I'm a full-time mummy

I'm always looking for printables to print out for our kiddos to learn and practice on. A few weeks back I stumbled upon these couple of printable games which I improvised a wee bit so that I can use them to entertain our kiddos during any road trip we will have (one coming up in December in fact)

The original printable is meant to be a mini book, for you to print, fold and cut out so that it is a small handy sized book that kiddos can use but I'm all for long-term usage of any useful, fun and educational stuff, so I decided to improvise on this by laminating the printables and turning it into flipcards instead.

The materials I used were:

The steps:

This is how my printables look like once completed. All ready to be used by our kiddos during a road trip!

Resources:

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We had recently spent a day at Sunway Lagoon and today I'll be sharing our experiences of our family outing there. Just in case you guys are not aware, school holidays has just started in Malaysia.

I had days before googled online for tips and what to take note of just in case I might missed out something when we arrived there. I packed our swimming stuff and brought 2 towels for our kiddos and a spare change of clothes for everyone. A few small packs of snacks for the kiddos only since I read that no outside food or drinks are allowed unless it's for the children. We didn't bring our stroller along as I feel it would be too cumbersome to lug around and had to worry about it as well. Anyway, we arrived at Sunway Lagoon at 11-ish am and I quickly went to get our complimentary tickets for the outing.

With the complimentary tickets, I went to the ticket counter to exchange them for our wristbands. At the main entrance, a staff will put on the wristband sticker on our wrists and we were welcomed in and the first thing we decided to do is to check out the Wildlife Park.

It was getting hotter by then and we managed to check out the tiger, white lion, black panther, some cute mini monkeys, otters and snakes before we decided it's time to head to the Wet Park.

I changed our kiddos into their swimming gears while hubby went off to load some cash onto his wristband and then went to rent a locker. Do note that there are few types of lockers which are available for rent:

- each time opening of locker will cost RM5

- small lockers unlimited opening/closing costing RM23

- big lockers unlimited opening / closing costing RM43

You can use cash or load the cash values onto your wristbands if you don't want to be bringing cash along. We left our wallets and belongings in our locker and load RM100 into our wristbands. All expenses incurred in the theme park can just easily be paid by swiping the barcode on your wristband. The remaining values in the wristbands can be redeemed at the gift shop on your way out of the theme park. Easy peasy!

I like that there are many benches and shades all around Sunway Lagoon, it helps when you are walking around with 3 kiddos and lugging your stuff along. Once we have all changed into our swimming suits and stuffed our belongings into a small locker, we head out to the big beach area. I brought along a plastic bag of necessity (water bottles for kiddos and ourselves, wet wipes, suntan lotion and goggles). Hubby rented a giant tube which we lug around everywhere we go (do not lose it as you will lose your deposit if you lose it!)

We spent quite a long time at the main beach area, enjoying the waves and then head on to the smaller pools with lots of playground for the kiddos and half a dozen rounds of river rides with our tubes. A few surprising and suffering moments for me (I'm terrified of water all over my face since I don't know how to swim) were when we went through this row of waterfalls as we sat on our tubes. I can't jump out of our tubes as our girls were sitting on my lap so I had to cover all 3 of us as we braved out of the waterfalls area.

We stopped for a while to have our late lunch (Burger King - reasonable price!) and resumed our water activities at the playground, main beach area (giant waves every few minutes by then which was really fun and exciting for our 3 kiddos) and decided it is time to slowly head home. We took a quick shower (lots of changing and shower rooms available though I wished there were soaps and shampoos provided hahaha) and changed into our spare clothes. It was already 5.30pm by the time we got ready to head home.

Then our 6.5 year old boy said he wanted to cross the bridge. Our eyes widened and since he insisted to cross it, we braved through and climbed up the stairs and crossed it. I was not afraid of heights (2 decades of staying in government flat at 15th floor, mehhh.. such height is nothing to me) but I was really tired as hubby and I took turns lugging our heavy load of wet clothes and towels since we were going to head home after that (we were told by staff there that lockers will automatically opened at 7pm and we don't think we could make it back the other side of the bridge to our locker in time, so we took out our belongings and lug it along.

We managed to cross the bridge and it was a satisfying feeling to do that with everyone in the family feeling victorious of conquering fears and etc lol!

I didn't manage to snap any pictures while we were in the wet park since my handphone was nicely stuffed into our locker ahahah.. but rest assured, there are staff all around the wet park ready to snap pictures of you and your family for memories. They will slap on a sticker band on your wrist which you can scan before you exit, where you can browse your pictures and decide whether to print them out and buy them back for memories and safekeeping. We bought 1 picture which costs us RM35.

