School holiday Week #5

Last week, we were pretty overwhelmed with activities. This week, we slow things down a little. We travel lesser this month partly because I was suffering from a backache. Our Christmas shopping are all done.

Home Activity 

#1 Cooking pasta

Little One had to cook on my behalf  because my hands were covered with medicated oil. We use  3 ingredients to make one pot pasta. I supervised her washing the tomatoes and mushrooms. She cut the mushrooms with a knife we got from IKEA. I help to slice the tomatoes into half and she tried to cut into smaller bits using the knife. After the water boiled, she threw in the pasta, tomatoes and mushroom.

#2 Sand Art

We made sand art this week.

#3 Learning to sing 12 days of Christmas

She learnt to sing the 12 days of Christmas. I taught her a new verse every day. It is not a difficult song to learn because it is a repetitive song but definitely a lot of memorising work involved which I think will be good for learning dictation. Haha... Do they still have that in Primary School? 

Other activities

Visited Kampong Lorong Buangkok 

This is Little One first visit and my second. We walked through the kampong. Somehow, the kampong seemed different from my last visit 3 years ago.

Visited Philatelic Museum

This is the second museum we visited this month. There wasn't any new exhibition except these mailboxes.

The current exhibitions are "Seeing is Believing: Unusual Stamps exhibition" and "Spice is nice". Little One has come especially to see "Ah Boy". However, it is under maintenance. Culinary Secrets, which was another interactive media in "Spice is Nice exhibition" was not working well either. I thought Little One may be upset about the situation but to my surprise, she was fine with it.

Saying Goodbye to Former Queenstown Driving Test Center

This centre, together with a portion of Dundee Road, will be demolish to make way for condominium. This building was the Queeenstown Neighbourhood Police Centre, and then private schools after the Driving Test Centre stops its operation.

Visited Compass Point

We love the look of Compass Point. The entrance of the mall is a mosaic of world map. I love, too, the wall mosaic featured in this picture. What I like best is they made a Christmas tree out of Eiffel Towel!

Eiffel Tower@Compass Point

Visited Holland Village

It had been a while we visited Holland Village. The mosque near to this was demolished! No building is permanent in Singapore unless it is gazetted as a monument.

Visited a bank

I opened an account for Little One. This is part of the plan to teach her to save money.

Ballet

She loves ballet so I sent her to free lesson in the library again.

Swimming

We try to make swimming a weekly affair. 

Tissue Paper Mosaic Magnet

Little One and I did this at Lot 1 shopping mall. It is a tissue paper mosaic with a good use. It has a magnet at the back. 

We are reading...

one more Baby Bug magazine and this book

You Can't Take a Balloon Into The Museum of Fine Arts

By Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman and Robin Preiss Glasser

We love this book. It is wordless but yet the pictures speaks volume. Little One is able to flip through the pages and understand the story without asking for help. 

This is one of the books from the "You can't take a Balloon" series, the other 2 books are "You Can't Take A Balloon Into The Metropolitan Museum" and "You Can't Take A Balloon Into The National Gallery", However, the library only has this title " You can't take a Balloon into The Mesuem of Fine Arts"  It is only available in Clementi Public Library and Choa Chu Kang Public Library. It is a fun, art adventure. 

As the grandchildren could not take the balloon into the musuem, Grandma offered to look after it. However, the balloon got loose and flew away. Grandma had to chase after it and the adventure around Boston begins. It is fun to see whatever Grandma's experience during the chase coincides with the artefacts the grandchildren were looking at.  

Tip for nurturing good readers

I used to think wordless books are not good for children to read simply because they are wordless. However,  I was told by a librarian that wordless books are good for children because it encourage children to look through the pictures and narrates based on their understanding. Reminds you of  Oral Test or Picture Composition? Yeah... that is how wordless books are supposed to work. I would listen to Little One's narration and correct her when she phrases her sentences wrongly.