learning Archives - Page 5 of 6

Preparing for Primary 1 – Part 2

I wrote a post on how I prepared my girl for primary school 2 years ago. Time flies and now I am going to prepare my boy for primary school next year. When I relooked into my list of preparation, I still find them very useful and they shall be applicable to my boy with some adjustment in expectations though. It shall also be more challenging this time round as I will be preparing for XX to wake up early for morning school after 2 years of afternoon school in Primary 1 and 2. YH will be in afternoon school. Hence, I need to adjust for both kids concurrently.

1. Eat a good breakfast

I find this a challenge to implement when I am not at home to ensure this goes through smoothly. I had tried for the past 2 years to prepare nutritious breakfast Continue reading “Preparing for Primary 1 – Part 2”

Our family new addition – the pet hamster

I am never fond of animals, big or small. Never have special feelings for dogs, cats, rabbits and have never shown much interest in insects too. But after having children, I know kids, by nature will love these living things. So, I try very hard to let them understand even though I am scared of animals, I am totally supportive of their love for them. My kids love little pets, like to pat dogs and cats, feed rabbits, show much curiosity in insects and even lizards which is my number 1 fear. Kel caught one recently and kept it in a container as a learning for the kids, but he had to let it go as I was almost screaming every time I need to walk near the container.

So when XX and YH bugged me for a pet hamster, I find myself seriously thinking if I should relent this time round. Having a dog or cat is definitely a NO since I am scared of them. Also, it takes lots of commitment and responsibilities to rear one. The kids have to know that they shouldn’t be having a pet on impulse. They have to know they are responsible for taking care of the pet if they ever have one, which includes feeding, bathing and cleaning up. Getting a pet hamster might be different and everything seems much scaled down for the following reasons:

1) Hamsters mainly stay in the cage.
2) They do not run around the house and create poos or puddles that Baby YT may pick up to put into his mouth.
3) They do not need to be out for walking.
4) They do not require too much emotional handling.
5) They do not shed furs which may be a big problem if it triggers the allergic reactions in my children who have sensitive noses.
6) Maintenance is low and no grooming is needed for hamster.

With the above reasons, I asked Kel how much he thought would be the total cost of getting a hamster with its complete cage and all. “Less than $50,” was his answer. Okay, I thought, in that case, let’s go to the pet shop and get one. My kids were overjoyed when I told them we would be getting a hamster.

When we reached the pet shop, XX and YH were both taken by a winter white breed. One look at the price tag showed $18. Well, luckily they did not choose the one that cost $50. Next, we went on to search for a cage. We chose a $20+ cage and were to be told by the sales person that cage was for travelling only. Does anyone actually TRAVEL around with a hamster?? He went on to explain our hamster needed a bigger one so as not to feel stressed. STRESSED!!!??? It never occured to Kel and I that hamsters will feel stress like humans. Alright then, we took a $48 bigger purple cage. The salesperson went on to recommend a house for the hamster. A HOUSE?? Isn’t the cage already the HOUSE? Next, he introduced a vitamin in powder form to be added to the hamster food for 7 weeks. This vitamin was to stabilize the hamster as it was moving to a new home. It was important for the hamster to be stabilized so that he would not bite for no reason or fall ill. And the vitamin pack cost $20, which was more expensive than the hamster. The salesperson went on for other must-haves: the food, a bowl for its food, a chewing block for the hamster to sharpen its teeth with, water bottle, a bath tub for its bath, bath salt, and a big pack of bedding to lay on the bottom of the cage. This is supposed to cushion its fall while exercising or climbing and to absorb its poo and urine. Then came the long bill, which totaled up to $123! And I have to repeat that the hamster only costs $18. Well, I have agreed to it and started it, I have to agree with the price. And I should have done a wikihow on setting up a hamster cage prior to this.

XX and YH listening seriously on facts about Winter

Touching little Winter for the first time

So, off we went home happily (for the kids) and set up the cage for our dear hamster. The kids decided to call it “Winter“. That’s a nice name.

Although the whole hamster set up cost was $123, we think that it is still worth the investment as we can see our kids learning lots from taking care of Winter.

Winter's purple cage — Winter’s purple cage

XX and YH looking at what Winter is doing in the cage

So far, they have been feeding Winter by refilling its food and water every 1 or 2 days, change out the entire bedding of the cage once a week, transfer Winter to the bath tub with its bath salt, play with it for several minutes everyday, and sit down in front of Winter’s cage to observe its movement. They love Winter and love to see him run on the exercise station so fast that he falls off. They love to see Winter sleeping everywhere in the cage and in many many different positions you can’t imagine. However, Winter is usually active at night. XX and YH will take a peek at it if they do wake up in the night to go to the toilet. I must say Winter brought a lot of joy to the little ones.

Winter in its temporary housing while waiting for his cage to be cleaned

Ever since we have Winter, I realize XX and YH readily took up the responsibility of caring for Winter. It has been more than a month, and they never push the responsibility of bathing it, feeding it and changing the cage bedding to Kel or me. For the first few days, Winter was not active and they were disappointed, and I was sad too. We were worried it might be sick or did not like us. I would peek at it every time I pass by it. But now, Winter is active and everyone is happy.

