28 Dec 2009

For the last two weeks, we have been traveling back and forth SG and KL. There is going to be more traveling until mid-Jan. We are pretty much-taking long breaks from studying or just doing whatever we can.

When I was in SG and my DD, Den in KL, I gave her daily assignments like reading (small phonic reader books), math worksheets, Chinese reading, etc, and asked my parents and sister-in-law to help make sure she did them. Well, she did half of what I gave her. Better than expect. :)

We have not been using Sonlight until today. We drove to SG yesterday (missed church again!!). I brought along some Sonlight books with me this time. However, I can't bring too much since we are taking a flight back to KL this Thurs.

We are temporarily staying in a very nice serviced apartment in SG. My DH, ST's company paid for it. Wish we could stay here forever but it is only for a month. So we shall fully utilize it as long as we can.

I didn't want to stay in the apartment the whole day, so Den and I went down to the resident launch to study this morning.

It was a good decision. The launch is very spacious with a nice sofa and no one in there. We have the whole place all by ourselves.

We are still in Sonlight week 3!! Hahaha! Den is so good with the week 3 memory verse now since she has been reciting it for the past month!! It is a good verse to remember though - Obey your parents for everything for this pleases the Lord! (Colossians 3:20)

We always start our study with a memory verse, prayer, and Bible study. However, the Word & Song Bible (under Bible) is too big for me to carry to SG, so I brought along a small comic book published by my church instead. It is a delightful Chinese comic book drawn by a young sister from our church. It is about how we can glorify God in the roles that we play in our lives - big and small - as long as we play them wholeheartedly.

After that, we started our Week 3 Science. We continued reading from the small book - Weather (under Science). Today we learned about the different types of clouds (we learned about this 2 years ago, so it was a good review for both of us), fog, snowflakes, hail, and how lightning and thunder happened. We also did 2 pages of worksheets.

I planned to do the optional activity included in the schedule. However, can't find some of the things I needed here, so I had to skip that and maybe do it in KL next week.

After that, she did a worksheet using Disney Princess Addition & Subtraction Workbook (under math). She is getting really fast with that. I have started teaching her carrying the tens unofficially -- as in I will do it with her whenever the math question required it but haven't let her do it herself. That is the next step in her math study (We are using Qdee's math) but I decided not to go into it yet until she is better with her addition and subtraction. I think she is ready now.

We took a break after that. She played at the outdoor and indoor playroom for a while before we headed for our lunch at the shopping center next to our apartment. One thing I love about this serviced apartment is that it is so convenient. After lunch, I bought some food I needed for cooking soup tonight.

We resumed our study at the resident launch after we put the food back in our apartment. She read one of the small phonic reader books for me. Then I read a Chinese book from 怡学故事列车 (read more about this from my previous post http://homeschoolingmomjournel.blogspot.com/2009/09/for-review-info-on-most-of-books-i.html) for her and we did the activities at the end together.

After that, she did a worksheet from Developing the Early Learner Lever 3 (under Workbook). I planned to let her do 2-3 worksheets but it took her such a long time to finish one, so she ended up only doing one.

We did a craft together after that. It is one of her Christmas presents - Glass Deco Art. We traced the pattern (included) on a piece of plastic using the black liner and after that, we fill in the colors. We need to wait for 8 hours before we can peel the artwork from the plastic and stick it to the window or glass. We are going to peel it off tomorrow morning.

After that, we went to the playroom again. We spotted some puzzles, books, and board games we are interested in when we came in this morning. So Den read a little bit (Barbie on Little Golden Book series!), then we tried to play the Cinderella puzzle, but there were too many missing pieces, so we gave up. We gave up on the incomplete Mastermind too. Finally, we settled on monopoly.

I did not want to play that with her at first because I think she is still too young to play that. We ended up playing for an hour and she was quite good. She can't count the money...too many zeros! I have to help her with that but she has a strategy...at least she claimed that's her strategy (I thought it was just luck!), she brought a whole block of properties and ended up winning the game!! We had to stop playing after an hour because ST was back and we were going out for dinner.

We are going to do that again may be Wed or Thurs. That was fun!

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

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! Wish you and your family a wonderful Christmas and a blessed new year ahead!

I shall resume my blog after Christmas and New Year! :)

17 Dec 2009

When my DH, ST is not around, there are a lot of things I have to do myself. Since I have to be out running all the errands, my DD, Den has to tag along too. So we don't have much time to study.

We only manage to read a chapter from Living Long Ago (under History) yesterday. We read about the ways of travel in Ancient Egypt. Thus concluded our study on Ancient Egypt. We did the reading quite late at night.