All in all, it was a fun and tiring day for us. Weather was great except for about half hour of rain in the afternoon (we had our late lunch then so it was a great timing!) Sore muscles everywhere the day after (old already I guess!) What a nice way to enjoy our family outing!

The theme park has planned out a whole new range of exciting activities and enticing promotions from 21 November 2015 to 3 January 2016 so do come early (their opening hours is 10am to 6pm) to catch the dance performances (we managed to watch some Hawaiian dance real up close), clowns, DJ pool party, music band and more!

Btw, Malaysians celebrating their birthdays will enjoy FREE admission into Sunway Lagoon for a period of a week from their birthday, along with a meal voucher worth RM10, redeemable at F&B outlets within the park. Sunway Pals members also get a free double tube to add to the merriment. Sunway Lagoon will also offer a 30% discount off the entrance fee for up to four accompanying guests of the birthday boy or girl. How cool is that?! Aside from birthday celebrations, Sunway Lagoon also offers special promotion to celebrate senior citizens. Malaysian senior citizens over the age of 60 are able to enjoy Sunway Lagoon for FREE.

In addition to that, visitors will get to enjoy 30% off on normal admission rate via Sunway Lagoon 2 online promotion packages – Family Packages and 4 To Go*. With Family Packages, 2 adults and 2 kids would only cost RM 378, and that’s not all; the package comes with complimentary RM10 retail voucher and meal voucher. As for 4 To Go, 4 adults admission tickets would only cost RM420 and it comes with complimentary RM20 retail voucher.

For more information on Sunway Lagoon, call 603 5639 0000 or log on to Sunway Lagoon’s website at www.sunwaylagoon.com or its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/SunwayLagoonMalaysia

Do note that I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the complimentary tickets for our family 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.

** 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 recently did a little DIY sewing project while still incorporating some teaching and learning moments for our kiddos as well. I used to play this game, it is called 'Batu Seremban' in our country (Malaysia in case you don't know) or five stones in English. This game is usually played by girls individually or in groups of two to five people. You can watch this tutorial on how to play the game. I remembered playing this game during my schooling years, so much fun!

I initially tried to sew using my sewing machine but it doesn't turned out nicely as the sizes I made is a bit too small and I feel really clumsy working on such a small piece with my sewing machine so I abandoned the idea and decided to hand sew the pieces myself.

So what we needed to make the batu seremban are:

- Cloth (any scrap cloths you have)

- Scissors

- Pen and ruler

- Needle and thread

- A small spoon

- Grains or beans (I used rice grains as I can't find any beans at that time)

Tutorial:

1. Using a pen and ruler, draw out 5 pieces of equivalent sizes (my measurement was 2.5 inches by 2 inches for each piece)

2. Cut out the respective pieces.

3. Take one piece, fold the piece into half (make sure the ncier looking surface is facing inwards) and start to sew along the edge leaving the last side for you to pour in the grains/beans.

4. With the thread still uncut, turn the piece inside out so that the nicer surface is facing outwards now.

5. Use the small spoon and start to scoop bits of grains/beans into the piece until about 70% full (I prefer a bit space in my pieces)

6. Sew off the remaining side to close up the piece and ensure no grains/beans are leaking or falling out.

7. Repeat the above steps for the remaining 4 pieces.

Teaching & Learning Moments:

1. I let our older 2 kiddos (6.5 years old boy and 4 years old girl) take turns to help me fill up the pieces with grains/beans. Get them to practise their concentration and motor skills.

2. I get to impart the knowledge of this traditional game in my country to our kiddos and let them have a feel of one of my childhood games.

3. At this early stage, I'm just teaching our older 2 kiddos to just throw 1 piece and try to catch it back with 1 hand. They get to practise their balancing, focusing and being able to juggle back the same piece that they bounced up in the air. It was quite fun to watch our kiddos trying to bounce off the piece from their palm.

4. I noticed that our 4 year old girl is still mostly throwing up the piece and not able to catch back the piece while our 6.5 year old boy tried to hard to bounce his piece. I had to get him to slow down and start with small height, to bounce by few centimetres from his palm and catching it back on the same hand and guiding him to increase the height as he gains confidence. Our 2 year old girl who didn't want to be left out tried to follow her older siblings as well but only managed to grab on tightly to her piece, hahaha, need more practise for her to learn to release her grasp of her piece.

And oh boy... my fingers are really rusty, can't juggle and throw and catch as good as when I was a kiddo playing these last time! Need loads of practice!!! But at the same time, I'm happy I get to impart this fun game to our kiddos as well  :D

** 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.