I'm down again! ARRRRGHHH

Sigh. I'm down with a bad sore throat and flu again. This is irritating. Very irritating. It's only been a few weeks since I recovered and now... sigh. Must be too much cny goodies and chocolates... My throat was so bad last night I couldn't fall asleep till I used Difflam to gargle and totally numb the throat... :( and my nose is blocked. This seems to be a really strong bug. Hopefully, I don't pass the bug to Alicia... feeling a bit worried coz I shared some food with her in the morning yesterday before the pain and all set in.

Anyway, this week's Daddies' Week at JG so I'm home today while Alicia's at class with hubby. I was supposed to tag along to help out during the washing up but since I'm sick, I'd better stay away in case I pass the bug to the little ones there... Wonder how they're coping without me... Alicia's never been to class without having me around at all... I'd at least be with her in the car or during break time... hehe.

I'd better go start vacuuming the floor now before I go to the clinic...

JG Bilingual PlayClub (20/2)

As usual, sat's class her favourite class so she enjoyed herself tremendously. Haha... all the music and movement (the music's really much better in this class: there's a guitarist and the music's really less dissonant in this class overall though sometimes the keyboardist does a lousy job too), and I think most importantly, there's a language she can comprehend... haha. :D

Her art work this week was supposed to be about using the round sponges to make little circles to form familiar objects such as an orange, an apple etc. But Alicia decided that her theme for the week's to have all the fun she can get with paint and it was really a pleasure to see her derive soooo much pleasure from painting with her hands (after painting with the sponges). Even the teachers decided to splash more paint on her hands and her drawing block since she was having so much fun and they were really glad that she wasn't afraid of the texture of paint or of getting dirty as many other children do usually. Anyway, the end product's never really the concern at JG - it's the experience that counts. And that's in line with what I think too - and so I just let her be.

Here's her abstract art:

JG Mandarin PlayClub (24/2 and 26/2)

This week's Mandarin classes went smoothly! Just that we were fashionably late on Wed (half an hour!) because little princess couldn't wake up on time and took forever to eat her breakfast. Other than that, I think she did have fun though I've noticed for a few times already that she always doesn't want to enter the room when it's Mandarin class. Hmmm... in fact, i think there was once she even tried to walk into the English class instead (just next door). :D That sounds exactly like my 'banana' brother: he always roamed out of chinese class during kindergarten to join any other class that was having English lessons...

The theme for the week is 'Trains' so art and craft revolved around trains!:

 

Water play... is it really just play?

I gave some water to Alicia to play with yesterday and she had a great time transferring water from one container to another! I thought to give her some opportunity to practise some gross and fine motor skills and have fun at the same time since she loves water!

While blogging about this, I happened to chance upon this site (which you may be interested to read about the benefits of this activity).

Here she is, concentrating very hard on her task:

And halfway, she started dancing as the DVD was playing one of her favourite parts of Elmo's World (but her eyes remained on her cups and water):

And a short video of her enjoying herself during the activity:

Eventually, she found more containers to transfer water to, making use of her imagination as she used little parts of her toys as 'containers'.

This activity's rather messy though and you've gotta constantly have a dry cloth around to mop up the water that lands on the floor in case the child slips. You've gotta also have some drinking water to replenish the cups of water when the water eventually all gets spilled somehow - Alicia likes to sip from these cups and pretend-cups so drinking water is a must!

Another point I noted during the activity:

Alicia tried transferring water with both her right and left hand and I realised that her right hand's so much more accurate than her left! :D

Stir-fried baby asparagus

This dish is simple to cook and the cooking instructions are basically the same as my other veggie stir-fries... quite a no-brainer.. :D

Nowadays I don't have much time to blog in greater detail about my cooking coz Alicia's taking up a lot of my free time by stretching her eating hours (and hence my feeding hours...)... :(

Hence I've gotta cut the long story short and get to the point!

