Sensory Play : Apple Bin @ 13 months 1 week old

I took the idea from Little Tiger Growing Up

Ingredients:
1. Oats
2. Apple figurines
3. Cinnamon sticks
4. Alphabet blocks - APPLE
5. Plastic scoop
6. Tiny/small containers

This was what i saw for one week after setting up this apple bin.

 And this!
Each time i opened the bin, he will gently closed it back and climbed up the bin!

Mummy was really upset and lodged a complaint to daddy.
"Oh no, our boy dislike messy play"  sob.. sob...
"and my bin was so beautiful..." :p
Daddy said " you do not know how to teach la!"
So, daddy came into action.


3.5 week later !!

Phew!! Mummy was glad Little J not a dirt freak!

He was at his 14 months old when he started to play this bin.

I kept this bin for weeks.
Just right before i disposed it.

This was at 6 weeks after!

Tot School : 12 months 3 weeks old

Here were the trays and I introduced a simple sensory box this round.

Right-Left, Top-Bottom
1. Leapfrog Letters Factory for phonics
2. Cereal Can with wooden sticks for fine motor skills
3. Mini muffin tray with lemon, apple, peach figurines for 1-1 correspondence
4. Shakers filled with googly eyes, soya beans, cotton, eva foam
5. M&D Pegged shape puzzle for pincer grip
6. Stacking Bowl (from previous weeks)
7. M&D Geometric Stacker (from previous weeks)
8. Sensory tray filled with pom poms, wooden blocks, pipes, screw & nuts
I'm keeping 6 & 7 since Little J was very much into it

This week, i put up a seperate corner as Little J's reading corner.
There was no specific theme at the moment.
His favorite books are Hungry Caterpillar & Peter Rabbit ( yea... since 6 months ago).
Quite a loyal baby.
At the top of the shelve, i put in some sensory flash cards from Alex.

He was attracted with the figurines.
He loved playing with the muffin tray.
Just using one hand, he flipped over and things got messier.
After few attempts, Little J managed to put in a unit into one of the holes.
Words introduced : lemon, apple, peach, yellow, red.
At this point of time, he was still mouthing.
All these activities were done under CLOSE supervision.

Little J moved around as he likes.
At a minute he was playing the tray,
the next he may just grab his favourite book.
And the next minute he may be removing the
felt alphabets from the felt chart.


We can spent almost an hour at school.
Little J was so engaging at the activities.

After playing with this stacking bowls for weeks,
he managed to stack 1-2 bowls.
I used this opportunity to name out the colors while he was playing.

This was one of his favorite tray.
Little J really used up his energy to shake vigorously.
Words like loud, soft, hard, gentle, soya beans, cotton, star, eyes were introduced.
He will also pressed the bottle, tried to open the cap and of course 'tasted' the bottle too.

My funny boy!
He sat on the tray, pull out the inserts, peeled off the masking tape and trying to put his face into the container!
Those masking tape came off mostly after few rounds.
Good fine motor skill actually.

Little J will never miss trying on his fav stacker each time we school.
He showed good progress with it.
He was able to stack 3-4 blocks, moving one block from one wooden rod to another, uses his tiny finger to press into the hole and slide it down when the finger hole met the rod.
Words like circle, square, hexagon, blue, green, yellow, red, orange were introduced.

Fine motor skill

Little J likes pressing and pulling off the alphabet.
Phonics are stressing me out!
I am learning with Little J the same time.
We  leveraged on youtube, The letter sounds song.

It was quite easy to show him shapes flash card.
We have been into The Shapes Song for awhile.
He likes 'circle' very much. He will hold this card dearly and moved his finger around the circle.
Sometimes he will just picked this card and hold it wherever he was going. Like his best friend.

There was no rules in 'school'.
This was the normal scene in most of our play time.
Most of the time i was like talking to myself :
'take this tray, .. put it back after you complete'
'bring out the mat'
'roll the mat and put it back'
etc
etc
I am still the one doing the cleaning.

