Cuti Cuti MLY & SG

For review & info on most of the books I mentioned here, please goes to http://www.squidoo.com/ahomeschoolingmomjornel (updated 11 Aug 2009)

We just came back from our 19 days trip around MLY & SG. It was a very long trip. I'm not sure exactly how long did we travel. Hmm...need to ask ST about it (1970 km in total acc to ST). For those who asked, this was our schedule:

Day 1 - Selangor to Muar (breakfast), Batu Pahat (lunch), JB (dinner) and finally reached SG at nite.

Day 2- SG Zoo

Day 3- SG bird park (Den is crazy about animals...she wants to be a zoo keeper when she grows up...)

Day 4- Children's Church, then Orchard Road (bookstores, surprised to find SG bookstores carry more or less the same selections of books as MLY...was hoping to find harder-to-get books there... disappointed...or I just went to the wrong bookstores?)

Day 5-Church, I shared with some of the sisters involved in the Children's Ministry.

Day 6- SG to Kuantan (lunch) then reached Cherating for the night

Day7 - Kemaman (branch), Rantau Abang (see sea turtles) and reached Kuala Terengganu for the night

Day 8 to 12 - Pulau Redang (we like it so much that we kept extending our stay there, so we ended up having to skip Perlis)

Day 13- Took the earliest ferry out of Redang and visited KT Islamic Civilization Park then reach Kota Bahru for the night.

Day 14 - KB, we watched wayang kulit at night.

Day 15- KB to Belum Forrest (Gerik), we saw some wild mushrooms!

Day 16- Belum to Pulau Pinang.

Day 17&18- Makan in P.Pinang

Day 19- P. Pinang to home.

At first, we planned to travel for 4 weeks then I realized Den would have to miss 4 weeks of Yamaha! That would be a bit too much. So we ended up only going for 19 days. We started our journey the day after her Yamaha, then came back right before her Yamaha. Even with that, she missed 2 classes. We have to see tonight if she can still catch up. (note: she can!)

She was a bit advance (she was one song ahead of the class) before the trip and practiced as much as she can the week before we go. In SG, she also get to practice since we stayed at our friend SH's house. After SG, for the rest of the trip, she had no access to the piano. So she practice on books, pretending she was playing piano.

On our last day, we went to my uncle's house in Penang. He has a piano in his house, so she played it. She did not play as well as usual. She practice yesterday (after we reached home) and today and she seemed to be doing alright...at least to me..next time maybe we can miss 3 classes...haha!

One of the things I worry the most before the trip was how was she going to travel for so many hours. We had a few long stretches of driving - Selangor to Singapore (with the detour, it took about 6 hours), Singapore to Cherating (8 hours), KB to Gerik (4 hours), Penang to KL (4 hours)

So I packed a bag full of stuff for her to play with. There were books, magazines, crafts, etc. Not only they can be played in the car, they were also good for rainy days when we were stuck in hotels. These were some of the things I packed:

1. A new toy -for any long trip, I always prepared a new toy, and this time I chose a lacing toy that was very inexpensive and yet fun to play with. I got it from the 'made in china' shop in Atria for RM16.90. She had hours of fun with it and it is good practice for fine motor skills, creativity, and eye-hand coordination.

These are some examples of the work we did together. I make the face for the rabbit/cat (haha, can't tell), and she did the body and hands. She also did the hair for the mermaid.

2. Magazines - I bought 3 - two Charlie & Laura that usually have fun crafts to do (we made a spider). One Disney princess magazine that usually includes simple math, stories, and coloring (bought from the newsstand, RM7-RM9)

3. Magnetic game board - contains 12 games including Tic Tac Toe, Draughts, Hoppiti, etc (bought from MPH at RM26.90)

4. CDs- especially the Wee Sing series (bought from various bookstores - RM39.30 for one CD)

5. 2 bottles of playdoh ( we ended up did not use them)

We did not have any formal study time, but I brought along some materials for part learning, and part playing:

MATH: Sudoku board & a math workbook.

LANGUAGE: two "talk about" books, that have vivid pictures to stimulate talks- Yackety-yak, the Alien's Back & Then and Now (see review at "talk about book" section)

SCIENCE: a book about science (part of Sonlight) - How do you lift a lion? (see review at "science" section)

BIBLE: a short story book (part of Sonlight) - The Gods must be angry (see review at "Bible" section)

PHONIC: Scholastic Sound-Out-The-Word Phonic Readers Set 2 (See review at "Language" section) -It has 5 little books, we only managed to read books 1 & 2.

CHINESE - 奶各中的青蛙, a German chapter book translated into Chinese.

LAPBOOK - this is the first attempt at lapbooking. I get all my templates from the net then printed them out and pasted them on a folder the night before we traveled.

On the front of the lapbook is a record of our traveling. Every day, Den wrote down the no of days we traveled in one of these little books, then I helped her to write down the date and the places we were in and also recorded the food that we ate. Then at the end of our travel, Den was supposed to choose the food that she like the most during this trip and I would help her to make a pop-up page. She ended up choosing 5 food instead of one -面薄 from Muar, a famous bread with kaya and butter from Kuala Terengganu China Town, Spinach soup from Berjaya Redang Hotel, 油炸鬼 from Kota Bahru, and Egg toast from Penang. She can't decide which one is her favorite and insisted she loves all of them. So here we goes -

Inside, we did a special book about Singapore. We learned about the time differences (no different) and the animals and pets in Singapore. I also left a lot of blank pages for her to cut and paste pictures that she likes about Singapore. She ended up pasting all the animals' pictures.

We also draw the flag of Singapore and the different states' flags and listed down the things we wanted to pray for that particular country or state.

In the middle, I put in a plastic bag for her Singapore coins and 相思豆 collection.

After that, there was a page for a variety of things.

First, we wrote down everything we can think of that started with "S", then another started with "SH".

Then we draw the Malay costumes that we saw in KT & KB. (I drew with input from her then she colored)

We also make 2 postcards, one about Redang and one about Kuala Terengganu.

At the back of the lapbook was the map of MLY & SG. Every day, we marked down the route we took 

with Green pen.

We had lots of fun doing lapbook and we both enjoyed it very much. I think we are going to do more of it.