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 piece of lovely angpow:

Today's storytime revolves around this set of angpows given to me by an awesome collector friend. Now what does this set of angpows reminded me of? Somwhere in between of waiting for Form 1 to start, my late dad gave me this catalogue of tiles design.

It's like a 6 inch by 12 inches booklet of pages and pages of pictures filled with tons of tiles designs. I remembered being so in awe looking at those designs.

I stayed in a government flat and the only floor tiles we have was those half by half inch very simple looking beige colored tiles in the toilet floor and those 6 by 6 inches white tiles around the toilet wall. Other than that, cement floor and wall all around our flat at that age.

So, that explained my amazement and excitement of owning that catalogue. It's like a mini dream getaway where my house one day will have all these awesome tiles LOL

Anyway, I kept that catalogue like a precious but when I started form 1 and we have Arts subject, I started using the catalogue to help out with my art work. When teacher taught us about geometric and organic forms of art, I turned to my catalogue. For our homework, we have to cut out any patterns with geometric and organic designs from newspaper, magazines, brochures etc, anywhere you can find, we have to cut it out and paste it onto the art paper to submit the homework.

I remembered getting an A+ for my homework. I felt so so so happy with that and I remembered my Arts teacher's remarks that my homework is good as I was able to find unique materials from others.

I also turned to the catalogue for other occasions such as DIY greeting cards and also other Arts subject homework. By the time I finished high school, the catalogue is almost gone. All cut up with holes everywhere. It has served me really really well.

I wonder whether I can get any more catalogues like that now? Hmm.....

 ** 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.

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. Now I'm really not a fan of water colors stuff. Or doing paper glue crafts. Or using blackboard with chalks stuff. The OCD-ness in me just can't stand the mess, the stickiness, the dust. Not at their young age. Maybe later. But now, I personally feel white board is the best for our kiddos.

I bought 2 units of white board for our older 2 kiddos. Each white board came with a dry erase marker pen and a duster. The size is appropriate enough for them at the moment.

I like the convenience of teaching them by drawing or writing out and show them and then erase it and let them write on their own. I do use exercise books from time to time but this was done after the practise on the white board. Perhaps the stingy frugal side of me do not want to simply waste papers as well LOL.

I also like the convenience part where I can easily bring the white board along should we decide to go out for some playground time and subtly making it into a learning moment haha. 

** 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 know, I know... it is weird. I mean, how often do you hear parents saying they read news articles instead of storybooks for their kiddos' bedtime stories right? So let me be the weird one to tell you that. Yes, I read news articles to our kiddos before their bedtime.

I can't even remember how we get to this point. I think probably one of those nights when the kiddos refused to sleep (btw, we all co-sleep on 2 huge mattresses) and I was so tired that I just turned on my iPhone and started browsing through my usual newsfeed channels searching for interesting stuff to read. And then our oldest kiddo asked me what was I reading and I explained and told him about the news I was reading. One thing lead to another, I started reading news article for their bedtime stories. I like that I don't need to turn on the room's light and hold up a book to read to all 3 kiddos LOL

So much that every night the standard statement from our 6 year old boy was 'Mummy, after this we brush teeth then get ready for sleep but before that you read news okay?' Okayyyyy...

Of course, I filter the heavy more serious type of news (politics for example), so those that I normally share with our kiddos are news like below:

I also shared the same articles on my FB page as well from time to time. I believe that knowledge is key and never harm anyone if we read up more and know more. And since I am reading out loud to our kiddos, I hope they can learn to listen the proper pronounciation apart from learning about things around them.

I was happy when I came across this article on what reading aloud to your children does to their brain. Excerpt from article below:

"When parents read to their children the difference shows in children's behavior and academic performance. And according to a new study, the difference also shows in their brain activity.

Researchers looked at children ages 3 to 5 who underwent brain scans called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while listening to a pre-recorded story. The parents answered questions about how much they read to, and communicated with, their children.

The researchers saw that, when the young children were being told a story, a number of regions in the left part of the brain became active. These are the areas involved in understanding the meaning of words and concepts and also in memory. These same brain regions have been found to be active when older children listen to stories or read. 

The brain develops rapidly from zero to six years of age, and the more exposure, the more you enrich and nurture these brain networks that are related to social and academic ability, the more the kid will gain the future."

There are benefits of parents reading to their children beyond the child's performance, too. "It's one of the most pleasurable activities that you do with your child -- there's physical closeness but it's probably the most unhurried time that children have with their parent and it is focused on them."

** 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.