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Here’s my homegrown version of Hot Guys Can Cook đ
Ever since I discovered my skin allergy to raw prawns, Pete has always been designated the role of “chief prawn peeler” whenever I cook kai see hor fun or seafood spaghetti.  However, yesterday, Pete had a helper too…in the form of little Ethan đ
Apparently he did a great job as well! Â Way to go, Ethan! đ
(pssstt….check out the apron too! Â He made it himself!)
It has come the time for Ethan and his classmates to embark on an exciting adventure with Little Pooh Bear in a very interesting project called Little Pooh Bear’s Adventure. Â In this group project, each child would bring home a soft toy, Little Pooh Bear, on Friday. The child concerned would then treat Little Pooh Bear as his/her guest in their homes and bring him around just like how we would treat a guest. Â The child would write about Little Pooh Bear’s adventures when he is with him/her and record it in a journal, which will be returned to school together with Pooh Bear the following Wednesday.
So last Friday, Ethan had the honor of hosting Little Pooh Bear at our home, and he was ever so excited! Â He took him everywhere he went, and asked me to snap pictures of whatever they were doing or eating, and then he would diligently write down what happened in the journal. Â At the same time, he would keep on reminding me to go print the photos for him to stick in his journal.
Sound like blogging, much? đ Â Perhaps I will have a chat with Ethan on whether he would like to have a blog of his own soon. đ
Here’s Ethan reading his story of his adventure with Pooh Bear:
Early this year, when I found out that Ethan’s K2 syllabus (which comprises English, Bahasa Malaysia and Chinese) would have a weekly “Chinese Dictation” session, or known in Chinese as ćŹć (“tÄ«ng xiÄ”:Listen and Write), I could not help being a little concerned.
Well first of all, we have never forced Ethan to learn Chinese and we never will. Â It’s a “nice to have”, but it isn’t compulsory, plus he won’t be going to a Chinese medium school anyway.
Secondly, I am NOT and don’t think I will ever be a Tiger Mother in the whole context of it, but I definitely could not bear to see my child sit there every week and not write anything during “tÄ«ng xiÄ”.  I think every Mom in her right mind would do this.  Or maybe it’s just something that was ingrained in me since my school days.
So I had to take it upon myself to “coach” Ethan in “tÄ«ng xiĔ every week.  Even though I do not speak or write Chinese (Mandarin), I told myself I would try my best to learn and teach Ethan, and in the process, I hope to learn something myself too!
Every Friday, he would bring back a list of characters he was supposed to learn up by the following Friday.
The first few weeks were relatively easy. Â The first one was just writing numbers 1 through 10, and he didn’t even need my help. Â Of course it inevitably became harder as the weeks went by, and soon we were learning how to write 2-character phrases. Â Now Chinese is basically all about memory and practice, so there were times when my memory failed me and Ethan then had to “correct” me.
That was satisfying, to say the least. Â Well, in the sense that I *knew* he was remembering the strokes!
I would usually go over the character and its meaning, and then show him the correct order of strokes, before we individually practised writing it. Â Before we bought the Creative PlayChinese tablet, I relied on the online Chinese tools to help me out. Â In fact, I still sometimes do!
Then, after we had practised a few times, I would cover the characters and we would the try to see if we could write them all out correctly. Â I even took the initiative to get us each a Chinese exercise book to write in! đ
Week after week, Ethan would happily show me his “tÄ«ng xiĔ sheet, where an all-correct submission would be given 3 stars.  I could tell he was getting more confident and nothing could make me happier.  In fact, I have never EVER told him, “You better get it all correct, okay?”, on the contrary, we always encourage him to just try his best, so even if he made small mistakes, it was still okay. đ
Well, then the “tÄ«ng xiĔ assignments became sentences!  Gosh…it just got more and more challenging , and on my part I was finding it tough to capture his attention at times.
You see, we previously revised the “tÄ«ng xiĔ only on Thursday itself and he would remember it for Friday.  As it became more difficult with more characters to remember, I could tell Ethan was becoming more overwhelmed by it all when we did the revision on Thursday.  He would seem disinterested and he would easily lose concentration and tell me it was too difficult, or that he was just too tired.
So I changed the schedule a little and our “coaching sessions” now start either on Monday or Tuesday, breaking up the week’s assignment into parts. Â And then the following day, I would go over the previous day’s work before starting on a new one for that day. Â This method has been working so far, and I am very pleased with the results.
He’s not overly burdened and yet he is happily doing well in his “tÄ«ng xiÄ”.  Even his teachers have been telling me that Ethan is doing VERY well in Chinese this year, which makes my day đ
The last thing I want to do is to have to bug him to finish up homework or assignments…at least not at this age! đ
Well, considering he won’t be going to a Chinese school, it is really a great achievement, and it’s always good to have a little bit of knowledge of an additional language.
Here’s his latest “tÄ«ng xiĔ sheet from last week: đ
And here is a list of items I have been using during our sessions, some more than others, but I thought it would be a great reference list for the parents who are in the same boat as me:
If you’re like me, you would know Eric Carle as the famous author of that ever-so-popular children’s book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Â He also wrote many other entertaining books, but The Very Hungry Caterpillar would be the most well-known.
Well, if you’re like me too, you would have enjoyed looking at the simple yet captivating illustrations in all of his books.
However, little did I know that those illustrations were also done by Eric Carle himself! Â Yep, Author AND Illustrator!
