The Kissy Mom

Today is the day I woke up 30 minutes earlier to drop Tiger off in school.

Usually MIL sends him since I'd rather snuggle under the covers for another 5 minutes. I am so not a morning person. Haha. Thank God for my MIL :)

As we walked into school together, his teacher greeted us at the gate. Not like she was being super polite but more for the customary temperature check. She also check his oral cavity. I was so tempted to ask why but nevermind la. Give a good first impression.

Teacher: Morning, Tiger. And you are the....?
Me       : The mother. *Tak kan la the sister. Got so young and pretty meh? Hehe*
Teacher: Oh, I've never met you before.
Me       : Usually the grandma sends him. *smile*
-feeling determined to send my son to school every morning. Hmmmph..

As we walked upstairs to place his bag, my very graceful son tripped and fell. Thank God he didn't start bawling his eyes out. I also noticed a puddle of water in the middle of the playgroup and the OCD in me so wanted to go and wipe it ASAP but sigh....nevermind la.

Tiger wanted to head out to the play structure outside but the teacher at the gate had a different idea, "Tiger, go read your Peter & Jane."
My first thought was, "Ala....kesian nye. Cannot play first?" but my son just turned around and headed back inside.
There, he is becoming a robot already after 2 weeks in school.
I really don't know if it's a good thing or not but since I have decided to send him to Chinese school where discipline will be even stricter, I might as well go with the flow.
Creativity shall be a priority at home.

I was about to leave when I remembered...I forgot to kiss him goodbye!! How could I?
I looked around and NOBODY was kissing their kid. How? Kiss or not?
I grabbed his hands and asked, "Can I kiss you?"
He immediately tried to run off! Rascal!!!
I yanked him and gave him the loudest kiss on his left cheek.
He smiled sheepishly and ran into the school without looking back.
This will probably be the last day I get to send him to school...hahahahaha!

Be grateful I didn't lick you :p :p

PS: It is important to lick your kids. Seriously. The experts think so too. Here's the link to the article.
Lick Your Kid. What Rats Can Teach Us About Parenting

I love you so much, sweetie. Much more than my sleep and that means a lot, k?

Painting areas for the kids

I used to love art until I attended art lessons...haha...the irony :)
I just didn't enjoy being told what and how to draw 'correctly'.
So, no art lessons for my children until they are ready to learn some techniques.
And only if they are invested in the idea wholeheartedly.
Honestly, I would prefer to pay for golf lessons.

I am so, so grateful to have the Internet at my fingertips because it helps me understand my children so much more. Who needs a diploma when I have eyes to observe my own children?
I love this article that explains the stages of painting.
Dragon girl is at stage 2, drawing circles and Tiger is at Stage 4, drawing creepy people.

Currently, this is how her atelier looks like. I am so inspired by Meri Cherry's blog
Our space changes all the time, depending on her needs and interest.
I leave everything out in the open for her except glitter. God forbid they should blind each other with those stuff.
We display her art on a string and as you can see, she uses different materials and papers.
On the IKEA easel is her current work. I'll only change the paper after she tells me it's done.
Otherwise, she will layer her painting like real artists :)

Sometimes, she prefers these foldable tables to the easel.

I am so trilled that she finger paints!

You know, like a normal child, unlike Tiger :)

Finger painting is a sensory experience on top of artistic expression.

Love it!

Besides paint, she loves these disgusting black whiteboard markers...sigh.

The good news is, she rarely stains her clothes nowadays.

So, I just close one eye la.

After about a year of  "Don't paint the walls!!!!"

I actually get some poster moments like these.

Oh, speaking of walls...Dragon hasn't been redecorating for some time now :) 

They also have another art area outside.

It's their outdoor learning area but they mostly paint, play bubbles

or make a mess at the water table.

The toy kitchen doubles as storage for my bags of organic soil and fertilizer.

 The old wine rack is perfect for displaying their stuff.

Some balls, art material, sand, explorer's basket, etc

In the drawers: Uppermost 2 drawers are laundry stuff and rags

Lower levels are their bubbles sand/water play stuff  

PS:

You see the little green pots?

They are environmental-friendly biodegradable plastic pots.

I have quite a few because ermm, I kept killing the herb plants for some reason. 

Upcycled into art containers! 

 I loved the old wine rack because the back doubles as a blackboard!

So glad I didn't toss it out.  I am such a thrifty mom.

My husband is a very lucky chap...sigh..

  

The most important part? Painting to promote peace and teamwork!

