First ice-skating experience

HOW LUCKY ARE KIDS TODAY???

Both hubby and I have never tried skating of any form, or seen/touched snow (real or fake) but now, malls offer passes for the kids to ice-skate for just $60 worth of receipts per kid. By the way, there is a slot for adults to skate too... but *ahem* I think we'll fare even worse than our kids. Cannot lao kui you know. Hehe.

Anyway, after chancing upon the skating show a few weeks back, we decided that it would be quite an experience for the kids to try skating, especially since Mandy has been asking to skate since she watched Belle in Beauty and the Beast skate in the show some time back.

Mandy has always been the very cautious sort and I was apprehensive about whether to let her have a go at it. But well, never try, never know. As for Barry, well, I didn't want to let him go but I knew he would provide much needed courage and company for the girl. I just hoped he wouldn't break a leg or something, knowing how clumsy he is. Haha.

After many postponements, they finally skated, or rather, tried skating. When I told Mandy we're going skating the next day, she looked at me, eyes all big in astonishment, and said "But we have to learn first right?" On the way, I could sense she was excited yet nervous. She asked me "When we go there, somebody will teach us right?" Cautious Mandy at work.

The boy got quite tensed gearing up. He muttered that he didn't want to skate already. Later, Mandy also wanted to back out. But only for that moment. They actually really wanted to skate. They were all smiles after that and Mandy kept saying Barry looked very cute. I say, both looked incredibly cute!

They tried out their skates and clowned around.

And then it was rink time! Before even stepping into the rink, Barry tripped on the steps. One of the in-charge was following him wherever he went. He told me the boy was very young and he'll see how he goes. I presumed he was worried that Barry might hurt himself.

He wanted to hold their hands but my kids flatly refused! He must have thought my kids were so weird. All the others were either skating (didn't look like it's their first time in the rink) or holding on to one of the adult helpers' hands. Only mine were walking like zombies of Night of the Walking Dead.

The in-charge was looking very worried. Hehe. The kids were really enjoying themselves though, especially Mandy.

They stayed close to each other, holding hands most of the time. Then, Mandy felt brave enough to venture far by herself. She walked away from Barry, all the while grinning.

Barry looked for her, panicked, slipped and fell. He cried and wanted out. Mandy just couldn't stay in the rink without her didi. So she came out too.

After much persuading, they went back in. But STILL too stubborn to hold the guy and the other gor gors and jie jies' hands. So many people offered help to them you know!

You can see that towards the end, it looked as if they were about to hold hands with the helpers, but that was actually the end of their skating experience for Barry started to cry when the gor gor held him.

For my kids, it's usually 'both or none'. Either they do it together, or they don't do it at all. They are very close which is wonderful. But it can be a bit frustrating sometimes. Hehe.

Anyway, because they insisted on holding each other, when Barry panicked and fell (because the gor gor came near), he pulled Mandy down too. She had a very big bump. At home, I saw a big bruise on her butt. So.... ya. that kind of ended the whole thing, after 15minutes.

The girl still wanted to skate but the boy was frantically tearing off his ankle/knee guards and helmet, and proclaiming "I DON'T WANT TO SKATE ALREADY!". We didn't want to push it. Anyway, like hubby said "We brought them here to have fun. What's the point of making them go again if they won't have fun?"

He was not the least perturbed and we went snacking and shopping instead. Woohoo!

Still, I'm proud of you kids! That was brave of you! :)

Now, we joked about bringing them to skate all the time. In fact, everyday, we asked them if they wanted to go skate later. Barry will grin and go NOOOOOO. Mandy will tell me that she wanted to, but not until she's much bigger. Then, she will be able to skate like the others. Ha.

Happy winter solstice festival!

I hope I got that right.

It's 冬至 tomorrow (according to my mum)! I did a search on the net and found out it's called winter solstice festival in english. Hmmm. Isn't there a nicer name?

She came up with the idea of letting the kids have a go at making riceballs (汤圆). She brought the stuff to my place today and we introduced this fun activity to the 2 little ones.

It was not easy at first when the dough (which was prepared the night before. Mum said this step is essential!) was still quite moist. Barry couldn't roll them into balls, he made little snakes instead. Mandy got the hang of it after a while and was making perfectly round riceballs. She was so pleased.

The more colourful plate had balls made by my mum and Mandy. Mandy really was pretty good, you can see. You also can see Barry's little pink snakes, more like worms, on the other plate.

 

Yummy!!!

The adults indulged in some store bought riceballs with fillings too. Oh, the dual coloured riceballs were made by the very boliao me. Haha.

Hubby said the texture of the homemade ones was PERFECT! I absolutely agree. Better than the ones from the stalls. Soft but springy. SLURPS!

Mandy loved the making, Barry loved the tasting. Looks like this is going to be a family tradition. *grin*

Art and crafts

Hubby complained, okay reminded me, that I haven't blogged for a while. :p

I'm quite tired of editing pictures of our outings. So I'll put up some pictures of the kids' artwork.

