Her First Drawing

We left the little girl to her own devices for a while as I chatted with my mom.  After a while, she came running to us with this piece of paper.  I was pleasantly surprised when I saw it.  What strike me the most was that the drawings filled the entire piece of paper.  Until now, she has only been drawing circles with little dots as eyes, nose and mouth, and her drawings have never filled a piece of paper.

I asked her what she drew, and she said the small face is Sarah moon, the big face is mama moon, and the other object is a pear with the letter A.  Hmmmm, I never knew she can write the letter A.

I am very happy with her development.  I am looking forward to more drawings from her.

The 4 Ws

The little girl has become so talkative. She can yak the whole day from morning to night and she loves to ask questions. Now, she has 4 favourite W questions. They are:

So Happy

I cooked baked honey ribs for dinner today. This is my 2nd attempt. The first I cooked this dish, the ribs turned out quite tough. So today, I did some research and made some changes to the way I cooked it. First, I covered the dish and baked for 45min, then removed the cover, pour some more marinade on it and baked uncovered for another 15 min. It turned out to be soft and tender. Hubby commented it was very nice, even better than those sold outside. He also said my cooking has improved tremendously over the last year, and now he is even looking forward to dinner everyday. I asked him “Huh, you mean you used to dread dinner?” “No lah, just that there was nothing to look forward to.” Hee hee, what he said made my day. At least, all that time hovering over the stove, getting oily and hot is worth it.

Water Fun

We had a mommy’s gathering yesterday at the IMM outdoor water playground. I thought that Sarah would enjoy the water play, but she was scared of the water spraying onto her face, so she tried her best to remain as dry as possible.

Unfortunately, she still got wet (haha). But after this, she was extremely careful in avoiding the water sprays.

Later her friends came, and one of the jiejie passed her this water toy, and it became her focus.

She even watered the plants!!

See the other children and Grace having so much fun.

I like this photo taken with Grace. See how she held on to Sarah’s arm, like a couple.

Thank God for blessing us with good weather for the kids to have fun, and for the mommies to fellowship.

Sarah’s Birthday Celebration

Today is Sarah’s birthday. We celebrated her birthday in advance last Saturday. For the previous 2 years, we had it at my in-laws’ house and my mil helped to cook all the dishes. For this year, I decided to have it at our place, and I will do the cooking as well as bake the birthday cake.

What Have I Taught?

Being in Singapore where importance is placed on academic success, every parent is anxious to get their child off a right start. This means starting academics as early as 2 or 3 years old, sending the kids to every enrichment class conceivable. I admit I have the tendency to fall into this kiasu-ism, but God has been consistently reminding me that character training is of the utmost importance during the tender years.

I came across this very meaningful poem. It reminds me not to sweat the academics, but to embrace eternal perspectives.

What Have I Taught? (By Betty DeMers Parkes)

If my children can quote Shakespeare

with feeling and understanding,

but think only of themselves,

…then what have I taught?

If they can spell scientific words,

and write 16 page reports,

but have no compassion for other,

…then what have I taught?

If they can work algebraic equations,

but do not think of how their words or actions

may affect someone else,

…then what have I taught?

If my high schooler gets into Harvard,

but doesn’t have a personal relationship

with Jesus Christ

…then what have I taught?

If my children are in the 99th percentile rankings

on all their standardized tests,

but resent being with their family

…then what have I taught?

If my nine-year-old reads Tolstoy,

and my seven-year-old knows all the times tables,

but they cannot play together

without hurt feelings and tears,

…then what have I taught?

It’s Box Day!!!

What’s Box Day? It is the day the box from Sonlight arrives. The Sonlight curriculum I ordered arrived today. It came in the morning but I was not in. Called Fedex in the evening when I came home, and to my pleasant surprise, they arranged for a re-delivery earlier at 8.30pm. I am impressed by the efficiency of both Sonlight and Fedex. I ordered last Wednesday and it arrived today, less than a week.

