A few days ago we were playing Bible Quiz over lunch with some friends. One of the adults asked – “Who can name the first five books of the Bible?” After Genesis and Exodus, none of us were entirely confident about the order (which speaks volumes about our Bible knowledge!)
Anyhow, it was an opportunity to teach the kids about mnemonics, specifically first-letter mnemonics. The one I learnt in school for the colours of the rainbow was “Richard Of York Gained Battles in Vain”, which I always found a bit odd since the poor Duke is mostly unknown to Singaporeans. Much better that we come up with one that makes sense for ourselves!
Anyhow, I challenged the kids to come up with one for the Pentateuch so we wouldn’t be lost for the answer again. And the title of this post is Athos’ attempt, which I thought was quite a winner!
In the midst of this impossibly hot weather, I’ve been trying to think of things to do with the kids that don’t involve us (well, me really) getting too sticky and sweaty.
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before but ICE is such a great, low-cost, boredom buster. Today we spent a good hour outside doing icey things, which worked so well in this nasty heat. And you can always teach some science on the sidelines – freezing, melting, surface tension, adhesion, cohesion, hydrophilia, hydrophobia blah blah blah.
But it’s really too hot to get into the science. So on to the activities -
Ice-racing – Give each kid a piece of ice and get them to blow it across a table. The first person to blow his ice off the opposite end wins. It helps to wet the table thoroughly to minimise friction. One variation we also tried is to use drinking straws to focus our blowing more precisely.
Ice carrom/hockey – Kids are to use their fingers to flick their ice cube carrom-style into a goal (I just used my hands in a V formation). They can also use straws, spoons or some other item as a stick or bat.
Ice fishing – Fill a basin with water and throw in some items that sink like marbles, coins or paper clips. Cover the surface with ice, the more ice the more challenging. Give each kid a spoon and they are to fish out as many items as they can. If you mix items you can give more difficult ones more points. To increase squeal factor, instead of spoons they are to use only their index and middle fingers (like chopsticks). If you have a bigger basin, you can also try bigger items which the kids must fish out use their feet.
Ice bags – Fill a small Ziploc with ice cubes and seal. Practice throwing and catching, and take cool break in between!
So here are more cakes, created since that last post. All are made from Betty Crocker cake mix, and the icings are either butter or whipped cream based.
Porthos’ 6th birthday cake – an aircraft carrier with Lego figures and models made by Porthos himself.
Milo powder and nuggets simulate soil and rocks in this military-inspired, sugar-saturated creation for Athos’ 7th birthday.
Aramis’ 3rd birthday cake is a train featuring chocolate-chip cookie wheels, windows made of Loacker biscuits, and Kit Kat tracks.
Athos is begining to outgrow cutesy cakes so we had some difficulty brainstorming for his 8th birthday. Since he likes Lego so much, we decided on a Lego block cake. I’m a little embarrassed to say most people had difficulty recognising it
It has been blistering hot in Singapore so water play is the activity of first resort in the Pilgrim family these days.
It’s not always convenient to go to a pool, so here’s a fun alternative, especially if you have younger kids. Buy a spray bottle from any household goods store, fill it up with water, and let the kids at it! The cheapest bottles go for under $2, and the more expensive ones have different nozzle settings.
Here are some ideas:
watering plants, leaves, flowers
spraying into tubs and basins
aiming at specified targets (we sometimes draw a bull’s eye on our blackboard)
shooting at each other – this works especially well if you have, as the Pilgrim family does, kids of varied ages. The older ones will always win in an all-out water gun fight, so spray bottles level the playing field enormously. Be forewarned that older boys might consider this extremely uncool! Athos was most dismissive at first, but eventually deigned to join in and had fun.
add different food colourings to each spray bottle and let them spray paint on a large piece of mahjong paper or the bathroom wall
if it’s a sunny day, challenge them to make a rainbow. Porthos managed to do it without any guidance and was utterly thrilled (not surprising given his history with rainbows). The spray should be the kind that shoots out a mist of water rather than a jet, and you should stand with your back facing the sun.
