Quick – what is the easiest way to get some kicks during a typical day at home?

Throw off your clothes, dance around wildly in your underwear (or in this case, TWO):

Good times, guaranteed.

(These pictures are the modest ones.)

Ever feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff you accumulate? I do! And so I have gathered mine together in the hopes that they will make their way into a home where they will be put to better use. A virtual garage sale, if you will.

Click over to the Tag Sale now – who knows what you might find!

Now for the giveaway! Over the weekend I made a few cufflinks to be used as gifts for Father’s Day and I have two pairs to give away. Unfortunately, I can only mail these out to folks in Singapore only – sorry about that!

To win one for yourself, all you have to do is leave a comment here by Friday, 19 June 2009, 11.59pm, Singapore local time. I’ll send them to two randomly picked posters.

Oh, what fun! :-)

We celebrated the third birthday of a very sweet little girl yesterday.

It began with good weather + tumbling in the treehouse + many laughs…

… and finished with with ice-cream + cake + many more things to tempt the sweet tooth.

What to do on a quiet (read: booooorrrriinggg) Saturday morning?

Bring out the:

And go to town!

Evidence at the scene of crime:

(Couldn’t resist this one.)

Rockets + rainbows + hearts in the dirt. Beauty can happen in most unexpected ways.

To parents of kidlets like I am – do you know about the skills your children are supposed to acquire and at what age?  Are you on top of it?! *gasp*

For our benefit the good people at Worldbook have compiled grade level curriculum guides for every level of student from Preschool to Grade 12. The lists are comprehensive, of typical things, ranging from social and personal skills sets in addition to academics. Useful!

The Core Knowledge Foundation publishes a series of books entitled, “What your Preschooler/Kindergartner/First Grader etc Needs to Know”. They are also a nice resource that covers a wide spectrum of subject areas. I have the Preschool book. It’s like a curriculum in a book – the fables and fairy tale stories, mother goose rhymes, math and science content areas are all contained inside. I like how this it makes it so easy – all you have to do it read it off to (or together with) your little smartie. Convenient for keeping the learning going when you’re traveling! It does require some thinking on the parent’s part, to make the experience more interactive and hands-on (important for early learners!). And with discernment, modify the content as needed so that it lines up with your religious beliefs.

We have reflected much about the matter of how children learn, and the manner in which we would like to see it happen for our own. I’ve seen so many advertorials about mind-training/mnemonics/right-brain training that is so very popular now and I have felt overwhelmed. I wonder if this is needed. To be sure, the question is not only of necessity, but also about whether it might actually prove counter-productive. If I were more studied in this area I would be able to offer a valuable opinion about it, but I’m not, so I won’t, lest I play the fool *grin*

There is one thing that I hold with much certainty: that kids need to know that growing up should be full of enjoyment! That they’re allowed plenty of time for play + discovery + self-exploration + gentle learning. Add to these: life skills + character training + an atmosphere of abounding love, hedged by a good measure of parental interest and involvement. That, I do think, completes the picture for these tender years.

As for the 4-year old in our household, these are the specific areas I want to encourage him in:

For the moment: the flashcards will remain in the box.

I have an exciting, ever-expanding to-do list of educational toys/games/activities I want to make (ie. learning on a budget) for the kids. My criteria are that they are fast, cheap and easy – otherwise I’d better off buying them instead!

These are two that I recently completed:

1. Bean Bags

These 4″ felt cuties were really fun and super fast to put together. I cut out some smaller shapes for the top and sewed down using a tight zigzag stitch. Stitch the sides together, leave an opening, fill with beans and close up. Voila! Excellent for throw + catch practice. There is a list of other beanbag games here.

