Arts Activity

It is my aspiration not to be a Tiger mom but to focus on a well balanced and holistic childhood for my kids (Sound too ambitious?) I always think being a Tiger or helicopter mom is easier cos we are more in control. I choose to put my kids happiness and safety as the first priority whenever I have to make decisions for them. 

Somehow, we are at the situation of having 3 enrichment class for lil Joy every week which she enjoys. I am tempted to send her for art classes to expand her horizon in the world of Arts which I love so much but I reckon it will be too heavy on our schedule. 

Instead, I try to incorporate an art activity every weekend. Here is us, redrawing a scene from Dr Seuss's book. I introduced to her chalk pastels and she gets to use the tongs to work on her pinch grasp.

Things seems fresh and fun for a moment.

Then she decided that it is easier to scrap the pigment onto the paper directly. 

We ended the session with a very brown hand and no photos of the final artwork. So sorry about the lousy documentations but I will work on it better next time.

Chinese activies

Lil Joy speaks mainly English to us, including her grandparents who does not understand much English. It is a concern to us, cause we are Chinese and we need to be able to appreciate this beautiful language and speak Mandarin.

Her school is English based, most of her classmates speaks English and I had to rack my brains to make the Chinese works. I signed her up for a Mandarin speech and drama class earlier this month. I reckon that a Chinese speaking activity will suffice instead of a serious sit down Chinese tuition class.

I am glad that she is starting to reply me in Mandarin sometimes and show no aversion to Chinese.

It occurred to me that I have not been introducing new words to her for a long time. I have also noticed that 80% of the (very few) characters which I have introduced to her earlier this year is retained in her memory when we are reading. I need buck up and squeeze in activities to download information now.

So I took out my Book 3 of 我会读 and started introducing her new words again. It is too dry to just flash the cards and so we did a bit of run around the house sticking the words onto the household items.






It is interesting to notice that Lil Joy does not know the Chinese names for some of the items..  But she has a great time running around the house pasting the cards and collecting them back.

Starting official school

Early October, I have enrolled lil Joy into an official school for her Nursery 2. It is a bit late cause we were left with the last term for this year. Nonetheless, it is better than nothing, this is one of the thing that we have to work around for our house move.

I have chosen the school based on Lil Joy's liking and the deposition of all the school teachers. Yes, ALL of them. It is a small school with 4 teachers and all of them are great, so I do not need to be in the mercy of the teachers' rooster. I really hate to be hoping for the nice teacher to teach my girl. 

School started with a glitch. We had the occasional crying from lil Joy when we drop her at school during the first 2 weeks and after that she is always running with joy towards the school door. So where is the glitch when she loves her school and the school teachers are great?

The teacher called me in on the first week, highlighting to me tat lil Joy couldn't write. I told her truthfully, I have not been teaching her how to write yet. The teachers were worried that she might have difficulty with her worksheets if she can't write in K1 next year. One teacher even offered to start a penmanship course for her. I asked them to give me a month and I will try to work on her writing. 

It was really one stressful month for me because I had to work out a routine with her to practice writing since our homeschool time slot had been taken up by her official school. Somehow, I managed to work out a 'one writing worksheet a day' routine after her afternoon nap. 

Thankfully, this month I am starting to receive feedbacks from her school teacher that she is improving on her writing and is able to copy simple words onto her exercise book. I even got a bonus when the teacher asked me in and lil Joy read a whole storybook to me. All these were achieved in the days when she happily go for classes.

With the more critical issue out of the way, I focus on another areas that I need to work on. 

Mornings

I have never been a morning person, except during those years when I had morning sessions during school days. Yah.. I am those who can sleep till 11am or even later if you let me to.

I used to try to have my 'me' time at night but realised that it is not working well. Either I fall asleep with the kids after they have slept or I ended staying up too late or my mind got too active to sleep. So you know, you sleep late, you most probably ended up waking up late the next day or severely sleep deprived.

It took me close to 3 years to get into a more comfortable kind of routine (if my kids let me have sufficient sleep during the night). After close to 4 years of being in motherhood, morning time becomes a coveted time.

Nothing beats waking up fresh in the morning and no one bugs you and you can have a clear mind to start the day.

Of course, what really happens after that depends on situations which sometimes dwindle to a very stressed up day but hey.. at least I get a good start. :D

So a GOOD Morning to you all.

Homemade rice porridge/ cereal for baby

When Little J hits his six month of earth life, we celebrated (actually we didn't). I was glad that the timing was just right when my work schedule is starting to ease up and I can pay more attention to her menu rather than scavanging for time to work and sleep.

I researched, read, prepared and planned for the first food taste when I was a first time mom. I decided on Homemade Rice Porridge or Cereal, whatever you like to call it. I am still hesitant to give him the instant rice cereal for the sake of convenience. That will quite defeat the purpose of me giving up my full time work. I want to know what exactly my kids are eating and want them to taste real cooked food.

Steps for homemade rice porridge for young babies.

1. Wash your white rice or brown rice.

2. Leave it to dry for a day or two on paper towels and cover it up to prevent creepy crawlies to feast on them. It is very important that your rice is completely dry before proceeding to the next step.

3. Blend the rice in a blender. Make sure that your blender is clean and dry. Blend your rice to the finest if your baby is still very young, older babies can have coarser rice. 

