The Bub in the Belly

Ryan finished off Edudrama at Julia Gabriel Centre for Learning a few weeks back. As I have mentioned before on this blog, we've decided that we won't be continuing next term.

Apart from the fact that the English and Mandarin classes will be held at separate locations from next term, we are not keen for a few other reasons.

For the English class, we feel that, in certain aspects, Ryan is too advanced, although he is the youngest in his class. According to Teacher Alexis, the main focus of the class now is to introduce the letter sounds and to familiarise the children with the alphabet. Ryan is more than familiar with the alphabet and letter sounds. I'd mentioned before that, at the start of the class, when all the names of the children are on the white board, Teacher Alexis will point to the first letter of each name and ask what's this? Ryan is the only one who identifies the letters (he shouts them out!). He is also the only one who can read his name. When Teacher Alexis points to Ryan's name (without saying it aloud), Ryan doesn't say anything - instead, he crawls over to the front of the classroom to acknowledge his name!

Another reason is that the class is not focusing on speech and drama at this stage and that was the area that we were targeting when we signed Ryan up. Teacher Alexis said that, at this stage, it is good enough for Ryan to have the courage and the confidence to get up and go to the front of the classroom to present the show-and-tell (and he does do this), even if he ends up not saying anything.

Actually, Teacher Alexis said that Ryan is doing fine. However, the fact that Ryan is doing well actually supports our decision to pull him out, because we feel that he doesn't need the class (at this point). We might consider enrolling him again when he's older, when the programme focuses more on speech and drama (this is when the children reach kindergarten age).

For the Mandarin class, we think it's not enough to help Ryan. Whatever is introduced in the weekly class is wasted because we don't practise it at home, so it's really pointless for us. Richard is seriously thinking of enrolling Ryan in a Mandarin pre-school!

Be that as it may, I think Ryan definitely had a lot of fun in the programme so the last day of class was a pretty sad one. Thank you JG! Ryan had a wonderful 1.5 years under your care!

On Saturday morning, we took Ryan to see Fan Yang's Gazillion Bubble Show at Downtown East. This famous bubble and laser show has been playing in New York since 2007 and has even been featured on shows like Oprah Winfrey, where Fan Yang performed and achieved his 15th Guinness World Record (he has 16). The show was very well received when it came to Singapore last year and this year's version promised to delight with a few new segments, including an ocean of giant bubbles washing down from the stage into the audience, making you feel like you're underwater.

The evening before the show, to put Ryan in the mood, we had a bubble play session with him at home. Actually, it didn't take much to put him in the mood - once the bubbles appeared, Ryan was squealing with delight, chasing the bubbles everywhere.

With a name like Fan Yang, I was expecting an Asian man. To my surprise, Fan is the son of a Hungarian father and a Vietnamese mother and he spent his early childhood in Yugoslavia. He lives in Canada and New York now.

The show was quite enjoyable. You might think that a show about bubbles won't make much impact, but really, if you're in the frame of mind to be entertained, this show will do it. Fan performed some pretty amazing stuff and the wonderful thing was that you could sense his pride and joy in his work. From the way he looked at his creations, to the gentle and confident, almost loving, way he handled them, to the happy bounce in his step when he was in the middle of a segment, it was clear that this man is motivated by a genuine love for what he does. Fan also shared his life story and some of his personal thoughts throughout the show, which gave it a touching and inspiring feel.

Ryan was quite intrigued and, once he got used to the loud music (which took him the whole of the first half), he started clapping and making comments. For us, the highlight of the show was the part where Ryan got to go on stage! Fan was throwing little foam balls into the audience to pick volunteers and I caught the last ball! What fantastic luck! Trust me, I got a lot of envious and hateful looks from the children around me! I asked Richard to take Ryan on stage although we were not sure if Ryan would do what Fan might ask of him. As it turned out, they didn't have to do anything other than to stand there, while Fan made a wall of giant bubbles. Here're some photos (Richard is kneeling with Ryan in his arms on the extreme right).



I think that was a great experience for Ryan! As a thank you, Fan gave each volunteer a bottle of his bubble solution, and Ryan held onto his bottle throughout the rest of the show and even during lunch!

The new segment - the ocean of giant bubbles - was fantastic. I really felt like I was underwater! There were a few other new segments too, but this one was the best. Luckily, we were seated in the front and middle section of the hall, I'm not sure if the people up in the stalls managed to experience the sea of bubbles.

The last segment of the show was the laser performance by Deni Yang (Fan's son), to the music of Prodigy. This was pretty spectacular and I enjoyed it.

The end of the show

After the show, we bought some bubble makers and a large bottle of Fan's secret formula bubble solution.

As a souvenir, we got a family photo taken inside a bubble! Pretty unique, don't you think?

It was a fun morning and I'm happy that we caught the show. I think everyone, young and not-so-young, enjoys bubbles!

We had lunch at Downtown East, walked around a little and took a ride on the indoor ferris wheel before going home for a nap. Ryan wasn't too impressed with the ferris wheel, he was more interested in pointing out the numbers on the carriages.

Hey, that's number 14! (We were in carriage no. 13)

Had dinner at Parkway Parade before heading over to the Singapore Expo where Popular Bookstore was having a warehouse sale. Spent about $400 at the sale, half of which was spent on an electronic dictionary (Mandarin-English and some other languages). The dictionary is for me but recently I've been busy gathering Mandarin materials and resources for Ryan so you can expect some posts on that in the future.

Ended our night out at McDonald's at Kallang where we let Ryan burn off some energy at their very small play area. He was quite jazzed up after that and, before getting into the car to go home, insisted on practising his numbers and letters at the carpark lot. We do this quite often, especially when I send him to or fetch him from his nanny's and park at the carpark there. We go around the carpark and say out the numbers and letters that we see - the individual lot numbers, the car plate numbers and letters, the number on the speed limit sign, the letters on the walls, doors, floor (eg. "SLOW", "B1", "PUSH", "EXIT", "RESERVED"), etc. Sometimes I call out the number or the letter and Ryan runs and steps on it. It's great fun, Ryan enjoys it and I get a kick out of watching him play.

The first thing Ryan wanted to do the next morning when he woke up was to play with bubbles. He got Richard to blow some for him while I got our stuff ready for his swimming class. So it looks like he had a really good time at the bubble show!