2. Felt Board and Shapes
This one you can put together almost in an instant. The idea here is to make a stiff backing for your felt board. Start with a sizeable piece of felt. Mine is a sheet of extra thick felt – only $2 from Daiso. You can get a piece of stiff light weight plastic board from the stationery supply store (I don’t know what it’s called but I think they use this for creating bulletin boards/displays etc). The felt needs to go onto the board, so use a strong glue – I used a super tacky glue but think white craft glue works as well. Leave it to dry for a few minutes and then cut off the excess and there you have your felt board all ready to be used.

(Visit this link to see how to make a sturdier board. For more ideas: 1, 2, 3, 4, and the Felt Board Flickr Pool. Superb!)

Now you can cut out an assortment of shapes from different coloured felt. I’ve read that it’s best to keep to basic shapes – prevents from boxing up the child’s imagination and creativity, but I couldn’t resist cutting up a couple of fancier ones.

I would really like to make something like this one day.

Next in the pipeline – File Folder Games!

Update on Circle Time: We have had 2 sessions so far, but had to stop because the boys are attending a 2-day holiday program at the brand new Kindergarten (we love this place and we love the principal even more) at our church. Yesterday, J1 asked me how come we didn’t have Circle Time and when would do it next, because he missed it. Little successes – fuel for a mom’s heart!

If you live in sunny Singapore, wouldn’t you agree that yesterday was quite possibly the hottest day on the planet? The clear skies had me thinking what a fantastic day it is to bring the kids to the pool at the shiny new Safra clubhouse – a mere 5 minutes away.

They held an Open House carnival over the weekend and I thought I was being clever to avoid the crowd by visiting on the morning of the first day, right after the rain cleared. I was so very wrong – the place was packed to the brim with people spilling in and out of the lobby, turning the otherwise short walk from lift to swimming pool into an obstacle course requiring a series of challenging maneuvers and fast reactions. The event was intended to be family-oriented: loud music, deejays hosting stage games, free candy floss and so on, but the noise and the excitement caused such a confusion among the boys who, with their questions were trying their best to be heard above the din, and I, calling out in reply, all the while trying to deftly and swiftly push the stroller through any empty space that immediately presented itself. Very futile indeed. This was no kid-friendly setup! A stray child could be very difficult to locate once lost in the throng – that spells very bad news for people with kids. I’ve since made several mental notes to always avoid such popular places, most especially during the weekends.

So anyway, we returned yesterday (Monday, the very HOTTEST day on the planet) and we did get to swim in the nice children’s pool. Except that it was so HOT and bright and having to squint our eyes to protect from the glare quickly grew tiresome. But I liked very much that they had built a dedicated child-sized shower and toilet facility, just for kids!

Here is a list of some other things that have happened recently:

1. J2 is 4!
This was the previous Saturday. Last year’s birthday was particularly memorable for him and I kept telling people that he had been looking forward to this year’s celebration ever since, and it’s TRUE!

2. Slashed by the bicycle chain
The underside of J3’s big toe was sliced by a moving bicycle chain. Very, very horrendous. Blood everywhere, lots of crying and a total of 7 stitches. I’ve become quite a regular at the A&E now. Sigh.

3. First fallen tooth
J1 was funny because he could not remember when, where or how he lost it. He never ever mentioned he had a shaky tooth! We think he might have swallowed it in his sleep.

4. Other things we have been up to at home
The boys have been requesting a lot of “art time”, ever since I brought out the watercolour paints and my favourite, favourite thing, watercolour pencils. They could easily spend up to an hour or more every day with this (best return on an under $10 purchase!), and we’ve found that Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book: Make a World makes the process easy and lots of fun!

Since J1 is now also reading reasonably well, I’ve given him the task of reading (on occasion) to J2, and he gets to call himself the Designated Reader (cool title, huh?). I recently introduced him to the first of the Nate the Great series, and it was well received, finished the book on the second day. So far so good!

Today we had our first morning Circle Time - in essence, a group time to begin the day and to bring focus to the day’s activities. We began with prayer, a few minutes of music and movement, then did a calendar activity, read a poem, did a rhyme and fingerplay (sign up here and you can print them off, nicely formatted, for free!), and closed with a devotional art activity (It’s not easy to find this book, but you can buy it locally. Leave a comment if you want to know where!). I’m going to try my best to keep this routine on our daily schedule.

