Christy @ Kidsrsimple, Author at Kids 'R' Simple

FIVE SQUARE – new family-friendly dining place

How often do you find a dining place that caters activities to everyone in the family?

FIVE SQUARE did just that! Not only did we have sumptuous mid-range price food, we had fun after that as well, all in the same place. So, you can eat slowly while other members of the family can move on to activities, and I am talking about electric car rides, playground, bouncy castle, pool table, art and craft and beer for the hub.

FIVE Square, the new flagship outlet of the FIVE Bar Group, had recently took over the old home-grown restaurant Hans in Great Eastern Centre. The concept of FIVE Square is rather unique with 4 different dining / chill out places within the same 13,000 square feet space. Add in a few play areas and the Artisan market (think of Uni / Poly days bazaar) within the same “food court” at The Bazaar, you have a family friendly dining area to go.

Let me take you through the play areas and the 4 interesting corners on FIVE Square.

PLAY AREA – For the toddler and younger children

The play area for the younger kiddos is sufficient to keep my toddler occupied for 2 hours that we were there. Best of all, they are all free, including the electric car rides!

ARTISAN MARKET – For the crafty kids and adults

The Artisan Market is only available on Saturdays and has up to 30 stalls selling hand-made accessories, arts & crafts, fashion apparels, decor, home-ware items and more. Missy 10 and I were so engrossed in all the cutie stuff and beautifully hand-made crafts that we spent more than an hour at one stall called Scottiecraft, learning from the freelance self-taught artisan who was selfless in teaching us how to make these beautiful spoon flowers, cupcakes and more!

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Simple baking with the kids – New York Cheesecake

I have found a great recipe for New York Cheesecake on allrecipes.com!

The texture is creamy and the kids totally love it! The reviews on this recipe actually rated it as THE BEST NEW YORK CHEESECAKE. I am not an expert in judging cheesecakes but seems like it is indeed very popular. I have baked 2 times so far with the same recipe. The second time was baked for Master 3’s 3rd birthday and we decorated and drew a car for him!

Previously, I had made many No-baked cheesecakes as I did not have an oven back then. No-baked cheesecakes taste yummy too, but I find the cheese taste in no-baked version much heavier than baked ones. You can find out more on my Yogurt cheesecake recipe here, which is also a favourite with my children.

Recipe for Baked New York Cheesecake (modified by me, if you want the original recipe, please click here)

Ingredients Continue reading “Simple baking with the kids – New York Cheesecake”

Village Hotel Changi Staycation – Play and Stay Fun

Our first Staycation probably starts with our wedding night at Ritz Carlton hotel 11 years ago. From then on, we went back to the same hotel almost every year as we love its hospitality and the luxurious room and also the place is a reminisce of our special Big day. In between, we did check out Marriott Hotel, Royal Plaza on Scotts Hotel, Marina Bay Sands, and Festive Hotel. On most times, we chose staycation as an alternative to travelling out of Singapore and did mostly impromptu arrangements. I hardly blog about staycation unless it is family friendly. So as you can guess, how this post came about. We were invited by Far East Hospitality to try out the “Play and Stay” package at Village Hotel Changi and upon hearing what the package had in store for us, I knew we would be having a fun time as a family of 5.

What does the “Play and Stay” Package include?

2 days 1 night stay in Village Hotel Changi
Buffet breakfast
Complimentary bowling or
Complimentary 1 hour cycling
Complimentary Koi Feeding
Complimentary Hop-on Hop-Off City Tour
2 hotel pools to have a dip in – Infinity pool and the Creek pool
Free wireless

Price? My last check on the website shows SGD170 for a Superior Room 2 Single Bed and SGD190 for a Deluxe Room King Bed! Pretty good deal for all the fun we had!

The STAY

The Rooms

We had 2 adjoining rooms with a door in between. Continue reading “Village Hotel Changi Staycation – Play and Stay Fun”

Checklist for a simple birthday party

I have been so busy lately that even though I knew Master 3’s 3rd birthday was round the corner, I just simply had no time to plan for it! And guess what? This busy mummy only started to plan for the birthday party 3 days before the big day! It has kind of become a norm to me even though I do not like it last minute. Sometimes, I feel guilty that I have not been as conscientious as most other mummies who plan much in advance and take care of every aspect of the party many months before. Well, I am glad I did manage to put up a decent simple party in a short time anyway. No one would know that I had only planned 3 days before.

The following checklist is a mental checklist that I have mastered over the years with 3 kids. Ok, I am sure everyone has about the same list and I am going to share what I did for games, venue, ideas and resources.

Here it goes rolling:

3 days before madness

1. Guest List and invites

First the hub and I decided on a day, not that we have much choice anyway. Usually, we host birthday celebrations on Saturday nights. Then we decided on who to invite. This is easy as the list is usually our immediate families which totalled up to about 13 adults + 10 children. Lucky for us, all our guests were able to make it on the short notice, yet, again. I promise I would not do that again if I can help it, i.e. invitation at the last hour.

2. Party Venue

We hold parties mostly in our small house. However, after Master 8’s lovely and cosy birthday celebration with his classmates in our favourite yogurt cafe “Frozen – a thousand blessings“, I decided on the same venue since it is new to our guests. A second time lucky for us, the date we had chosen was still available to book. We love this place as the kids love the Frozen yogurt, not to mention that the venue is basically FREE with $120 for a 2 hour slot which included $120 worth of yogurt for our guests! The place is cosy for an Continue reading “Checklist for a simple birthday party”

5 Reasons Why My Kids Do Not Have Tuition

I know this topic on tuition is going to have 2 camps on it. Hence I need to put a disclaimer that this is not a post to say having tuition is a bad thing but what I feel how a child’s precious life should be. If needed, I may send my kids to tuition, but, it must meet some consideration criteria before I will do that. I will address my take on this later.

My eldest, Missy 10 is in P4 and No. 2, Master 8 in P2 and No. 3, Master 3 going to pre-school soon. From birth till now, all 3 of them have not had any enrichment classes and I hope to keep it this way for as long as it is possible.

There are many parents who send their children for tuition or enrichment classes at a tender age. There is no right or wrong. These parents usually want their children to have a head start in life and be high achievers in their adult life. It may be for the reason of learning things ahead of other peers. It may be due to some children need tuition for extra academic assistance or just want to be ahead in the syllabus than others. And it could be due to the reason that some parents do not want to leave to chance and cannot imagine failure to happen to their children.

For me, I feel that a child’s life, which I am defining here as the category of zero to 16 age of life, is too precious to spend too many waking hours on academic stuff. Formal education can last for about 16 years from P1 to University. Some spent 20 years of their life in academic. Our Missy 10 spends about 6 academic hours in school + 2 hours of extra academic classes which totals to 8 hours on studying, and I have not added the time she spends on homework and assessment. If a child goes for tuition after school, that would mean spending another 2 more hours, not inclusive of the school homework and tuition homework that a child will need to do when he / she gets home. Oh, and the travelling time. Nowadays academic pressure is everywhere and our poor children are subjected to all these stresses at a tender age. They should be enjoying their rightful childhood, doing simple things like play. I wonder how these children will look back in life with not much memories of being a child except going for tuition and studying.

5 reasons that I am putting off tuition for as long as possible.

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