Our first sensory bin at school.
I just put in whatever i have like wooden blocks, pompom, screws & nuts, pipes, ping pong balls, plastic mini grass.
Little J will take his time to touch and feel the items.
He likes throwing too.


It was my first experience having tot school.
I am still learning and struggling to teach.
I hope it will be better as we go along.

One thing for sure, i love spending time playing and watching Little J during our school time.
I can never trade it off with anything just to look at his progress.
He is growing really fast.

Totally addicted to him!

Tot School : 12 months 1 week old

Finally!

Part of the lazy me was also very excited to set up 

the 1st tot trays for little J.

Yea, i waited until he was one.

Top - Bottom. Left - Right

1. Egg scooping

2.Pom pom and raisin can  for palmar grip

3. Baby puff can with pipe cleaners

4. Pompoms and palette for 1 to 1 correspondence

5. Pegged puzzle with animal sound

6. Stacking bowl

7. M&D Geometric Stacker for palmar grip, for shapes & colors

His favorite stacker. Look how he concentrates.
He removed the blocks while i just mentioned the shape & color.

Clapping the bowls with each other, throwing them around.
Cheered mummy with funny actions.

Recycled his cereal can and cut open a small slit at the top.
He played with the mini spoons, threw them around, he got interested
when i slot some spoons into the can as he was curious with the sound
when he shake the can.

After few attempts on inserting mini spoons, I grabbed another
raisin tin, made a big circle opening and brought out some big pompoms.
This was one of the best activity for him.
Little J was able to transfer all the big pompoms into the can.

Little J was more interested at the eggs, trays, mat.

Hey, my young ciku "thinked out of the box"!
Yea... why not??!!

Touch touch, feel feel.
We will revisit this again.

His pincer grip was improving.

This was mummy's chair while i observed little J when he plays.
After few sessions, he started to claim this chair as his.
Mummy needs to move her butt and let him took the crown.
He was so cute when i asked him 'sayang bear bear'.
Gaya reading book.. he loves flipping the pages.

Right Brain Education : My dilemma

Before having little J, whenever my SIL shared her learning/teaching experience on my niece, her sharing did not really imprint on me. My brother once said this "children's prime time is during their 1st 3 years!"  I can sense his urge to ensure her daughter well exposed on the 1st 3 years.

It all started when i have a visitor from Singapore. This mummy of 3 was sharing "right brain method" and she left a few big names with me. "Dr. Shichida", "Dr. William & Martha Sears". I just left there as well.

As when my little J growing up, I started to pay a little more attention on how to teach and what to teach, being a mother now.  I do felt the responsibility and burden to bring up my little boy in my best ability. I cannot recall the exact moment but it was like when baby J was few months old, I started to google on above subjects. I asked my SIL who has familiarized herself around these subjects. One lead leads to another. I got more curious each time i read. 

Where and how should i start?? I have no experience and baby J was my first born. That time, names like Sichida, Heguru, Glenn Domann, Tweedlewink were all over me. Fortunately Unfortunately these right brain schools only available in KL. Hot Mama (on right brain) took baby J once to a right brain baby class in Pulau Tikus. It was not impressive to me & hub too. Plus the timing and our little baby was just too small. So, we have decided no right brain class for baby J moving forward.

So, what's next? I was blessed to receive a hands down Tweedlewink Dvds. So started showing to my little boy when he was .... hhmmnnn... 6 or 7 months?? that was when he can sit. We did some e-flash cards as well. After a short period of time, I was losing the momentum. I have more fear of exposing him to any square box (tv, laptop etc) than what he can learn from it. So, i stopped the flash cards. Or i should say, i stopped when i completed the 12 sets of children flash cards from RightBrainEducationShop.  

Yea,, some of  you may think i am crazy, kiasu or overdo. Frankly, it's not that i am kiasu but i have fear. I am fear of being a failing mum. I believe in teaching the right thing at the time. I was told that 0-3 are their prime time, so.. I just have to try. I am not sure, i can only try and seek the answer myself. Afterall, the foundation of right brain method is all about LOVE.