Most of the time, they fight like cat and dog because the girl is so ferocious.

See Tiger's unhappy disgruntled face? Hehe.

Learning to share is good.

 

 Tips for sanity:

1. Start with a small number of items on display. Some crayons, papers, stickers.

Then you can gradually introduce paint, clay or playdough.

We are at expert level with sand, scissors, loose parts and wires for their use.

When I add glitter, you will know I've totally lost my sanity :)

2. Buy washable paint

I buy Crayola because it really is very washable.

We no longer wear smocks because the kids dislike having their movements restricted.

The paint is still cheaper than their bajus.

When they are older, I am buying tempera and ugly aprons.

3. Soak the used art stuff in a large container overnight

 I dump all the palettes and brushes into a water filled container and wash the next day.

Minimal scrubbing and water saving.

4. Stock up during sales

Occasionally, I can get 30%-70% off Crayolas during Toyrus Warehuse sales

Otherwise I'll just have to hold my breath and buy them from Art Friend for 10% disc.

5. Minimizing wastage

"Mama, I need help please. I poured too much paint. Sorry"

That will be my son, Tiger.

"Muahahahahahhaha"

That will be my daughter. =.="

 

In cases like the above, I will scoop whatever I can back into the bottle or tube.

If there are some leftover on the palette, I will wait for the kids to fall asleep, 

make myself a cuppa green tea, sit at the easel and paint.

When was the last time you painted?

A Week in October 2014

The last week had been one of our low-production weeks.

Mondays are usually no school days since I usually work till late.

Mid week, we were distracted by Dragon's Halloween costume.

Sneak preview of the back only :)

She loved it even though it was a tad tight around the belly.

 Tiger and I went to the toy store after his music class to buy the amulet and crown for her

and he conveniently bought two more Pixar cars, Bob Cutlass and Darrell Cartrip.

He chose Bob for completion of book 7A.

I hid Darell in my underwear drawer since he is refusing book 7B right now.

Everyday, he'll ask, "Mama, do you remember where u keep Darrell?"

Imagine if someone overheard..Is Darrell her stepson? Or goldfish? 

At the toy store, he was also asking for this 

which is a repackaged version of this.

*raise right eyebrow*

Sneaky toy makers, I know watcha trying to do.

 I said no to buying replicas and when we got home, 

I gave him this and it was the first time he moved on from C-V-C words!

I don't know about you but I've never studied phonics or silent Es in school.

I learnt it from Alphablocks...haha.

When he spelt ICE, the very intelligent toy dog named Scout said

I

sssssss

E is silent in ice

I was like, "WHOAAAA"

But I'm not very smart, so, you be the judge la.

Worthy investment, in my humble opinion. And you can skip the two toys above

We painted some plaster with the girl.

She is naturally comfortable with paint

The boy's all grown up.

The first time we painted plaster he was only 19 months old.

*Sniff*

Since they were in the mood for Halloween, I made some "blood" for pouring.

She poured non-stop for 30 minutes.

 

I made it more difficult for Tiger by asking him to pour an approximate amount

like 100 mls or a quarter.

We use this Spot-the-Difference book from popular fair for our right brain practice.

He will memorize the picture on his Left for 10 seconds.

Then I will fold the book ask him to circle the 10 differences on the page to the Right.

If he answers correctly, he gets to stamp "Good Job" on it :)

I also introduced some simple subtraction to him this week using

some free Halloween worksheets from Royal Baloo.

I think he was saying 'four' in this picture :)

We also did a lesson on odd-vs-even.

This time, I told him odd is one-syllable, hence the last cube has no partner

E-ven has two-syllable, therefore the last cubes are in pairs.

 Then, I pointed out the pattern to him on the 100 board.

One is odd, so all numbers ending with one are odd.

And I repeated with all the odd numbers.

Now, when I ask 97 or 67 or 34 is even or odd?, he could answer me very confidently.

Yay for homeschooling!

Just when I thought I was a good teacher..I have this monkey girl who teaches me humility.

"Cat, dog, cow, duck, horse, horse..."

"Ehhh, that's a goat"

"No, horse!"

"goat"

"horse!!"

"goat"

"HORSE!!!"

Okay...horse..

She was pissed with my behaviour and busied herself by spinning this hippo.

She loves these and many a time, goes to bed with one in her chubby palm. 

Sometimes, school is interrupted simply because they had better things to do.

