GIVE AWAY: Story Wheel Post Reading Activity for Ages 5 to 8

At one of the KidsREAD sessions I had volunteered at earlier this year, I read aloud a book titled “Don’t Forget your Bacon!” by Pat Hutchins, to the children. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Forget_the_Bacon!) I wanted to create a post-reading activity, instead of using the available materials given to us. After a few weeks of work, I created a Story Wheel template. I had hoped that the children could bring it home and revise the rhyming words in a fun way with the Story Wheel.

I would like to share this Story Wheel for free. Please perform the following steps and you’ll get the Story Wheel in PDF so you can print it and make a Story Wheel for your children!

Read on here to see how you can get the FREE printable Story Wheel (http://wp.me/p2Ku51-vy)

ShopBack lets you save with cashback and discounts coupons!

Motherhood is serious business. Everything zaps up so much time. Since I had children, I started shopping online.  There was practically zero time for retail therapy, let alone physically buying necessities for the family. I believe if you are a mother reading my blog post now, you would probably be nodding your head. Items I frequently purchased online included children’s clothes, shoes, bags, books, gadgets, and I even bought a portable potty once. Now that my children are in primary school, I do get more time, but I’m so used to purchasing online that I’m sticking to online shopping.

In my last post on World Read Aloud Day, I shared about how I related to the simple yet meaningful book “The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds”.  This week, I decided to own a copy. Naturally I went on to Book Depository’s webpage. Thankfully, I remembered ShopBack ShopBack in time…. [read on about how to get cash back from shopping!]

World Read Aloud Day!

Today marks this year’s World Read Aloud Day. This Day is created by LitWorld (http://www.litworld.org/worldreadaloudday).  It is an invitation to the world to join in the wonderful act of Reading Aloud. Spreading kindness and positive social changes around us can be done through a simple act of reading aloud, at the workplace, in school, or at home.

Neither my husband (DeeDee) nor myself (MeeMee) reads often. I am a slow reader, and I struggle to finish a book. Any book. We have heard that reading is good for children and we (me, mostly) do read aloud to our children (GerGer and BoiBoy). However, due to our busy work schedules, we could not do it regularly. I feel guilty about this all the time.

GerGer could read a storybook by herself when she turned seven, in June two years ago. She excelled in her phonics lessons during her Kindergarten days.

BoiBoy was different. He could not grasp the sounds and blends taught in phonics lessons. I got worried and throughout his Kindergarten Year 2, I gave him extra revision on phonics. I had to learn phonics myself in order to coach him (*giving my own shoulders a pat for the hard work*). It has not been a smooth sailing journey, but we survived the year. When he started Primary One, he was only six years and two months old. He could only read simple books with a couple of sentences on each page. He struggled with sounding out words. My eyebrows could not be straighten, and my heart stirred, every time he read.

I attended talks from their Primary School on reading, and I sought help from teachers.  Nothing improved, except my listening skills.  Well, jokes aside,…. (read more here)

I started gifting again

I used to love giving out handmade cards. The long drawn process of making cards gives me a kind of satisfaction I cannot describe. It’s been a long while since I made cards. 
Since I married and moved in with my in laws, space became a constrain. There was no table space for my crafts. I still do crafts but on the floor. Working on the floor doesn’t allow high precision so I no longer make cards which I feel needs high precision. …. read on

Stop taking Sausages and Ham

Stop taking Sausages and Ham

I grew up in a small family and many times only my mom and I were eating at home for many years. It is not easy to cook for two persons and we are not exactly good at cooking. So we ended up with lots of junk food meals. My favourite was instant noodles and sausages. I love canned food too, from  Campbell’s soup to tuna spreads. My mom is adventurous with new kitchen appliances and we had our microwave since I was rather young. At that period of my life, I had no clue I was eating junk food.  I was not interested if I was healthy or not. I was only concerned with my weight and what I wore.

My first lesson learnt was a miscarriage. …….. (read on…)

How my children learned to cycle the safer way.

” The bicycle wobbled. My arms were stiff with fists clenched tightly onto the handles. My legs froze. Before I could move any muscle, I was thrown off the bicycle.

It hurt tremendously. My right knee was badly scrapped against the rough track surface. There were bruises on my hands and elbows. All my schoolmates who had just taught me how to cycle were way ahead of me. I was left behind, with no experience in tackling the steep and winding slope. It felt especially lonely as I sat up. I had to get back up in order to catch up, or they won’t be able to find me. (note: we did not have pagers, nor handphones then.)

That night was a painful and sleepless one. My mum ran out first thing the next morning and came back with a tube of antiseptic powder. (She is a very resourceful mum). The powder dried up my wound really fast and I felt so much better after two applications. I was 14 and it was the most painful injury I had. The wound was deep. It was one I could never forget. Today, the scar is still on my knee. ”

The terrible fall I had at 14 years of age had made me determined to help my children learn cycling through a safer process. I searched for information online and tried a few ways.  ……. [click here to continue reading].

Understanding my six years old boy all over again.

In 2016, BoiBoy starts his formal primary education journey. I had put in a lot of effort to adjust the daily routine for GerGer and BoiBoy last December, so that they will sleep and wake earlier. Both of them are in morning sessions this year and the morning routines will be here to stay because Ministry of Education had rolled out a plan for single session primary schools country-wide.

While the children only took a few weeks to adjust to the change in hours last December, things began to change when school officially started in January. BoiBoy’s daily tantrums got worse. His anger fits got more intense. He is unhappy over the slightest issues, and has continuously made unreasonable demands (for example, he wanted to have a pair of new boots immediately after school one day).

Way back in 2013, I have used interesting ways to coach BoiBoy on Anger Management. I conscientiously chose to use time on coaching his emotional management, over coaching on academic aspects. All along I had thought that I was doing pretty well. From early 2013 to late 2015, I got busy with the retail business I had embarked on, and I guess the emotional coaching took a back seat, though we still talked about it when BoiBoy gets angry in my presence. While I was soaked up by the retail business, BoiBoy had his angry fits at home and AhMa would usually give him snack treats to distract him.

This year, the challenge of facing BoiBoy’s daily angry fits midst the morning rush, the daily after-school homework, and weekly enrichment classes almost made me bonkers. My emotions went downhill with each anger fit I had to face. I started to blame myself. Perhaps my parenting style is not good for him? Perhaps I should be working again so he would not have to face me so much? But who will coach him on school work? Who will help him transit into Primary School Life? I have lost all every bit of confidence in me by the end of January. ……..  [ read on ]

A pleasant surprise on first day of 2016.

A pleasant surprise on first day of 2016.
The 2015 year end school holiday is coming to an end. BoiBoy was sick for the first week of the holiday. When he recovered GerGer got the virus. Her symptoms were different. She had fever for about 5 days, recovered for two days (we managed to go out for that two days) and then she had fever again for 5 days. When she recovered, we caught a movie, went to KidsStop!, Jurong Safra Kids Amaze, jogged, and shopped.
Our new domestic helper arrived shortly in mid December. Instead of being a great help, she arrived with a strong cold bug and passed on the virus to the whole family. Her arrival brought us distress. She is slow at learning, refuses to listen to our instructions and does everything against our practices. The family quarreled over the decision to send her away or keep employing her. Unhappiness filled our flat.

It is no joke to have the whole family sick and an unhelpful helper in the house. On Boxing Day, DeeDee and Grandpa went overseas for a night to attend a wedding. Grandma was too sick to join them. I was home taking care of two sick and grumpy children. Two days later we brought them to the General Practitioner: GP (their regular Pediatrician was on long leave) and they were given antibiotic. They had so much medication that they lost their appetite, felt lethargic, and were grumpy. We were so worried. The next day, I had fever. “Not another problem?!?” I teared. After self-medicating for two days my fever and cough did not go away. Reluctantly, I went to the GP with GerGer on New Year’s Eve. I brought GerGer along as her fever seemed to be stubborn and she vomited twice that day.

BoiBoy chose to accompany her when GerGer rested in my bed, instead of watching television. I smiled with joy as I watched this attention-seeking boy show concern for his sister.

On New Year’s Day, I vomited the whole day…….. [ read on ]

Motherhood and Business in the year 2015

This year is coming to an end very soon. GerGer has completed her Primary 1 and BoiBoy

Christmas Card Design

has graduated from Kindergarten this year. This is also the year we sold off our business setup, at the right time and price. On the domestic side, we have sacked our helper as we found out she was meeting her boyfriend while she lied to us about needing time off to run emergency errands.

It has been a rough year. Wait a minute, which has hasn’t been rough on me after I started my Motherhood Journey? Hmmm….

I seldom rant here, but I think I need to let out a little here this Season. My apologies to followers to hates to read rants.

GerGer’s Primary One Journey

GerGer teared at the school gate for the entire period in Term 1 when I sent her to school. My heart sank each time I watched her bravely walking into her school with tears rolling down her eyes. We knew that she is a sensible girl. What we discovered was her emotionally brave side, and we were so proud of her.

I kept chit chatting with her whenever I had the time in Term 1. DeeDee agreed to let me take time off from our business operations during this time. GerGer was sad she had no friends. She was shy (is still shy) and introverted. In school, she was soft spoken. She was not adapting well to a system much larger than her Kindergarten.

To my dismay, …… [ read on ….. ]

Confused about phonics?

Ever since my previous blog post about “ Marrying the Letterland Characters with Phonemic Chart“, I am glad to have received various requests for the materials. However, many in my circle of mothers have responded that they do not understand what I have written.

I figured that my earlier blog post might be too technical for those who do not know what phonics, or phonemes are. In this blog post, I will attempt to put in simple terms what these are all about. ……  [ read on ..]