Jan goes to school!

* Warning: This is a looooooooong post..........

Jan's turning 18mths soon and we thought it'll be good to expose her to some classes... so we signed her up for a holiday programme with Julia Gabriel for a week and the theme was "Off to the farm!". We also wanted to check out how the lessons was conducted and to gain some insight in teaching toddlers.

The first half hour was basically taking attendance and free play with all the toys on the red mat. Before lessons started, the toddlers will help put the toys away in the respective trays. Jan was quite upset on the first day when she had to put the toys away but it got better. She even helped the teacher to carry the tray!

The proper lessons was about an hour. It starts with morning greetings to all the teachers, adults and toddlers. The lead teacher would then do a demo of the craftwork that the kids would be doing shortly after. Here's the collection of art pieces that Jan did over the span of 5 days!

After the craftwork, there were songs, introducing the letters "p" and "g", "Magic Box" time, story-telling and more songs!

The last half hour was basically snack time and play time. Jan has many first-time experiences tasting different food like oatmeal squares, raisins, cocktail sausages, raisin bread, marie biscuits etc. I love to see her expression when she tastes the food. She also learnt to self-feed quite a bit from the class which I'm happy about :)

There was a variety of outdoor play time activities like the usual playground, sand play and water play. It was good exposure for Jan. She learnt to climb up the stairs, go through tunnels, down the slide etc.

All in all, I would say that this was a good experience for both me and Jan. It's actually quite tiring since I had to be with her in school in the morning, rush home after class and then get ready for work in the afternoon. Thank God for bringing me through the tough week!

Will post about the school excursion to the farm soon!

Well done Trinity!

All of us who send our kids to Trinity's nursery should really pause a moment and give it our most sincere thanks, because it offers awesome value for free!  After sitting in a Julia Gabriel class over the past week, I made a mental list of what I liked and dislike about the class.

What I liked was that Jan got to interact with and learn from other kids of her age group.  I also appreciated some new ideas of activities we could do with Jan (e.g. playing with playdoh).  Jan also learned more about how to feed herself!

However, I found that even for professionally trained teachers, it was not easy to engage children of this age using a classroom format--much of the time half of the children were lost in their own worlds.  Also, the instructor led parts of the session was only 1 hour long (the remaining hour is free play), so I find it a bit short...

So if I think of the session in a slightly simplistic manner, it was not too different from a typical Trinity nursery session!  Music, activities, snacks and play.  Yes, Julia Gabriel has more trained teachers, but Trinity has loving and committed volunteers!  Haha...think my church is going to get me be a spokesperson for the nursery.  Three cheers to Trinity's nursery!

I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet

We went to the zoo during one of the past weekends!  I haven't been to the zoo for quite a while, so it was probably as exciting for me as it was for Jan.  I rediscovered this world class treasure that we have in Singapore.  I was really impressed with how the place is setup, such that visitors can have close-up experience with a huge variety of animals, not be obstructed by cages and fences, and enjoy shade from Singapore's blazing sun.

Unfortunately, Jan was not feeling very well that day, so she didn't get to see much of the park.  Moreover, the park was rather crowded that day, so that further dampened our experience.

Nonetheless, I would want to go back there again.  I think it is a great place to visit, especially when you bring kids.  It is the perfect place for me and pt to bring alive all the animals we have shown Jan on picture books.  Moreover, there were a lot of informative display boards about animals in the park, and I think we adults can benefit much from the park too.  However, next time I would prefer to take leave on a weekday to go, hopefully it will be less crowded and more enjoyable.

Oh ya, if you are wondering what the title of this post mean, it is the title of a story that we frequently read to her.

Below:

1. The famous (probably now infamous) white tiger. 
2. Jan with a tired face...she was feeling sleepy for most part of the trip
3. These otters were really funny.   They would move around as if they were stuck to one another.

  

What should you learn next, papa?

Frequently I find myself spending time with Jan but have no idea what activity I should do with her.  I really want to make full use of the time to do something enjoyable together, and even better, teach her some useful skills.  Occasionally, I stumble into a good idea...but more often I am just blank.

So far, I found it useful to go to books and websites for help.  They have given me ideas of what skills I should focus on helping Jan develop, as well as recommended activities that I can do with her.

Moreover, once Jan master whatever skill that I want to impart, I will need to find new activities and new skills to impart her.  So I can't just learn once and the relax.

It's a constant learning journey for us parents!

Home Alone

Last Friday we had a church meeting to attend at night, but my mum-in-law was not around that night to baby-sit Jan for us, so one of us had to stay behind.

In the past, either of us could had stayed behind, since we both could put Jan to bed.  Recently however, Jan has become increasingly stickier to her mother.  She would cry uncontrollably for her mother during bedtime or when she gets woken up from her sleep.  Anyone else (except my mum-in-law) going to her rescue at those times would be greeted with more desperate cries.  I suspect it is somehow related to the fact that children of Jan's age is near their peak of separation anxiety.  Well, Jan's screams at me are probably also getting back at daddy for not attending to her cries in the middle of the night...

Anyway, strangely enough, we decided I would stay behind that night.  When my wife left the house, I was filled with much apprehension, as I have not put Jan to bed for a while, and I was worried that if my wife comes back to a crying baby who had way past her bedtime, she would not dare to go out by herself again...and I really didn't want that to happen.  So I prayed to God that Jan would quickly finish her milk and then quickly fall asleep.

After I prayed, I began executing my plan.  I had planned a series of activities to slowly wind Jan down.  At 7:30pm, she has already finished her dinner, had her shower and donned her sleeping clothes.  I let her run around for half an hour before I took her into the room to read her some stories.  By then, I had turned on the air-con and dimmed the lights, hoping that to use the cool temperature and the lighting to induce sleepiness in her.  I was started restricting her movements by placing her in the cot.  After a few stories, it was milk time!  Thank God that she held the bottle herself and drank more than usual (usually, she would only hold the bottle occasionally, drink a little from the bottle and would rely on us feeding the remainder of the milk to her using a spoon)!  As such, the milk feeding task was actually easier than usual.

Top: Jan holding her own bottle during our return flight from Hong Kong 

Once the feeding was done, I dimmed the lights further and played a music CD.  Now, I was really getting worried, because I still do milk feeds everyday but it must have been eons since I put her to bed.  With apprehension I put Jan into her cot and used the most soothing voice I could master to tell her to go to sleep.  She fidgeted around a bit before lying down, and within me I felt a rush of excitement as I felt I was nearing success.  Then I noticed she was clawing at her diapers.  Worried she had poo-poo'd in her diapers, I quickly picked her up to do a quick check.  Luckily no poo-poo, but I decided to change her diapers anyway since she was already on the changing counter.

The frustrating bit was that by the time I got her back to the cot, she wasn't as sleepy already...she roamed around her cot, made some attempts to lie down, before she decided it was time to summon the real bedside angel.  My dearest lovely Jan then started crying "Ma Ma!"  "Ma Ma!"...*faint*....

I quickly picked her up from the cot and whipped up my last trick--cradle her in my arms and walk her to sleep.  I have done it a trillion times and it almost always worked...only that we stopped doing that eventually 'cos we didn't want to make it a habit for her. 

The trick worked flawlessly--the crying stopped, her eyes started showing signs of sleepiness, and before long, she looked like she was going to doze off.  I battled in my mind if I should carry her till she was fully asleep--but risk re-enforcing a bad habit, or put her back into her cot then and risk her jolting her into full-wakefulness again. 

Left: Jan sleeping in the baby carrier during our Hong Kong trip.  Of course she would only fall asleep when it's mama carrying her.

I decided to be brave.  I put her down, and then held my breath to see what would happen.  Jan landed on the cot, sensed that she was out of the comfy of daddy's arms, flipped her body to a face-down position, and then started fidgeting around.  I quickly used my hand to pat her bottoms in the comforting granny way.  She looked asleep as long as I continued patting, and finally I realised that she had really fallen asleep!  Three cheers for Daddy!

Haha...a simple matter but amazing that I could write such a long post about it...heehee...really thank God for making it happen.  I even messaged my wife that the whole episode was a piece of cake ;-)