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of baby asparagus (cut into three sections)
• a few prawns - remove shell but keep tail intact, devein
• 2 cloves garlic - minced
• fish sauce to taste

Marinate prawns with:

• a bit of hua diao jiu
• a dash of ground black pepper

Method:

1. Heat some oil in a wok. Add the garlic and fry till fragrant.
2. Add the prawns and fry till 70% cooked. Remove from wok.
3. Add the baby asparagus and fry till nearly cooked. Add a little water if necessary.
4. Place the prawns back into the wok and fry till both prawns and asparagus are cooked.
5. Add fish sauce to taste.

For toddler's consumption:

• Cut baby asparagus into less than 1cm length and allow child to self-feed.
• The part near the 'spear' of the asparagus is the most tender so you can opt to give that to your tot.

Pan-fried salmon in black pepper sauce

It's been a long time since I cooked this dish so since my mil had bought a slab of salmon for me earlier, I thought this is the dish to cook!

It's really easy, tasty and nutritious!

In the midst of cooking

Done!

Black pepper salmon

Ingredients:

• 1 slab of salmon (not sure how much it weighed) - cut into cubes
• 1 thumb-length ginger - cut into slices
• 1 bunch of spring onions - cut into 1-2inch sections
• 1 tablespoon Lee Kum Kee black pepper sauce
• a bit of water to mix with the black pepper sauce

Marinate salmon with:

• a generous amount of crushed black peppercorns
• hua diao jiu

Method:

1. Heat some oil in a non-stick pan. Fry the ginger and spring onion till fragrant.
2. Add the salmon cubes.
3. Fry till the salmon turns a nice golden brown then flip over the the cubes.
4. Continue frying for a short while till the salmon is cooked through.
5. Combine the black pepper sauce with a bit of water in a bowl. Add the sauce to the pan and fry for a little while more.
6. Add cornflour solution if you prefer a thicker sauce. Otherwise, dish and serve. :)
7. Garnish with more spring onion (optional).

My first attempt at teriyaki chicken

Our simple dinner last night

I tried making my own teriyaki sauce for the first time yesterday... but it didn't turn out to be what I expected... rather disappointed... but it was still quite tasty - just that it didn't taste really like teriyaki sauce...

I was referring to this recipe for the sauce, but when I tasted it, I thought it was too salty so I started adding water since I saw another recipe which added water... maybe that was why it tasted different... hmmm... oh well. Will try again!

I referred to this recipe for the teriyaki chicken recipe.

The letter B (Part I)

I came across this cute craft idea and since I had a toilet paper roll on hand that day, I went ahead to make the butterfly for Alicia. The original idea is to let the child make the butterfly but since Alicia's still young and immature - she'd definitely tear up the butterfly parts even before we start pasting it on the roll - I decided to laminate the parts and let her piece the butterfly together (and take it apart too) by using velcro! She looked at it at first, took it apart then suddenly she realised that it was a butterfly and she started flapping her hands like they were wings and started saying "fu fu fu"... :D

Here she is, playing with stickers... trying to make a letter B. But she was rather grouchy that day... so we didn't finish the activity... besides, she's still really hung up on 'A'... haha...

Look at my pouty princess...

JG Mandarin PlayClub (19/2)

Alicia's still learning to cope with distractions in class ... but I think she has to learn that she is not allowed to misbehave even if others are inattentive in class. That's something she has to learn since there will be distractions in class when she starts going to school proper. Hopefully she'll learn soon - I've been talking to her about this issue...

For art and craft, Alicia played with dough for the first time and she was hooked and refused to do the other task for the day so I brought home the materials... I've yet to let her do it though as I think she's actually not mature enough to handle the delicate paper craft - she tore off part of the paper when I offered it to her at JG. She actually played and held the dough all the way home - even in the cab!

Development in the 16th month (Oct 09)

Walking

Started really walking on 12 Oct.

