Mother's Day ...

After a sumptuous dinner at a Thai restaurant, we continued our Mother's Day celebration at one of our favourite spots ~ H*agen D*zs. Both mommy and daughter love ice-cream very much, and when daddy said:"Let's go for ice-cream," we were sure that we were going to "HD" brand ice-cream kiosk :-)

Last year Mother's Day, Kyra was about ten-month old, could only call Mama and eat ice-cream but this year, she said "Happy Mother's Day, mommy!" and "H*agen D*zs". I wonder what she can do for next Mother's Day, probably a hand made card with some help from her daddy?? (Daddy, get my hint or not??)

Children Fun Club

I started a club called "Children Fun Club" at my company early of the year. The main objective of the club is to provide a place and environment for the parents and their kids to mingle around and have fun. Six pair of mommies and children (including myself) turned up during the first session. Before that, mommies voluntarily took their parts in preparation, some arranged the room layout, some prepared for the refreshment and etc...

Since i was the "founder" of the club, i led the first session. I planned for the activities and played the teacher role. During the session, we sang, we rhymed, we had fingers play, we did origami, we read stories, we ate and we made friends...The kids seemed shy and nervous in the beginning, but after warming up with them with some songs and movement, they started to show interest.

Each mommy is supposed to take turn to play the teacher role, then we will have a variety of activities, ideas and styles of leadership. From here, parents can share their parenting skills. Besides, I think the kids will enjoy even more when they see their mommies (the adults) singing, reading and playing with them and also their friends.

Sad to say, we have not been continuing the activity since then (always so muck work to do, so many places to go, bla bla...). Well, I shall just start sending out the 2nd session invitation email real soon!

A Star Student Quiz Contests

During Feb'08 & Mar'08, i got myself tighted up with quite a few of activities. Besides work and family, i helped organizing a quiz contest for kids aged 11-13. I was the Quiz Master in this event, so i was the one who came out with all those "funny" yet meaningful questions. I spent a lot of time googling as i wanted the quiz to be different from any other typical quizzes. I set questions from various aspects:general knowledge, mathematics and science, languages, IQ, technology, games, sports & etc...

Well, trust me, it was not a simple task. You got to think questions accordingly to their standard (if too low a standard, they feel no challenge, if too high a standard, they feel hurt). You got to think questions which are of their interests, otherwise their concentration will swing away (so some pop singers, hit movies, PS games questions is a must). You got to be well prepared and confidence with your suggested answers, just in case some whiz kids challenge you??

By the end of the preparation, i myself who gained a lot, in terms of knowledge, creativeness and interpersonal skill. And the feedback we got was surprisingly favourable and above our expectation.

Thanks to the team members' (we called ourselves the Humanity Team) hardwork and effort. We managed to attract approximately 80 kids in the first contest and collected around RM1000 for Tzu Chi Buddhist Centre. Due to the great responses received and the requests to have the quiz again, of course, when there is demand, there is supply, we had the quiz for the second time in Mar'08.

It was so fun and satisfied when you heard some of the kids saying:" huh, this type of question also got ah, but what is the answer huh? school never teach leh..."...And i had a good time laughing when the kids had to pass the movement challenges (balancing a book, throwing ball into box & ...) for them to qualify to answer questions set in the final round...

I am thinking of organizing some other fun learning activities, maybe... Fun English Day Camp ??

Creative way of attracting kids to like vegetables

In one of the early childhood education classes that i attended last month, the lecturer asked us to bring some vegetables such as carrot, cucumber, eggplant, beans, potato and etc...
At first, my coursemates and I were so curious what was the lecturer planning to do with these vegetables-" We are not going to have cooking class, are we?"

Well, it ended up we have to use our imagination and creativeness to do some "craftwork/artwork" on the vegetables, and the objective of this lesson is to attract kids to like eating vegetables.

So, we decided to work on the theme "Fun Park". In about one hour time, we managed to "set up" our Fun Park with vegetables-made swing, seesaw, slide,fountain, benches, flowers and birds.

This is a good idea, isn't it? If your kids at home don't like vegetables, use this method to test it out!

Buddies...

(From left: Ping,Heidi,Cindy & Kyra)

A sunny morning at Penang Youth Park, Ping and her husband brought their sweetie to join us to have a short "mothers-fathers-daughters" gathering. Ping has been a buddy since we were in kindergarten, then studied at the same primary school for six years, same secondary school for another consecutive six years, to be exact, we were in the same class for twelve years!

Ping got married 4 months before me, and of course i was her bridesmaid. And coincidentally, we were both pregnant and became mothers in the same year. Kyra (22 mth) & Heidi (20 mth), looking equally charming and loving, we wish you two can be best buddies, just like your mothers...