Like riding Kater Katoo, the stuffed caterpillar

School was also cancelled again on Friday when we rotated his toys.

Despite the fact that I had to duct tape the tracks together, he was so happy :)

Princess is in a stack-everything-in-sight mood. 

She stacks literally everything...blocks, paints, shoes, stones. 

Here she was playing with hubby but I cropped him out for indecent dressing.

The blog is rated 13 PG.

A couple of her cute/funny expressions

She has shown some interest in golf.

I hope she chooses to excel in golf instead of say, carom :p

Low contact sports with proper,nice clothes AND big prizes...what's not to love?

If she becomes the next Michelle Wie, could you guys please note that her mother (me)

had nurtured her gift and she shall not place the mother (me) in an old folks home no matter how senile the woman becomes. Thank you.

 

If she chooses to be an artist...can also la...

My wallet was crying after I bought some charcoal and 

a huge bag of  Crayola art supplies from Art Friend in the Gardens.

Anywhere else selling Crayola with discount?

The kids spent Sunday at Ekids where a few hours of running around cost me rm 100 (wtf?)

But that meant dating and shopping time with hubby :)

He kept whining while we were at the Baby Fair, I ended up with nothing to buy.

The boys in the 3D ride before we went home, exhausted.

I am learning to let go and let them learn at their own pace.

So, that's basically our week in pictures.

 Oh, we also spent a lot of time at the park but I never bring my phone anymore.

Must distance myself from Facebook when I am with the kids :)

Science: Making Waves

Most of our science lessons are prompted by my 4 year old.
I think the process where children are encouraged to ask questions and think is critical in laying a strong foundation in S.T.E.M.
The process of finding the answer via scientific method (hypothesize, designing experiments, recording results) shouldn't be too rigid or complicated at this point.


We were singing Whales' Sneezes from YAMAHA when he asked, "Mama, if whales sneeze...then only can get waves?"
I explained that it is the wind created by the sneezes that forms waves and the stronger the wind, the bigger the waves.

So, his question was, does a sneeze make waves?

It would be difficult to make him sneeze on demand. 

I thought of using pepper but that would just make me look bad as a mom.

So I explained that the whale's sneeze represents a very strong wind.

High velocity wind, which we shall recreated using a piece of straw.

I hypothesize that "We can make waves with the straw.

He agreed and we experimented.

We concluded that wind can create waves.

To learn more, we watched a Youtube video on wave formation and surfing 

To be less Tiger Mom-like, he was allowed to have fun cutting wavy lines

To cap it off, we read some facts on whales and he played with his talking pen.

Easy peasy but so much learning.

I love spontaneous lessons!

Next, we will learn how vibrations can create waves too with our tuning forks :)

Still life drawing: Sunflowers

When I came home from work yesterday, I was greeted with a "Mama, see MY sunflowers!?!"

=.="

His sunflowers. Like he did anything besides throwing compost everywhere.

I was actually super excited too. The first plant that survived...woohoo!

Everything else I'd planted from seedlings died...unintentionally, of course.

This time I told our kakak, "Jaga baik baik, ok. Kalau mati saya nangis."

(Take care properly. If die again, I will cry)

Bless my helper.

 

So pretty :)

 

Since we are learning about flowers, I suggested a drawing session.

We used Buncho oil pastel for this project.

They are Tiger's fav art material at the moment.

Here he was contemplating, as usual. Followed by: I cannot, this is hard.

I am so used to his pessimism/perfectionism, I just brush them aside effortlessly.

JUST TRY, will be my usual respond.

  

This artist went to work without asking. 

She walked around the whole night with her work, admiring it. 

"Whoa, nice"

"Pweeeti"

No shame, this one.

 

Focus level: 2 out of 10

She went from painting to cycling after one minute.

I hope she chooses to be someone amazing, like an adventurer or environmentalist.

Something that we normal people only dare to dream of.
She would suck at being anything confined to a cubicle...hihi...pity her future husband.

Her focus level is as good as mine...the way I digress, I apologize.

What was it I was...ohhh, sunflowers...

Tiger started of with a simple outline.

 I took a picture with my phone and zoomed in to see the details.

So cool, right?

How did people live before technology?

 We added some glitter because mama's cool like that

For some reason, this is my fav piece thus far.

In 20 years, he may produce a Van Gogh, like this!

A mother can dream :)

This was more enjoyable and simpler than I thought.

Next time, Cezanne-inspired?

Disclaimer:

I helped Tiger with the leaves outline, the rest is all his work.