All Entries in the "weekend reflections" Category

Weekend Reflections- Playing Scrabble

Scrabble is one of the games which I recently introduced to my boys.  I find this a very educational game as it not only challenges them mentally it also helps to improve their spelling capabilities.

The boys are still rather young  at 3 and 6 yrs old and have quite limited vocabulary so we play this game slightly differently from how it is traditionally played.

The boys are allowed to draw as many letters as they need from the pot and then form words on their letter holder.

They need to use a minimum of 3 alphabets to form a word.

So far Roy has managed to come up with these words without prompting

- One

- Two

-Mama

- Roy

- Ryan

- They

Ryan is able to spell many more words on his own as they have spelling in his school regularly. Some of the words he spelt out for me included- cake, eating, children, happy, birthday, mummy etc.

I find it is a good tool in getting toddlers like Roy interested in spelling and learn new words in a fun and interesting way.

Do you play scrabble with your kids?

Weekend Reflections- Kids Talk

Counting has been Roy’s obsession lately. He is simply fascinated with numbers.  His favourite DVD is Richard Scarry’s 1-2-3 Counting VCD

Roy watches this VCD at least once a week. He is now able to read numbers up to hundreds and loves reading off the numbers off the parking lots in the multi-storey carpark near our house.
Recently Roy has even been asking me how to spell the numbers.
His favourite questions now is ” Mummy how to spell One?”, “How to spell —(Two/three etc)”

He is now able to spell up to three besides being able to spell his name and his brother’s name.

I’m glad that he shows interest in mathematics and counting.  I recall then when Ryan was around his age he too was interested in numbers.

When did your kids started showing interest in numbers?

Weekend Reflections- And Baby makes 5

my 3 kids

These few weeks I have been pouring through the boys old pictures and looking at how their facial features have changed since birth. They are still as cheeky as ever with their killer smile and eyes. I really wonder how baby R3 will look like when he/she arrives in September.  Will he/she look much different from his/her brothers?

What I do know is that Baby R3 will not be a small baby as both Ryan and Roy were about 3.7kg when they were born. Baby R3 will be out early as we will be scheduling a C-section as the boys too were delivered by C-section.

I have been busy looking through baby catalogues taking note of items which I would need to list down in the “have to purchase list”.

It has been 3 years since I have handled a newborn and most of the things that we got for Roy can’t be reused as they have yellowed with age or started to disintegrate. I hope to be able to get everything ready before September.

Weekend Reflections- Kids play at Explorer Kids

Today we brought the boys out to Explorer  kids at Downtown East. It has been quite a while since we last brought them to this indoor playground.  We had signed up for the membership at this place and enjoyed the discounted rate of $11/hr rate instead of $20/hr. I still found it rather  costly as we had to pay a total of $22 for 1 hr play for the boys.

However seeing them have so much fun playing in the playground makes me feel that the money was worth spending.  The weather has been rather too sunny lately with no rain for the past few weeks. The scorching sun has made it  too hot to bring the boys to the park to play on weekend. By the time the sun starts going down it would be dinner time and I do not want to risk them suffering from sun stroke due to the strong sun.

Visiting an indoor playground seem to be the perfect solution to let them release their energy and go around climbing up and down the play structures.
There are many different such indoor playgrounds in Singapore but this is one of the biggest that I have brought the boys to.  Surprisingly it wasn’t crowded when we were there. I guess that everyone must be too caught up in preparing for tonight’s reunion dinner.

Tonight we will be having reunion dinner at home. It will be a simple affair with R cooking some simple dishes for the boys and me.