It’s wonderful to know that your kids are capable of caring for a pet. The kids, in turn, love the trust we give them by getting them a pet hamster. Kel and I are just too happy our kids are learning an enjoyable lesson in responsibility.

What’s your experience in having a pet? Was it a good learning for your kids?

I want to stop hurrying my kids

After reading through the handsfreemama post on “The day I stopped saying ‘hurry up“, I felt so guilty and upset of frequently saying “Hurry up…” to my kids. I am one who is impatient, and one who want to complete many things in my limited time spent with my kids since I am a working mum. The post resonates so much with what I am experiencing, I decided to check myself on how I can right things and stop uttering the “H” word so frequently.

On Saturday mornings when the kids have piano lessons, I hurry my kids to brush their teeth, eat their breakfasts, and change their clothes. When time is running out, I hurry them out the door, ignoring complaints of little feet hurting because of some blisters or dismissing their remarks of forgetting to do their piano theory with “I told you so…” or speaking at top speed of “There’s no time to tie your hair in pleats now. We’ll have to do that in the train or while waiting for the lift. If you had stopped watching tv, your hair would have been tied by now!” all under one breath. It is usually these stressful, late for class moments that the kids will start to go back in the house to find their animal kaiser cards, story books, little pet shop toys, erasers, etc, etc. It gets on my nerves and I’ll be off shouting “1,2,3 out the house” commands, all the time carrying baby YT in the baby carrier. The baby must have felt all the anger, his mummy’s fast heartbeats thumping against his head and the negative ions in the air. At such times, the papa would start to pour in some oil to the fire by criticising my time management.

On weekday evenings, we have dinner at leisurely pace. However, halfway through the meal, my 6 yr old YH will start to leave his chair, walk about, sit or stand (I can’t make out of which is which), and it is this time, Kel and I will hurl out the “H” word to command him back to the dining table . After dinner, during piano practice, YH will dilly dally about. He can play one song, walks about, plays with his dinosaurs, goes back to the piano again, and bangs the keys. At such trying times, I will “coax” him back to proper practice by using the “H” word. I said, “If you quickly (a synonym for hurry) play the pieces well and practise seriously, you can master the pieces quickly (2nd time usage here) and we can go on to do other stuff together earlier (another form of hurry up).” See! I have used the “H” word in different forms here, 3 times in one sentence! Not to mention, I said it in a hurried way too.

As the evening is so short, I try to squeeze in lots of activities into the 2 hours that we have. It became a habit to utter the “H” word conveniently, add in the “H” mood, it truly is not the kind of relax evening I would love to have with my kids.

Then, I decided, to make an evening happy and relax,

I need to slow down my pace.
I need to speak at a slower speed.
I need to forgo multi-tasking to some extent.
I need to plan and prepare earlier for outings.
I need to target arriving at all functions 10 minutes before start time.
I need to stop using the “H” word or its synonyms.

On many occasions, if I can allow more time by planning in advance and like what kel said, to better manage time, or allowing an extra 10 minutes, I need not use the “H” word 9 out of 10 times.

I decided to slow down my pace this week and check on myself for uttering the “hurry up” words. I begin to observe many things that I have never seen before, or rather have forgotten. My boy, YH has such beautiful eyes when he smiles. When I stop myself from interfering with the way he plays with his baby brother (he can be violent sometimes), I realize he is very conscious of whether the baby smiles as a result of his funny actions. He beams with his crescent eyes and toothless grin when YT smiles or claps his hands. When I allow him tantrums during piano practice and do not hurry him, he goes back to the piano on his own after cooling down and plays smoothly without hiccups. When I do not hurry him for bedtime, he produces beautiful drawings and little crafts. He is slow in writing, yet, when I sit down beside him and look at him, forcing myself to throw out hurrying thoughts, I find that he writes with such moving intensity, I could have cried.

I do not tend to hurry my girl, XX, so much. She is more disciplined and independent. When I plan things in advance and remind her from time to time, she does things responsibly and timely. I have learnt to look at her and observe the things that she does. I learn to listen to her with full attention. When I allow her to bathe the baby (with help of course), she can do almost everything that I do, although with double the time I spent. She can wash the baby’s hair, body, change the diapers and help the baby wear his clothes, etc. She loves to have me say goodnight unhurriedly and have me on her bed beside her while recalling what happened in the day. When I stay around in her room for a little while, she flashes her sweet girlish smile and speaks in babyish voice. I love her voice.

My kids tend to sleep late and have a thousand and one things to do before lights out. I used to hurry them to dreamland so that they have enough sleep and so do I. Now, when I do not hurry bedtime so much, they settle down better and I got to enjoy the perfect bedtime ritual of kissing them goodnight before I leave the room in peace.

