Postive Parenting - Developing our interests in Reading & Writing

We all know that reading is essential for us to hone our language skills and cultivating this good habit will inevitably influence the way we write. Creative writing is a strong focus in our schools and I have seen some of the compositions that our Primary school children have written. And I tell you, they completely BLEW my mind! I'm half wondering if I should start my K2 girl on Enid Blyton's books but deep inside, I know that she isn't ready for that yet. Nevertheless, it does no harm to instill good reading habits at a young age and just how do we go about that?

Developing your Child's Reading and Writing, part of a series of Positive Parenting workshops organized by Julia Gabriel Centre really helped solve the many doubts that I had and I appreciated the opportunity to be invited to attend it. Julia Gabriel and her wonderful, chirpy daughter-in-law, Aggie put Dw and my minds at ease with their various methods of engaging children and developing a literacy rich home environment. This is the start to building the foundation for reading and writing, something which will follow our children for their lifetime. 

The no. 1 rule which was stressed to us at the onset was: We, as parents, have to be readers if we want our children to be readers! Totally true! Go take a look at Tom and Pippo Read a Story to know exactly what we are talking about. So, start reading! Newpapers, magazines, novels, they all work!

 

 

We were given time to role play. We took turns to read to each other, pretending the listener was our child. It was quite awkward initially, given that we had to constantly change our voice pitch to suit the mood of the book and had to be very expressive to gear to the tone that will retain the interest of the child. Apart from simply reading words, we should also give attention to the pictures in the book and elaborate on them. Afterall we are talking to little children and these pretty, colourful pictures are more than likely to catch their attention then just plain, black words which probably do not make much sense at their age!

We all know as well, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy... so yes, PLAY! Use our imagination and creativity to create fun games by taking the concepts from our favourite childhood games like Snakes and Ladders and Monopoly!

 

A natural progression from reading is writing. We were shown the different tools used by Julia Gabriel Centre for their Pre-School education classes to help children of various age groups develop their writing skills. Finger paints, fat pencils, pencil grips, these were just a few of the many instruments introduced to us. Kids have it lucky these days, don't they! I certainly didn't have this luxury when I was in Pre-school!

 

 

 

So with fat pencils at 3, we get scribble writing... like Jen's master piece:

 

 

I look forward to the time when he gets to N2 next year and goes on to the 2nd stage: emergent writing, which essentially means that he will be drawing pictures that depict a story. Something which Jill still enjoys doing now, at K2! She will draw and tell us why she drew the bees, the butterflies, the flowers and what were they doing prior to flying etc. 

 

With these little steps, it will eventually lead to the 3rd stage in K2, whereby our children will then write for a reason. They write to tell a story on why recycling is important and what they do for recycling. They write recipes, how they bake cookies. They write grocery lists, they write rules of games they play. The list goes on, you get the idea... 

I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of the workshops, especially Critical Thinking on 24 Oct, which is an extremely important skill that will benefit our children in many aspects of their lives. Lifelong skills like effective analysing, reasoning, evaluating and creativity are all parts of Critical Thinking and are the building blocks for problem solving and communicating rational solutions. If any of you are keen, do contact Julia Gabriel Centre to find out more and you are definitely still in time to enjoy the 10% if you sign up for your 3rd workshop!

A Sunday with Julia

By DW

We usually spend our Sunday afternoons lazing at home or sometimes window shopping with the kids. This weekend was slightly different as we spent the afternoon at Julia Gabriel (Forum) with none other than Julia Gabriel herself. The topic was “Empowering Your Child with Speech and Language”, a topic that was of interest as we have 2 little ones.

Not knowing what to expect for activities for the kids, except that there was going to be story telling, we brought Jill and left Jen at home. Little did we know, that they had toys and art & craft activities (& not forgetting FOOD!!) all laid out for the young ones, poor didi got left out of the fun again. But Jill sure had a fun time. Thanks to Fiona & her team of enthusiastic teachers!

Ms Fiona Walker, Principal Director at Julia Gabriel Centre for Learning, working with Jill on her story of how the caterpillar grows into a butterfly.