Teeth

Last incisor out (I forgot to record when the other 2 lateral incisors emerged...)

Speech

Word count:

7) cat: said "cat" when reading her book and can point to a cat and say "cat" on 25 Oct.

8) no: said her first "NO" on 13 Oct while shaking her head and waving her hand at the same time to communicate her preference

9) quack: said "quack" when pointing to a duck in the book,

10) dog: said "dog" when reading (30 Oct)

11) drum: said "drum" when reading (31 Oct)

Others

Can nod and shake head very well by 1 Oct to indicate her preferences.

Can pick out the right flashcards when asked (23 Oct).

Showed ability to understand limits: stopped at the 'forbidden corner' in the bedroom, said "no" and waved her hand, then walked past it :D

Development in the 13th-15th month (July - Sept 09)

Speech

Alicia started calling 'mamma' and 'daddy' specifically (well, most of the time!) shortly after her first birthday.

And on 17Aug 09, it was the first time she responded to requests of calling 'mamma' and 'daddy'.

Her 6th word

She referred to herself as "cia" (pronounced as 'sher') on 5 Sept 09 as we tend to call her that instead of "Alicia". Hehe..

Teeth

Her top central incisors emerged on 12 Aug and the lower left lateral incisor emerged on 27 Sept.

Climbing

She showed off her climbing prowess by climbing up our sofa (which is quite high) on 6 Aug 09.

Walking

Took 1 firm, independent step without stumbling on 28 Aug 09.

Took 2-3 firm steps on 14 Sept.

Fine motor skills

I started exposing Alicia to the doodle board when she was young but of course she wasn't keen or interested in holding the 'pen'. But on 16 Aug 09 (1 month after her first birthday), she decided that she wanted to hold the pen and doodle away! And there has been no end to that ever since! :D

Others

Alicia started imitating (or at least in my records) since 14 July 09. And she started displaying her 'love' for doing housework on 15 July 09 as that was when she started to imitate me wiping the floor. She'd just grab a tissue or cloth and start wiping the floor or table... and she's even more fond of doing this these days (at 19mths). Haha.

On 28 Sept, Alicia also learnt to shake her head to indicate that she doesn't want something.

Her first "DADDY"

"Dad" was the fourth word she said (20 May 09), followed by "Daddy" the next day. :D Does that count as two separate words? Hehe. I think soooo.... so I shall record it as such. Hahahahaha....

The word count:

1) ma

2) mummy

3) bye

4) dad

5) daddy

Of clapping and teething...

The first time Alicia showed off that she could clap and could clap on demand was on 9 May 09. :)

It so happened that on that same day, her first teeth cut through too!!!! After 3 weeks of troubled eating (and feeding), she finally got over her swollen gums as the first bits of her lower central incisors emerged!

The first wave and the first words

Alicia learnt how to wave bye-bye and showed it off for the first time on 4 May 09. She also learnt to say "bye" while waving and could wave on demand. :D

I believe "bye" is the third word she said, the first being "ma"! She said her first "ma" at 4mths and subsequently when she was 7mths, she said "mummy" four times though it was definitely non-specific. :) It wasn't a one-off calling of "mummy" so I'm sure she said it!

Words spoken (by 10mths):

1) ma

2) mummy

3) bye

The pincer grasp and the first self-feeding

Alicia mastered the pincer grasp and self-fed for the first time on 27 April 09.

I remember she picked up the Gerber star and put it into her mouth and was so pleased with herself. Hehehe. But I think I was happier than she was! :D I recall she was trying to pick up the star for a few days before that and didn't succeed. I thought it'd take a long while more before she could pick it up and self-feed but she was faster than I expected. :D

Sitting up

Another overdue post. :) And lots more coming up - I try to update the blog whenever I can...

The first time she sat up on her own from a lying down position was on 9 March 2009.

And the next day, she sat up another three times on her own.