I love my kids. I want to enjoy time being with them while they still want me by their side. The dishes can wait, the dirty floor can wait, even the me-time can wait. My kids are growing up everyday and soon, I will have lots of time by myself and probably too much time on hand to spend. When that time comes, I wouldn’t want my kids to hurl back the “H” word to me. I would equally want them to enjoy time with me at a leisurely pace.

(Thanks to handsfreemama Rachel whose beautiful write-up causes me to stop and re-look at my hurried pace. You can check out her blog here, she writes beautifully and so true to what we parents experience.)

Learning Math – Simple Division using bottle caps

Division using bottle caps

My girl has started on learning “Division” in school and I know it is not easy for her to grasp it as a new topic. Yet, this concept is in everyday life and she just doesn’t know it’s called “Division”.

If you had read my earlier post “Learning Math – Mass using Lego blocks“, you would have known that I have been trying out simple Math concepts for my 2 kids using Sarah’s (from Frugal Fun for Boys) method that she uses for home-schooling.

First we start with some bottle caps (we had 12 of them). Then, I asked XX and YH to draw on a piece of paper each with 2 columns as the following:

1st column: Numbers 1 -12 – This is the number of bottle caps that we used in all.

2nd column: “Each person has caps.” This is to write down after dividing the bottle caps between the 2 kids, how many bottle caps does each person has.

Again, my kids love the decorating part for their papers but this time round, they spent lesser time on it.

So, the games goes – I started with 1 cap and ask them:

Question 1 – “Is 1 an even or odd number?”

Question 2 – “Can it be divided equally between 2 persons (XX and YH)?” If their answer is “Yes”, they put a tick beside the number 1 on their paper, otherwise, they put a cross.

Question 3 – “How many bottle caps will each person get?” And here they have to write down the answer in the 2nd column. (XX actually answered yes in Question 2 and her answer for this part is each person will get “half” the cap, haha, it is not wrong even though that’s not the answer I am looking for. Clever girl!)

And the game goes on with 2 bottle caps all the way to 12 bottle caps.

YH's check sheet

Even before the end of the game, they began to see an “AB” patterning but still does not know how “Division” concept comes in here. That’s when I had to explain to them that by doing this activity, we are learning on “Division”. This is simple division of 2. As XX already understand multiplication, I wrote down the number sentences for 2 x 4 = 8 vs 8 bottle caps divided into 2 persons, i.e. 8 ÷ 2 = 4. After writing a few more examples, she began to understand the relation between multiplication and division. As for my boy, it is a little more challenging to understand the big word “DIVISION”, but he could grasp the concept of dividing bottle caps equally. Also, he understood more on what is odd and even numbers.

XX and YH had fun playing this activity while their baby brother YT was reading and playing with bottle caps by the side 🙂

YT reading @ 6th mth

Do you have simple and fun learning for Math or other subjects? Share with me! I would love to hear new ideas to play at home!

Learning Math – Mass using Lego blocks

Balancing object YH balancing with Lego blocks

I have been thinking how to teach simple Math concept through play that will interest both my 8 year old XX and 6 year old YH. I found so many resources in countless excellent blogs in the blogosphere. One of them is on learning the concept of Mass using Lego blocks, a hanger and simple objects (found in Frugal Fun for Boys blog). This is timely as XX happens to be learning Mass now.

First, get a hanger and 2 strings / ribbons. Then, with 1 string / ribbon, tie a Lego block as a starting piece so that later on more Lego blocks can be fixed to it and the other string / ribbon tied to any object that is not too heavy. Next, I got XX and YH to each draw a simple score board with 3 columns with the following:

1st column: OBJECT – What is the object being weighed?

2nd column: GUESS – How many Rectangular Lego blocks do you think will balance the object?

3rd column: ACTUAL – The final answer to the number of blocks that will balance the object.

Score board

XX and YH took quite some time to work on this score board, simply because they were busy decorating their score board, and we have not even started anything yet!

The kids enjoyed the activity and we tabulated the scores with guesses that have the correct answers. 2 points for the correct answer and 1 point for close to correct answer as a consolation.

* You would have noticed that the 2 pieces of score board in the picture look weird. That’s because when we tabulated the score, YH was not happy that he lost to his sister by 1 point, and he did a naughty act by spitting some saliva on his sister’s score board. I, too, did a naughty thing to scrap the saliva back onto his paper and there you see XX’s paper was cut short to remove the saliva portion, and YH’s paper was torn a hole as he tried to wipe off his own saliva. It’s a norm to see them squabble over such minute things. And equally a norm to see me deviate from the goody, yummy mummy supposed by-the-book way of punishment.

Off center balance

Oh, and one interesting and unexpected learning from this activity is that when each child took turns to weigh their Lego blocks, they shifted the Lego string position. This resulted in off center balance of the hanger as the centre of gravity had shifted. When initially we saw that it took 10 Lego blocks to reach balance, it now could not balance and required 12 blocks instead due to the string shift. I had a good opportunity to demonstrate that the position of the strings at the 2 ends of the hanger was important in determining the balancing act of the object and the Lego blocks. And the kids were pleasantly surprised by this new finding!

Try it with your kids and you will be off to great, simple fun learning!