Making her caterpillar, based on Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar

all time kids' favourite - story telling session!

 After settling all the kids down, the session started. A lot of the information was shared but a main point which we learnt was that it was imperative for us to create that environment for our children as they learn best if we immerse them in it. English wise, I don’t think it will be too much of an issue; Mandarin on the other hand is something that I am a little more concerned as Mandarin is not exactly my strong point.

We were also told that associations worked well too, an eg would be to have a situation where one parent speaks to the child in English and one parent in Mandarin or perhaps have designated "Mandarin speaking days". We did consider that but knowing that our Mandarin is what would be deemed as "pasar Mandarin", we have decided that it was best we outsourced this. However, we do have DVDs with Mandarin Songs which we play. Music never fails to ignite the life in children and it's one of the best ways to let them enjoy the language. Nevertheless Jill is starting to love Mandarin and if at any point she does initiate a conversation with us in Mandarin, we always very gladly reply to her in Mandarin as well.

A way to encourage our children to use it more, is to use cards that are labelled appropriately in Mandarin for Television, Bed, Cupboard, Refrigerator etc and use these cards to play games with them by labelling the item with the correct card, we can take it even further by doing it in both languages. Julia has very kindly offered to help us to get the right terminology in Mandarin for each object.

Us with Julia (right) & Fiona!

We would definitely need to make a greater effort to start learning with our children, also a suggestion that was made during the session. By doing that, I myself can refresh what I have learnt previously and at the same time encourage the kids to learn as well. Who knows that they may even start teaching us or better yet, we can even get Jill to teach Jen!

The group of parents (& kids) who participated in this session. Thanks to all for sharing your tips & ideas!

Dinosaur stomps!

Jilliane is going to be 4 this year and it's certainly time to get her more interested in reading. I'm glad that my little girl enjoys being read to, but I know it's now time to introduce her to r-e-a-d-i-n-g, to expose her to phonics.

I've been deliberating if I should send her to phonics classes. I've heard from friends that in this time, it's vital for kids to have a firm grasp of phonics as without it, they will do badly in Primary school, especially for Maths. It has been months and I'm still thinking. At this point, I'm really glad that Julia Gabriel has written a book, specifically on linking 2 alphabets, to teach kids the sounds and to entice their interest in reading!

Rainbow Bear's Dinosaur Discovery Book - wow! This is just in time as Jilliane has mastered single alphabet sounds in school and part of the syllabus this year will be sounds like "ch", "th", "sh" etc. And what makes it even more exciting for children is that this set comes with a story telling cd! So Jilliane need no longer listen to only my voice, which may come across as monotonous after a while. Moreover this book has many tongue twisters, so I'm actually grateful for the cd :)



So off we went "sh sh Shamini Shunosaurus. Shamini Shunosaurus shows shiny sea shells" & "th th Thecocoelurus throws three thick thistles". It was alot of fun as we giggled through all the sounds, rhymes & twisting fun.



I've in fact, even starting reading this to Jenson, indirectly. I'll place him on the bed beside Jilliane and me, hoping he will catch a phase or 2. I'm sure this will be one of those timeless classics, where he will still enjoy it 3 years later. Given that this theme is on dinosaurs, he, being a boy, should be even more excited about the book!

If you happen to read this post in time & are looking for something to do as a family this Saturday, head on down to The Dinosaur Stomp, from 10am to 5pm at Forum The Shopping Mall. There will be a special book signing sessions with Julia Gabriel, lively performances by Rainbow Bear and friends, and a Dinosaur Stomp. In addition, there are going to be art and craft activities, face painting, great goodie bags and prizes to be won from the Dinosaur Egg Treasure Hunt and Lucky Draws. To top it off, this book package will be sold at a 15% discount! Thumbs up! :)

Dreams about school

Intermittently for the past few years and intensifying alot more recently, I've been having scary dreams. Not dreams about death nor dreams about ghosts, but dreams about school!

It's scary because my dreams are filled with issues like me not passing up my A Math homework to Mrs Yeo, or having a Math paper the next day but I've not sorted out my formulae for sine & cosine. I even have dreams about me missing the deadline to sign up for modules and tutorials in for the new Uni semester. I always jolt myself awake panicking for these reasons, only to be filled with relief that alas, all these are just dreams.

A friend whom I was sharing this with, told me that these are fears which I have encountered in my growing up years. Well, to keep the record straight, I've never missed any datelines for any module registration and I've always managed to sort out my Math queries before any major exams. At most, I just skipped a couple of tutorials & lectures here & there and sometimes forgot to hand up my homework. Other than that, I've been perfectly fine with school.

Having said that, I gotta admit that I've been a quite a stressed up student at school. My cousins did darn well and I was expected to perform up to standard too. Whether this was really other people's expectations or whether it was just my own expectations that I was trying to live up to, I've not totally figured out yet.

Perhaps it's because of these dreams that I rather spend my weekend playing with JD, bringing her to malls or to the park than toiling through classes and reciting ABCs with her. I've also made up my mind NOT to put her in Tao Nan. People whom I've shared this with have commented that I'm really silly with almost a free pass in since I'm a Hokkien and my house is within 1km of that school. But no, looking at how elitist our new breed of children are these days, I'm pretty sure I do not want JD to follow in the same footsteps.

I miss Friends..

A friend recently brought up the topic of her kid lagging behind in his writing skills, compared to his peers his age. This is a concern for me too. JD has not started to really walk yet so I can foresee further lags for her in the areas of motor skills development as she grows. I am worried of course but I've gotta trust in God that He has great plans for her.

As I was speaking with my friend, I started to think back to the days when I was 4 or 5 years old. At that time, terms like gross motor skills, fine motor skills etc were not coined yet. No one knew how many milestones their kids had to achieve by certain age, no one cared. Everyone was happy and eventually we all turned out fine.

I used to have great expectations for my child. Before she was born, I envisioned her to be a genius. As time passed, I realised that my expectations were unrealistic. I'm not a genius, neither is Dw, so how I can ever expect my daughter would be one. If she does indeed become one then it's a bonus. As she grew, it became more obvious that her motor skills development was really slow and whilst I was initially all jumpy over this, I've learnt to accept that she is progressing and progressing at her own pace. A pace which makes her happy and comfortable. That's important. That's what children should be like. Happy, carefree. Their turn for worries and stress will come soon enough. Let us not accelerate it.

It's sad when I sit back & look at how fast society has developed but how pressurized and stressed we are. Gone are the days of good old sitcoms of Friends, Fresh Prince of BelAir, Ellen to name a few. Now, we're faced with TV like CSI, Fringe, Flash Forward and worse, Desperate Housewives. Nerve biting shows that keep you on the edge of your seats, sure.. but alot more morbid, alot more gruesome.

I still have a couple more years to go before JD has to "officially" attend school. Till then, I'm determined for her to have a smashing fun toddler hood filled with screams of joy & laughter.

Talking of which, I really have fond memories of our old playgrounds of sand & cement. Those old Dragon playgrounds where we can climb and walk through the skeletal dragon, Those merry go rounds that we can get on and our parents will turn us round & round, the wooden see saw that brings us Up down, Up down and the ever classic swings with the tyre type material that we always try to turn inside out.

Taser

I learnt a new word after reading this article this morning.

What's a TASER?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Taser is an electroshock weapon that uses electrical current to disrupt voluntary control of muscles. Its manufacturer, Taser International, calls the effects "neuromuscular incapacitation"and device's mechanism "Electro-Muscular Disruption (EMD) technology".Someone struck by a Taser experiences stimulation of his or her sensory nerves and motor nerves, resulting in strong involuntary muscle contractions. Tasers do not rely only on pain compliance, except when used in Drive Stun mode, and are thus preferred by some law enforcement over non-Taser stun guns and other electronic control weapons.

Tasers were introduced as less-lethal weapons to be used by police to subdue fleeing, belligerent, or potentially dangerous subjects, often when what they consider to be a more lethal weapon would have otherwise been used. The use of Tasers has become controversial following instances of Taser use that have resulted in serious injury and death.