yesterday today tomorrow...

I have been wondering what Bryan's been up to in the kindergarten. He comes home to tell me how boring his days are. So boring that he cannot even remember what he's done in class. So boring that he doesn't have to time to play at all. So boring that he's happy doing copywork willingly at home. So boring that he begs to go to the playground, watch TV, not to take a nap everyday. I really have no idea what he does in school. Btw, boring means "not enough play" for Bryan. He has certainly inherited the "play" genes from us, actually ermm more from his dad. 

But there are at least two things I'm extremely happy about: 

1) He's learnt to pray! Yay! Praise be with God. 

2) He's learnt to spell some words and write pretty decent sentences. 

Yay, that's good enough for us. For now. At least. 

on two types of English...

I was lamenting about how quickly Bryan lost all his American-ness in his speech. Just a week ago, on his first day of school in fact, we were out having lunch at a kopi-tiam nearby. The fishball noodle lady was surprised by how much English both Bryan and Kristin spoke. Actually, the surprise is on us. We're amazed at how much Chinese the rest of the kids in Singapore speak. We're lagging so far behind! Anyway, the lady thought that we weren't Singaporeans - terrible Sg mom here who doesn't speak Chinese with her own kids. Well, I begged the lady for a chance... we'll buck up and learn Chinese, can?! Ok, I'm not bragging to say that my kids speak well... please don't get me wrong. But the fishball noodle lady noticed something different about the kids' English. Yep, definitely not the slang or accent. Just the complete sentences I think.

BUT all these complete sentences were COMPLETELY gone by the end of the week, when Bryan was talking "need lah, wan lah, no lah, yes lah, oso can lah, so farnee lah" to his Daddy. 

Two nights ago, he even told me to "e-Lase" his word. 

Excuse me, what did you just say? 

Oh Mom, I prrrretending to speak Indian! I meant "erase". 

Yesterday, we were out at NTUC for groceries. And there he went again, my flavoulite! 

Huh, what? Sorry, I don't understand what you want. 

Now Mommy, this is what happens. I speak two types of English. I have forgotten what the actual word is now. The only type of English I can remember is the type of English I heard when I was still in your tummy. You don't understand it, Mommy. So when my brain can't remember the real English word, it goes back to the other type of English. 

So it's not Indian anymore? Another type of English.... yes indeed. 

Yep, just admit it. My son speaks Singlish alright in just a week of kindergarten. You can tell that we're settling in well. 

a hammock is a hammock is a hammock...

How do you pronounce the word "hammock"? 

Alan and I both say, "ham" and "mock", thus "hammock".

But Bryan corrected us, "No! It's hammock!" You know, like how the Americans would pronounce stomach, with an inverted e in IPA. 

Anyway, if you don't believe me, try the link to the Free Online Dictionary. 

Ok.... is this a case of orang utan and hammock now? 

Hope to post a video footage soon. 

After note: 

Just looked up the Cambridge Online Dictionary. 

hammock is pronounced /hæm.ək/.

So Bryan's right.

According to Daddy, Bryan said he heard it on Caillou long time ago and couldn't imagine how we could have doubted him. Alamak, he's such a PBS kid! How would we know? We never grew up with Caillou!

definition of the week...

Bryan: Look, Mom, it's a bib!

Bryan exclaimed happily as he showed me how he had bitten off his Gelbwurst into the shape of a bib. 

Mommy: Do you know what a bib is? 

Bryan: Yes, of course. It's something a baby wears around her neck so that her clothes will not be dirty when she eats. 

Hmmm, looks like he hasn't forgotten why he had one on when he was a baby. 

eeny meeny miny moe

Just the other day a friend of mine, Lilian, was asking about this bright-eyed girl. So here's a video on her imitating her brother.

rhyming is the name...

Please do not adjust your screen. Yes, I was swirling the grapes in a bowl.
Anyway, if you've ever eaten with my family before, you'd know that my children and food aren't great combinations.

For some time, my cooking skill was in doubt. But trust me, I don't think that's the cause. The teachers in school have given away a portion of my children's lunch to other kids whose parents apparently forgot the lunchboxes. And guess what? The other children cleaned up the plates! And I was tasked to mash potatoes from scratch at a friend's dinner party. Out of seven children, 5 ate their mashed potatoes heartily, but my kids didn't even touch their portions.