Kyra's Home Library

I came across an article about "home library" from the newspapers the other day and was very much into this idea of creating a little home library to my daughter,Kyra. Hence, I went to the small sticker booth and ordered a couple of hundred pieces of stickers with the wording:" This book belongs to Kyra Lee's Home Library, Dated.........". So, from now on, whenever she has a new book, we will help her stick it on until she is big enough to do this by herself.
I hope by doing so can help to cultivate her interest in reading books and fostering good habit of taking care of her books. What do you parents think? You can even practise this if you are a book lover, or collector :-)
If you wish to know more about home library, you may go to www.myhomelibrary.org

First touch of sand...

Last Sunday, we brought Kyra to the beach with the intention to let her have her first touch of sand. She was so scared when i let her sit on the sand and cried when i let her stand on the sand and the wave splashed to her tiny feet. It took us a while to calm her down.
She started to enjoy playing with the sand when she saw other "che che" and "ko ko" buiding sand castles around her.
She fell sick the next day, i guess because we washed her with the cold pipe water :-( but this will never stop us from taking her to the beach again 'coz she just started to love it!
P/S:Never think she could get tanned so easily, i should have put sunblock on her :-)

Kyra turned 1!

Kyra finally turned one year old on the 31st July 2007. We dressed her up with the T-shirt specially embroided "i'm 1" (a gift from her Aunty Susan) and her first pair of shoes from the Clarks (a gift from her grandma). In the morning, we had a small praying ceremony and the interesting part was to let her pick the first thing from several items (book, calculator, egg, angpow and pen).
Guess what did she take as the first item? She picked up the book, then followed by the calculator. Haha,her grandma interpreted that she would be good in studying in the future :-)
We had a small birthday party for her in the evening. She was so curious and excited to see so many people turned up with gifts and of course a big Winnie cake placing in front of her.

Homestyle Cucuk Udang

Never in my life would I imagine Cooking to be one of my favourite pastimes. Since married and stepped into Motherhood, it really changed my style of living. From a “tomboy” since young, all of my time was spent in studies and sports, catching me cooking in the kitchen or doing other household chores is a difficult task!

Now, becoming a mother, almost everything changes. Of course still considered not good at cooking, but at least have interest to improve my cooking skills. Surely, I wish my little girl can be like Chinese proverb saying, “入得厨房，出得厅堂” (direct translation: presentable both inside the kitchen and outside the living room), hence, I would better set a good example myself :-)

Here, I wish to share with you my mother-in-law’s recipe - “Homestyle Cucuk Udang”. It’s quite simple to prepare (comparing to her on hand recipes like Curry Fish, Hokkien Mee, Laksa & …) and I’m sure you will have a great time preparing and enjoying the yummy cucuk udang with your love ones.

Homestyle Cucuk Udang

Ingredients: 500g oat flour (1 pkt 1kg cost around RM1.80, so use half of it)
600g small prawns
2 eggs
½ tbs of salt
bean sprouts (around RM0.30)
1 bunch of Chinese chives (Kuchai in Hokkien)

Preparation: Wash and drain the bean sprouts. Wash and drain the chives, and cut into strips. In a big bowl, add the oat flour, prawns, eggs, salt, bean sprouts and chives together. Add some water and stir the mixture. Keep on adding water and stir the mixture until it becomes half liquid. (just like pic.1)

Add oil to the preheated pan, scoop out the mixture (portion by portion) using a soup ladle and fry it. When it turns golden yellow colour, you may scoop out another portion and fry it until you finish all the mixture.

Saurce Ingredients: chillies, garlic, sugar and lemon.
Preparation: Blend the chillies and garlic. Add some sugar and lemon and stir it.

Enjoy and hope to hear your feedback on this recipe!

Little Puppet Show

Hi Parents,

I wish to share with you some very interesting art & craft activity which i've learnt from my best friend, Swee Lin. Swee Lin organises activity class at her taska every Saturday, and this was what we did together with the kids last Saturday - a Puppet Show.

Kyra had a good time watching and listening to the elder Ko Ko and Che Che presenting their puppet shows. We had a good laugh when a British kid, Kai presented his show, he had so many puppets (all his family members, including his grands and his dog!) with his house as the background. Another Japanese boy, Yuki showed off his beetle dinosours fighting each other (too much of Ultraman, i think).

Anyway, i sincerely think it is a good activity that can let your kids' creativity and imagination flourish.

Find a good weekend and do this activity together with your kids, they will love it!

WHAT you need:
1. A box ( any size of box, eg. shoe box, milk powder box & etc...)
2. 2 pieces of paper
3. Colour pencils or crayon
4. some cloth
5. Needle and thread
6. Scissors
7. Glue
8. Sticks

HOW to do:
1. First, let your children draw the background using colour pencils or crayon by themselves.
The background can be anywhere, under the sea, in a garden, your house, anywhere!

2. Then, ask them to draw the puppets, it can be people, animals, cartoons, dinosaurs!!

3. Next, cut the front side of the box and the top part of the box (so that you can put your puppets inside)

4. Paste the background to the box, cut the puppet and glue it on the stick.

5. Cut the cloth into two pieces, sew it to the box and... you're done and ready for the show!