交通工具 - 船

This is the final part of our CL homelearning on transportation. Previously, we had done this and this.

To get them interested, we started off with some fun that I knew they love. We had avocado milkshake for snack that day. As I was washing dishes, I saw the avocado skin and an idea struck me! We could use them as boats! Haha.

They were so thrilled! Mandy was beaming with joy and Barry was trying his best to sink the Lego boy, wreck his boat and make the water as dirty as possible. As usual. At least this time, he didn't pour water all over himself and the floor.

We did a collage craft.

Mandy was having a flu when she did this. She couldn't manage to finish the collage for the sea. No wonder too because she was taking such pains to find the perfect blue piece to fit in perfectly. She didn't want to see any white gaps and tried her best not to let the papers overlap. She was particular even about the shade of blue. I know because she was mumbling while sticking "Ok, there's dark blue here already. Here? Have. Stick here then."

OMG, looking at her do a collage can make me want to tear out my hair. But yet, I'm very proud of her. Such patience. A pity she couldn't finish it. I was on the verge of asking her to 'anyhow stick' so that she could finish it. But that would be wrong right?

She did the sea on the left side of the boat. As you can see from the right, I'm not as patient as her.
 
Barry? He did everything (with lots of help) BUT the sea. You would have notice that the sea collage is the bulk of the project. Hah.

They also did this:

Both coloured. On hindsight, marker pens are such a mistake! Should have stuck to colour pencils.

By sticking time, Barry had lost interest. Mandy said the name of each vehicle in chinese before sticking them in the right bubble. She insisted there was no place for the train because trains don't go on roads. So I drew tracks for her.

I also let them stick stickers of vehicles in their sticker books, but only after saying the name of it in chinese correctly. The boy gave up afte a couple of stickers. The girl, after many repetitions, now know the names of the vehicles pretty well! YAY!

She also learnt to recognise a few more chinese words:  车, 飞, 机, 船

My aim was for her to learn more words but I was pretty slack. Oops.

East coast with mum

This time, we brought along our new Ezy Roller and my mum! Hehe. Mandy wanted to show her how she cycles.

The weather was not as fantastic as our previous outing in December. It's starting to get hot! But thanks to the trees, we had shade most of the time.

Started off with cycling for the kids. Barry insisted on trying. He could 'cycle' by himself for a while. But his feet only moved back and forth, and not one full round. We tried to teach him the right way and he got confused and gave up. Hehe.

He went on the Ezy roller instead.

They took turns. Here's how the roller works:

Barry's legs are nearly too short. He can manage it but not fast. They like the roller very much and we like that it's fuss free for us, except the bringing out part since we don't drive. We found out 3Wheels rents out Ezy Rollers at East Coast! So we don't have to bring it there next time. The kids love to roller around our estate though. :)

After that, we went for hotcakes while waiting for our turn to rent the big carriage!

It was worth the 1+hour's wait and the $40 rental. Hubby and I got to cycle! He super gian cycling. Haha. My mum got to sweat it out a bit too and she liked that. The kids loved the wind and were giggling throughout, until it got hot. Haha.

Then we had a feast at TungLok seafood restaurant again. They ran out of Peking Duck so we ordered the chilli crab yet again. This time, the crab was delicious! Sweet and succulent. Even my mum ate quite a bit. As usual, the girl feasted on chee cheong fun and they boy ate a bit of everything, except the crab of course.

After lunch, both kids fell asleep almost instantly on the taxi, and continued their nap till 4+ in the evening.

Though my mum was still troubled and exhausted, she chatted animatedly with us, played wildly with the kids and laughed out loud at some instances. I'm glad. :)

Cute little lions ushering in the new year!

Inspired by Crazymommy, I did lion dance costumes with the kids on friday. In fact, she has so many good CNY craft ideas I want to do much more with the goods. Alas, I'm way behind schedule in spring cleaning. Haha. I think I should target ONE room instead of the whole place. I've lived here for...7 years? Or more? I don't think we've ever managed to get our place spring-cleaned in time. Oops.    

Plus, I haven't bought any new clothes for the kids. Not a single piece. Going to survive on Xmas presents. Ha. And they might wear clothes they wore last year. Oh, not Barry. Don't think he can still fit into them. :p

By the way,  Crazymommy is a sahm with 2 kids (with no help) and she's very talented in crafts and super good at multitasking. I learnt a lot from her. :) So if you need craft ideas, go visit her site. She gives lots of links too.

Here's our version of the costume:

We spent more than an hour on these! It was fun but I didn't realise how exhausted I was. OMG, there was so much to do! Crazymommy, how did you do it?

I wanted to let the kids do as much as they could. So I left the choosing of colours, drawing, cutting, sticking to them. Mandy was competent enough to do all that. Barry was not. I knew he wanted to try so I let him. In the end, he made a huge mess, leaving many tiny pieces of paper all over the floor. Glue on the floor, sticky tape on the floor, shreds of crepe paper....cotton wool... I guess that contributed to my day long headache. (Serious, I had a headache after that that lasted till this morning. Ha)

Mandy did everything herself, except for the sticking of eyes and 'tail'. I'm very proud of her. She was actually tired from her slight cold but she said she liked making the costume so she would continue to do it even though she was tired.She toiled over it for over an hour.

Barry was distracted on the way but managed to be involved more than I expected him to be.

