Feverish Genting

Rynae was running a fever when we woke her up at 5.15am on 25 May for our much awaited Genting trip. Her fever caught us unprepared and came at the worst timing. Irregardless, we proceeded with the excursion and with her medicines of course. She was unlike her usual self on the bus journey there, still and quiet. We attributed her behaviour to fever. After medication, she slept quite a fair bit on the bus and I was thankful for the peace. Her fever came and went but she enjoyed the rides albeit the sickness.

Above: Ride on the Carousel.

Buffet breakfast in First World Hotel wasn't top notch but it could fill hungry stomach and non fussy easters (like me). A not-to-be missed destination is the outdoor theme park, which I felt we had under utilised, partly because of the rain and partly due to the presence of kids as rides were limited to children rides. I was dying to play some thrill rides like the Corkscrew, Go Kart and Flying Coaster but didn't had the chance to. Pity.

Left: Rynae giving a warm hand shake to Joe (sounds familiar?), the Monkey mascot.
Right: Freaking out on the Rodeo Rider.

Left: Confused map reader

Right: Fun time at the playground

Her greatest indulge of the entire trip was at Country's Tid-Bits & Candies Cottage, where she helped herself freely to the countless ranges of sweets and tidbits meant for sampling. Not to mention, I had a jolly good time testing the food stuffs too!

School Holiday Begins and Mummy's Nightmare Starts too!

Rynae completed her 1st semester of school on 23 May, Friday and brought home some art and crafts on her last day of school. During the past 3 weeks, they learnt about different kinds of animals, colours and shapes. The book that her school had choosen for the theme was titled Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see? The story introduces a series of animals asking the same question, "What do you see?". The brown bear answers the question first and the other characters - a red bird, a yellow duck, a blue horse, a green frog, a purple cat, a white dog, a black sheep, a goldfish, a mother and children took their turns to reply. Rynae's teacher told me that Rynae enjoys story telling (even asked teacher to repeat) and that she could remember all the animals sequentially! Teacher also brought them 'animal hunting' in class using a binoculars! Oh.. aren't school fun?

The Great Expo Sale

As a prelude to the Great Singapore Sale, Expo exploded with exhibitions and events over the weekend of 24 & 25 May. There was not only the much publicised Food Fair, there was also the Addidas warehouse sale, Robinson 150th Birthday Bash sale and Popular Bookshop Sale! Shopaholics Mummy made it down in hope of getting some good deals. Somewhat expected, range of Addidas apparels on sale was limited and past seasons. I only managed to get a pouch and a top each for myself and Rynae. This was the top I grabbed at $15. I thought the design was evergreen and suitable for hot weather nowadays!

Panda Bread

Mummy bought 2 Breadtalk Panda Bread as a donation to help Sichuan earthquake victims. Knowing well that this is a corporate social responsibility exercise by Breadtalk, I do not mind participating as all proceeds from the sale of these 'Peace Panda' will go towards China Embassy and Red Cross Society in aid of the poor Chinese. A good course after all! For those who have not tried this bread, it tastes exactly like their An-Pan Man. I showed it to Rynae and she was amazed... to the extent that she bit off both its ears!

Visit to National Museum

I took a copy of National Museum's Festive Guide and got to know that the Museum has planned an inaugural Children's Seasons from 1 May to 6 July 08. There were various workshops, exhibitions and events (some free, some not) lined up and I must say that the programmers are doing a good and active job in encouraging visitorship because some programmes were really useful and interesting. Furthermore, they are relatively cheap.. i mean economical too!

Today, after running an errand in Chinatown, we brought Rynae to the Museum for the first time, with an intention to try out an 'interative installation' - the Murmurs Playground. Surprise surprise. The Museum was no longer the same as what I remembered it by. Besides being greeted by a flowery, giant-sized David replica at the front door, we noticed that the once old, solemn and boring venue has turned out to be so modern and arty-farty! There was an interactive exhibition in the basement that has some cutleries, gloves, safety hats etc attached with magnet and being stuck onto a giant metal wall. Audiences are allowed to remove and reorganise these items themselves, anyway they wish. Following pictures were taken at the mentioned site.

Next, we procceded to The Murmurs Playground, an installation by angGie seah for toddlers 30 months to 4 years old. It is constructed with an aim to encourage the toddler to 'speak' through the process of play using the senses of hearing, sight and touch. Made up of a series of tasks, this installation enhances the early stages of the speech development or murmurings of a child. Educational as it sounds, we weren't able to apprehend its objective of speech encouragement though. I mean.. there's nothing to talk about actually! Just run about and play only what....

An artist impression of The Murmurs Playground.

The Tumbling Maze.

Musical Chef.

Lolli-Poppy. Drawn as standing lollipops in the artist impression, these soft sculptures that create a sound when pressed are being modified to be mounted on the wall.

Gigantic bean bags and drawing area.

Puppet Story Telling

By sheer luck, I came across a website that provides FOC educational activities like craftworks, DIY story books and worksheets. It's a wonderful website that even provides lesson plans for teachers and parents! I think Rynae's school accesses this website for some crafts ideas too! Mummy has always liked art and craft since young so after browsing through, I decided to try out some crafts - toilet paper roll puppets that go with Rynae's fairy tale books! There weren't many titles but Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks & the Three Bears are bingo!


Perfect! But still short of props like bowls, chairs and beds...

Remember the wolf made by Rynae in school? Recycled in this story herein. Anyway, wolfs are common bad characters in fairy tales and fables... e.g. Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, Mowgli The Jungle Boy and The Boy who cried Wolf etc...

FOC Worksheets

I came across some useful educational websites recently and printed some FOC worksheets for Rynae. I noticed that she is rather good in connecting dots with sequential numbers, over in computer and wondered if she can do it likewise on paper. As she has not acquired the skill of writing, joining the dots did cause some difficulties for her. Nonetheless, this is a good practice for her in training her motor skills, counting and problem solving (as in look and think carefully) ability. I too, printed some FOC mazes for her to play too!

1st Mother's Day Present!

11th May is a day for all wonderful mothers and that includes me! Yesterday, Rynae came home with my very 1st Mother's Day present! I was expecting a card but her teacher had taught her how to make a sunflower instead. The heart shape petals (meaningful as it is) were pasted on a small paper plate and a thick straw was used as the stem. There were even wordings of 'I love my mum' on it! Here's wishing all sexy mama a trouble-free, nonsense-free, crankiness-free, prank-free, smooth sailing Happy Mothers' Day!

Indonesialistic

Rynae went to indonesia during the May Day long holiday and besides riding up and down, round and about the island in a motorbike, she played with some new found 'toys' too! Ah Em has adopted 3 puppies (1 white and 2 black) and they were real cute! It was amazing to watch Rynae speaking to them like how I spoke to her. Haha..

I found a child seat and ferried her in it. Though this child seat isn't quite the same as what we have over here but we're thankful for it anyway. Cus 2 years back, Rynae has to squeeze in the front basket!

Accident

Rynae came home with a da bao today. A really BIG one. But.... it's non edible. Her teacher recounted the accident to me in school that Rynae had stepped on a toy, slipped and hit hard on the tiled floor. However, when we reached home, her account of it does not tally with her teacher's. Rynae complained that Faid, a Malay classmate had pushed her and caused her to fall! Why didn't the both teachers see it? I'm gonna bring justice to light the next time she goes to school. Accidentals are forgiven but not school bullies! I rubbed a hard boiled egg on her bao and applied zam buk thereafter. Worse still, the bao's gonna turn purplish tommorrow!

A Piece of Cake

Mummy has got something up her sleeves but unfortunately her printer has ran out of ink. The very next day after Daddy replenished it, Mummy spent hours going through her files for teaching aids to print for the little tyke. Rynae has always like birthday cakes and Mummy has in her archieve, a paper made cake which she downloaded from 3EyedBear.com. Each slice of cake came with a candle each but I felt that the candle's too flimsy so didn't retain it. Several issues back, 8-days magazine gave a credit mention about this website for its FREE paper crafts and I do find some interesting paper kits there! So, now Rynae can have her piece of cake and eat it!



















Click here for cake kit.

Birthday Party @ KindyRoo

Saturday finally arrived. From the moment Rynae woke up, she's been told to coorporate in getting ready for everything (from drinking milk to going to the toilet, to bathing) because we would be bringing her to Asher's birthday party. Aren't she excited as she lurves birthdays. It was our first trip to Turf City and not to mention, KindyRoo, where the party will be held. Turf City wasn't the least ideal place for shopping but I guess the place could survive with its high spending power customers (a lot ang mos) who either frequent there for food in children friendly restaurants or to send their children for enrichment courses.

Rynae needed no warming up upon arrival and without wasting a second, began her crawlings, climbings, jumpings and rollings around the vicinity. This is an entertaining venue for active kids indeed!

Looks like outward bound ya?

These are not all! There was a wall for climbing, some toys and books!

There were eleborated and participative story telling sessions in the cafe too! Aren't the miniature furniture cute? Mind you, they aren't cheap ok? I saw it priced at $100+ in Raffles City, for just an armchair men!

Stealing limelight from Birthday Boy...

And a volunteer to eat the cream.... before anyone else... *faint*

DIY Paper Bag

Cousin Asher's gonna have a birthday celebration on Saturday and mum thought of getting Rynae involved in the gift preparation (non monetary of course cus the little girl's broke!). The only and most sensible thing to do is to ask her to paint and then transform the painted piece into a paper bag. Additionally, Rynae made a hand-shape card for Asher too! When I showed her the completed gift wrapping, she could recognise her own artwork and claimed credit for it!

Honestly, Rynae's not too thrifty with her usage of paint and smeared thick paint coated strokes onto the vanguard sheet. Lucky mum started way ahead. Cus you know what? It took 5 days for the paint to dry completely!