I'm a full-time mummy

Whenever I think our kiddos are ready, I will let them watch certain movies. The last time I shared on my FB page that our kiddos watch Jurassic Park movies (1, 2 and 3!) there were people bashing me for letting our kiddos watch shows like this. I was like 'Wha-at?! So many learning opportunities in that movie!' Anyway, my kids, my way, my reasoning.

So a few weeks back, I decided to let our kiddos watch 'Cast Away'. Apart from the scenes where Tom Hanks found the dead airplane staff which I told and made sure our kiddos closed their eyes and not watch until I said so, they watched the rest of the movie.

At first, I explained to our 6.5 year old boy that although it does seem grim and scary watching the plane crash part, I told him to also hang on and see what will happen next. I asked him to imagine what he would do if he was stranded on an island. Whether he knows what to do and why Tom Hanks did what he had to do in the movie.

Despite all the tragedies and circumstances, Tom Hanks persevered on and survived with whatever he can salvage from the crash. As he discovered new things on the island, I would ask our kiddos what do they think he can do with the items he found? (skating shoes, tutu skirt, etc)

I did get a few surprises from their responses. At one point where Tom Hanks was just starting to make fire, I asked our kiddos what do they think he was doing and our 4 year old girl answered 'Make fire!'  I was very impressed as there were no indication whatsoever that he was making fire at that point of the scene and she knew what he was going to do. Coolness!

There were some other surprises where our kiddos said words that I never knew they would know at this age. When asked what was Tom Hanks trying to build with all the logs and the plastic siding of the door he found on the beach, our 6.5 year old boy casually said 'Raft'. Whoa.. I didn't realised he would know and understand what this word means.

I also used the opportunity to teach our kiddos that we should never give up so easily and that we should try and do our best. I told our kiddos to make use of everything they can find and think of just like what Tom Hanks did in the movie.

I was very glad that we could watch this movie together and learn at the same time!  

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I have been sharing some of my favorite angpow pieces on an angpow collectors group in Facebook and some members have been telling me to continue sharing my memorable stories and so I thought, why not write it down, that way, our kiddos can read about it when they grow up next time, eh?

For those of you who are not familiar or never heard of the words 'Angpow' (also known as 'ang pau', 'ang pao', 'angpau'), here is a quick definition:

Angpow = Red Packet (filled with cash inside) given during festivals

So for today's angpow story, it comes from this piece of lovely angpow:

Today's storytime revolves around this angpow from Hennessy and Johnnie Walker. I don't take alcohol at all and didn't intend to keep any angpow related to alcohol but since the angpow design reminded me of something, I thought, why not? So, what is the story about? Look at that few kois swimming around.

The first time I see this angpow, I ignored it cos alcohol brand and I kept it aside.

The second time I see this angpow was during my angpow housekeeping routine where I took a good look at it and noticed the koi fishes reminded me of this blog widget I used to install when I first started my blogging journey back in June 2009, a month after I resigned from my IT job to be a stay-at-home mum (SAHM).

Back then, I created a blog on Google (Blogger) and it was just a small avenue for me to jot down my new journey as a SAHM while taking care of our then 3 months old boy. I was busy looking for things to spice up my boring blog layout and stumbled upon this widget which you can just copy paste the code onto your blog engine.

What the widget does was it shows a bunch of kois swimming around and those fishes will swim towards where your mouse is hovering at. You can customise how many fishes, what colors, etc etc. To be honest, I spent quite some time just playing with those virtual fishes hahahahaha... just cute seeing those fishes chasing after my mouse cursor lol.

Fast forward years later, I moved out from Google Blogger into my own domain, no more fancy smancy widgets on my blog now, I prefer to keep things plain and simple. But still looking back at the picture of these fishes just jolts back the early blogging memories of mine :)

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

(* Image source: Pestpro)