About Dominique

http://dominiquegoh.com

Singaporean Educator, Coach and Hands on Mom of Three. Connect with me on Google+

Posts by Dominique:

Insane Goals for December and November Review

With a blink of the eye it is now December the last month of the year.

In November I managed to achieve the following

  1. Dominique’s Desk Fan Page has broken the 9000 fans mark. As of today there are 9118 fans subscribed to my fan page. Woohoo!!
  2. Alexa ranking is down further and I hope that it remains the same or reduces further. Last glance it was 78,691.
  3. I’ve completed the 8 part ” Preparing for Primary One” series and will be doing recap post all throughout December.
  4. I’ve signed up for a new season of Zumba classes starting mid December.  I am looking forward to restarting Zumba classes after our trip overseas.
  5. I’ve completed 2 book reviews, 8 giveaways and 2 product reviews on top of the normal daily posting on the blog. I still have quite a few book reviews to be completed but will finish them up in December.

 

 

 

Major Fail area

  1. Weight has remained at 64-65kg. I have been feeling tired lately due to the bout of cough and cold that I had in November so have taken it easy with exercising.
  2. The house is still in a mess. I give myself 31 Dec as the deadline to get all areas of the house de-cluttered.
  3. The year end photobook has yet to be done. I think I can only get it completed after we come back from our holidays.

 

 

Here is are my goals for 2012

Weight Lost Goals

I’m determined to get my weight down to 55kg by the time Tiger girl turns 2 in Sept. ( This has been revised to 60kg by Feb 2013

My routine would be

  • Stair climbing (x2) 5 times a week
    Zumba WII/IWII Active or other interactive sports games.
  • Increase intake of fruits and water.
  • Cook more healthy foods
  • Try to get more sleep at night if possible ( hopefully Tiger Girl can sleep through the night soon)

Household maintenance

  • Organize the kids toy chest and donate the toys that they don’t need.
  • Clear out expired stuff from the pantry and the fridge.
  • Pack up the baking cupboard and put all the essentials neatly inside.
  • Wash all the air-con filters/ clean all the fans in the house.
  • Re-ogarnize the bookshelf.
  • Sort out the pantry and all other cupboards.
  • Rearrange the books/items in the kids room

Educating the kids (Ongoing)

  • Prepare Doggy boy for P1 next year by doing daily exercises in English, Maths and Chinese doing weekdays.
  • Read daily to Tiger girl and start doing more flashcards with her.
  • Brushing up on Monkey boy’s composition and oral skill for both English and Chinese.
  • Getting Monkey boy to polish up his piano pieces for the upcoming piano exam this year. He is taking hi Grade 2 Piano exam this year. (He just set for his exam in July and achieve a Distinction for the Grade 2 Piano Practical)
  • Getting Doggie boy to do practice the piano more often.
  • Getting the kids to read more in English/Chinese before bedtime.
  • Read the bible at least once every fortnight.
  • Pray more often with them.
  • Teach Tiger girl music ( New project starting Nov)

For the blog (Dominique’s Desk)

  • Increase revenue to be able to save enough to buy a DSLR.- Am reaching the target very soon!!
    ( Have bought my DSLR a Canon 650D and am now learning how to use it efficiently)
  • Have bloggers to guest posts on my blog. (ongoing)
  • Guest post on other sites/blogs at least once a month. (ongoing)
  • Increase readership and grow my traffic. (ongoing)
  • break the 100,000 Alexa mark

For Myself

  • Practice taking more shots with my camera.
  • Brush up on my Japanese and French.
  • Do regular facials at home. (I ve started a new beauty regime now which I faithfully follow)
  • Try out new dishes/bakes once a month.
  • Be able to fit into my wedding dress again and take a picture wearing it with the 3 kids.
  • Go for short courses to improve my cooking/baking skills

For the family

  • Do up a photobook for Tiger Girl
  • Photobook for 2012
  • go on more family outings/ overseas tripsspend more time with R and resume having date nights. ( We have been on a few dates so far and it has been good )
  • Do up an annual photobook documenting the highlights of the year ( Current project added in Nov)

[App Review] 3 Groovy Pigs HD

3 Groovy Pigs HD

3 Groovy Pigs HD is  an interactive  version of the traditional 3 little pigs story with a twist. In this story the 3 little pigs are talented musicians who can play their chosen musical instruments very well.  They play the piano, violin and drums and have their own Groovy band.

One day the 2nd and 3rd little pig decided that they should pursue their career as individual musicians and left the eldest pig and their home in the middle of the night. This started of their adventure and encounter with the Big Bad Wolf who eventually joined their band and became the fourth member of the group.

There are many selections to this storybook app. You can select to have the story read out to your child or for him to read the storybook herself. There are also stickers which you can paste on a selected background to create your own unique poster, a colouring game and a jigsaw puzzle feature.

 

Tiger girl reading the story

There are interactive features on each page. Kids can try out some of the in-games related to the story like

* Tapping a run or jump button to help the Pigs escape from the Wolf
* Blowing on the mic to help the Wolf blow the houses down
* Trail their fingers to help the Pigs find their respective houses
* Finding hidden itemsinteractive games

You can also tap on the musical instruments/characters to play the sound, swipe images to reveal colours and also colour in the pigs and their instruments on certain pages.

testing out the colouring page

The colouring activities were Tiger girl’s favourite and she enjoyed herself tremendously filling in the colours on the pigs.

Check out the video below to see the app in action.

 

My thoughts

I like the wide range of activities which they had within the story. My kids enjoyed reading the story and trying out all the various applications. It was as app which they  could read/play several times without getting bored.  The only difficult that they had was  blowing on the mic to help the wolf blow the house down. They skipped that activity as they had problems locating the mic on the ipad.  It would be great if there was a short video or better explanation of how to do the “blowing” then just a one liner at the bottom of the screen.

 

You can purchase the app for $3.99 at the iTunes Store.

 

Disclaimer: I received a promo code by the sponsor to redeem and try out the app for review purposes. Opinions are 100% my own. This post has a Compensation Level of  1 . Please visit Dominique’s Disclosure page for more information.