Shows: Les Misérables (II)

Since they first viewed the Les Misérables' 25th Anniversary concert DVD, the kiddos have been learning some of the songs on their own, with the help of Youtube. 

They started with "Castle in the Cloud"and later moving on to the season's favourite: "Do you hear the people sing?", which forms part of their performance repertoire and top-pick sing-a-long during car rides.

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Here's a video of an impromptu "rehearsal" video before bedtime:

(apologies for the blurred out faces — am trying to preserve a measure of their privacy online for security reasons)

Tractors: Baby see, Baby do

We restrict and monitor our kiddos' Youtube viewing. They are not allowed to watch videos without a parent or authorised adult present — the many different video links readily accessible means they could start with something "harmless" and land up in a very different place.

While the elder two like watching cartoons, selected music videos, toy unboxing and demonstrations, Baby only wants to watch videos of aeroplanes, rubbish trucks and, of course, his beloved tractors.

Usually he'll bring a toy tractor or two along for the viewing and get toy tractor to imitate whatever the Youtube super heroes are doing. 

Sometimes toy tractor gets to practice what it learnt with Baby's wooden blocks. Quite a lot of heavy lifting involved!

Garden: Waking up my Garden

Another coffee compost post.

We were passing by dr. Cafe Coffee in Ara Damansara, when the bunting in the window caught our eye. It said "Wake up your garden", with an offer to take a free bag of its coffee compost.

Not one to pass up anything "free", I asked Boy to go in to request for his bag of coffee compost.

Tada!

Growing Up: Par-Tee Time

The boys celebrated their 6th and 3rd birthday, respectively, today with a fun miniature golf party at Mini Putt, Citta Mall.

Our amazing golf-bag cake!

Decor was basically DIY, with a golf ball/tartan theme,
although the mini-golf ambiance definitely helped

Food items were named according to theme too,
e.g. doughnuts = hole-in one; blue jelly = watering hole;
fishballs = golf balls; sandwiches = sand-wedges;
drinks = watering hole; pasta = in the rough;
chicken drummets = club heads; tea = tea off

  

 
It was a great time for us to spend with family and friends. I like activities where parents and children can participate together, and miniature golf was a big hit with all ages.

Garden: Coffee grounds

Stopped by a Starbucks yesterday and popped in to ask if they had any used coffee grounds to spare for composting.

Without question, the staff promptly opened the tray under their espresso machine and filling a whole paper bag full with the used grounds. Thank you Starbucks for your recycling and waste reduction policy!

So this morning, we gave our entire garden and our compost area a good dose of coffee grounds.

Why coffee?
According to this article:

• Worms love them, so it's useful for attracting and breeding worms, which speeds up the composting process
• It's a good soil conditioner and a good "green" nitrogen source

Point to note:

• Coffee's acidity is removed during the brewing process, so it's essentially neutral
• We should limit the coffee grounds to no more than 25% of the volume of the compost heap

Garden: One Saturday Morning ...

Baby and I were enjoying some time in the garden.

When suddenly ... something dropped down onto the lawn!

A little myna hatchling!
Poor fella didn't last long before breathing its last :-(

Homeschool: How we use Young Scientists

Was pleasantly surprised that my kiddos like reading Young Scientists magazines. And even more so when I realised that the contents were actually quite good.

So we've been going through article by article. One issue can actually last us 1-2 weeks. Apart from science knowledge, the benefits are multi-faceted.

• We read through the articles/comics — covers reading and vocabulary. 
• Boy writes down what he has learnt — covers writing
• Sometimes we do a related activity to the lesson of the day — can be anything from drawing to science experiments.

Toys: Traditional Spinning Tops

Kiddos got a cool souvenir from Jakarta — personalised traditional wooden tops. Made from bamboo, there's a cut-out slot on one side of the top that gives off a whistling sound when the top spins.

After the Beyblade craze, it's nice to get back to the original versions :-)

 

Homeschooling: Journey of Discovery

Since Boy graduated from kindergarten a year early, he was too young to enter Standard 1 in a government Chinese school.

So we decided to take a year off formal schooling — a gap year of sorts — and see where that road leads. Yes, Mummy, who has sworn never, ever to homeschool her kiddos coz she can be such as a Mother Guppy, was going to what seemed impossible. Lord, help me!

So we started on Jan 2, when the other 2 kiddos started their school year. We don't follow any set syllabus, but here are some of the books that we do use daily:

Kumon workbooks for some drilling in math

School: First Day!

Baby started kindergarten on Jan 2. He's the youngest in his class, but the biggest in size.

The first day, he was brave and strong in the midst of many crying kids. Proud Mummy!

Then reality set in that he would have to be brave and strong and attend kindy every weekday for the  rest of the year! That was when the waterworks began, as did the bribes and persuasions and every other psychology method out there.

Garden: Starting our Composting Journey

In an attempt to be more environmentally conscious, we decided to jump onto the composting bandwagon.

Having no green thumb and very little patience can be a bit of a challenge. However, I figured, no better way to learn than to jump straight in and work things out as we go along.

We decided to use the empty flower beds behind the house — about time we put them to good use, I thought.

Eggshells decompose faster if finely ground, but we just crushed them

First off, we started sorting out our kitchen wastes. We don't cook much, but we like fruits, so all the peels went into one segment. Egg shells too. And coffee grounds.

 

Kitchen: Make a Cake

The kiddos enjoy helping out when it comes to making cakes, under Kakak's supervision.

Mille Crepe Cakes are the flavour of the season for now.


Mummy says, "Yum!"

Measuring the ingredients

Pouring the cream in carefully

Layer by layer

Arranging the peaches before they all get eaten up by the little helpers!

Living Skills: This is the way we wash the dishes

We've started letting the kiddos do some basic household chores, beginning with washing their breakfast dishes every weekend.

Baby thinks it's the funnest things in the world, which is great.

He'd carry a chair to the kitchen sink, squeeze his way between his siblings, and wash his plate and utensils.

Kakak usually gives its another quick wash after that. But I don't really think it's necessary because he seems quite thorough :-)

Motor Skills: Fixing furniture

Fixing simple Ikea furniture is a good way to learn motor skills and teamwork!