Enrichment: Can't live without it, can't live with it

I cringe whenever my friends with primary (and yes, even preschool) age kids talk about their packed evening and weekend enrichment schedules. I cringe because I can identify, and I see how easy it is for us - well-meaning parents - to get caught up in a race that's become more about academic excellence rather than academic help for those who truly need it.

Our own enrichment woes are about Chinese. Although I've tried to keep B's time free for play and bonding, this is one area where we need help in. I harbour no illusions that B will be a top scorer in advanced Chinese, but I do want him to be confident academically when he enters local primary, and not let poor Chinese be his Achilles heel in school, and later on in life. Currently, I haven't found the right program since B graduated from the parent accompanied playgroups at Chengzhu as the timing and method are not suited for my kinesthetic and auditory learning boy. We've tried 1-to-1 tutors at home but B's too young and lacks the focus to engage 100% with them - and besides, playing and interacting in Chinese with him is something I can do myself. I'm not ready to leave him alone in a brand new (fully Chinese!) environment as he just started half day nursery. So in the interim, we signed up for weekly mom-and-tots flexi sessions at Bibinogs till B turns 2.5 years, hopefully enabling us to enjoy our last few months in class together. Going forward, I'm still searching for a more structured yet interactive class that mixes outside and at home learning. Maybe we'll trial Berries or Hua near us in a few months when he's ready for another drop off. I'm also in the midst of sourcing more Chinese toddler books and DVDs, but the caveat is this banana-mama needs hanyupinyin to make any sense of the characters :( At the moment, the only time he willingly speaks Chinese is when he sings - a start, I guess :)

All that said, before you go tiger mom enrichment-crazy on your kid, watch this video - a reminder that too much of a good thing can be more harm than help. Let's not kill their interest before it has a chance to bloom!

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Horsing around this 马年！

Wordless Wednesday: Crafty Chinese New Year

新年快乐！

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Dem aching bones

A late recap post as September was a tiring month. Everyone in the household fell sick, helper was on home leave, hubby and grandparents were frequently away.  While regular laundry, home-cooked meals and toilet cleaning were somewhat neglected, holding down the fort (while sick too!) gave me a nice super-mom buzz and of course, a deeper appreciation for all dedicated caregivers and homeschooling moms out there...  Some days when a me-only holiday or even full time work seemed like a nice break (not in reality, I know), I turn to this article's quote: "The more time a mother can spend raising her kids, the better. The better for them, the better for their souls, the better for the community, the better for humanity. Period."

That said, we still worked through a theme: OUR BODY, following B's weekly Gymnademics home material as I had little time for much else. B even got "kicked up" to the 2-3 years Fellows class a tad early (hope they don't regret it!)

ABC:  We didn't find a "wow" body book at the library as the many kids books were either too simple or too wordy.  So we revisited a few classic books and flash cards around the body, reinforced by simple craft on Saturdays with dad.

Our best activity:  Making our B-sized skeleton.  Mommy traced out B's body on paper, drew and cut out the bones, while B painted it.  He loves greeting "skeleton" every morning and night, sticks food stickers in his mouth because it's hungry.  All those bones must make him look quite thin!  Bonus: The skeleton makes a perfect prop for Halloween :)

Music: Songs worked wonderfully in this theme!  Now that B actually sings (well, he strings all the words in a run-on-sentence), music really aids his recall and encourages him to move more parts of the body.  We'd been singing Head Shoulders Knees Toes for a while now, but he's also responding more to the Chinese versions too (the ones in class have different, fun variations of 拍拍手).  This month, B picked up on a few more:

Outings:  It's that time of year for birthday parties again!  Besides that, we tried to go outdoors as often as possible before the rainy season hits. We joined a few friends for a beach playdate, visited The Garden House (a new nature-themed preschool), went back to Gardens By The Bay for the Mid-Autumn Festival show, fed fish and picnic-ked out at Botanic Gardens, among others.

