Monday, December 28, 2015

Perbadanan Perpustakaan Awam Johor

We have spent a great deal of time at Perbadanan Perpustakaan Awam Johor. The girls have been frequent visitors to the Children Section. They have a good selection of children books.  What excite us the most was that one card holder can borrow up to 15 books for two weeks! 

We love surrounded by books.They help us to keep our sanity. If you want to keep yours too, you can visit this wonderful library at: Jalan Yahya Awal, Johor Bahru. Here is the website.

These bring us to another world!

Look what we found! A compilation stories of Madeline.

These Etiquette Series are good read for the children.

Phonics for Iesha

Classics in Bahasa Malaysia!

Now we know what a.m and p.m. stand for. 

These series are rather costly. I've been eyeing these series for quite sometimes. And I was so excited to have found these gems in this library!

Do you know who built the Kaabah?

Do you know who is that brave boy?

Super love these series!

We definitely can't resist this Atok Eric!

Iyra still amused with board books.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Who has hands but cannot clap?

We're always on road trips. Sometimes we visited NekMa and TokBa in Kelantan, and sometimes to Johor Bharu visited Bapak. In order to have a good time while driving, I need to think of some activities for the girls to make sure they are all occupied and not diverted my attention to things like "Mummy, see that teddy bear in the car at the back!", "Mummy, can you help me with this game?", "Mummy, could you please color my nails?". Girls, I'm driving. 

So I created this riddles. Kids love riddles. At least I can make them occupied for 10 heavenly minutes. I let them asked me with the riddles and tried to answer it, even though I already knew the answers. In order to have the extra 10 minutes, you may give wrong answer multiple times and trust me the kids will love it. 

So here are the riddles for you to print and laminate. If you guys want a Word version, you may leave your email and I'll try to get back to you! Till then, bye.

Riddle 1

Riddle 2

Riddle 3

Riddle 4

Riddle 5

Monday, November 23, 2015

Frozen Hand

That hit my wit's end, yes, that Frozen song. I bet every mother in the world could simply sing "Let it go, let it go! I am one with the wind and sky!" effortlessly (complete with hand waving in the air and foot stomping on the floor). I feel you. 

Inspired by this Disney movie, we made our frozen hand. Of course we want to be cool like Elsa. So let's see how we made it.

We used: latex gloves, blue food coloring, Lego mini-figures and water.

1. Put a few drops of blue food coloring into a jug of water.

2. Put in Lego mini-figures into the gloves.

3. Pour some water into the gloves. 

4. Tie them.




5. Write down the names on each hand.

6. Place them in the freezer overnight.

7. Once froze, it's time to play!

8. Remove the gloves from the hands. 

Most of our frozen hands lost their fingers. Tips: Run the gloved hand under a streaming water, and slide the glove off very gently. But not too much water as it may melt the whole finger. 

9. Pour some salt onto the frozen hands. See them melting!

Iesha was so excited once she saw her Lego head. 

She seems happy. 

The cold never bothered me anyway!

Thursday, October 29, 2015

The Egg People

We've been doing two major indoor growing recently. We planted beansprouts in the egg shells. We painted the shells and glued some funny eyes. It took only three days to get the fascinating results! Through this simple beansprout planting, we learnt about stems, leaves and tendrils. But we can't see the roots. To get a visual way on what plant consists of, we did another planting activity. We'll update about it soon. 

Presenting you our Egg People! 

Day 1

Day 3

Day 4

Day 4

Day 5

Day 7

A Lego man sipped coffee under falling leaves. 

What a beautiful Spring!

Day 8- They can't handle the long hair anymore.

Day 20- Found this after we went back home from a vacation. Our egg people have died, so we took their eyes for our next activities. Recycle!

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Say, Build, Write!

Hi guys! It's been awhile since my last post. The girls and I did a lot of activities and experiments, but I was just so malas to switch on my laptop and updating. But anyway, for the goodness of sharing (the feeling of it), I need to be rajin. You know guys, the major reason of having this blog is to share the ideas and activities with all moms out there (if there were any who actually reading up my blog, ). And of course for another reason that could be obvious and highly perceived whenever my girls turned 20s and saying "Oh Mummy! How lovely of you to have write about us since we were 1 month!"

Ok. That's it. 

So here is the writing activity for Iesha and Iyra. Iris apparently didn't like this, but it turned out she was the one who checked her sisters' work for this activity. Iyra is still struggling with her ABCs, so I worked easy on her. I asked her to write the alphabets while saying it correctly. Iesha can now read and write, so I challenged her with her new learnt words. We started with simple home stuff and also with her new learnt ordinal numbers (first, second, third to tenth).

For this activity, you may need a laminated worksheet which I provided at the end of the post. You can download, print and laminate it. You may also need foam alphabets (I bought these cheap stuff at Mr DIY that cost me RM3.50/ piece). You also need erasable marker pens. 

I would recommend this activity for 3-5 years old kids. Older kids would simply abandon this. Another thing is, don't force your children to write the words/ alphabets correctly or perfectly. Let them experience the wrong stroke, the missing dots, the wrong curves and such. Let them. Don't criticize. Criticizing will make them totally go "Take this and do it yourself!" to us. So, the keywords: Don't criticize. 

Till then.

What you need.

Say B!

Write B.

Build it!

For bigger kids, you may use photos and let the kids guess the words.

You did it, Iesha!

The template

Monday, August 24, 2015

Creativity is intelligent having fun!

...you nailed it Sir Einstein!

Fingerprint Art by Iesha, 5.

Dice Counting Games

These are perfect maths games for preschoolers. Get all these and many more free fun dice games here.  Make sure your preschoolers win the games too! Here are some notes on why winning is important in preschoolers.

A Word About Winning 
Children take game playing seriously, so it's important that we help guide them through the contest. When a playing piece falls to a lower level, our kids really feel sad; when it rises up high, they are remarkably proud and happy, even if we adults know that it happened only by chance. Therefore, you need to help balance your child's pleasure in playing the game with his very limited ability to manage frustration and deal with the idea of losing.  

For 3, 4, and even 5 year olds, winning is critical to a feeling of mastery. So generally, I think it's okay to "help" them win. By about 6, kids should begin to internalize the rules of fair play, tenuous as they may seem to a child who is losing a game. So I am also fine with a 6 year old "amending" the rules to win if he feels she has to. I encourage you to acknowledge your child's need for special rules. At the start of the game, you might want to ask, "Are we playing by regular or cheating rules today?"

(Source: here)

Gold in the Pot 

Seashells on the Shore

Sprinkles, Sprinkles Everywhere!