I'm a full-time mummy

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 2 pieces of lovely angpows (front and back placed side by side):

When I see this angpow, ESPECIALLY where it comes from, I just gotta add it into my collection. Not because I like butterfly but more because of the company Metrojaya.

I started working as a sales promoter during school holidays when I was 16 years old. I still remembered getting paid RM4/hour for the part-time job, working 10 hours a day and at the end of the month, I gave RM50 to my late dad (he fetched me home with his motorbike every time I finished work at 10pm) and RM150 to my late mum for her allowance, the remaining goes to my savings and expenses.

I was assigned to the Childrens' Department, helping out as a packer. First time I know of such job title. What I did was help out the cashier, to pack and wrap the customers' purchases nicely. Metrojaya has a unique style where all purchases will be put into a thin layered plastic bag, wrapped nicely and then put into a Metrojaya plastic bag. I still remember a supervisor telling me each plastic bag costs 2 cents. Sort of a privilege shopping experience feel.

I continued working part-time during school holidays after that even during college time, earning my own income, not wasting away my holidays doing nothing. In a way, I don't regret working part-time there as the savings I made from the job helps out my parents.

And that is the beginning of my independence stage, sort of like the butterfly spreading its wings to fly, not needing to depend 100% on my parents anymore.

** 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 came across this article which I must definitely share with you guys as I'm very interested to know your thoughts on this.

For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here:

Handstands and cartwheels have been banned during break times at a primary school after pupils kept injuring themselves.

Children at Old Priory Junior Academy in Plympton, Devon, were stopped from carrying out all "gymnastic activities" two weeks ago. The school said it made the decision after a number of minor injuries to wrists and to backs. It said it had been contacted by one parent about the issue.

Interim head teacher Emma Hermon-Wright said: "Over a series of a few days we had quite a few [injuries] for the same reasons. The children said they had been doing cartwheels and handstands and had fallen and we thought it was causing us a problem at school.

"In PE lessons in primary schools they are carefully supported and carefully controlled to help learn skills of this nature and we have very good gymnastic capabilities in our school. "[On break times] we've got a lot of children in one go and you can't be supporting every child for a backward roll, forward roll, cartwheel, handstand or whatever they're doing at play time."

The school said it had responded to one parent who was concerned about the decision. It said: "Ultimately, the safety and wellbeing is our responsibility and it is paramount to everything we do here." It was not trying to stop children from having fun, the school said, and the ban was temporary while staff worked out a way of allowing them to take part in gymnastic activities under staff supervision.

Do share your thoughts on this!

** 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'm in an on-going process to make more and more flash cards for our kiddos. My current goal in educating our kiddos is to instill their love for reading, do loads of flash cards and worksheets on spelling and writing and hopefully more practice and worksheets on Mathematics stuff later on.

I got some templates of animals and its young from the Twinkl website (loads of free stuff there!) and did some minor customizations based on our kiddos interests and my gauge on their understanding level at the moment. Printed out some pictures, laminate them and use a card ring to hold these cards together for ease of use.

What I did with our kiddos using these flash cards were based on each kiddos' age, level of understanding and learning style.

With our 6 years old boy, I get him to read out the name of the animals and test him on the animals and its youngs - body parts, habitats, how they move etc.

With our 3.5 years old girl, I just flip through the animals one by one while I say out the animal and its youngs' names, their color and name of their body parts and ensure our girl pronounced it correctly.

With our 1.5 years old girl, I did the similar to what I did for our older girl, just that I focused on the adult animals at the moment.

From time to time, I also look for videos on YouTube that shows how the actual animals and its youngs look like and behave in their natural environment. I checked with our kiddos as we watched the video, what are the colors of the animals, how they move, what they eat, identifying their body parts and so on.

Will share more in near future if possible ;)

** 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.