Den spent Tuesday nite at my parent's house. My brother and sis in-law came back from Aus for holiday. She is quite close to them and wanted to spend more time with them. I only get her back home after lunch. I let her practice piano and watch the new Yamaha DVD (book 3). I will be away this weekend and so she won't have time to practice before her class next Tues. She also finished the Yamaha homework.

Her friends, NN & SS came over to swim late in the afternoon. Then we went out for dinner with NN & SS family. By the time we get down to study, Den was quite tired. She kept yawning even though she insisted she can continue. I decided to stop after one chapter. We talked to ST on the phone and we read Boxcar Children (under K Read Aloud) before bed. This is becoming our bedtime ritual.

Today we went for a check-up with the eye surgeon. After that was a series of errands to run - change tires, buy bus tickets, change one panel of Den's glasses, etc etc. By the time we reached home, it was 5pm. I was half dead and still need to prepare dinner.

I let her watch GoodTV while I caught my breath. I wished I can get all those GoodTV Chinse cartoons on DVD. Her Mandarin improved a lot by watching those cartoons. I know most of them are translated from English cartoons but they are all good translations. Hopefully, we will get some good Chinese cartoons in SG because I don't think I will be able to continue to subscribe to GoodTV in SG...hmmm...something I have to find out.

For those of you who have not subscribed to GoodTV, I highly recommend it. You pay RM450 one time and that's all. That covers satellite disc, decoder & installation. Good duel! It comes with 2 Taiwan Christian channels and 3 more Taiwan channels (public tv, that kind of thing). You never have to pay any monthly fees. Most importantly, your kids will enjoy learning Mandarin! :)

Anyway, we had a simple dinner and then I decided instead of studying, I let her practice more on the piano. She won't have access to the piano for the next few days. So we only read one chapter on Ancient Greece in Children's Encyclopedia (under history). I had yet to check out the internet links, so I did not show her any. I prefer to check all the links myself first. Some of the links are too difficult for her.

Just now, after she sleeps, I check out the links and found the BBC link quite interesting. You can see the Greek play here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/ancient_greeks/greek_world/ ;
and design a Greek pot here:
http://www.schoolsliaison.org.uk/kids/preload.htm

I'm going to show her these two links maybe tomorrow...hmm..hard to say...another busy day ahead.

For review & info --
For K books - http://www.squidoo.com/booksforK (updated14 Dec 2009);
on Pre K books- http://www.squidoo.com/ahomeschoolingmomjornel

15 Dec 2009

As usual, a very busy Tuesday. Sometimes I wonder why I always get lots of phone calls on Tuesday. I have one call on Monday and today, the already busy Tuesday, I got 11 calls!!

Den woke up at 11am. For the second day in a row woke up with a dry diaper!! Yeah! Den only used diapers when she sleeps at night and I have not been pushing her into not using them. She usually sleeps 10-12 hours at night and I think it is hard for her not to use diapers. I don't want to wake her up during the middle of the night to go to the toilet. So I basically just waited for her to be ready herself.

I did the same thing with her toilet training. I started when she was around 1.5 years old. I let her go without diapers for a week or so (when we were at home) and after a week she still could not pass urine in the toilet in time, so I think she was not ready and continued to let her wear diapers.

I did not push, just tried again when she was 1 year and 8 months old. Again when she was 2 years old. Finally, at 2 years and 3 months old, after a week without diapers, she could always go to the toilet in time. From that week onward, she goes diaper free during the day time. She almost never had any "accident".

However, she still insisted she need to pass a motion in the diaper...because she need to stand up to do her big business!! haha! It was rather funny, every time, when she need to go, we had to put a new diaper (since she was no longer wearing any diapers during the daytime) for her so that she can pass motion in the new diaper.

I continued to wait and wait and finally at the age of 4 years old, she can pass motion in the toilet.

With this previous experience, I decided I was not going to push her into not using diapers at night. I would wait til she is ready. I think maybe she is almost ready now. =D

Back to our schedule today. We did not have much time to study as usual. We only have about 45 min. So we review our week 3 verse --- we started this 2 weeks ago! (Many things happened in the last 2 weeks - my dad has a heart operation, my grandpa passed away, we went to SG and came back). Then we listen to Joseph's story using The Word & Song Bible (under Bible & Christian Book). We put in Joseph's sticker in the Book of Time (under History).

After that, we only have time for one story from James Herriot's Treasury for Children (under Sonlight Read Aloud). Today we read about Mr. John Skipton & his carthorses - Dolly and Bonny. Mr. Skipton loves them very much, they worked hard for him and with him, and now even though he was no longer using them as carthorses (replaced by tractor), he continued to take care of them and loved them.

