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.


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