The spray bottles are a useful tool for sand play as well – if you are building sandcastles on a hot day, spray the built structures occasionally to keep them wet and intact.
Don’t be surprised if the kids find other interesting ways to use the spray bottles. Athos started giving Porthos a “haircut”, spraying water like an old pro barber!
Just a quick post to link everyone over to Red Sports’ feature story on Seng Kang Primary School, the only school in Singapore that offers daily PE lessons for all its students, rain or shine.
Earlier this year, Porthos came home from school saying that he didn’t have PE that day, even though it was on the schedule. Why, I asked. “Because we were behaving badly. So the teacher punished us and didn’t let us go for PE.”
I thought that was one of the more absurd things I’d ever heard. I’ve also heard anecdotes of schools cancelling PE for PSLE revisions or make-up classes. Is it any wonder that the ruggedness of our nation is in question?
According to Singapore’s Health Promotion Board, “Singapore has one of the highest rates of myopia in the world. In Singapore about 30% of the children become myopic by the age of 7 and by age 12 about half of them are myopic. There is a grave need to prevent myopia in children at a younger age because the younger the age of onset of myopia, the higher the risk of developing eye related diseases later in life.” HPB also supports daily outdoor time because “emerging evidence suggests that spending more time outdoors may help delay the onset or progression of myopia.” (Source: HPB website)
Add in our obesity rates, and the range of learning disabilities and sensory problems present in our chidren, and Seng Kang’s example truly stands out.
MOE has just announced that it will suspend AWARE’s sex education programme.
The statement says that “Today, schools are allowed to engage external vendors to supplement MOE’s sexuality education programme. MOE has reviewed the internal processes for selecting and monitoring vendors and found that they can be improved. MOE will put in more stringent processes to ensure that training materials and programmes delivered in schools are in line with the Ministry’s framework on sexuality education. Schools will suspend the engagement of external vendors until the new vetting processes are completed. The Ministry is also reviewing ways to provide parents with more information about sexuality education in the specific schools that their children are in.”
About AWARE’s sexuality education, MOE said that “in some other aspects, the Guide does not conform to MOE’s guidelines. In particular, some suggested responses in the instructor guide are explicit and inappropriate, and convey messages which could promote homosexuality or suggest approval of pre-marital sex.”
The whole saga at AWARE has left me troubled. I didn’t like how the new guard came into power and their inability to articulate a coherent position and direction from the get-go. But I was also upset by the subsequent savagery online and offline that demonised Christians. Keep reading →
Today I found a deck of quiz cards from my favourite second-hand hole in the wall. They cover English, Math, Science and General Knowedge calibrated for ages 6 onwards.
Anyhow, I took out the bunch and tried them on Porthos. We were having fun when this nugget came along:
“Correct this sentence: She hurted her leg.”
Porthos’ answer came back quick as lightning – “She injured her leg!”
Just before bedtime, I read the story of the Crucifixion to the older boys. When I was done, we went through the story again, and I would leave out parts and let them fill in the blanks.
When we got to the conversation with the criminals, I said, “Jesus told the second criminal, ‘Today you will be with me in…’”
Porthos, with a bright smile, said, “Paris!”
Later on, Pilgrim Dad was explaining to Aramis that we had gone out in the morning “for some coffee so that we could get a buzz.”
Dear innocent Aramis asked, “Why do you want bugs in your coffee?”
Hundreds of things to do today, but must pause to share the new MCYS family video that was recently released. The work of the inimitable Yasmin Ahmad, whose other videos I’ve mentioned elsewhere.
Here’s the note the teacher received the next day.
Dear Mrs. Jones,
I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer.
I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit.
I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it.
Her picture doesn’t show me dancing around a pole.
It’s supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.
From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.
Porthos came out of his bedtime shower with his hair slickly combed, and one thick tuft sticking straight up out of his head, like a carrot-top. “Wow, your hair looks cool,” I said, suppressing my laughter. He looked very pleased with his creation.
Some minutes later, I noticed the anti-gravity hair showed no sign of collapse.