4. PRESTO! You have your semi-convenice rice cereal ready. Keep them in a clean and dry air tight container.

Whenever you want to feed your baby, here are the cooking instructions. (Serving portion of 2 dessert spoons)

5. Put a tablespoon of 'powered rice' and a bowl of water into a small saucepan and bring them to a boil. Once the water starts boiling, turn your fire to low and let it simmer for another 10 to 15 mins, stirring occassionally to prevent the rice from sticking to the base of the saucepan. Taste the rice porridge to ensure that they are cooked and soft enough to be swallowed by your baby. You may add water, breastmilk or formula milk if the consistency is too thick. I like my porridge to be of dropping consistency whereby the porridge will drop off from the spoon quite easily. Google it for more details.

5a. (Optional) seive the porridge thru a fine mesh if your baby is still very young and just in case there are lumps or whole grains of rice missed by the blender. You will have a very smooth porridge after this.

6. Serve to your baby with high spirits once the porridge is cool enough. 

Side notes

1. Some people use coffee grinder instead of blender? Using a blender is easier than using the coffee grinder because it seems like my coffee grinder doesn't like to grind small grains. I did have a hard time trying to clean out the leftover coffee powder in my grinder and I have no plans to get a coffee grinder just to grind rice. Blender is faster and good enough for me and it is also easier to clean.

2. Yes, you can skip the blending part and just simmer your whole rice grains for an hour to make it real soft like the traditional way. Seriously.. for 2 spoonful of porridge I have no intention to keep my eye over the fire for a whole hour while babysitting and multi-tasking.

3. You have seen people cooking batches of porridge and freeze them? Why don't I do it? Well..being chinese we do not think that overnight rice is 'good'. And I don't mind cooking it once a day for 2 meals. Little J is still young and the above mentioned portion is enough for 2 meals. I usually split half of the porridge and keep them in the fridge for her dinner at the later part of the day. It's just my personal choice and the dry rice can keep for a longer time than in the freezer. One less thing for me to remember in my cluttered brain.

4. Why is the cooking time a range of 10 to 15 mins? Just to share, different type of rice have different level of water content and will need different cooking time. You might need to trial and error before you get the consistency and 'right' cooking time. The trick is, add more water if you are worried about undercooking and want to cook your porridge for a longer time and stir consistently. Do not worry about too much water as they will evaporate eventually as you cook them longer. Usually I do not even measure the amount of water, I just eyeball them after a few attempts.

5. This rice porridge is the base of many other recipes to come. You can add so many ingredients to it and make it a delightful meal for your little ones. 

6. Why is this post so long? Because I am long winded? Neh. I am just taking very detailed notes of my findings and experience over the past weeks so I can refer back for future use. Well.. You always have the option to skip the reading :)

Happy feeding and I hope this post has been somewhat helpful.

P/S: Babies are washable, be mindful of that during feeding and do not freak out by the messes.

Gelli printing art activity

I saw this technique called Gelli printing on the internet and was eager to try it out. Instead of getting the commercial Gelli plate, I tried to make my own permanent gelatin plate. Although many has been successful with theirs, my DIY process has been semi successful. The texture of my gelatin plate did not turn out the way I was expecting it until after I left it to cure for about 2 weeks after the third try.

Excited, I bought a brayer and is ready to have a great time printing out colorful pages. But wait, being a very good Mom, I let lil Joy has her go first on my successful gelatin plate.

It is a fun process, especially when she has to pick out new skills like managing the paints, picking up the large bottles and squeeze them gingerly on the spot she wants.

Most of her prints come out to be brown or black because she loves to mix all the colors and love to have lots of black. During the process, she learnt to use the spray bottle to moisturise her paints.

And tons of concentration while she decides what she needs to do next. I have given her stencils and foams to make designs. It is really fun to see her place the blank sheet of paper and carefully lay it over the plate, then carefully remove it to reveal her artwork.

Drying lots of painted papers will not work on the floor. The last session we had ended in a mess because there is not enough space and the papers fly around. So this time, we made a makeshift clothes line. It adds on to the fun of this activity because lil joy gets to take a break from sitting down to peg her artwork. It is a joy to see lots of printings hanging in my living room.

After the session, I was excited to have a go on the gelli printing but alas, lil Joy broke the gelatin plate and I tried to melt it and set it again. But it did not harden up as well so I redid it and added more gelatin to it. It seems to work slightly better and I tot I will give it more days to cure. Sad to say, when i go back to check it a few days later, it seems to become very soft and part of it are breaking off. I suppose there is only this many times you can remelt the mixture.

I suppose, I just need to get a real Gelli Arts Gel Printing Plate 8X10 Inch for myself but I doubt they are for sale in Singapore and if I want to order from overseas, that will mean alot of shipping cost. Maybe.. I just have to be contented with the DIY gelatin plates for the time being.

A new video series

I am back to the Youtube community and this time, i am sharing a series of my coloring process of the Secret Garden by Johhna Basford and calling them colorvlogs.

This idea raised the eyebrows of my hubby and adds on to the list of weird things that his wife likes to do.

I am still sharing this with you all because I do enjoy watching others doing craft n arts. Hope u all enjoy :)

https://youtu.be/K9GcW6fIYs8