First Encounter with Shekinah Learning Curve

It was my plan to be my child's first teacher and homeschool her till she reaches Kindergarten. The reality is slightly different because I am not a full time mom and I cannot commit myself 100% to the preparation and execution of lessons for lil Joy. I have documented some of our lessons on my Dayre with username Fidesfloris if you are interested.

So by the time, Lil Joy was nearing 4 years old, we decided to send her to a nursery once we have moved to our new place. The disappointment during the search of the kindergarten was another story for another day. I actually documented the incident on my Dayre in one of the April 2016 entries. All in all, I felt so helpless after the assessment at another school on a Saturday afternoon because I was so sure that I have found the right school for lil Joy which turned out to be otherwise. I told hubby that I will knock the door of every kindergarten in the area that day to find the right one.

I saw a preschool a few doors away which I do not recall seeing it when I was doing my research online. I rang the bell although the door was locked and the lights at the main reception were out. I was quite relieved when a young cheerful lady, Miss I, came to the door, it was obvious that the school was closed for the day. I asked for some basic information and thought I might drop by again on another day. To my surprise, she invited us in to take a look at the premises.

When she opened the door to the one and only classroom, I cannot believe my eyes. All the toys, education equipments were laid out neatly on low shelves, very similar to montessori classroom. The classroom is an open concept for all the classes which means lots of room for the children to run about. she explains to me about the school uses a project based approach and they do use some Montessori method during their lessons but they are a not full montessori school. I cannot believe that I have stumbled onto a school that is using montessori method because a Montessori school would have cost a lot.

Miss I, graciously invites my girl to play with the equipments and toys and halfway through our conversation, another lady came back to the class, I would have expected the teacher to say hi and proceed to continue her work but instead, she promptly bonded with lil Joy and started to show her around and kept my girl occupied while Miss I and I have our conversations for almost an hour.

The friendliness of the teachers and the harmony that they work together and welcoming us to the school without prompting really leaves a very deep impression for me. I value a harmonious working relationship among the teachers in a school although I know it is not something that we can expect in all schools.

This happened in April 2016 which was almost a year ago and in October 2016, we enrolled lil Joy to the N2 class.

I will be doing a review about the school after she has attended it for 2 terms.

Starting montessori activities

I have shared this set of montessori materials with my friend when lil Joy was around 3 years old. I must say, i have not been super diligent in working the activities with her but I follow the main spirit of  respecting the child and follow their cues to learn. Thankfully, she ended up in a school which does montessori work so she is in better hands now.

Somehow, Jr J seemed to so more interests in the handling of things and so I started him with the knobs the other day. I don't think it is the right way to present this activity since it is meant for 3 years old kids but I don't see the harm of letting him try it since it trains his concentration to sit down and figure things out.

Boy, he is real charming when he is concentrating.

I have been doing light crocheting every night now and to keep lil Joy at the bay, I throw her a ball of yarn n let her do whatever she wants with it.. so a lot of snipping has been going on.

And wrapping too.

Chicken Soup with Instant Pot

We still have leftover curry from yesterday but I do not like the idea of feeding so much of it to my kids. So the menu for today is chicken soup.

I am using the stock that I have made previously, saute the meat on the wok to achieve the crispy brown skin. Instant pot should be able to achieve the same result but I might need to do it in batches which is a no-no for me because time is precious.

I saute the veggies in the instant pot at the same time and then marry all the ingredients together. There is no need for recipe, you just add whatever ingredients you like and add 1 tablespoon of salt and then season to taste when the soup is done. 

I set the cooking time to 35 mins, it took longer to pressure up because I am using frozen soup. Then I went off to do a quick workout from youtube.

Meanwhile, I start stir frying my cabbage and mushroom and here it is. If you notice, I try to minimise processed food and cut down on meat for the family.

This settle the lunch and dinner for the day, not forgetting the Kimchi in the fridge which turn out to be quite nice. Hubby mentioned that it will be nicer if the Kimchi has been fermented longer but I was not ambitious enough to ferment it too long in room temperature for the fear that it might turn too sour.

Oh and I added the Japanese curry from yesterday. It is always comforting to know that there are food at home.

Japanese Curry using Instant Pot

I hate to start my blog posts with.. it has been a long time since I last blogged. But it is the truth, I had been more active in Dayre for the past 1 year because it is easier to post on the phone directly.

Since November, I have been trying to track my work time, past 1 week I decided to include all the activities that I have spent for myself and for my family. I have been actively trying to find ways to be more productive. Tracking makes me aware of the limitation of resources and instead of flaunting  my time away, I try to make sure I spend it on things that are really worth it. 

I am still not a productive person but is in the process of striving to be at least 80% productive most of the time. Hopefully, by the end of this year, I can be on the top of things instead of under them.

One of my daily challenge is to put food on the table, Food that are appealing to my 2 kids and still nutritious enough that I would not feel guilty about feeding them.

Japanese Curry Using Instant Pot

So here are the ingredients with soup stock made last week and ingredients cut by my helper.

To minimise monitoring, I use instant pot but I still saute my meat using the wok on fire to get a more flavourful taste from the meat.

At the same time, I will saute the veggies in the instant pot. My way of multi tasking in the kitchen.

Marrying everything in the pot and putting the curry cube on top all within 10 mins.

Finally, setting the Instant pot to 12 mins on the soup function. After natural releasing the pressure, I open the lid, mix the curry for a little n let it simmer for another 5 minutes under saute mode. 

My curry was a little too watery today, will take note to use lesser liquid the next round.

Tadah.. and here is the final product which is yummy. Pardon the little serving, cause it is also one of my goal to lose some weight this year.

Someone is enjoying his meal a lot. He is starting to make his stand that he wants to self feed. Despite the mess, I still let him on his road to his little independence.

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.