My children just don't like food. They eat because they need to live. They aren't the sort that live to eat! Oh no, correction there. They eat because their mommy force them to. Ok, I know some would advise that I should let them starve. Well, I tried. Works for Bryan but certainly not for Kristin. I think the fact that she's still a tiny dot is quite self-explanatory.

Anyhow, so much grumbles and grouses on my kids not eating, not liking food etc.

So one evening, I was reciting this rhyme that I made up then and there just to get my kids' attention to eat grapes:

Ten little grapes,
Swirling in a bowl.
Oops, it's too crowded,
Now one must go!

And yay, they ate the grapes! I was elated!

I gave the kids some snacks today when they got home from school. Again, some mommies might think why I serve snacks between meals if the children don't already eat well during meal times? Well, actually, I checked, they didn't eat their lunch. So correction again, I was serving lunch at 2.30pm.

Bryan was eating his snacks while swirling his bowl and reciting this little poem he made up:
Three little cookies,
Dancing in a bowl.
Oops, it's too noisy,
One must go!

And pop went a cookie into his mouth!

So while rhyming is the name, eating is the game! :)
For as many games as one can cook up for the benefit of eating, I think my kids would probably be a tad more willing to feed.

word of the week...

I-I-C-P-T-N.

"Look, Mommy. It's Aye, Aye, Captain! I heard it on Spongebob."

That was Bryan playing with toothpicks at the dinner table. It's funny how he left out all the vowels. But he did get the consonants right.

I'm very pleased with his progress in school. A year ago, he would not be ready for some spontaneous toothpick spelling like this.

I'm also very happy with the fact that when he's asked what the letter is, he'll say the letter's name. And when he's asked how the word is being read, he will sound out the word phonetically.

But right now, I'm sure he's rising to the challenge of spelling bee. Actually, he was already spelling words younger. Words that are of significance to him, e.g. zoo! I think he was a couple months short of 3 then.

c'mon, darling...

This is my favourite phrase. I hurry my children through the whole day with "c'mon darling, let's go!"

And this afternoon when Kristin woke up from her nap, she told her mommy, "C'mon, darling. Let's go!"

it's a cow!

Mommy: What animal goes "moo"?
Kristin: It's a cow. And you get milk too!
Mommy: Wow!

I think the sound animals make is just too simple for my little girl now. I shall try asking her what one can get from an animal or perhaps naming the youngs of animals.

word of the week...

Bryan: N-O- No, V-M - Vem, B-R - Ber. There, mom, NOVEMBER!
Mommy: ????? LOL

Today's Novmbr the 27th!

KAPUTT!

I was just thinking of the funny words my kids use to express something is out of working condition.

The top favourite for Kristin is "kaputt". It is German, but can also be found in the English dictionary. She moved on very quickly from "broken" to "kaputt" and probably thinks that this is her favourite word now when something is out of order.

Bryan likes to say, "Look. My ship is wrecked." Or, "look Mom, Meimei ruined my train!" And I constantly hear him scream, "Don't wreck this! Don't ruin that!" whenever the two are playing together. Yeah, you can almost sense his frustration coz Kristin is definitely not a very nice little sister now. She's going through the phase where she destroys all things! O help! Kaputt! Alles kaputt!

kristin talks...

She's been quite chatty recently. Just about time, 2 months into school. After four months of nursery Bryan attended in Singapore, not only was he talking at at the speed of a bullet train, he was also performing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Stars on keyboard. He was about 27 months old then. He did have the advantage of starting school a month earlier than Kristin did. And of course, he enjoyed much more adults' attention since young.

But I find Kristin's speech pretty advance too. E.g. I wanted her to go show Daddy her tongue. (Side-track: She has been having ulcers in her mouth since Saturday. Think trick-or-treating almost dehydrated her.)

She came back to me and she said, "I did (it) already!" Past tense! Wow!

This evening after dinner, Kristin was tugging at a cushion, dragged it across the living area and laid it down on the floor. When she realised that I was observing her, she explained her intent: I need to sit on the pillow, Mommy. See! And there she was, sitting on the cushion.

Ok, I wasn't going to argue that it was a cushion and not a pillow. I was very impressed that she sensed my curiosity and offered me an explanation for her silly antic.

More on her language to come...

colours and shapes...

Bryan burst out singing this song while he was putting his toys away this evening.

