Playground and the importance of play!

I make it a point to fit play time into Alicia's schedule so it's not just always about learning this and that at home. A child is, after all, a child. And certainly there's much to be learnt when a young toddler like Alicia gets to play! Read more about why play is important for young children here.

It's not every day that I get to bring Alicia down to play at the playground because of her sleeping and eating pattern and habits. Most of the time it's too hot to let her play at the playground... but today's weather was marvellous: cool and cloudy.

Here's Alicia enjoying every moment of her playtime:

Hmm, what happens if I sit on this...

let's climb over this hurdle!

Tree bark... what's its texture?

hmm... it's rough...

Fiddling here and there!

Should I try the Challenge Ladder?

Or perhaps this?

I think I'll just sit in this rocking 'horse'... "rock, rock!"

What's this flower doing on the floor... let's take a closer look

Tired... let's take a short break before we run off again!

More Mandarin (or rather bilingual) learning aids!

Last Saturday I got the term booklet (which shows what will be taught for the term) from Alicia's teachers and I started to conceptualise how I wanted to do up the learning aids for this term. Last term, I only did up the cards for the chinese words taught for the term but I thought I should also try to reinforce the concepts and words taught for the English segment. So after much deliberation, here's what I came up with:

The Chinese and English words are both velcro-ed onto the card so that it gives me the option to just cover the words for one language at a time. According to one of Alicia's chinese teachers, it's better to just teach a concept in Chinese rather than provide an English translation of the concept immediately after telling her the Chinese equivalent. This is to prevent the child from thinking in English and translating concepts into Mandarin later on - which is what I do actually... :D

Anyway, I chose to velcro both sets of words on the card for easy storage and when I want to teach the English words, I just remove the chinese ones and vice versa. I think it should work nicely for us for the term! :)

Here's Alicia getting acquainted with the word cards:

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

Chicken with baby asparagus

It's a really simple dish... the taste is quite ordinary and not outstanding. I would have added red bell peppers if I had them on hand, but I didn't, so the appearance of the dish looks a bit drab. Anyway, it's quite a convenient dish and has veggies and chicken so if you want to save time and effort cooking up another dish, you can try this... with red bell peppers if you can, please. :D

Alicia hasn't had baby asparagus for a long long time so she was quite happy to eat them again last night.. :) She wasn't that keen on the chicken... I guess it's because I didn't marinate them long enough so the chicken bits weren't infused with the overall taste of the dish...

Chicken with baby asparagus

Ingredients:

• 3 chicken thighs, diced (deboned, visible fats removed)
• 1 bunch of baby asparagus (diced)
• 1 clove garlic (minced)
• 1 small red onion (diced)
• water
• cornflour solution (for thickening of gravy)

Marinate chicken (preferably overnight) with:

• 1T oyster sauce
• 1-2T Lee Kum Kee chicken marinade
• ground black pepper
• 2tsp brown sugar
• 1tsp cornflour

Seasoning:

• 1/2T hoisin sauce

Method:

1. Heat some oil in a wok. Fry the diced onion bits till they become translucent.
2. Add in the garlic and fry till fragrant.
3. Add in the baby asparagus, and some water if it's too dry and the onion and garlic are turning brown too quickly.
4. When the baby asparagus is almost cooked, add the chicken cubes and fry till the chicken is cooked.
5. Add seasoning.
6. Thicken gravy with cornflour solution if necessary.
7. Dish and serve.

For toddler's consumption:

• Make sure baby asparagus is less than 1cm in length. The most tender part of baby asparagus is near the 'spear' so if possible, offer that to your tot.
• Cut chicken meat into small pieces.