And these are a few recent favourites from the family photo album:

Things have been shifting around here and this is the way I would describe it: an internal upheaval, an awakening; a clarity in the understanding of my calling and a vision of the pieces of the greater picture moving into place. I know, I just typed a lot of words – a lot of vague words, but the idea is that things are changing… my person is changing, and that’s pretty exciting!

And of course, what good is internal change if there’s nothing to show for it? I’ve discovered new motivation to organize, clean, take charge and to see that things put into their proper order. And dusting – I really enjoy cleaning the dust off every grimy nook and cob-webbed corner I can reach with my chic pink duster. I feel like I can breathe again.

I have been putting together some simple, budget-friendly activities for the boys to promote learning through hands-on exercises. With some beans + measuring cup + spoons + containers of different sizes, we do scooping and pouring (for motor skills) and estimation. I’m thinking of doing a graphing activity for this as well for more advanced math skills.

I had bought these Digit-Clips on clearance at LearningResources.com, and in some twisted way I have fallen in love with their products. They really put the fun and colour into learning! I printed up and laminated cards with numerals + number words + numbers words in Chinese.

There are a number of different things you can do with these, from simple things like putting the numbers in order, matching the numbers to the words and matching the cards to the corresponding number clips. They worked great! J1 was able to correctly recognize the Chinese characters, which was a nice thing.

We also do a LOT of scribbling + colouring at the moment – something that J2 really seems to have a knack for.

Things are going pretty good.

There is so much on my mind to talk about here but I’m going to have to make this a fast one, because I have a rambunctious one-year old (J3) about to awake from a nap any minute now and that means I shall have to leave the computer and resume mommy responsibilities, ha!

I’ve just spent a few quick moments picking out and editing some recent photos and a little video that I put together real quick of J3 and his little friend (yay for iMovie software). So, enjoy the visual update for now, and hopefully, if time permits, I’ll be back on the blog soonish with more words (and pictures).

One windy morning at the Marina Barrage:

J3 celebrated one year of life in the outside world:

Furiously crafting handmade presents for Christmas – fabric button magnets (Amy Butler fabric, and great finds from Daiso: Kraft wrapping paper, lace, printed cotton tape and more):

And last, a homemade video: A + J Getting Acquainted

Have a good week!

No, not me. Although I wish it were me – have you seen the kinds of toys kids get these days? You could have a plate of cool and then some. I mean seriously, it makes you think how fine it might be to trade these adult liberties, like staying up past bedtime, eating unlimited quantities of chocolate and being the boss of me, just to be young and free from cares. Oh, the joys of being five!

The biggest of the little J’s was officially five years old last Saturday. There are times when he can be downright disagreeable, but most times he’s this little person who’s learning to read, write, count, negotiate, make sense of the world and be more of a person in his own right as much as a five year old can. And I watch this formation and trans-formation happening everyday. Now this is a God-given privilege that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

This year I wanted to give him a Diego-themed party (did you know, Diego and Dora are cousins?), and I have to admit that I’m not very good at making parties happen. I feel all energized at the part where I get to do invites and pack up goodie bags, but the rest of it… not so good. (Which partially accounts for the recent blog-absenteeism: 2 weeks of pre-event stress and 1 week of post-event recovery. Haha. Good grief, as if there weren’t bigger problems in life.) I definitely need to work on my party-planning skills, seeing as I’ll probably need to be planning for three each year from now on!

I had the invites designed using clipart and printed them onto fabric, with the help of freezer paper. Pinked the edges to prevent fraying and it turned out absolutely great!

I’ll post some photos of the presents that J1 received in another post. They are just, so, so cool, I want them for myself! Until then, some really cute photos that are having me feeling full of warm fuzzies: