Den Drawing Progress Part 2

It is easier to start a new page then going back to change the old one. So to see some of her earlier artworks please see Part One.



15 April 2010 when we were in SG, Den was in drawing mood and almost spent the whole day drawing. These are some of her artworks from that day.


This is one of my favorite!! Title: Mommy in fancy dress and high heels!













This is called Dad Dad loves mommy! Loves coming out of his eyes!!...too much Tom & Jerry!!

















This is Den Den! This is the first time she drew her self in glasses. I hope it mean she starting to accept her self wearing glasses. She was having a hard time with it. She would look in the mirror and told me she did not look pretty with glasses.

Of cause all those well intended people who always goes - "poor thing! so young have to wear glasses! " did not help.

She would make sure she takes away her glasses every time her photo is taken. :(










All these are mommy - sometime she is happy, sometime she is sad, tired, angry, sleepy, etc etc.


















Another picture of my wedding! This time she drew dad dad (the one with tall hat) waiting at the other end of the red carpet, I am the one in the middle and she is the flower girl.


She really wishes she was in my wedding!!! Ha!Ha!



















Den drew this on 21 April 2010. She was 5 years old and 4 months old.


This is one of her favorite game to play. She is the shop keeper and I am the customer. She will draw the menu and let me order from it. I loves this game too because I get to check my mail, update blog or skpe while playing...since she does all the work. I just order, eat and pay. ^^


This is the front cover of her menu.










This is the inside of the menu.


On the Left, there is a set of Sandwich, drink and hot dog for $4.11; another set is sandwich, drink, hot dog, ice cream and a free bag for $11.13.


On the right, a set of sandwich, drink, ice cream and free bag for $8.00; another is a set of hot dog and drink for $2.08.


At the right hand corner is the drinks menu-$5.12 each.



21 April 2010, half way working on her math worksheet, she decided she need to color it. She also added captions on the pictures - this is the first time I see her did that.

On the top, the little girl said, "Mmmm! Mom!"

On the bottom, the little girl said, "Mmmm! I love you!"
Mom said, "I love you!"

The LORD is my rock

Not having my DH at my side was not as difficult as I first thought.

Thanks to SKPE, we get to talk every night and some time for one hour or more. I teased him that this is even better than having him at home...at least now he concentrate on me when I talk!

Taking care of my 5 years old dd, Den 24/7 also not as bad as I first thought. When I cant take it any more, I will tell her I need some Mommy time and she will leave me alone for awhile....I will drink my coffee or lay down for awhile, regain my sanity and go back to the business of taking care of her.

The biggest problem of not having DH around is now I will have to take care of the stuffs that he used to handle. Some of those are really challenging to me...like driving to unfamiliar places, engaging contractor to fix our leaking problem, banking...it might not seems like a big thing to others but there are big challenges to me. So much so that I feel like hiding in Singapore forever and not coming back to Malaysia. ^^

I was stressed up the night before I came back to Malaysia, just the thought of having to drive down to KL for Den's eye therapy sessions filled me with fears. The road at that place is really narrow and with those big trucks at the road side make it impossible to cross.. ok, impossible for me to cross...but others seems to be fine. It is very difficult to get a parking there too.

Then during my devotion, I read 2 Samuel chapter 22. The familiar verse spoken right into my heart - The LORD is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer! For the past few days, this is what I depend on, when I drove down to KL, when I cant find a legal parking and have to park illegally, when I was caught in a big tropical storm and even with my wiper at full speed, I still cant see the road...I kept reminding my self, the LORD, who loves me, who always provides, is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.

HE was.

HE is.

Our little house keeper

Den has decided she is a much better house keeper...compared to her mom, ME!

The first thing she did yesterday evening when we reached our house in SG was to "redecorate" our stuffs -she repositioned the clock, letters stacks, baskets, etc(we did not have much stuff yet!) and she was running with a 103F fever. After putting everything in their places, she declared it was much better now.

This morning, after getting an inspiration from one of homeschooling mom, I decided to let her vacuum with me. Yes, it did took me much longer to complete the job but the homeschooling mom had reminded me once again, all this are part of her important schooling. So in every room, I let her vacuum first before I vacuum it again. She did a decent job.

After that, she spent half a days in her room, reading books we brought from MLY and coloring. We got a cool free gift from Ribena - with every purchase of Ribena, they gave out 1 recycle bag with 3 color pans. You can color the bags with the pans. She was happily color away...dreaming of using her DIY bag to carry books to library tomorrow.

She also reorganized her closet, took out all the folded clothes and refold them. According to her, I did not fold well. She refolded everything and left 2 items - 2 pants out. Then she called me to her room, she showed me how to fold a pant properly and the other pant is for me to practice folding under her supervision!

Sad to said, her closet now does look more organized than mine! May be God know how much I hate house work and decided to give me a daughter who just love to do house work and very soon will just take over all the house work?!! Please God, please! Please don't let this be a temporary interest!! :)

She was really into her coloring, so I did not want to spoil her fun. Finally at 430pm, I decided she colored for too long and we started school.

We sang praise songs and prayed. After that we read a story about Love from 圣灵水果屋 (House of the Fruit of the Holy Spirit). Thats our last chapter on Love.

After that we read about Incas people in Sonlight Week 8 history. Sonlight books espcially the Children Encyclopedia are just too heavy for me to carry back and forth MLY and SG, so I scanned all the pages we needed for week 8. We read the books in my laptop.

For a video on Machu Picchu, click here.

For science we study about coast and coastal erosion. We also learned about Headland, Cave, Arch, Stacks and Stump. I showed her some of the photo we took in Great Ocean Road, Australia one and half years ago.

She was there too but at that time I did not know how to explain the great scenery we saw. Now thanks to Sonlight, I can! Seriously, Sonlight don't pay me for advertisement, I just really in love with the program.

These are some of the interesting website for this topic:

1. To look at the different type of sands around the world, check out this site;

2. To look at the video of the amazing coastal erosion, click here;

3.To play a coastal feature jigsaw puzzle, click here.

I left her playing with the jigsaw puzzle while I prepared fruit as snack for her. After that she watch 30 min of cartoon while I cooked. She watched English cartoon...cant find any Chinese cartoon on TV. :(

During dinner, she told me, "next time when I big big already, then you can go out shopping and may be buy me a special present while I take care of all the house work at home!" Lord, that is my dream come true!! :)

12 & 13 April 2010

Wow! I have not been blogging for the past 2 weeks! Let me summarized what we have been doing for the past 2 weeks.

Den and I travel back to MLY on 29th March (Monday) after staying in SG for 3 weeks. 30th March is the busy Tuesday and I bought her for eye therapy on 31 March. 1 April is the Moundy Thursday, we went to church service at night and my dh, ST and my brother Sam came back that day too.

On 2nd April, Good Friday morning, I organized a Easter Egg hunt for Den and a few of her friends.

Den and I was invited to an Easter Egg hunt when she was 2+. After she found one of the chocolate egg, she insisted to eat the egg right away and refused to continue to search for more. By the time she finished the egg and wanted to continue to hunt for more, the hunt already ended, so she ended up with only one egg.

She has been asking me to organize an Egg hunt for her every Easter after that. The timing was never right since I was always busy helping out in church during Easter. Besides it is very expensive to buy big Easter chocolate egg in MLY.

This year I was not helping out in church and my brother bought all the egg from Down Under for us! So I decided to organized one for her. We had it at the park across the street from our apartment.

At the suggestion of one of the parent, we hide all the eggs at the maze (it is only 2-3 ft high so it was not scary to the kids). Four of them (Den, W&W and EG) had a wonderful time hunting for eggs. After that, I told them the story of Easter. We ate the egg and snacks and we sang Praise songs and prayed. Later on, they play at the playground before we went to a coffee shop for lunch. Den said, I want to do this every year.

ST and I drove down SG on 6th April and back again on 8th April (MLY car cant stay in SG for long, max 10 days per year or else have to pay SGD 10 per day). We moved some of our personal belongs down. ST & I have not decided on when exactly Den and I will move down for good. So for the mean time, we will continue to travel back and forth.

Den stayed with my parents since we were gone only for a few days. I gave her daily Chinese reading assignment and math worksheets.

When ST was around, we needed to run lots of errants (went to Mid Valley twice in a week!) and visited his parent and family members. So no time for school. On top of that, I was helping a relative in video editing. I love editing and have not been doing for quite some time, so very happy to have the chance to do it. Which translated to...I spent too much time doing that and no time for anything else.

So for the past 2 weeks, Den just did her daily English reading assignment from I Can Read It! Book 1 (under Sonlight Reader 1) and practiced her piano (she did not have the chance to practice for the past 3 weeks...when we were in SG).

ST went back to SG on 11 April. We finally have time to school yesterday (12 April)! We pretty much spent the whole day studying. We were so happy to study again! haha!

Den spent the nite in my parents place and only came home around 1130am. We had lunch before we started school.

We started with Sonlight week 8 Bible verse, not sure if I wrote about this...even if i had, it would have been quite sometime ago, so let me refresh your memory!

Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long
in the land the LORD your GOD is giving you. ~ Exodus 20:12

Den read it on the white board once (she can pretty much guess/read all this words) then she can recite it from memory. I am very happy about that.

After that we listened to 2 stories in the Word & Song Bible (under Bible). One about the Balaam and the talking donkey (Number 22) and the other was Moses last words to the Israelites (Deuteronomy). The song came after that was "I got the Joy Joy Joy Down In My Heart". Den had not sing this song for awhile and she was really happy to hear it and has been singing this all the time. She is adding her own verse - I got the Holy Spirit Holy Spirit Down in My Heart, etc.

After that we did all the Read Aloud in Week 8 - 2 poems from The Llama Who Had No Pajama and 4 pages of rhymes from Mother Goose (both under Rhymes and Poem).

We also looked and discussed Edouard Manet's The Railway in Come Look With Me (under Art).

We read 3 chapters of The Hundred Dresses (Sonlight ReadAloud) as well. When we first starting this book, Den was not too interested but now she is getting more and more interested. Kept asking me to continue. My Father's Dragon and The Boxcar Children are still her favorite so far(under Sonlight ReadAloud).

I decided to start teaching Den the concept of multiplication. I have not decided if I want her to memorize the time table at this point. ST prefered me to start later. His reasoning...he started to learn multiplication when he was 10 years old and I started to learn that when I was 7, yet he is better at it than me...so his reasoning is later is better. Hmmm..not sure Im buying his reasoning. But for now, I just want her to understand there is a better/faster way in adding up.

I used marbles and boxes to explain multiplication. For example Four boxes and each one has 2 marbles = 2x4 or 4x2 ...(I prefer 4x2, ST prefers 2x4...so I told Den it can be both ways). I did not ask her for answer, I just want her to tell me this is what times what. I used marbles because she had been begging me to let her play with my marbles and I think this would be a good incentive for her to learn multiplication.

Den loved the lesson and we spent 1.5 hours doing that. She still asking for more but I can tell that she was tired and so I refused to continue.

Instead, I let her read for me. She read 2 new chapters from I Can Read It! Book 1 (under Sonlight Reader 1). After that, She was really still in the mood to study, so she decided to read to me from the first chapter of the book again.

Today is the busy Tuesday. However, her ballet class was canceled. Instead I bought her down town for her weekly eye therapy. We reached home around 330pm. She read a chapter from I Can Read It! Book 1, then did 2 pages of math worksheets (one on time, one on shapes) and 2 pages of Handwriting Without Tears (Under workbook).

After that she ate snacks, bath and watched Mandarin Cartoon from GoodTV while I rested (too tired from driving to down town, I'm not a good driver.) and cooked dinner.

After dinner, we went to Yamaha. According to her teacher, Den's class is progressing very well, so well that they are going to do 2 extra songs. The teacher said, she had never had a class at this level get to do 2 extra songs. Usually they only can do 1 extra song or none at all. I'm happy to hear that and at the same time a bit worry. Den wont have the chance to practice in SG! Will she be left behind since the class is progressing so fast. I really have to do something about this.

ST and I has been discussing about getting a temporary keyboard in SG for her to practice. Last week, we saw Casio keyboard on display. So we let Den tried them out. She rejected both the lower range keyboards (RM299 & RM699)...she said the sound were not good. We did not let her tried out the more expensive one (RM1400) because it wont make sense to get that. Might as well get a 2nd hand electronic piano since the one we have at home now only cost RM900. I think I'm going to look at some of the piano in SG the next time I go down there.


For review & info --For K books - http://www.squidoo.com/booksforK
Pre K books- http://www.squidoo.com/ahomeschoolingmomjornel