And it was this same collage illustrating technique that Ethan was emulating when he recently created what I like to call….a Masterpiece đ
Basically the collage method involves painting, sponging and decorating pieces of paper and then cutting out the relevant shapes, and then layering them on top of each other to create a picture with different textures and shapes.
In this piece of art, Ethan did a picture with reference to Eric Carle’s book “A House for Hermit Crab”.
Some close-up details of the work involved:
And the final product, which this beaming proud Mommy had framed up:
This would be added to Ethan’s art collection, including his Rainbow Sky painting, which he did last year to raise funds for the Japan Tsunami victims.
Hannah’s class organized a short field trip to a local pet store a few days ago, and just like that first time with Ethan, I couldn’t help being a little concerned, although admittedly I was less concerned now, perhaps because the pet store was just a little distance away from school, or perhaps like they said, it’s so much easier the second time around. đ
In any case, Hannah was really really excited about it, and kept asking me each day leading up to the day of the field trip, if it was the day of her field trip. Â She got up extra early that day and I could tell she was looking forward to the trip.
I opted to leave my point-and-shoot camera with her teachers, so that they could help me take some photos of Hannah and her friends.
First time riding on the bus with her friends:
Awww…don’t the little kids look adorable?
Probably posing with a clown fish statue:
…and a group photo! Yay!
Looks like she had a blast! Â Now she keeps asking me when her next field trip will be.
I marvel at how fast my kids learn these days. Â It’s true that I spend a lot of time with them, but I hardly ever formally TEACH them anything that is remotely academic. Â We do a lot of free play, we talk a lot and discuss the things we see around us, we love having fun, sometimes we add some singing and dancing…but one thing I don’t force my kids to do is to write. Â Even for Ethan, writing came naturally to him, and that is how I believe it should be.
Hannah is showing a keen interest on writing, much to my amusement. Â It started with scribbles and she would pretend to write notes and letters to me, and now she is beginning to form some words on her own. Â Even her pencil grip is quite good, I would say.
Her favorite word to spell right now, after her own name of course, is “COW”. đ
She would also form long imaginary words with a string of alphabets and ask me to read it.
She even surprised me when she would write something on paper and ask me what Chinese character it is. Â Sometimes it doesn’t really mean anything, but she just learnt how to write the number ‘seven’ in Chinese:
Now THAT I can read! Â Good job, Hannah!
A couple of months ago, Hannah came up to me and said, “Mommy, I have a song to sing for you.”
So I said, “All right. Â Let’s hear it.”
And I loved it! Â It was one of the songs she had learnt in school, and I was amazed she could sing it so well.
So, well…it has been a while now and I keep asking her to sing it for me to take a video, but we keep forgetting and procrastinating, but finally I got it on video. Â And here it is (you have to turn the volume up a little though, ‘cos I forgot to fiddle with the volume settings on my camera):
There’s also a second verse (Daddy), but she didn’t sing that part when I recorded it.
Lately there have been instances when Pete and I would be discussing something in the car, and Ethan would ask, “What are you talking about Mommy?” or something to that effect.
We then told him it was PRIVATE, and it was only to be discussed between Daddy and Mommy.
So since then, sometimes he would come over and ask me if what I was reading on the computer was private or not, and if he was allowed to see it.
Then one day, Ethan and Hannah was chatting in the car (as usual) and they started giggling. Â I instinctively asked, “What’s so funny, guys? Â Can you share it with Mommy?”
Ethan immediately replied, “No Mommy, it’s PRIVATE! I’m just having a discussion with Hannah.”
In my face. đ
“Daddy, you know..I just can’t wait to grow up.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to get married, have kids….I want to do all the things you do. Â I want to be just like you, Daddy!”
Awwww….How sweet is that?
I first heard of the MY Garden Birdwatch from Bart, and when I broached the subject to Ethan, explaining to him what we needed to do to be part of the “bird-watching crew”, he got all excited and started counting down to the day we would do the count.
This Garden Birdwatch count is an annual activity where volunteers all over Malaysia would do a garden bird count at a specific time frame, and then submit the data to be included in the yearly bird count survey. Â To get ourselves ready, I downloaded the bird pocket guide and the bird count sheet and brought it along with us on the date of the count.
The kids got up bright and early and we decided we would do the count on June 2 2012. Â Yes, they brought their binoculars too!
It was supposed to start at 9:00a.m. and last for 30 minutes, but our first count spot (i.e. at the swimming pool area) did not result in many birds landing on the ground. Â Birds flying overhead are not supposed to be counted, according to the rules of the bird count exercise.
Then I happened to see some birds in the playground, so we headed there instead. Â And our 30 minutes started at 9:05a.m.
Ethan was very diligent and wanted to spot and count as many birds as he could, but Hannah was very distracted by the playground equipment.
“You have to be quiet so the birds won’t fly away!”
Ethan checking against his bird watch pocket guide on what kind of birds those were…can you see them in the background? Â They were actually rock pigeons!
“Let’s see if I can see more birds from up here!”
We spotted quite a lot of Eurasian Tree Sparrows, and also a very pretty Olive-backed Sunbird, but too bad, I could not get a good enough picture. Â You can see an array of awesome bird shots Bart captured during his bird watch session with his sons!
The day after the bird watch and bird count, Ethan wanted to submit the survey results. Â He had read from the website that we are supposed to enter the data online and submit it all online. Â So I let him do it…and he was only too happy to oblige!
We hope to do it again next year! đ