"There's red for the stop sign and green for the trees
And blue for the skies and seas
This is a song about colours, colours... we see them all around.
Red stand up, blue stand up, yellow stand up, everyone stand up.
This is a song about colours, colours..."

I'm impressed by what he caught on in school for this week. Yep, this week's theme is Colours and Shapes.

During our playdate with one of his good friends from his class today, it was so much fun observing the kids goofing around with an old game I used to play with my friends too.

It went like this:

Who took the cookies from the cookie jar.
Who me?
Yes, you!
Couldn't be!
Then who?
Ryan took the cookies from the cookie jar.
Who me?
Yes, you!
Couldn't be!
Then who?
Bryan took the cookies from the cookie jar.
Who me?
Yes, you!
Couldn't be!
Then who?
Mommy took the cookies from the cookie jar. (I had to play along when I heard my name.)
Who me?
Yes, you!
Couldn't be!
Then who?
Kristin took the cookies from the cookie jar.
Who me?
Yes, you!
Couldn't be!
Then who?

Again, I was pretty impressed by these two four-year-olds. They were listening to each other intently to continue the chant.

joke of the week...

The kids and Daddy were having some fun in the living area after dinner, while Mommy was busy folding away clothes.

All of a sudden, Bryan went, "Daddy... *growl* This is an allosaurus. It eats vegetables!"
Daddy, "Huh? What's an allosaurus?" Obviously, dinosaurs and Daddy don't get along.

Then, Bryan assembled another dinosaur and explained to his Daddy, "Now this is a killosaurus. This one eats meat. Run, Daddy, run!"

By the way, allosaurus are any of various carnivorous dinosaurs of the genus Allosaurus of the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous Periods, and killosaurus is just a new term that my 4-year-old paleontologist-wannabe is cooking up.

terrible 2's?

I've been reading quite abit on how this is affecting alot of my mommy friends right now...
When did this exactly happen for Kristin???

I think it all started out when she mastered the magic word "No!". Now when was that??? I think it didn't take her long after her 1st birthday to say "no" since she's always getting a daily dose from her big brother.

Yikes... how long more???

the fat cat sat on the mat, the finale...

This is Day 5 of "The Fat Cat sat on the Mat".

Bryan completed the whole reader with me, reading about 80% of it all by himself! The other 20% he insisted on parroting me.

Wow! I was impressed!

Ok, on some occasions, I think his memory served as a great aid to his reading as I've read the book to him before. But really, I've not read the book to him more than 5 times, I guess. So it wouldn't be right to say that he read it out of his memory. Also, I think Bryan's a natural when it comes to rhyming. So, when he got "room", he got "broom" too, not forgetting "wish", "dish", "fish". And because we talk so much nonsense day in day out, and he orders and commands his sister what she ought and ought not to do, "So get off the mat!" wasn't much of a challenge to him. When he got "get", he immediately completed it with "off".

Anyway, I'm definitely rejoicing over my a-little-less-than-a-week-of-"hard"-work... We are now one baby step closer to literacy! :D

yay, he's reading alright!

We just had lunch with Daddy in the city.

While waiting to be served, Bryan read to his Daddy his silly sentences again. Boy, was Daddy proud of him!

But we were quite disappointed to hear that Bryan didn't want to learn how to read. He said he would once he became a big boy. And for now, he preferred to be read to...

What a lazy baby!!! Actually my secret agenda of teaching literacy is to have him read on his own in the morning when he wakes up, lest he comes bothering me in my bed! Hey, I'm cranky too when I don't get my sleep, ok?

bravo, Bryan!

As of "The fat cat sat on the mat" Day 4, Bryan is finally reading! Reading actual words and understanding them, and not picture reading. Yeah, tried and tested! Really!

Guess what just happened? He was peering into my screen to read my previous post and he saw what he could recognise. To make things easier, I printed out a copy of the silly sentences he made. And the most amazing thing happened! He read all of them! Every single word! Awesome! I know he definitely understood what he read coz he was laughing his head off.

Well, to many moms, this is probably no surprise for a 4 year-old. Many kids that I know have already started reading as early as three, or maybe even younger. But it is the utmost gratification for me after an intense lesson of two days. Now this makes the quasi-homeschooling that I do fun!

"Mom, remember to tell Daddy what I did today, ok?" Oh no, you're gonna to read to him!

the fat cat sat on the mat again...

Last night, I was totally convinced that my son was an under-achiever.