I remember her amazement at herself when it happened. It was written all over her little chubby face then. :) And whenever she managed to sit up on her own, she'd look at me for approval. hehehe...

I'm really glad to be able to have the privilege to be a sahm, to watch every little milestone that Alicia reaches! :P

JG PlayClub (17/2/10)

Alicia wasn't her usual self today - both at class and at home. She kept fussing and throwing tantrums and really tested my patience. Even her teachers noticed that she was in a bad mood today. But of course, no one really knows why. And she can't express herself well enough yet to tell us what's up with her today.

Anyway, I think it's a generally bad day for me today. The cab driver who took us to JG was a really rude, grumpy man who never once smiled or greeted us or said any niceties at all throughout the trip and even at the end of the trip. And he glared at Alicia and threw her a disgusted glance when she made a little bit of noise in the cab. And he kept grumbling how he may be made to pay the parking charge for driving into JGC even though I reassured him that there was a 10-min grace period and I'm certainly not gonna take that long to get out of his cab - I definitely wanted to alight as soon as I could! Who could possibly face such a grumpy man any longer than necessary?

Oh well. During today's lesson, Alicia was naughtier than usual, though she did help to keep the toys and the toy tray. She just didn't sit as still as usual during story-telling time and even fussed when I tried to seat her nicely in my lap! And when the teacher asked her to go collect her funpass, she refused to go forward and made a scene even. Sigh.

During art time, she again, for reasons unknown to me, started to throw tantrums. She insisted on sitting on one of the teachers' lap instead of moving to the next station to complete the next art piece. And when she finally completed the second task, she refused to go and wash her hands. I was really tired out by her silly tantrums and she definitely was trying to test her limits today!

Here's her art work for the day. This week's theme is "Circle" so they made a 'clock' and a 'watermelon'...

The paint for the watermelon was still wet when it was time to go home so it stuck to the clock... that explains the yellowish bits of paper on the 'watermelon'... hehe.

My little painter

Recently Alicia really loves to paint...

Look at that serious expression on her face:

I love mixing colours and fingerpainting!

On the third day of new year...

On the third day of new year, we went to my mum's place for dinner and also to my uncle's house just across the road. Here's Alicia in her third CNY suit, stuffing her face with fruit after dinner:

And here's the pretty jelly my uncle gave!

My little Tigger

On the second day of new year, my Korean beauty evolved into a little Tigger:

My cheeky little Tigger

And she was exceptionally grouchy too! Must be all the napping gone haywire!

Look at my Tigger roar!

Learning the letter A (Part II)

*Hop over to Simply Mommie's Precious Handmades to view this learning aid and other interesting learning aids! :)*

Here's Alicia fiddling with the words and pictures of things starting with the letter A. Although she won't be able to match the words to the pictures anytime soon, I feel that it's still good to expose her to the words. Anyway, I've not made the board on which she's supposed to stick the words and pictures on to form a collage. Haha. Hopefully it'd be ready soon. :)

Another activity we did was to let Alicia do some fingerpainting. I had intended to let each fingerprint form an ant (click here for details), but due to the nature of the paint, the fingerprints weren't defined at all. I guess that's the tradeoff for using non-toxic, washable fingerpaints from Crayola.

Anyway, I've decided to let this sheet of paper be the cover for her letter A lapbook... Most importantly, Alicia had fun, so it really doesn't matter if the activity didn't work out the way I wanted it to.



Songs we sang in conjunction with the teaching of 'ants' and the letter A were:

• The Ants Go Marching
• phonics song for the letter A (she likes this better - I think it's because it's new to her!)

She has this singing toy from her first birthday which happens to have the song about ants!:

My little Korean beauty on the first day of CNY!

Isn't she just adorable? She looks so dainty... until she starts moving around! hahaha...