At the suggestion of the author, James Herriot, the veterinarian, Mr. Skipton dressed Bonny up and enter her into the Family Pets contest. Nobody expects a carthorse in a Family Pets contest. At first, the Secretary refused to let Bonny enter the contest (Den's eyes started to get misty at this point) but Herriot vouched for Bonny & Mr. Skipton and finally, they were allowed to enter the contest. Not only that, they won the first prize!

It is such a heartwarming story!! You can feel Mr. Skipton's love for his horses and V.S. and also the love and companionship between the two horses! We love this book!

Den bagged me to continue but I had to cook lunch, so I let her work on two worksheets from Developing The Early Learner (under Workbook). Ha! We were supposed to finish this last year but now we are just in the middle of book 3!

We had fried rice for lunch. Then Den practiced her concert pieces. Her Yamaha concert was last Tuesday but we were away in Sitiawan for my grandpa's funeral, so she missed her concert. I thought her teacher might want her to perform tonight, so I asked her to practice (and I was right).

After that, ballet, came home, bath, had dinner, and went out again for Yamaha. Today was the last ballet class for this year. It will only resume classes on Jan 2010. We still have Yamaha next Tuesday, but no Yamaha on 29 Dec.

Den performed 2 songs in class. She did not do as well as she did in Book 1. I think it was because the teacher asked her to perform at the end of the class. She was kind of tired. However, she was happy with her performance, so I did not say anything to discourage her.

Thank you for some of your emails encouraging me after my last posting. Don't worry, I am alright. I struggled when I wrote my last posting, I'm not sure if I want to write about my panic. Finally, I decided to be as honest as possible in writing my blog, so that it might be of help to those who go thru the same thing.

Do I miss ST? Of cause. Other than in 1995, when he graduated one semester before me and came back to MLY in Aug (I came back in Dec the same year), we have never been apart for so long. Especially when he was on long leaves for the past 6 months and we were together all the time.

Having said that, other than yesterday morning's panic attack, I am pretty confident that God will empower me in everything. He is my Shepard and His rod and His staff comforts me. I shall not be in want. Thank you for all your prayers.

For review & info --
For K books - http://www.squidoo.com/booksforK (updated14 Dec 2009);
on Pre K books- http://www.squidoo.com/ahomeschoolingmomjornel

1st day without ST

My DH, ST started work today in SG.

Den & I went down to SG with him last Thurs and only came home last night.

This is our first day without him.

It finally kicked in this morning when I woke up that I would have to be responsible for the whole household as well as Den all by myself. I went into panic mode for a few minutes.

After I calm down enough to list down the things I need to do this week and put them into priority, I felt much better. I told myself to take it easy. Crossed out the things that were important but not urgent like cooking (which involves grocery shopping first!), we can always start that next week. So I sms my friend CST to go out for lunch.

I decided to just do the bare minimum today. Urgent and Important. Instead of cleaning the whole house today, I just cleared away all the stuff from traveling and washed the clothes - laundry as well as hand washed and also clean the toilet. Vacuuming can wait.

The study would have to wait too. While I clean the house, Den was happily drawing and playing with her new pet - a tortoise - a Christmas gift from her grandpa. (ST screamed: "I was away for only one day and now there is an animal in our house????")

We had white porridge for dinner. Just put some sesame source, light soya sources & pepper. Heard that it is good for digestion. Since we had been eating so much outside food, it was a good break for our digestion system...and also the fact that we had an empty refrigerator!

At first, I planned to do some study after dinner, but my parents wanted to see Den. I think they might be a bit worried that we were alone. So I decided to bring Den over for a visit. While Den entertained them (or VS), I sorted out ST mail. He has been handling all our financial stuff, now I need to learn to read all those letters from banks!

I struggled if I should go to Giant to buy some groceries but finally decided against it (I don't like to buy at Giant). I just took some eggs, onion, and meat from my mom instead! Yes! Can cook tomorrow.

After we came home, Den bathed, get ready for bed, talked to ST on the phone and finally we only had time to read one chapter of Box Car Children (under Sonlight K Read Aloud). We started the book in Sitiawan two weeks ago, when we went back there for my grandpa's funeral.

I read it the night before I intend to read to her and could not put down the book. I ended up reading the book in one shot. It is an interesting adventure of 5 orphans trying to make it on their own. The story is cheerful and uplifting and very easy to read. I thought Den would love it and I was right.