Personal: 

• B truly started conversing in Chinese! 好棒 兴烨！
• Started singing with words, not just sounds/tones (mainly in English): Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Row Row Row Your Boat, Hokey Pokey, Wheels On The Bus, Rain Rain Go Away, Happy Birthday, and snippets of everything else he hears around him. 
• Tantrums remain infrequent and can be pre-empted as it's usually related to (1) Too tired and don't want to bathe before nap (2) Too hungry yet don't want to give up his cars
• Growing independence - he's increasingly saying "Mama, B do" whether it's drawing, stamping, reading, eating, choosing what to wear, etc.  Feels like my little boy wants to be a man too fast!  
• Growth spurt!  One day he suddenly outgrew his 2 year sized shoes and pajamas. When we were at IKEA this week, we also discovered that he's 90 cm - the "magic" height for entry into some playgrounds, and also, bus and MRT payments ;)  When did that happen?  He'd been seemingly stuck at 86 cm and just around 12 kg for the past few months

No time for flashcards?

This month, we covered TIME.  Thankfully, I managed to save time (hah!) searching for, making and adapting material for B as the theme coincided with the Gymnademics weekly home material.  It allowed us to reinforce numbers as B's been sporadically saying 0 to 20 (in English) and 1-10 (in Chinese). We also dived into the concept of day and night, seasons and weather patterns as B loves pointing to the moon, sun, stars, rain, clouds, etc. ;)

Books. There are soooo many good books about time, numbers and weather. Reading books is even more fun now that he repeats most words and memorises familiar phrases that he likes. Here's what worked well for us among the titles we could find in the library and had at home.

 

BTW, we really enjoyed "Only My Mom and Me" by Alyssa Satin Capucili which covers the days/seasons that a mom and child spend together.  But I had to return it to the library and haven't bought it online yet :(  Also, there's many book-based activities from Margaret Wise Brown's "Goodnight Moon," a classic bedtime fave that shows how time passes before bed. Maybe we'll try that in Sept....

Craft. We made a weather/week/time wheel to complement the theme.  B loves spinning it while saying the words and numbers. He's also slowly learning how to manipulate the wooden clothespegs. 

Music and Movement. When we reviewed the days and months, B would get stuck on Wednesday and had a tough time associating the months with "concrete" things.  These music videos helped! (Note: There are many out there online, these were the ones we liked more)  

  

Chinese?! One day, B re-discovered our stash of bilingual flashcards, gleefully exclaimed "WOW!" and brought them over to read together.  Whenever there's time at home, he would open box after box to flip through. I try not to repeat the cards and end leaving him wanting more.  He tends to say the English word when he sees/hears me read out Chinese characters, but he does vocalise some Chinese, esp. those he hears frequently from songs, conversations and his first set of Chinese storybooks.  

Art:  Since this was mommy's first year as a Singaporean, we hosted a casual National Day BBQ, jet flypast and fireworks watching at our place. B excitedly says "boom boom fire" and "zoom zoom airplane" when he sees his artist impression proudly displayed on the art wall :)

Outings and Special Projects: This month, B visited Megabugs Return! and the Science Center (rather underwhelming, seriously in need of upgrading), the Art Garden @ SAM (again!) and the Istana Open House for Hari Raya and National Day. We also returned to the Esplanade for Hello Ling, the second in the PLAYtime! series, which dramatised the effects of light or in B's words "sunlight, starlight, moonlight ... and rainbows!" To cap it all, B made his first (?) science discovery, i.e. a simplified "taugeh" project to grow green bean plants over time (i.e. the 7 days in a week) with the help of water, air and sunlight.

Personal:

- When asked "What's your name?"  He'll say it all in one run-on word "bwxy!"
- Mr Manners. B calls "Hi, Thank You, Please, Good Morning, Bye, Day, Night (and Sleep Tight)" if prompted though once in while we'll get a spontaneous "Morning/Bye uncle/aunty!" while in the lift, charming our neighbours (and some strangers). The family tree will come in handy for those Chinese titles and names!