After a very long procrastination, I finally continued our CL homelearning lessons on transportation. (Linette, I'm still too lazy to type in chinese...Heh)

First, I showed them the word cards of 飞 and 机. Focusing on the word 飞, I asked them what flies. Mandy was able to say 鸟 and 飞机. She said helicopter too. I told her I can fly too. "Watch me!" I said while I jumped and flapped my arms. The kids laughed and tried to imitate my failed attempt at flying.

"咦, 我们不能飞啊! 为什么呢?" "啊! 这是手啊! 不是翅膀! 鸟有翅膀吗? 飞机呢? 直升机呢?" Mandy said helicopters' wings are the ones spinning on top. I told her those are rotor blades, 螺旋桨(finally found out what it's called!) They don't look like wings but they help the helicopter fly.

"鸟和飞机都有翅膀. 翅膀让它们飞! 你看! '飞' 字也有翅膀!"

I made detachable 'wings' to let the kids stick to complete the word. I pointed out that the 钩 looks like a tail.

Then we did a simple craft of assembling the body (机身), wings (机翼) and tail  (机尾) of the aeroplane. They also drew suns, birds and sponged painted white clouds over the blue sky.

Mandy's:

She said the plane flew into the clouds.

Barry's:

That cheeky boy painted all over the words. Mandy wanted big clouds, Barry wanted small clouds. Both turned out very nice! :)

The girl drew a watermelon the other day.

I realised she wouldn't draw if I don't teach her. So I drew one watermelon and she followed step by step. She drew and coloured herself nevertheless. I guess I was too insistent on her coming out with drawings by herself and that stressed her greatly. Now she likes drawing more and because I'm there to guide her, she draws with more confidence and interest.

The zigzag lines were difficult. And it was a bit tricky getting her to alternate the dark and light green properly. But what do you know? Her watermelon turned out way nicer than mine! I love it!

Then, I spelt 'watermelon' for her to write. She was so proud of her work!

I think drawing fruits is a wonderful way to get her to learn patterning (lots of fruits have patterns!) and practise her lowercase writing! And it's easy to pique her interest since she loves fruits so much. It's also about the only thing that works with the boy when it comes to drawing. He refused to draw though, crying that he cannot colour properly and gave up. Haiz.

The girl also attended a 2 hour mixed media art class at the CC, with Philson and his cousin last week.

I was apprehensive because besides school, she's never attended anything by herself. I wanted to use this lesson as gauge to see if she was ok with attending outside classes herself and if she was interested.

She loved it!

The first thing she said out of the classroom was "Mama, I come to this school next time? Is this my school?" She said she liked the class and wanted to attend it again. Whoopee!

Here's what she did in class:

A lot of it was the teacher's work, I could tell. And especially since all 3 kids took out almost identical artworks. Ha! Nevertheless, it was still good exposure.

So now, I'm looking out for art classes for her. And swimming classes. And... I've already signed her up for music classes. Ha. Ya ya, I know. Slowly... I'm just saying...

Jacob Ballas, after so long

I have rather fond memories of Jacob Ballas garden at the botanic gardens. When Mandy has just started to walk, a group of them (Philson, Talia and Nathan) had an outing at the garden and they had so much fun. Go see here, here and here.

The kids were so chubby, gosh! Now, they know one another's names and we're still going out together. At that time, Jaime and I were also pregnant with our boys. Time really flies.

We wanted to bring Barry to the garden since he's never been there. There was hardly anybody there on a wednesday morning at 9am.

The entrance was decorated prettily with colourful Xmas trees.

This one is made from recycled bottles and cans. Nice!

We saw lots of fruits trees bearing fruits.

 Had a walk at the maze which made Barry pretty scared. After that, they cleared the dirt off their shoes.

My kids just don't smile normally, as somebody pointed out, like ME!

Barry immediately exclaimed that the shaky bridge looked like the one from Kungfu Panda. Mandy was quick to announce herself Tigress and Barry became the fearsome Tai Lung!

They were wary of the very loud waterfall. Holding hands gave them courage.

Their favorite part of the garden - the PLAYGROUND! The kids insisted on going up the harder way.

Crossing the stream... A bit worried for the clumsy boy.

The kids learnt some facts about water plants but were mostly excited to spot fishes.

We toured the place a while longer before a snack break for the kids. After that, it was 2 more stops before we headed for Square 2 for yummy Old Hongkong Kitchen dimsum.

Stuffing his mouth with cheerios

After lunch, we caught the ice skating show at Novena Square. We sat at level 2 where we could get a better view of the show.

 The show features different young skaters everyday.

The pros from Australia.

The kids like the show very much. They prefer this to the Sesame Street show. Heh.

Spend $60 at the mall and one kid (below 1.4m) can go in the rink to skate for 30 minutes! I checked out the skating kids one day and the whole thing looked safe enough. So, we're bringing both our kids to skate at the mall next week! :)