The Bub in the Belly

This post is a mish-mash of recent photos. Like many parents, I snap a million photos of the son (almost) everyday, and not every photo fits into a theme, so I thought I'd just throw them into one post.

This is Ryan's recent Lego Duplo creation. That's Buzz Lightyear at the top right corner, preparing to fly "To Infinity and Beyond!" We're not sure whether Ryan prefers Woody or Buzz at this point, but it sure is amusing to hear him exclaim, "To Innininy and Neyornnnn!" In December last year, we had thoughts of popping into Hong Kong Disneyland where they just opened up a section based on Toy Story, but we decided not to go just then. Maybe this year?

The next shot was taken at Beach Road Prawn Noodle Restaurant, which is near our home. Ryan loves chopsticks so he always collects a handful when there are some around.


There was a couple sitting at the next table and the lady apparently decided that I needed to be aware of some important things, so out of the blue...

Lady: Your son is very handsome.
Me (after looking around for the voice): Oh, thank you. (smile)
Lady: He will be a good speaker. (she says this in Mandarin)
Me: Oh (laughing a little), he is just starting to talk now. I'm still waiting! (smile)
Lady: Yes, he will be a good speaker because his upper lip points upward. (she says this in Mandarin and with absolute conviction)

(That's according to an old Chinese saying - if your upper lip (Cupid's bow) has an upward arch, you will be a good speaker.)

The next photo was taken at Tanglin Mall's snow village. I like this photo, despite the technical flaws, so it gets included! It's the expression on Ryan's face that brings me back to this photo again and again - so innocent and full of wonder.


We are still breastfeeding! More on that in a separate post.


There were a few weeks last month when Ryan liked to stuff his fingers into his mouth. And I'm not talking about sucking on a thumb, I mean five fingers at one time go into his mouth! Here he is in the car, playing with his fingers in his mouth and reading "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle.


Enjoying another book in the car. This was "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", also by Eric Carle. Ryan turns the pages and prompts me to "read" the book to him while I drive. Yes, I know every word by heart. And so does Ryan! I'll try to get a video of him reciting the story!



Brushing teeth with daddy.


Some post-birthday bash photos here.

Fresh flowers - anybody knows what these are called?


The leftover curry from the curry fish head. After keeping it for a day or two in the hope that we'd find some way to consume it, we gave up and threw it all away.


A couple of nights after the birthday bash, the wind came howling through the house and lifted the inflatable bouncy castle off our terrace, depositing it in the bushes in the driveway. That shows how strong the winds were because that thing is heavy! Fortunately, Richard went out to the terrace in the morning to check on everything, otherwise we wouldn't even have realised that the bouncy castle had flown off.  On a previous occasion, the wind tried to take off with our sprinkle mat but that landed in the driveway too. Exciting living in the east. Anyway, here's Richard collecting the bouncy castle while I snapped a photo from our balcony.

For English Edudrama last Saturday, Ryan had to present something for Show-and-Tell. I decided to give him something extremely basic and simple, so I packed these paper puppets for him.

I actually made them a few weeks ago for Ryan to play with at home. If you have Eric Carle's book, "Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See?", you'll recognise them. I traced the outline for each puppet from the book onto tracing paper, transferred the outlines onto drawing paper and coloured the animals with crayon and colour pencils. After cutting the shapes out, I taped a disposable chopstick to the back.

I had the idea to make them because we were enjoying the book so much and I wanted to use the opportunity to encourage Ryan to use more descriptive words - brown bear, red bird, yellow duck, etc.

As it turned out, Ryan didn't say much during Show-and-Tell, he was too busy "flying" the red bird around, but the other children loved the puppets and were eagerly shouting out each animal's name!

In other news, I mentioned that, after the previous (Mandarin) Edudrama class, Richard and I made a windchime to help reinforce the words "feng ling" (Mandarin for windchime). Well, I pointed to that thing every morning and evening saying, "feng ling! feng ling!" and I recited the windchime poem in his Edudrama book whenever I had the chance. Well, I'm pleased to report that Ryan seems to have absorbed the lesson! He actually said (a mangled version of) "feng ling" the other day when I pointed out the windchime to him! I'm so happy that our efforts paid off!

I will try to think of a way to reinforce this week's Mandarin lesson, which was "qi qiu" (balloon). If you have any ideas on that, do share!

[This post also appears in our Learning at Home section.]

[This post also appears in our Learning at Home section.]

Here's an activity that I made to reinforce colour recognition and counting.

I cut out the seahorse shapes using a template I found on the internet. The template was for twenty seahorses for a counting activity but I decided to use them (mainly) for colour recognition. I used felt but paper or foam would be fine too. I was intending to draw some eyes on them but Ryan already recognised them as seahorses and couldn't wait to start playing with them, so I didn't bother. Ryan was introduced to seahorses when we looked at sea creatures and also when we read Eric Carle's book, Mister Seahorse.

We play with these in a number of ways. Ryan will pick each seahorse up and say its colour (he actually did this naturally the first time he played with them, without any prompting from me). As he picks each one up and says its colour, he will also arrange them in a line.

Alternatively, I will arrange the seahorses in a line and get him to pass them to me one by one, based on their colour. I will ask, "Please give me the orange one" or "Where's the beige one?". Once the seahorses are all in a row, I will repeat the exercise by asking similar questions - "Which is the pink seahorse?" or "Show me the green one".

You can also make two sets of seahorses (ie. two blue ones, two red ones, etc.) and use them to play a colour matching game. Another idea is to ask your child to sort them by colour families - you can see from the photo that we have a dark green baby seahorse and a light green one, a brown one and a beige one, a dark orange and a light orange one - these can be paired up and you can teach colour gradation that way.

We do use them to count too. Obviously, the more seahorses you make, the more you can count up to.

Simple activity to make and lots of ways to play!

[This post also appears in our Learning at Home section]