My blogshop: Simply Mommie's Precious Handmades

I finally went about doing up the blogshop site and you can take a look at the collection of handmade learning aids I make. My learning aids are all over the place in my blog so I've decided to place them together in another site for easy viewing (and purchase, of course).

These learning aids are all original and handcrafted by me and hence, with the amount of labour (all the cutting gives me a sore and an almost-blistered right hand!) and time that go into the learning aids (not to mention the cost price of laminating pouches, original ink cartridges for printing, velcro etc.), they do not come, well, cheap.

Nevertheless, if you can see past the fact that the learning aids are just laminated pieces of paper that have been made visually appealing, you would be able to appreciate and recognise the creativity and the love that went into making them. :)

Happy shopping. :)

Here's a print-screen shot of my blogshop:

Alphabet Fun

This is a learning aid we bought during one of Takashimaya's toy fairs and I think it was incredibly cheap (like about $7?) I really can't remember but I was rummaging stuff in the storeroom the other day, trying to look for something and Alicia kept bugging me. Hence I quickly turned my attention to the stack of stuff we bought from the toy fair the other time since we bought some learning aids in advance then. Time to check if they were suitable for her learning now... and so, I took out this set for her to play with and she has been excited about it for the past week or so.

I'd say the great thing about this set of learning aids is that it's self-correcting and hence if it's not the right puzzle piece, the kid will know because of the bad fit.

Counting the pieces she's put together...

Look at her cute pouty lips as she says "two!"

On the underside of the cover, there are a few suggestions with regard to how to make use of the learning aid but I think Alicia has her own ideas for now how she wants to use it. :)

Nevertheless, she has great fun with this set of learning aids and she's very good with the puzzle already. Talk about appropriate time to take out this set of learning aids.

Nowadays she'd purposely place wrong puzzle pieces together and tell me it's "wrong" and there is a big "hole" between the puzzle pieces.

Kids.

I'm not sure if you still can get this set of learning aids from Takashimaya or its related toy fairs but you can keep a lookout for it the next time! :)

Review of Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?

Here's another of Eric Carle's books though only the illustrations were done by him.

Nevertheless, I think it's quite an enjoyable read as well with an animal taking the centrestage with each flip of the page!

Needless to say, that helps to focus the child's attention on the animal and also because the book's about the sounds the animals make, Alicia had quite some fun while reading.

Her favourite animal from the book currently is the elephant and she would pinch her nose and wave her other hand like a trunk, imitating the sound an elephant makes. :)

Next in line of her favourites is the boa constrictor - which is well, essentially a snake in the kids' eyes and and I just wonder why the author couldn't have made it simpler for the kid by referring to it as a snake instead. No prizes for guessing that Alicia hisses whenever we get to the page about the boa constrictor. Then again, she's always fast-forwarding the reading to those two pages she loves and hardly focuses on the rest. Sigh. Kids just have a mind of their own, don't they? :)

Overall, it's a good book but I think Alicia really misses Eric Carle's From head to toe as she's been asking for it, often asking for where the gorilla who thumps his chest is! *faint*

Time to borrow that book again for her.... :)

Julia Gabriel PlayClub (Term 3 Week 5)

It's mid-term and the last week to withdraw from JG without forfeiting the deposit. Like I mentioned in my previous post about JG's lessons, I've decided to withdraw Alicia from JG and so that's what we did on Saturday.

After all that's been said about the increasingly worsening teacher-student ratio and how I feel the class has become mainly about crowd control, I still think that the teachers are creative in their teaching ideas for drama time and art.

Here's one of the pieces of art Alicia did last Sat. The theme last week was "three".

A mobile made of 3 hanging fish (with 3 stripes each on the body)!

The other piece of art work was stenciling the chinese word san (three) on a sheet of paper (I'm too lazy to dig out that piece of work to take photos).

Waterplay was fun for her that day and she enjoyed music time too - it's the first time this term that she started showing signs of enjoyment during that segment. I dunno why but she's been really grouchy during music time for the past month of lessons. Well, I'm glad she finally went off to dance together with the rest instead of insisting that I carry her!