- Potty training steps.  B regularly voices when he needs to pee and poop, does it in the toilet more often and has fewer accidents. Even though we've not yet gone all-in (i.e. he wears diapers/trainers when sleeping and when outside for extended periods), this has been so encouraging for us all. Yes!

- Hello, tantrums. Our gentle, observant 21 month old B has finally succumbed to his undeveloped cortex :) Thankfully the tantrums are not frequent and rather predictable (i.e. he'll say "No like! No want!" or throw a fuss when he's upset, tired at end of day or had a poor nap, or wants to be independent).  I guess a happy, stimulating and secure environment with a balance of love and discipline is no longer enough at this age! B needs his autonomy, and we should “never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.”  Maria Montessori said this best

- Gimme freedom! That's perhaps why B likes music and movement so much.  I flip through the newspaper with him in the mornings, let him choose how many and which books to read, have regular messy, art and music playdates.  As his vocabulary expands, he's forming more and more 2-3 word phrases to better express himself and is gradually overcoming his shyness to say words in Chinese and Malay too 

"Today is Monday" everyday according to B, and it's a delightful day!

I did what I knew, and when I knew better, I did better

June was an exercise in child-led learning.   Forget about class or mommy's "lesson plans," our theme was on B's all time favourite things...

Theme:
(1) Things that go:  It started out with us reading Brian Biggs' excellently illustrated vehicle series, esp.  Everything Goes: In The Air for days up till (and after) B's first flight to Phuket.  Shortly after, his Chengzhu holiday program took the Playclub tots on the Duck Tour bus AND boat.  Then we ended up flying again (aka the unplanned haze-cation) to Penang. For a boy already crazy about wheels and diggers, it only seemed natural that this ended up as our special monthly theme

(2) Shapes: Learning shapes is fun and easier as B recognises his rainbow colours (he calls indigo "dark bool" ;) Besides the hand-me-down shape sorters, blocks and a timely Gymnademics home package set, we reinforced shapes through bean bag games, geometric foam pictures and playdough

Routine:
We used lots of puzzles this month given B's growing interest (and affinity) for this. Besides the wooden peg puzzles, we took out slightly harder board and magnetised ones.  It takes him some time to get the alignment right even if he knows where it should go. But he takes them out from the boxes himself to work at it almost every day.  For a boy that can't stay at a task too long, this is quite a feat! We also used more representative learning to support what B would see in real life, i.e. block building a "duck bus/boat", drawing the jet pilots and helicopters flying by for National Day rehearsal, browsing through books, transportation art and flashcards with photos and/or illustrated print, role playing with toys and sound effects, etc. We even tried threading with his Good Night construction site set. Speaking of which, B can thread in and occasionally flips it over to thread out but doesn't quite know? have patience? to keep threading the next sequence.

Art and Craft:  So many this month given the special occasions, but no time to complete a big special project (that one's already WIP for next month). Our top 2 faves:

(1) Fathers' Day card - B made 3 this year, 1 for dad, 1 for each grandpa

(2) Garden montage of ziplocked paint, bubble wrap prints and cut-out shapes

Outings:  June was children's season and school holidays.  So... You guessed it!  We went back to the Singapore Art Museum (awesome Enchanted Garden kids exhibit) and Gardens By The Bay (Flight of Fancy's hot air balloons). We also visited the Philatelic Museum to see geek!mom's Star Wars exhibit.  With the Singapore Duck Tour, Phuket and Penang trips, B is slowly touring his way through Southeast Asia ;)

Personal:

- Mealtimes are back to normal, even better in fact since our Penang trip.  B feeds himself, has a robust appetite, is keen to try new things, and most importantly, happily eats fruits and veggies again! At his 18.5 month check in/jab, B weighed 12.5 kg.  He couldn't stand still to measure the height, but based on his ex-pants shorts and pajamas, he's definitely over 86 cm!

