Julia Gabriel PlayClub (Term 3 Week 8)

Last week's lesson at JG was really quite different. And the difference was that Alicia finally agreed to speak to her teachers. :P Usually she doesn't say a word to them but she will whisper quietly to me in class. I guess she's just not comfortable to speak to people she's not familiar with.

Well, it was also the first time she's been asked for an opinion during class time. Her teacher who was demonstrating the artwork for the day asked her if he should put 1 or 2 scoops of glue for the craft and she pondered for awhile, then said TWO, enthusiastically, but raising the wrong number of fingers... lol. She usually raises the correct number of fingers but I think she was so excited (coz she actually jumped up from my lap to answer the question), she just raised her whole hand instead.

During the demo for art, the teachers will also usually say 'stop!' when they stop putting the glue/ glitter/ paint. Right after the teacher finished saying 'stop', and when he was about to move on to say something else, Alicia again excitedly jumped up and shouted "STOP!" lol. Everyone was very amused with her that day. :)

Later while waiting to do art at one of the tables, she went to get her letter S stamp. The teacher asked her to say "please". Usually she'd just look at him and not say a word. But that day, she went up to him, really close to his face and almost spat out the word "please" at him. Really hilarious. Subsequently she said her "thank you" and named the letter S and the sound it makes accordingly. The teacher said she has made remarkable improvement. Haha. Actually she has been able to speak, just that she doesn't speak to him. LOL.

I wonder whether she'll continue to speak up in class this week! :)

Julia Gabriel PlayClub (Term 3 Week 6)

Week 6 at Julia Gabriel. 4 more lessons... We're counting down to the end of the term! lol.

Theme this week: the letter C.

The art piece the Mandarin teachers prepared: a coral crown:

The English teachers didn't prepare any art materials that day. Instead, the kids were allowed to make their own cereal crunchies by scooping cornflakes, rainbow sprinkles and a bit of honey and mixing it all up for a pre-snack time snack. :P

Alicia was more interested in the cereal crunchies than the coral crown but once she reached home, she started plucking out the sequins from the crown and well, she had her fair share of fun there! :P

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!

Julia Gabriel PlayClub (Term 3 Week 4)

We were the first to enter the classroom on Saturday - it's been eons since we've been early for class! Somehow we managed that day and Alicia had a little more indoor playtime. :)

Theme of the week?

QUICK.

Hence:

a crab that moves quickly

(you can place your thumbs behind the crab - there's a strip of cardboard attached behind so your fingers can act as the crab's legs)

A fast-moving boat at sea :)

The boat is attached to a disposable chopstick and the paper plate has a slit in the middle so you can move the boat horizontally!

Outdoor play was sandplay and she refused to go near the sandpits at all so off she scooted to the playground... when will she ever like sand? :)

Alicia's class size is becoming larger and larger - and I'm really tired of beating the crowd to get her art done. These days, she refuses to play with the toys while waiting and insists on waiting AT the table and trying to get her hands on the artwork. Needless to say, that means lots of struggling as I try to get her away from the table...

Lessons have become very noisy and inconducive with the new kids taking turns to cry. And since it's JG's philosophy to not let a crying child leave the classroom, we've had to put up with lots of noise. Although I do understand their good intentions of teaching a kid to settle in and all, as a parent of a not-constantly-bawling-child, I find it difficult to concentrate as an adult, what more a 2-year-old?

The huge class size also means a change in the teacher-student ratio and to pay that amount for the term with such a ratio, I find it truly hard to accept. Besides, I don't see Alicia picking up much from class this term. Perhaps it's the class size. Perhaps. I'm really not sure. One thing I'm certain though is that she's picking up a lot more at home so I think I should just save the school fees. I'm sure we have a better use for that money. :) That said, Alicia and I have enjoyed the lessons and the teachers, and it was only after much deliberation that we've decided to withdraw after this term...

Julia Gabriel PlayClub (Term 3 Weeks 2 & 3)

Just realised that after blogging about Alicia's birthday celebration at Julia Gabriel, I didn't mention or include pics of her artwork done that day... The theme last week was "fish" and that explains the art pieces:

Painted with fingertips

Cover the fish body with glue then sprinkle the crepe paper followed by the sequins and sprinkle glitter

Swimming during Outdoor Play:

Week 3's theme is "yellow" so yellow paint features prominently in her work:

Paint the turtle shell yellow, sprinkle soy beans on it then use the dotter to dot away!

This is supposed to be a clam, but it got crushed on the way home :P

Scrunch up tissue paper into a ball and stuff it into the clam then stick eyes on it.

Paint the clam yellow on both sides and sprinkle glitter:

First lesson of Term 3 at Julia Gabriel

It was pouring last Saturday morning and it was a last minute decision to bring Alicia to class because the rain abated only at 11+- and thus, we were REALLY late that day!

This term's theme is "Out at Sea" and the week's focus was "dolphin" so the kids had fun threading a cut-out dolphin and painting a dolphin with crumpled newspapers and a stencil.

Alicia can thread quite well already - it's been some time since I last gave her a threading activity and she has improved tremendously! :)

Time to make some learning aids for threading? :P

Here she is at home with her dolphins:

Made her pose with her dolphin :P

Splish splash!

Nice?

I think it's pretty artistic... :P

Julia Gabriel PlayClub (Term 2 Week 9 & Graduation)

Last week Alicia went for class with her daddy while I stayed home to clean the blinds, windows and do the routine vacuuming and mopping. The theme of that week was pink so lotsa things were in pink that day, including Alicia's dress, and of course her artwork:

Cute little pig eh?

The kids had strawberry milkshake and Alicia had some too... I can't really remember what else happened that day but apparently she made a mess in the car after class because she insisted on having her milkshake in the car and in the carseat all alone, while hubby was at the wheel. lol.

Week 10's party week as usual and the kids will collect their 'graduation certificates'. :) The theme of the week was 'fizz' and so there were lotsa bubble-related activities, including art!

For this piece of art (below), the teacher blew bubbles into the paint (with soap solution added of course) and used the piece of paper to scoop up all the bubbles for each kid. The kids could then burst the bubbles with their hands/fingers or just wash them pop. Then they used cotton buds to draw 'bubbles' near the fish... well, they're supposed to be bubbles but of course Alicia had other interpretations.

This abstract art piece was done by sprinkling coloured powder with baking soda added then spraying vinegar at it using a spraycan. Due to the chemical reaction, there will be little bubbles! Of course that amused the kids. The only drawback of this activity was the excess vinegar which gets onto the paper so in order for the painting to dry properly, I had to tilt the paper so that the excess vinegar could be removed (which explains why the artwork looks like this) :)

Here's Alicia receiving her graduation cert (she wasn't as excited as she was compared to Term 1, in fact she was rather apprehensive):

This is Alicia before the party began... she went to survey the food first! haha.

Alicia playing the keyboard with her teacher during the graduation ceremony (she'd received her cert already so she was bored and checking out more interesting stuff):

Yeah! I got to play the keyboard while nobody else did! kekeke...

More about Julia Gabriel next term! For now, a well-deserved break for both Alicia and us!

Julia Gabriel PlayClub (Term 2 Week 5)

This week's focus was on 'jelly' so no prizes for guessing that the kids got to eat jelly during class that day! What was surprising to me though was that the jelly-eating session was in place of a piece of artwork that day. The Mandarin teachers went on as usual with the art but the English teachers had the children eat jelly with fruit cocktail during that segment. Alicia was very happy to eat the jelly that day and she self-fed half a bowl of it before going on to do her art.

I had to throw away her piece of work that day because the glue wasn't dry when we left Julia Gabriel so the glue leaked onto the bag. Fortunately I managed to clear the mess but the piece of craft had to go... the teachers gave them three small plastic containers and they filled them up with some paint, covered them and shook them so that the paint would be distributed through the containers. Then they glued the containers of paint (which were supposed to be jelly moulds of 'jelly') to a paper plate.

During magicbox time, the English teachers had a jar of jam in the box and the teacher, Rino, demonstrated spreading jam onto half a slice of bread and ate it in front of the kids. After that, the kids all got a jam sandwich too while he read a book about jam sandwiches to the children.

I think Alicia had enough food to fill her up during the lesson so when it came to snack time, she hardly ate a morsel. Rino was shocked that she'd 'finished' snack so fast this time because she'd always been last to finish for the past few weeks, since Term 2 started. haha... that was only because she didn't eat. Anyway, all the kids finished snack earlier than usual that day so everyone had extra time for either music time or outdoor waterplay - of coz the kids chose extended outdoor waterplay! :P I guess everyone played enough that day because when it was time to clear up, there wasn't the usual bawling. Even Alicia, who was last to leave the tub, didn't protest all that much when I brought her off to change. :)

Julia Gabriel PlayClub (Term 2 Week 4)

This is the first Saturday that I've had to bring Alicia for class on my own since we started her at Julia Gabriel. Well that's because my hubby has reservice and hence we had to go there by cab and back. I was a little apprehensive at first because I was afraid that it would be difficult to get a cab from Evans Road on a Saturday, but thank God, everything worked out well and I got my cab within 5 minutes of waiting by the roadside. She misbehaved in the cab on the way home but that's another story...

We were late again for class - it seems that it has become habitual. I do hope that we can put a stop to this bad habit of turning up late for class. I've never liked to make an entrance and now with a kid, I still don't. Plus, I don't really like to disrupt the class...

Anyway, Princess couldn't get up this morning and instead of concentrating on eating her breakfast (chocolate bread), she was pinching her bread, poking the chocolate filling with her finger....... doing everything possible to make us even later for class. And when I finally stopped her from her nonsense and ate up the rest of the bread, she was of course furious and started throwing a tantrum. Knowing that she'd not agree to drink any water in that state (and I really wanted her to drink some fluids after that chocolate bread), I decided to nurse her although we were already late. Of all days, someone took longer than her usual 'sip' at the breast and made us even later for class.

When we arrived, the teachers were just about to demonstrate the art work for the day. Here's Alicia's work:

She simply loves to sprinkle glitter and it took me a long time to coax her to stop sprinkling glitter...

Anyway, today's lesson's focus is on 'apple' and so during Magicbox time, the children were each given a slice of apple to eat. As usual, Alicia was last to finish - in fact, she gave up the last small bit to me coz she wanted to participate in the 'apple-plucking' activity that was going on (one of the teachers 'dressed up' as an apple tree and had 'apples' on her for the children to pluck and put into a basket). The way Alicia reacted to the teacher - the inquisitive look as she took in the sight coupled with the running back to me hurriedly yet still ever so cheekily to 'tell' me what she had seen - was really cute. Children are so amusing really.

As usual, she was last to finish the snacks today and eventually I took the plate and cup away from her so that she could participate in the lesson's song and dance segment. Maybe she was upset with me for doing that because she kept throwing tantrums during that segment. Even when they were singing her favourite song 'Skimerink', she didn't do the actions or sing along as she normally would. The only song she decided to participate in was 'Twinkle twinkle little star'. Sigh.

Outdoor play was sandplay today and she refused to play with the sand - as usual. And so she ran around in the playground in the sweltering heat, 'cooked up' some 'dishes' in the play-kitchen and that wrapped up today's lesson!

Julia Gabriel PlayClub (Term 2 Week 3)

Alicia was relatively well-behaved during Saturday's class... Anyway, during the previous lesson, the instructors gave the children grapes to eat as part of the teaching of the letter 'g'; this week, to teach the colour  'orange', the instructors gave them carrot juice to drink! :D And so the kids were made to queue up to collect their carrot juice and had to say 'orange' before the cup was handed over (well, of course even if the children didn't say it, they still got to drink it!). Alicia had two small cups of 30ml each... yes, she queued up twice... but there were times she just wanted to be part of the queue, even before she finished her first cup. The instructor said she just loves to be part of the queue... lol.

For snack time, the kids were given raisins, watermelon and biscuits. As usual, Alicia was the last to finish but this week, she refused to give up on the food so the instructor moved the table and chair aside so that the class could move on to the song and dance segment. And so, Alicia was the spectator for the day... every time the class danced around the classroom and when they walked by the table, they'd laugh at Alicia - still eating! sigh... and in the end, she finished everything only after the song and dance segment was over! During that segment, Alicia would do the actions of songs that she likes then carry on eating... LOL.

For art, they painted a 'carrot', and used a comb to make squiggly lines to make it look like a real carrot. But we didn't get to take the carrot home as it'd be included in the graduation booklet. Here's the other piece of art she did. She was given a balloon filled with some water and that was the painting medium for the day!

Julia Gabriel PlayClub (Term 2 Week 2)

Alicia was so restless in class, moving here and there in class... but she didn't wander away from the activities. Instead she kept going up to her teachers to ask them for hugs and just to sit on their laps...

For teaching of the letter 'g', the instructors gave the children one big grape each to eat during English story time. When the children had gone to wash their hands, Alicia went up to the instructor and told him "more, more!". Hahahaha.... but she didn't get more because it was time for Chinese story time...

As for swimming that day, she refused to enter the tub at first and by the time she agreed to do so, it started to drizzle so she hardly got to play much. Once out of the tub, she wanted to go to the playground to play but she was wet and had to get changed so she threw a terrible tantrum when I brought her back to class to be changed. Sigh. I wonder if she's already reaching the terrible twos coz she's been extra naughty recently...

Anyway, here's her art for the day:

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! :)

JG PlayClub (27/3)

Last Saturday was Alicia's first lesson of Term 2 at Julia Gabriel. The usual instructor was on reservice so there was a stand-in teacher for the day. Honestly, that lesson really made me appreciate the wonderful lessons Alicia has been having. Truly, a teacher is the one that makes all the difference to a lesson taught. Storytime has never been so boring and never have I seen anyone tell a story like that. She stumbled over the words and it seemed to me that she didn't know the story very well at all (read: poor lesson preparation). Furthermore, I couldn't see any link between the chosen storybook (about a pony) and the theme for the week (noodles). I thought it'd be commonsense that a teacher should choose something relevant, something pertaining to what needs to be emphasised for the lesson. I mean, even if the story didn't centre around noodles, they could have at least chosen a book that centres around something starting with the letter 'n' since that's the emphasis for the week. I was really disappointed with the storytelling and I think most people would have been able to do a better job. Anyway, nobody was paying attention during the English storytelling because it just didn't manage to get the kids' attention. In contrast, the Chinese drama section was fabulous - there was audience participation as well as direct relevance to the theme.

Anyway, we were very late for class that day and when we arrived, it was already time to do art so we'd missed the indoor freeplay session, the funpass and magicbox segments. Here's Alicia's art for the day: a plate of kway teow and a plate of noodles :D

Bilingual PlayClub (Term 1 Graduation)

Today's the last lesson of the term for Bilingual PlayClub and so the kids had their 'graduation ceremony'. Yesterday Alicia 'graduated' once already but I didn't have my camera with me... today I got my hubby to take a video of her when she went up to receive her 'certificate'. She was very keen to go up to collect it on her own and she was all excited about it after that... :)

Here are some photos of her eating during party time:

It's yummy mummy...

And here's her art for the day (a pull-along art piece of a boat, truck and car and two motorcycles that can revolve on the plate):

and here are the mementoes (a photo taken after Parents Chat and her graduation 'certificate' which comes along with one of her pieces of art):

Can you spot us? :)

The last two Mandarin PlayClub lessons...

It's time to say goodbye to our friends and teachers at Mandarin PlayClub since today's Alicia's last Mandarin lesson... we arrived very late for class today - the latest ever! - because Alicia woke up early this morning so she fell asleep again at the 10am milk feed...

You can view photos of her first experience with 'face painting' here.

Here's the art work she did for the week:

And there was a 'graduation ceremony' at the end of class where the kids went forward to collect their 'graduation certificate'... surprisingly, Alicia went forward on her own... she has not done so willingly without having me go up with her so far for all Mandarin and Bilingual lessons so far!

It's actually a A4 booklet where there's a piece of artwork they did in one of the weeks... (can't rem which week though)...

and there's a photo which we took during Parents Chat... can you spot us? :D

JG PlayClub (Term 1 Week 9)

Mandarin lessons were fine this week though she's still trying to enter the English PlayClub classroom whenever we reach JG and she would refuse to enter the Mandarin classroom. It's always with much coaxing on the part of the teachers that she'd enter - or if I just enter the classroom and leave her standing at the door (she'd run in after me so that works). Term's ending next week so there are just two more lessons to go!

Anyway, today during the singing session, she performed the actions of Itsy Bitsy Spider (sung in Mandarin of course - I'm sure she didn't understand a word of it) in front of the class, much to the amazement of everybody coz even the older kids can't do it correctly in sequence. :D *happy mummy*

The theme this week is Gold (as in the colour) so here are her masterpieces:

She loved the bell! And she played with it all the way home on Wed and she even said "bell" a few times when she was playing with it in the cab. The surprising thing is that I didn't tell her that that was a bell so she's already grasped the concept of 'bell' when I was teaching her using the letter B word-pic cards! Anyway, by the time we got home, most of the 'gold' from the bell had fallen off...

She also enjoyed playing with the 'handbag' and on the way home in the cab, she tore out the string from the paper plate in her attempt to 'wear' the bag over her head.... haha.

Here are her masterpieces from the Bilingual PlayClub (a fan and a bunch of keys):

JG Bilingual PlayClub (27/2)

As mentioned in the earlier post, my hubby brought Alicia to JG on his own that day since I was down with flu and anyway, it's Daddies' Week so it's really appropriate that he should be there in place of me. :D

She was, according to my hubby, generally well-behaved and she was looking around for me after lesson.. haha.

Here's her art for the day:

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!:

 

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!