Here's a collage of photos of how she spent the day...
and check out the other little Korean beauty (my niece) too! :D

JG PlayClub (13/2/10)

As expected, the turnout for today's lesson was bad, similar to yesterday's lesson. Hehe. As a result, my hubby was allowed to join in the class in the last half hour of lesson since there were only eight students today.

I dolled Alicia up in a pretty red Oriental dress my mother-in-law bought for CNY since this week they're supposed to dress in red and in their CNY outfits. Yesterday, I dolled her up in last year's CNY romper (fortunately it still fits... haha... we don't have that many oriental-style clothes for her). Anyway, the red dress was supposed to be worn on the first day of new year but my mum had bought a beautiful Korean-looking satin dress for Alicia and she looked sooooo dainty that we had a change of plans. Hehehehe.

My little TV addict watching TV before going to class...

Back to the topic.

Today's art:

Learning the Letter A (Part I)

Recently I've been working on making some materials to teach Alicia the alphabets, starting with the letter A. So far, I haven't finished going through the materials yet and she's already familiar with the letter and can recognise it and point it out and say it clearly on her own. In fact, she could say it the first time I went through the alphabet A with her. But I feel it's always good to do lots of repetition with a young child like Alicia so I'm still going to go through the rest of the materials. :) I thought of most of these activities on my own, bearing in mind what she loves to do most at the moment... must cater to my little "student's" learning needs. Haha. :D How can I possibly miss teaching? Keke. I'm teaching EVERY DAY, 'working' overtime all the time! :) Just that this 'student' of mine now is MUCH MUCH younger than the JC students... haha. :D And did I mention that it's so much more rewarding, enriching and fulfilling to teach my little one? whahahaha....

Anyway, these activities were carried out over a few days... it's not possible to cram so many things into a day! Space out the activities as young children learn well with repetition. For me, learning at such a young age must definitely be through FUN and exploration! That's why my activities centre around the various senses, and music and reading are absolutely crucial in their learning process.

First I wrote some As for her on a piece of paper (both upper and lower case) in different colours. Then we pasted As I cut out from magazines and stuck them on the same piece of paper together with her.

This is before we stuck the As from the magazine on...

Then I went on to the Alligator Puzzle with her but she wasn't interested in it at first. She's reacting to it a bit more now though she's not really piecing them together yet. She can identify the parts of the alligator though - head, body and legs. :D This puzzle's meant for 18-24mths and the progressive puzzle's available here.

And after that, I let her play with the Apple Tree I prepared for her. I came up with this activity as I believe she'd love the feeling of playing with the velcro and I was right - she LOVES this! But she loves pulling the apples off the tree rather than sticking them back on... :) She loves this apple tree so much she brings it around with her in the house sometimes!

Yay! I finally finished sticking all the apples on the tree mummy!

*Hop over to Simply Mommie's Precious Handmades to view this learning aid and other interesting learning aids! :)*

For literature, we read the book, The World of Ants, and she was fascinated by the MANY ants in the book. Sometimes some non-fiction's good for young children too! There's no need to just stick to fiction... hehe. But you can always read The Ant and the Dove or The Ant and the Grasshopper with your kid too.

I also exposed the Build-A-Letter resource to her but I think she's not so into it yet. Well, maybe when she's a bit older or maybe she just needs a bit more practice. At least she's flipping through the file and playing with the pieces here and there now and then. I guess that's a start.

Hmm, what's this?

Let's check out the rest of the file!

Hee... see my letter A?

Another activity I did with her was with her sticker book. She loves stickers so I thought that this would surely catch her attention - and it certainly did! I drew the alphabet (upper and lower case) on her sticker book and her task is to stick the stickers to form the alphabet. I chose to do this using a sticker book because she's not so precise in her sticking skills yet so the sticker book would provide room for correction - and she definitely needed it! Hehe...

I'm done with the BIG A... now on to the LITTLE one...

Now to add the finishing touches... paste the stickers of letter A!