“Did you use water for your hair?” I asked. “No, I used the purple gel,” said Porthos, evidently proud of his manly act.
It probably wasn’t the best reaction but I laughed out loud. The thought of Porthos diligently coiffing himself with Pilgrim Dad’s hair gel – just before bedtime – was a bit too much to take.
“That’s great,” I said, when I could finally speak. “But next time, do it in the daytime, ok?”
At bedtime, as I kissed him goodnight on the forehead, he said, “Don’t suck up the gel, Mummy!”
I’ve always wondered about the saying – lak sup jia, lak sup tua – and now it seems there is science to support what the wise Hokkiens have known all along.
A quick post to link everyone over to this recent little gem in the IHT – an afterschool care centre asks kids to give advice to incoming US president Barack Obama.
When Porthos started pre-school, he became well-known for crying at the start of every single schoolday for TEN WEEKS. (The eleventh week was the term break….)
Today is Aramis’ fourth day at pre-school and the contrast couldn’t be more stark.
Pilgrim Dad and I bring him to school and, like an old pro, he walks ahead of us straight to his classroom. The teacher helps him with the opening rituals – water bottle and hat out, namecard on the wall – and he settles in to play. It’s the last day that parents are allowed in the classroom so I quickly take some pictures, pause for a hug and kiss, and step out. Better that we start getting him used to not having us hanging about. Keep reading →
In case you missed it, Australian researchers have just completed a study that concludes that exposure to sunlight is a major factor in the incidence of myopia.
Comparing six and seven-year-old Chinese children in Singapore and Australia, they found that 30 percent of the Singaporeans were myopic, against just 1.3 percent of the Australians. The differentiating factor was the amount of time spent outdoors – 30 minutes for the Singaporeans versus two hours for the Australians.
“What we would suggest,” said the researchers, “is that what’s happened in east Asia is that they have got the balance totally out of kilter.”
It’s 6am on the first day of the school year. The Pilgrim family stirs to life. Dawn has never been my time of day (and some of you will know why this is hugely ironic). My bleariness is made worse by having stayed up the night before to blog out my maternal angst.
The boys are not excited about breakfast. Porthos has already begun to fuss because he hates how the school shorts feel against his legs. I do a last-minute check on their school bags, then it’s into the truck as we head out to school.
We arrive with plenty of time to spare. In the back, Porthos has stopped whining about the shorts, and is now leaning half-awake against the window. The poor fellow looks tired. We park and help the boys with their bags. I’ve forgotten to adjust the straps on Porthos’ schoolbag and it hangs almost to his knees! As I fix his bag, I keep the conversation light and cheery, all the while praying hard for a smooth transition. Porthos, after all, was famous in kindergarten for crying through the first TEN WEEKS. Keep reading →
I find myself feeling much the same way as the last time. It’s now 11pm and we have to be up by 6am so the wisest thing to do would be to sleep (and God knows I need it).
Yet I am sitting up in bed, unable to settle, feeling bereft, recalling random moments – how he got such a laugh out of mimicking my response to cockroaches (EEEEEEEK!), the pink misshapen heart he made me for Mothers’ Day, the way he picks up tunes and sings snatches of them all day long – and wondering how he is going to hold up tomorrow.
When I put Porthos to bed earlier this evening, I asked how he was feeling. “A little excited,” he said.
I was glad. Some years back when he started kindergarten, he held the school record for the child who cried the longest before settling down – 10 whole weeks. The first day he got to school without tears, the teachers actually stood in a row and applauded, and the principal said to me, “We were so happy to finally see him arrive at school with a smile on his face!”
I’ve spent the past few days psyching Porthos up for school in various little ways. We carved out personal shelfspace for him, let him decorate some magazine holders in his favourite colours for his schoolbooks, and brought him shopping for a new schoolbag, water bottle, pencil case and wallet.
Sitting at the door of our home now: two pairs of Bata socks and shoes, two schoolbags, two sets of school uniforms. And a mother’s heart waiting, wondering, praying.
