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

I have previously shared another kopitiam angpow story but for today's angpow story, it comes from this piece of lovely angpow:

Looking at this angpow, of course it reminded me of my childhood memories during my kampung holiday time. Every morning, I will wake up at 7-ish and followed my late mum, walked about 5 mins to the pasar pagi (morning market) and we will meet up with my late popo at this kopitiam for breakfast.

I always have the fishball noodle soup while my mum will have her curry noodles with a glass of kopi ping (iced coffee) which I only learned to like this recent few years. On rare occassions I would get to order 2 long slices of steam white bread with butter (not a kaya fan then)

The fishball noodle soup is heavenly. I can never find anything that taste as good as that noodle ever since and still not giving up finding the alternative.

Back to this angpow, looking at the uncle pouring out the hot coffee reminded me of course of my beloved popo. My late popo's breakfast will be a cup of hot coffee with her kuey teow noodle soup. I was always amazed at how my late popo can just drink up her hot coffee from that small cup with that small plastic spoon. She stirred few rounds and brings up the cup and slowly sips and savors the coffee.

From time to time whenever I think back of my kampung days, I can always think back of the memories of walking along the paths towards the pasar pagi, then to the kopitiam and sitting at our usual corner table right behind the noodle stall. The smell, the sight of pasar pagi all around, the sound of people buying and selling... aaahhhhh... money can't buy all these memories....

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I had recently started to teach our 4 year old girl how to write number 1. She has been nagging me to include her whenever she sees her 6.5 year old big brother doing his kindy schoolwork.

I am not a big fan of buying workbooks as I feel it is wasting money to just have our kiddos to scribble and write on it. Of course you can always make a photocopy or laminate the worksheets but I was too lazy for that and also some worksheets found in the workbooks that I have seen are just too simple or too advance for her age, so I ended up scouring through the Internet and customizing some or at least, looked for some that is as close as it can be to meet my expectations.

Anyway, I gave her the 1st worksheet on 17th Sept 2015. I started off by explaining to her number 1 and how to write the number 1. Her grip is not there yet, as you can see from the pictures, she grasped the whole pencil instead but I wouldn't worry much about this at her age now.

The first worksheet was a combination of few samples I've seen online. It shows the number 1, how to write it out with some dotted lines to guide her. I also added in a clip art on how to show the number 1 with our fingers, followed by the word 'ONE' and 'one' in both uppercase and lowercase. The last portion was for her to practise writing number 1 again based on the number of objects shown.

I gave her the 2nd worksheet on 23rd Sept 2015. This worksheet was taken from the Mathseed website. The objective is for her to identify which picture has 1 object and to draw the line to link the correct object count to the number 1. The second portion was for her to identify which picture has 1 object and to circle the correct count. I'm happy to see our 4 year old girl able to circle better this time round and she didn't even wait for me to finish explaining to her which fruits has 1 count only.

And since she is able to finish the above worksheet fast, I gave her another one. This time is for letter A/a recognition. This is her 2nd lesson as I have previously taught her to write the letter a (upper and lowercase) I got this worksheet from preschoolmom website. What she did in this worksheet is to practise writing the letter A and a following the guided dotted lines. Then to color in and draw the object that starts with the letter a (in this sample is alligator) At the bottom left, she was able to circle the letter A/a that she can find in the box without my help at all. The bottom practise is to just fill the missing letter, which is A.

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I have been cutting down on doing product reviews ever since our 3rd kiddo came along in end of Sept 2013. I do still accept review pitches but only when time permits and if it is something that I can see it being useful and beneficial to our family. Also, as busy as I am with 3 kiddos, home cooking, taking care of hubby's administration site of the business and swamped up with managing my FB page and blog, I just can't say no to reviewing good books! Reading is my passion and coupled with books that are of parenting, children, family or religion or educational genre, all the more I gotta say yes!

Title: JJ's Science Adventure: Magnets
Author: Aurelia Tan & Jonathon Koh    Illustrated by Nicholas Liem
Publisher: Harvest Edutainment Pte Ltd (2013)
ISBN: 9810776322
Paperback: 84 pages

Description from the product page:

"JJ's Science Adventure is a series of educational comic books designed to help readers master key learning objectives stated in the Singapore Ministry of Education's Primary School Science syllabus. After receiving their birthday presents from their grandfather, Joyce and Jonathon find themselves in possession of two bags which transform into a talking robot (Robo) and a teleportation portal. With a set of keys from Robo, the kids open the portal into sub-dimensional world created by the 'World Maker', an incredible invention by their grandfather to help them learn science.

In this adventure, the twins journey into the World of Magnets where they discover the physical properties of magnets and solve challenging puzzle traps laid by their grandfather. Will they survive the constant sabotage by a Minion sent by Mr Sinister and win the prize, a piece of puzzle key which unlocks yet another secret?"
When I first received the email pitch to review this book, I was quite hesitant as I've never let our kiddos try out comic books like this before. I also thought that the words are a bit tough on our 6.5 year old boy but since we've previously touched on the topic of magnetism before in the family, I thought of just giving this a go and worse comes to worse if our kiddos are not ready, I can just keep the book and try again some time later when I feel they are ready.

The book arrived shortly after and I gave a quick check through the book. The illustrations is gorgeous, love it! The fonts are easy on the eyes as well.

I waited for the right time to show this book to our kiddos. I let our oldest flipped through the book and checked out the book before I suggested reading the book to them in the afternoon during their playtime.

I started out slowly by introducing the characters in the book and once in a while, I would subtly ask our oldest kiddo to read some shorter sentences in the pages. We also paused every now and then throughout the book especially in the pages where it explains on how magnets work. I can see our boy getting interested and curious at the same time. In fact, we paused quite a long time in the pages where it explained how to magnetise objects and how an object loses its magnet force.

I can totally see our 6.5 year old boy loving the illustrations in this book. We were laughing at the antics of the main characters and the jokes in the storyline as well.

Size of the book is just nice, not too short and not too long story for the kiddos to digest through. Once, a few weeks after we have gone through the book, I heard our boy mentioned to me saying 'Did you remember the book on the magnet when it says one part is north and one part is south?' as he shows me his Lego creations that looked like a magnet stick.

That was when I told myself 'He remembers what we read in the book. Not bad, not bad!' And that was just after reading one time. Definitely will go through the book again and again with kiddos for sure!

I would totally recommend this book for any parents wanting to educate their kiddos on the topic of magnetism while yet having fun at the same time.

The book is available at Harvest Edustore or Amazon. You can also find it a retail stores in Singapore such as Elm Tree at Funan, Star Vista, Downtown East and Paragon, MPH at Parkway, Raffles City and Robinson, Junior Page at ARC

There is another volume entitled 'Heat and Light' as well in case you are interested!

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a copy of the book in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"

** 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.