I gave him a stack of self-made cards with words of the sentence "the fat cat sat on the mat" jumbled up and told him to read each individual words and then arrange them into a sentence.

He had no problems with word recognition. He was reading each card alright. But when it came to forming a sentence, it was "the fat cat sat on mat the", until Alan could sense my frustration at dinner table. (Yeah, at dinner table, coz otherwise Bryan will not be interested in food. Don't get me started on starving them for a few meals. My children are just not interested in food. They can starve and be cranky and crazy, and still they won't eat unless they are sat down at the table with Daddy and Mommy saying "Eat! Eat!" every other second. Why don't they like food??? Anyway, that's another grouse altogether.)

Alan pointed out that it could be too boring for him to just form one sentence. So I thought, ok I would throw in the other words like"bat, hat, rat" and see what Bryan would do with them. Still not much progress.

After dinner, I wrote some silly sentences on the board and got Bryan to match each sentence. And indeed, he showed keen interest in silly sentences. Still, he had to check with me a hundred times before he completed a sentence. And after 15 minutes, he said he's too tired and his arms were all aching from arranging the cards! What???!!! What an under-achiever, I thought again. Sigh!

During lunch today, we did the word cards again. Yeah, it's "The fat cat sat on the mat" on Day 3. This time I didn't have any spare moment to check and baby him through the sentence making steps, so I just told him to make one silly sentence to make me laugh. What came out of that motivating factor laughter?

"The fat bat sat on the rat."
"The fat rat sat on the cat."
"The fat bat sat on the hat."
"The fat cat sat on the rat."
"The fat mat sat on the hat."
"The fat hat sat on the bat."
"The fat cat sat on the hat."
"The fat rat sat on the bat." etc

Now not so much an under-achiever today. Yay! Of course, I had to pretend that his silly sentences were cracking me up. He was certainly proud that he could make Mommy laugh with all his silly sentences.

the fat cat sat on the mat...

Yesterday was a good day for me.

I managed to quickly cook dinner while the kids napped. By the time Bryan woke up from his nap, I was able to have some fun with him.

We have had this chart on our main door for a very long time. It finally served its purpose yesterday afternoon, when I told Bryan to sit in front of it and learn the first 4 words in the "-at" family column, while I cleaned up the kitchen.

It didn't take him long. After 5 minutes, "I'm done, Mommy! What's next?"

He's been resisting his afternoon nap ever since we came back from Singapore. So whenever I say he doesn't have to go back to his bed anymore, he loves it! In fact, he loves it whenever he has to do some "work" for Mom so much that when Daddy was back yesterday evening, he proudly informed his Dad that he was doing some "work" for Mom.

Anyway, next it was word-recognition exercise for him.

I wrote a series of "cat", "bat", "hat" and "mat" on the easel and got him to circle, t-cross, cross out and then strike out the words, one group at a time. Pretty well, and all this while I was still clearing the cooking utensils in the kitchen.

Next, it was word cards.

Got Bryan to read out the words, while prompting him not to forget the accompanying actions. The actions were a lot of fun for him. e.g. scratching moves for "cat", flapping arms for "bat", hands over the head for "hat" and lastly, he had to sit down on a "mat".

Finally I showed him the card "at", hoping he would transfer some of his knowledge to reading the word on his own. Well, not so much. He needed some clues.

The last thing we did before dinner was for him to complete reading the whole column of the "-at" family chart. And he did! Applause! So I did manage to get him to transfer his new "-at" knowledge after all. Oh... yes! I also got him to read "the fat cat sat on the mat" out loud and immediately he remembered we had a book in that title.

After dinner, we had a short revision on those words using Magna-Doodle board. Then we started reading "The Fat Cat Sat on the Mat" together. It was fun and an accomplished lesson plan! Homeschooling this way, I like it. But this is not always the reality.

Reality is: Mommy is always tired, Bryan is being silly or cranky, or Kristin is disturbing us!

But it was definitely seizing the moment to get him to learn a few more words.

Oh... did I mention I was in the gym yesterday? Yeah, that's where the energy came from. I think I need to camp out in the gym to feel fit mentally to teach again.

Next on my lesson plan is the "-ish" family. Not very many words - "fish", "dish", "wish", "swish". But I can certainly read Dr Seuss' One Fish, Two Fish with him after that.

I do have many ideas in my head... but really can't summon energy to realise them. Where is Brand's Chicken Essence and Youmeishu???