- Sleeps well overnight (~11 hours straight) but his naps have gotten shorter (~1 hour average) even on days when he's so tired and nodding off by 1130a!  He tends to wake up crying from his nap yet will only sleep longer if we rock and hold him.  Another regression? Separation anxiety again?  Just roll with it?
- Resumed potty training which I started / stopped earlier this year.  This time, we are going the distance  i.e. no diapers while at home and playdates.  Also bought another, lighter single piece "portette"

- At times, he shows a little stubborn and willful streak so I've been more firm with discipline, insisting he continues with the basic home "routine" (incl. helping out, cleaning up), and not giving in to his temper tantrums. So far, nothing unmanageable (yet! yet!)

- Steady progress language and cognition wise. He's started to fill in missing words from familiar stories and songs, repeat new words that he's able (willing?) to vocalise and put 2 simple words together like "eat/no more", "back door."  Oh, and he's asking "WHY?" ;) It helps that I'm reading more specific books with big fonts, few words like the Dr Seuss and Margaret Wise Brown classics, in addition to our usual dialogic, fun but variable stories. Besides English, he seems to find Malay/Bahasa easier to pick up but that could be b/c I've been quite negligent with Chinese since our holiday break! Of course, if I were honest, for a verbal mom like me who talks, sings and reads to him constantly, I do wish at times that he could say more earlier! But he's developing at his own pace and all is well

- I made his first photobook to help make reading (pages, prints, photos) more personal and fun for him. Also as an alternative to flicking through photos and videos on my smartphone.  He seems to enjoy flipping through it and it grounds him esp. when we are away from home.  Small steps worth continuing and building on

- We STILL haven't committed to 2014 nursery for B next year .... Talk about kiasu!  Yet even with my sporadic homeschooling efforts (longer task/wishlist than actual), I still feel we're doing ok and giving B a better experience at this age

Plan C = change and continue

Up till a month ago, I was counting down the days to drop B off for half-day childcare, thus freeing my mornings for personal/business projects, pilates, etc.  The list for things to do during "ME" time is endless....  However after visiting said school again to refresh my memory and meet the (new) staff, it became unfortunately clear that this wasn't the best or right solution.  Thinking that having doubts and feeling uneasy was just a normal phase for any mom about to leave their kid for the 1st time, I borrowed a couple of books including Elizabeth Pantley's No-Cry Solution for Separation Anxiety.  After reading the first few chapters, speaking to moms in similar situations, soul searching and even reaching out to various schools to discuss options, I soon realised that my 18th month "freedom" plan was shortlived.

But why?  Simply put, too much has changed in the one year since we registered B there.  To stick with the original plan "B", as I've been calling my extended maternity leave, would be unfair to all fronts.  To B (given his personality and progress at this age), my personal situation (no longer working full time or pregnant with #2 for now), and the school itself which was going through a fair bit of change too.

So, what now?  Plan C is essentially same same but different. Who'd have thought we'd enjoy daily home school, parent-accompanied playdates and selected enrichment (Chinese, music and gym/right brain) for so long?  But we clearly see the benefit all this interaction and exposure has had on B -- and parents too.  One thing I'd tweak is to perhaps do more with less. That is, to better integrate what he learns in class with our home plan, outings and occasional playdates.  We'll still do some trial classes if anything interesting comes up but I can tell, all this will keep us quite busy through year end!

Kindermusik: Feathers ... and a busy B

Vocal play was the "call" of most of this term's Kindermusik lessons. Nice timing as B is also acquiring language - a gradual development process that includes listening, facial interaction, symbolic play, means-to-an-end behaviour, object permanence, imitation and vocal chord development.  Vocal play engages the vocal muscles intensely and is great preparation for expressive speech.  Exploration with sound also increases spatial reasoning, which is the ability to understand how things relate in space and time, to visualise the world accurately, to form mental images of physical objects, and to recognise variations of objects.