Oh, Mandy decorated her lion's tail. She said it's a tree. "These are the leaves falling down. A lot a lot of leaves. It's winter." She also scoffed at my idea of sticking the lion's mane. "NO. Lion's mane not like that what! They fall down at the sides one what!" before she plucked out the crepe paper I stuck on for demonstration and re-stick it her own way. The result is quite funny, looking like 2 ponytails at the side. But well, it's her masterpiece and she's really pleased with it. That's enough. :)

See them dance! Mandy delegated me to the drums. Hehe.

You can see the very unglam me for a brief moment in the video, juggling the drum and bells. Ha. Tempo a bit out at some points. That's because I was distracted ok. My rhythm sense and tempo is my strong point in music hor. :p

Hope we'll find time to do more CNY crafts. :)

Thou shalt not waste

As the kids grow bigger, they begin to imitate the adults more. Mandy, of course, has started 'lecturing' everybody around her for quite some time. She also says things like "See mama! I can colour so well, next time I teach you ok?" She teach me? *rolls eyes*

Now, even Barry says things like that. Once, he said he will teach Mandy how to draw. It made her quite mad. Haha.

The other day, when hubby refused to let them watch a Youtube video on the computer, Mandy said "Only one what papa! C'mon!!". C'mon little girl, do we really talk like that? Yet another time, she exclaimed "Wow! That's cool man!" when she saw something that I've made. Haha.

Recently, she's been preaching about minimising wastage. It started one day when she saw me washing dishes.

Mandy: Mama, what are you doing?

Me: Washing dishes.

Mandy: Why must you use so much water?

Me: Er. Because there's soap. I have to use more water to wash the soap away.

Mandy: But still cannot use so much water you know? Like that is wasting. Next time, we don't have enough water to drink, to bathe, to wash hands... HOW?

Since then, she's been preaching to me and Barry almost everyday. Even Barry is telling me not to waste water. "Don't turn on so big mama! Cannot! Cannot waste water!" he insisted. Then, it'll take forever for him to rinse off the soap on his hands.

But actually, I'm thankful for their reminders. I do use too much water sometimes. Guilty. Hehe.

Yesterday, the girl lashed out at the boy when he took an extra piece of tissue for his perspiration. "BARRY! Cannot take so many tissue! DON'T. WASTE. TISSUE!"

She continued with her tirade and said "You waste then we must cut down so many trees you know? Cut and cut. Next time, the squirrels... and the... birds... cannot go and make their homes on the trees already. HOW?"

Wow, not bad little girl. You can link loss of natural habitats to human wastage. Ha.

So take it from a 4 year old everyone. Thou shalt not waste!

What we did last december

An evening at Esplanade

Hubby and I are music lovers. We're particularly found of live performances. We used to go Crazy Elephant at Clarke Quay for their blues rock music. We also went Wala wala and Balaclava a few times. Of course, being 民歌餐厅 performers ourselves, we patronised 木船 (when it was still in Chinatown) many times. Well, we used to perform there too. And before 一炮儿红 closed shop, I visited the place quite a few times. We 客串 a few times too.

We really miss those days where we could watch performances late into the night, then go for supper afterwards. We miss that kind of magic in the air which only live music can bring. Alas, young kids in the family certainly doesn't support this lifestyle.

On that particular evening however, we got back a little bit of that magic. We were lucky the band playing that day was pretty good! Of course the kids weren't interested but we had them laughing and squealing by placing them on our laps and dancing with them to the music. Hey, music should be enjoyed thus! They were enthusiastically clapping to more than 3 songs!

But first, dinner and a walk by the riverside.

Very unsightly white balls.

Don't worry, I read that all these plastic balls were recycled after the New Year celebration.

We decided to stay out a bit later that night. During holidays, we are willing to push back their bedtime to 9.30pm. School nights are strictly 8.30pm. That night, they slept at 10+pm I think.

The keyboardist was awesome.

 Drummer was awesome too.

The bassist was quite good but the lead guitarist was bleah.

The band is called Laksa something. With the exception of the lead guitarist, they were all very groovy and tight. Pretty impressive! We performed such free performances at the Esplanade before and so I was surprised this free performance was of such fine quality. (Ya lah, we weren't exactly that good. Hehe)

Hannah's 4th birthday party

Do I really still need to write captions for birthday parties?

Meetup with SNGS friends

Made a new friend that day too. :)

We had lunch at Marche. That was a good choice because the kids had such a great time at the Marche playhouse that we could chat from 11+am to almost 4pm. At 2+pm, they napped for a while, Mandy in the stroller and Barry on the bench with cushion.

Even hubby enjoyed chatting with us girls. Ha.

We should do this more often. :)

Woodlands waterfront

It was my mum's first time there. There was a huge group of people. They all look like Myanmar (I've checked! This is the correct name for people of Myanmar) or people from that region. It looks like their family day or something.

Later, we saw them leave in the busloads! It was the 18th, anyone know if it's any day of significance for them?

The skywald was swarmed with kids, some of them very big. So after playing at the playground, we took a walk at the jetty first. My mum, as usual, was a great entertainer. She fed them pears and jested around with them.

This Mandy, so corny.

 Finally got to climb. We started a huge traffic jam behind us. Oops.

 

Or course, we had many other outings last holidays which I've already blogged about. We thoroughly enjoyed spending the whole month together as a family.

Aren't holidays great?