This is our second chapter book but it is much easy to read than the first The Milly-Molly-Mandy Story Book (under Read Aloud) in Pre K. Hmm..


This is Den's drawing of the boxcar that orphans stayed in. (For more on her drawing, check out my posting at http://homeschoolingmomjournel.blogspot.com/2009/10/dens-drawing-progress.html )

As a whole, I think we are doing great on our first day without ST. Pray that we will be able to say the same thing tomorrow.

For review & info --
For K books - http://www.squidoo.com/booksforK (updated14 Dec 2009);
on Pre K books- http://www.squidoo.com/ahomeschoolingmomjornel

5 Dec 2009

It was a rather eventful week - both of my brothers came back from overseas, then one left for China again, my dad had a heart operation, my grandpa is hospitalized and in the midst of all these, my DH, ST is busy packing for his job in SG starting middle of this month. We did not have any sit-down and study time until yesterday. However, Den did worksheets and read from Fun Tales (under Sonlight K Reader)(we are down to Book 25, two more to go) whenever she can.

Yesterday, finally, we had time to sit down and studied. We finished off Sonligh Week 2. We did the memory verse, listen to Bible reading (Rebbecca's twins), and did all the Science books for week 2.

We focused on the weather in week 2. The water cycle, windy weather, rainbows, snowflakes, storms, and floods. Other than the Children's Encyclopedia (Under Science), we also started a new book called Weather (under Science). It is a small book from Usborne as well. Colorful and interesting.

We can't do the experiments this week because they focus on the concept of hot air being lighter (don't think I know about that before this!). All the experiments require a heater!! haha! Can't find any heater (lots of AC though) so can't do it. We read about the experiments in the Usborne Science Activities Vol 2 (under Science) and also watched how they raise the hot air balloon in InquisiKids DVD (under Science). I think Den got the idea.

We also did the Science worksheets that come with Science Curriculum and read a Chinese storybook I bought from the Big Bad Book Sales. It is about a little mouse who thought he is not a mouse because he is fairer than all his friends and thus he begins his journey in search of his "true identity". At first, he thought he might be a white cat, then he thought maybe he is a polar bear. At last, he realizes he is truly a mouse and goes back to his home happily.

I bought almost 2 boxes full of books in the sales. It was really wonderful. I only paid RM3 for this book.

Today, we started on Week 3. We have a new Bible Verse that started with "C":

"Children, obey your parents for everything, for this pleases the Lord."~ Colossians 3:20

Den remembers we studied this verse in Pre-K. She was right, we did. In pre-K, we did a shorter version - "Children, obey your parent."

We read one history lesson from Living Long Ago (under History). It talks about the food that Ancient Egyptians eat (surprised to find out it was very similar to what we eat now!) and suddenly we felt like making bread because it talks about how the Egyptians made bread.

So we stop our lesson and proceeded to the kitchen. We ended up baking a coffee cake!=D Have not been baking and it felt good to bake again.

While waiting for the cake to bake, we did the read-aloud. We read 2 pages of mother goose and 3 wonderful modern poems from The Llama Who Had No Pajamas (under rhymes & poem) and we started a new book - James Herriot's Treasury for Children (under Sonlight K read aloud). While I prepared for the lesson this morning, before Den woke up, I already knew she is going to love this book. True enough, she fell in love with the book right away.

It is a collection of animal stories, told from a country vet's point of view. It is also wonderfully illustrated. Today we read a story of two dogs in Only One Woof. Gyp & Sweep were brothers and best friends. Sweep was sold by his owner and Gyp missed him. Gyp was a silent dog, he never ever bark, until one day - one year after Sweep was sold, he saw Sweep in a sheepdog competition and make one bark - "Woof!" when Sweep won the competition.

Sweep came over and the two rolled and played together as if they had never been apart. Den's eyes were filled with tears and she said she was too happy for the dogs.

I told her, real friends will always be friends even if we are separated by time and space....trying to prepare her for separating from her friends when we move down to SG.

After that, we did a chapter in Come and Look with Me: Enjoying Art With Children (under Art). It is actually not in the Sonlight K schedule, I bought it as an additional because we both enjoyed A Child's Book Of Art (under Art & Picture Dictionary) in pre-K very very much.

Come and Look with me is different from A Child's book of Art. We only look at one picture at one time (instead of a group of pictures that share the same theme in A Child's Book of Art). Besides the picture, it also listed discussion questions and the artist's background. So far, we enjoy it very much too.

For review & info --
For K books - http://www.squidoo.com/booksforK(updated 5 Dec 2009);
on Pre K books- http://www.squidoo.com/ahomeschoolingmomjornel