We were encouraged to keep up vocal play by exaggerating the shape of the mouth, using animated facial expressions and eye contact via mirrors and/or positioning yourself within his view.  In addition, we should sing often and invite him to accompany on instruments.  Kids actually start singing early by babbling, repeated words and fragments, and finally adding rhythmic features and pitch components.  Singing is enjoyable AND beneficial in both cognitive development (abstract conceptual thinking, verbal abilities, originality) and motor development, esp. coordination. Besides sounds, we did some symbolic play too with feathers, toy birds and paper "leaves" to teach that one thing can represent another, starting with familiar items.  This correlates to language acquisition in that a word represents an object. The first stage of symbolic play usually manifests from 6-8 months and becomes more sophisticated as they grow with imaginary and role play.  This time there were new syncopated swing and jazz song-and-dances!  "Sing a Song of Sixpence" (dig that groovy intermission!), "Gee, But It's Great to Meet a Friend" and "Once I Saw a Little Bird", "Hop To It" and "Duck Dance" which explored the tribal calls of the muskogean people and combines vocal play with singing in a fun way.  :D

Home library:

1. Feathers for lunch.  Lois Ehlert, Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich Co.  
2. Baby Steps. Claire Kopp, WH Freeman and CO.  
3. Singing Bee! A Collection of Favourite Children's Songs.  Compiled by Jane Hart with pictures by Anita Lobel, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books. 
4. Trees, a poem. Harry Behn, illustrated by James Endicott, Henry Holt & Co.
5. CD. Brahms at Bedtime:  A Sleepy Serenade.

On a side note, I renewed B for one last term at Chengzhu Playnest and Kindermusik Village. We've thoroughly enjoyed these and mama's morning "right brain class" (plus books, numbers, phonics, music and outdoor activities where possible). But when he turns 18 months, we'll need to tweak his schedule (drop some, *maybe* add a few like drama or Montessori?) as he'll attend morning toddler group at Pat's Baby Haven and continue his weekly mom/buddy afternoon playdates.

He also had his MMRV booster shot yesterday. Thankfully there's only 2 more jabs till the next series at 10 years old. Pheew!  He's now 11.3 kg, 81 cm at 15.5 months, understands lots of words, vocalises some, learning to self feed (patience and mess are a challenge for me!), naps ~2 hours once a day, sleeps from 830p to 730a with occasional waking (argh), and works on his gross and fine motor skills every chance he gets.  What a busy boy!

Month 10 Week 2: Little man cometh!

These past few weeks, B seems to become more and more like a little man :D  

- Got his first haircut!  Quite stylish, and actually complements his big head that's slightly flat on the back, hehe

- Drinks his own sippy cup, self feeds cookies/biscuits/fruits, eats slightly mashed foods (no more purees) 

- Verbal diarrhea and cognitive milestones!  Responds to cues by looking, pointing, signing and occasionally doing the right actions.  He can "show me the cars/wheels/balls/etc", turn on the light switch, aircon and fan buttons, goes to and picks up books/bottle when he wants to read/drink, shakes his head, waves his hands, raises his arms.... Also coos, gurgles, babbles all the time!

- Stands upright, letting go briefly. Cruises more confidently, holds onto and pushes objects while on the go

- Loves music and movement so I've started him on Monday bounce & rhyme sessions in the park, including circle time in our Wednesday playdates and signed him up for Friday Kindermusik Village classes in early October (each term lasts 8 weeks)
- Going for his first Chinese immersion class at Julia Gabriel's Chengzhu Mandarin holiday programme.  This should be quite an experience as my Chinese is terrible, and he's mainly been exposed to English (and Malay/Bahasa) at home.  If he takes well to it, I may consider signing up for regular classes there

- Finally met his maternal uncle on a surprise visit from San Francisco (via Seoul) -- hooray!  

- Got his Singapore passport (along with mommy!) in time for his first overseas trip this weekend.  Wish us luck!  I suspect we'll have to bring more stuff for him than all of our own combined ;)