That aside, both Sarah and I were both very excited about the box. I told Sarah a few days ago that a big box of books will arrive for her, and she has been asking me everyday about the Box. We both unpacked the box and Sarah was excitedly going through all the books. I had to stop her as it’s bedtime. I promised we will look at all the books tomorrow.

There are a total of 21 books, an audio CD and 4 workbooks to develop auditory, visual, motor and comprehension skills. The books look great, and I can’t wait to read them myself. I have noticed some of the books may be too difficult for Sarah, so I guess I will take this really slowly. Will probably start with the easier ones, and either stretch this over 2 years, or repeat the program twice. Either way, I think we will have fun reading.

A Love for Reading

I know many parents started introducing books and reading to their children while they are still very young, some even do it as pre-natal stimulation. Admittedly, I did not start reading to Sarah until she was about one. One fine day then, it just suddenly occurred to me that I have neglected a very important means of learning for her. A good book can open up a new world for the reader, it brings ideas, facts, experiences to the reader. I remembered when I was quite an avid reader when young. My parents have 2 big bookcases of books and they were sufficient to occupy me till my teenage years. When I got married and moved out, I brought along most of those books.

My Choice of Curriculum

After my earlier post, both Jean and Pauline were interested to know about my choice of curriculum, so I thought I will share about it here.

I have decided to use the Sonlight Core B curriculum together with the Letter of the Week.  I have shared that I love the Charlotte Mason principles of education, particularly using living books to learn.  However, CM does not advocate formal academics before age of 6, and there isn’t any available CM curriculum for this early years.  I used Before Five in a Row.  It is not so much a curriculum, but more like a source of ideas you can use with each book.  We had gone through all the books several times, and I did not feel like repeating them again.  So I started to search for a curriculum with these criteria:  uses good/living books, gentle, does not push academics and is fun.

I heard about Sonlight, researched about it and found that it fits my criteria.  However, I was still hesitant as their instructor guide does not seem to be very well-liked.  So I put my decision on hold.  Then, recently, I revisited Sonlight, and also found a Sonlight yahoo group.  Two wonderful ladies on this group came up with 2 schedules based on the Core B package.  One is based on a theme each week, while other is a progressive schedule, i.e. the books are arranged from the easier level and moves up in level of difficulty.  I thought this is great, especially the themed schedule.

In the course of my research, I also found Letter of the Week (LOTW) which has received much good reviews and best of all, it is free.  I liked it but I felt that the choice of books could be better, and I also don’t quite like the idea of getting my books from the library and be subject to the availability of the books.  So I decided to combine the 2 together. I could link the weekly themes to an alphabet and do some of the activities from LOTW, and we get to read the wonderful books from Sonlight.

However, I intend to go really slowly with this as I feel the training of the heart should be the focus in these early years.  So probably we will stretch each theme into 2 weeks.  In any case, we have quite a few activities lined up each week that I doubt we will be able to school beyond 2 or 3 days a week.

Go Away!

This happened just a while ago while I was putting Sarah to bed.  As usual, both papa and mommy will accompany the little girl to bed.  Papa said “Goodnight” to her, and she replied “Goodnight, papa”.  Then it was my turn.  I said “Goodnight” and she knew I expected her to say goodnight to me.  But she purposely replied “Goodnight, papa”.  I repeated several times, and she gave the same reply each time.  I knew she was being cheeky and wanted to have some fun.  So I joking said, “Ok, then you go away, go to papa”.  To my shock, I saw her expression changed and she burst into tears, big fat drop of tears.  I knew she was hurt by what I said as she thought I meant it.  So I quickly carried her into my arms, kissed her and said I love her and that mommy was just playing with her.  And she cried “I don’t want to play”. Only after repeated assurances did she stop crying and was back to her cheerful self.

She thought I really did not want her and she was scared and hurt.  Hubby said that I should not say such things, not even jokingly as at her age, we, the parents, are her centre of universe, and she is very sensitive and vulnerable regarding such things.  Yes, I learnt a lesson tonight.

My little girl, mommy is sorry I said those words.  Mommy won’t joke about such things again, ok?