Have a guess! :)

Sha la la, Sha la la
Take my school bag, going home
Say goodbye, to teachers
Goodbye to my friends

Goodbye teachers, goodbye friends
See you tomorrow
Lao shi zai jian, xiao peng you zai jian
Da jia ming tian jian!

Laundry Basket Cocoon

The two of them are so much fun. They were goofing with their own laundry basket one evening. They were pretending to be caterpillars, trapped in a cocoon, waiting for their time to be transformed into beautiful butterflies. They must have watched the video "The Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle too many times. They have such wonderful imagination that the laundry basket becomes their instant cocoon. Love them nuts! :)

Jie-jie butterfly has flown away, left only di-di butterfly in his cocoon.

Animal-Lover

Reuben loves animals. In fact, "animal" is the only 3-syllabic word that he can utter very very clearly. He has a small plastic container which he keeps his plastic animal figurines inside. He can name and make the sound of almost all the animals in his container, e.g. hippo, snake, turtle, cow moo, goat baa, sheep meh, horse neigh etc. Unfortunately, the number of animals in his container is decreasing as some were misplaced. Well, it's a good excuse for me to source for these cheap plastic animals to add to his collection. Shopaholic mommy :)

Row Row Row Your Boat

There's a Pasar Malam behind the Seng Kang market. There are some fun rides for children. The boating ride looked rather interesting and Phoebe wanted to have a try. She liked it very much and I thought it was quite worth it, $3 for a 5 minute ride. She likes to be in control sometimes. The boating ride allows her to "row" the boat by cycling the pedals with her hands. It was easy to manoeuvre. Poor Reuben was whining by the side of the pool. He wanted to have a go too but he's too young for it. In fact, he's too young for all the fun rides. Wait till next year, Reuben! You'll have your chance :)

When I re-looked at the video recording, I thought I sounded silly! I kept asking her if it was fun. Of course, she was having fun! You can see the smile and excitement on her face :) Silly mommy :p

Sharing the Ipod Touch

Phoebe has learnt to navigate the Ipod Touch very well. She's also able to use the PC/laptop pretty well. She loves some of the children's website that we have introduced to her: UpToTen, Starfall, CBeebies, Nickelodeon Junior etc . I'm well aware that our children lives in an ICT era. I cannot teach them the skills of tomorrow but I can help them to acquire the skills of today. So I let them play with whatever IT stuff that I can grab hold of (with wallet limitations of course!).

Caught Phoebe and Reuben sharing the Ipod one evening before bedtime. :) I love to see their engrossed expression.

I can hear some of you commenting that it's no good to lie down on the bed to read/play with the Ipod Touch. It's bad for their eyes. Yes, I'll take note and will remind them next time :p

Mozzarella that Binds

On Wednesday of the March holidays, we were free and did not have any plans for the day. Phoebe woke up early. Spontaneously, I decided to let her make bread pizza on her own since she had made it before and we had the necessary ingredients at home. She enjoyed herself very much and did not need much supervision, except the baking process which involved the hot oven toaster. When she had completed making the bread pizza, Reuben woke up just in time to enjoy the fruit of jie-jie's labour. Phoebe was very glad to share her pizza with di-di. The two of them had a fun time eating breakfast together, in their pyjamas! Haha. I wanted to do a follow-up activity with Phoebe, and that is, to do a recipe for bread Pizza but we haven't had the time to start our mini project. Maybe one of these days, we'll find time doing it. With two young kids, time is never enough but I just hope that we're spending quality time together :)

Look at the long strand of Mozzarella cheese! Simply delish! :) Reuben enjoying his pizza too, with his favourite blanket on his chair :)

The two of them wanted to share a cup of plain water too. They're enjoying each other's company. Hopefully when they grow up, it'll be their sibling love that binds them together, not just their similar pyjamas. :)

Reading to My Kids

Phoebe and Reuben love books. Going to the library has become part of our fortnightly activity. Sometimes, we'll go to the library without them because they are having their nap. But I always ensure that my house is filled with a fresh supply of books for them to read and flip. Reuben has caught the book-loving bug from Phoebe. Phoebe has already graduated from the Joy Readers. She could read Level A-D of the Joy Readers. Reuben is the rightful heir to the books. Right now, Reuben's favourite book is still "Run, run, run" though he also likes 8 other titles from the Level A series. Every night before the children sleep, we will read some story books to them. Phoebe always ask for more. Two stories are usually not enough. She'll ask for four, or five or more, stories after stories. Right now, in addition to the usual library story books, we're also reading Children's Beginning Bible stories to her. She loves the Bible stories. We hope to build up her Biblical knowledge through reading the Bible stories to her. We're glad that both children love books. My daily prayer for them is that they will improve in their word recognition and that they will grow up into independent avid readers.

Papa reading to Reuben. Look at how engrossed he was!


Level A of Joy Readers

What Tooth Do You Have?

Papa was driving us home one day and Phoebe and I were talking about our day. I asked her if she had eaten too many sweets in mama's (grandma's) house. She said she ate 2 sweets and 1 chocolate for the day. Phoebe loves to eat sweet stuff but because of her single kidney, we always limit her sugar intake. I told her that she has sweet tooth, just like mommy. Then she asked, "What about didi?" I replied that didi likes to eat salty stuff. Phoebe said, "Oh! Didi has salty tooth!" All of us burst out laughing. I told her that didi likes savoury stuff, just like papa. Then Phoebe added on, "And Auntie? Auntie has spicy tooth!"

(^_^)

Hints From My Children

I was waving in the car. Phoebe was in her booster, sitting behind the driver seat. She said, "Mommy, when you wave your hand, (the skin/flesh on) your arm also moves." (-_-)

I was in the study room, using the computer one night. Reuben struggled to take the heavy Uzap from the bedroom and gave it to me, saying, "Mommy, tu tu tu tu... (the sound made by the Uzap when it was operating)." (-_-)

Enough hints... Time to take out my sport shoes...