Music Appreciation

I read from a blog recently that for music appreciation, it is recommended that a young child starts to listen to a composer's music continuously for half an hour for a period of four months before changing to another composer's music. So I started Alicia on Handel's Water Music since 2/2/10 and she simply loves it... she sways to the music and gets all hyped up during the grand parts. :)







Besides letting her listen to classical music, I actually prepared these keyboard cards much much earlier - at about the time I sent her for the trial class at Staccato, but I just laminated them with my spanking new laminating machine... hehe. :) I've got another set of note recognition cards that aren't ready yet. I'll get that done soon... but there's no real hurry. Heh.

*If you'd like to purchase this set of teaching materials, please drop me an email at simplymommie@gmail.com or leave me a msg at the Chatterbox! :)

Egg Shelling

Today Alicia tried to shell her hard-boiled egg on her own for lunch. And she went about her task very seriously... and every time a piece of the shell didn't land in the bowl, she'd stop and pick it up and put it into the bowl before continuing to shell the rest of the egg. :D

Here are some photos of her shelling the egg and a video too!

JG Mandarin PlayClub (12/2/10)

We were the first to arrive for the 11.30am class today! The English and Mandarin PlayClub teachers were all awaiting the students as they expected that the turnout would be bad today. For the longest time, we thought that Alicia might be the only child for the day! And the teachers were discussing that mabbe they'd have a Bilingual class! :D Anyway, in the end, we had a grand total of 5 students in our Mandarin class and so there was very individualised attention today. GREAT! Hehehe.

Alicia seemed to enjoy herself more today and was more relaxed. She even played with the glue during art time and I allowed her to do so... afterall, she needs to wash her hands after art anyway... so no harm letting her have a little tactile exploration. :D But she took it a bit far and put her hand in her mouth while on the way to the toilet! Fortunately, it's non-toxic.

Here's the CNY art:

Today's snack was quite special: buffet-style. The teachers laid out the food JG prepared as well as the new year goodies the mummies brought along for the day on the table and we helped the children take what we felt was suitable for them and the kids will take the plate back to the table on their own (with a little help of coz). So since new year goodies are all heaty, I only allowed alicia to eat the JG food. Haha. Ok, and half a small kueh...

Chinese Word Cards

During Mandarin PlayClub, the teachers will go through with the students individually the Chinese words for the week (and those already covered in past weeks) using the prepared word cards. I observed that those 2 years and above were all more or less able to repeat after the teacher for some of the words they have covered in the past five weeks (including the Indian boy who's in the class too! - impressive!). Well, technically, she did learn these words too at Bilingual PlayClub since JG has the same theme across the classes, there wasn't such time and attention set aside for each student in the Bilingual PlayClub since the class is much bigger. Since Alicia has missed half of the term already with this class, and she doesn't have much exposure to Chinese words, I decided to reinforce them with her every morning when it's Speak-Mandarin-time-with-Mummy. :D

And so, I got to work immediately after I put her to nap that day after lesson, and by the time she woke, the word cards were ready! :)

Well, I don't use these like flashcards in the sense of flashing them at her at a quick pace. Rather, on the contrary, it's to slowly read those words to her and get her to understand them. That's what is done at JG anyway.

Here's a pic of my cards!:

Hop over to Simply Mommie's Precious Handmades to view other interesting learning aids! :)

JG Mandarin PlayClub (10/2/10)

Alicia went for her first Mandarin PlayClub session on 10/2. She looked a little lost at first but fortunately there was a familiar Chinese teacher so she was quite alright after a short while. I guess it's also because it's the first PURE chinese lesson she had so far and the main Chinese teacher's accent is much stronger than the ones she was exposed to during the Bilingual PlayClub.

Snack time's different from the Bilingual Class too since for small classes, the children are expected to queue up for their snacks and take the plate of food back to the table where they will sit and eat on their own. So it's the first time Alicia's doing that... hehe.


Since it's Chinese New Year, they made CNY-related craft: