The Bub in the Belly

Free play with blocks.


Playing with beads (fine motor skills).

More play with beads - here he is rolling the beads around the cardboard lid, taking pleasure in the sounds generated.

Finger printing.

Painting with pastels.

Swimming class.

Building train tracks.

Popping in to post a quickie! Things are fast and furious at work, hopefully it will stabilise by mid-week.

Here are some instances of Ryan entertaining himself with everyday items. All these occurred about a month ago.

Here's Ryan in his tent (a blanket over our chairs) in the living room.

This next game, he thought up all on his own, I was actually quite amazed. He just opened the cabinet, took out the placemats, arranged them on the floor and started hopping from one to another, counting as he hopped. Richard was pulled in to join in the fun.

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]

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!