During this process, i found LittleTigerGrowingUp. Go read Jessica's blog! There were so much i can share about her blog but you just go read yourself. I like her style. Her blog opens me up and lead me to many resources. Guess I have the same vision as hers for our little ones.

Moving forward, I will just follow her sharing as the lead for little J's homeschool. The more i read, the better i feel. At least i was not that panicky anymore. Let's take each step at a time. Be slightly patient and enjoy the process with my little precious. I need to confess I'm not a hardworking mum like Jessica. I doubt I will be able to carry out the amount of activities she had with little tiger with little J. But definitely I will just use her ideas often because i am LAZY!  Why should i stress myself further while i can leverage right??

P/S : Jessica, thank you very much!!

There are many wonderful blogs/resources out there. Find something that suits your needs. A lot of great parent/s did wonderful things for their kids. I just love the way they LOVE.

Baby J : 12 months old

My little boy officially ONE!

This is the most difficult post for me now. Sitting here for the past 15 min, blank on its content. Well, i can share his activities but i feel kinda bored. Writing a post after 2 months is not a great idea.

What i did when i was 12 months old!

Had a small celebration with parents on their 10th wedding anniversary!

Such a boring couple!!   ^.^

First time exposed to public swimming pool. 

Had wonderful time with Zhe Hoong

Breaking away from the routine food and introduced new food.

Banana pancake.

Having half boiled egg & toasted bread for breakfast

Daddy kept complaining about his long hair. They are not long laa...

Wanted his boy 'botak'. Mummy only allowed short hair. No botak.

Started to show fake cry, in a quiet often mode.

Surprised mummy by holding his milk bottle!!

(Actually he was trained since 8 months at nanny's place)

Loving gesture, kissing his favorite teddy bear

Baby J : 1st Birthday Celebration

Picture paints a thousand words!

Buffet dinner was held at our parking area. Our home is too small to invite everyone in. Luckily the weather was alright. It was slightly warm due to no wind and no cooling fans around. Most of the relatives turned up and the party started 7pm sharp.

Left : Baby J trying to remove his new shoe

Top Right : Kong Kong (Paternal ) with daddy's cousin & family

Bottom Right : Grandma (Maternal) Grand Aunt Veron, Kam Mo YJ, 

Anna Kam Poh, Grand Aunt MC & Sister JY

Everyone would like to have a picture with the birthday boy.

Bottom Left : Red blouse is grandma (paternal)

The Yeap/Yip family

Looking at these pictures will tell you how sociable Baby J was.

He was truly the Happy Star of the Night!

Singing birthday song to Baby J & cake cutting session

Daddy , Mummy & Baby J

Mummy's friends with their kids.

Top left : Joanne with her 2 daughters & SG's son ZH

Top Right : Wai Pei & her family

Bottom Left : Lai Mei & LF

Bottom Right : Stella & Edmund

Princess from Cameron, my niece enjoyed herself very much

 Top Right : Grand uncles, grand aunt & family (daddy's side)

Bottom Right : Great grand aunts, grand uncle Swee Tatt & family

Children having fun!

I only realized we forgot to take family photos with the birthday boy! oops..

The party ended at about 11pm.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Thank you everyone for the love!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

To my dearest baby,

Happy 1st birthday to you! Daddy & mummy loves you a lot and thank you for bringing so much joy & love to this family. You seems to enjoy your party that night. You were so friendly to everyone. Your great grand aunt, grand aunties, grand uncles, grandma/s, grandpa, cousins and many friends of  yours mummy's came to celebrate with you. Such a blessed boy!

We pray that you will continue to grow healthily and most important to be a happy little boy!

Everything changed the moment you came into our life.  Mummy has not been sleeping thru the nights for 365 days. My boobies officially yours and you have literally stolen everything from your daddy. 

You gave me the opportunity to feel how motherhood was. You worked very hard with mummy to ensure breastfeeding was successful.  Thank you for being understanding and kind to mummy. The way you enjoy your meals and sleeps, fuss free (yes, its fuss free and not less fuss) brought me wonderful memories of your first year. Maybe you have known that the more support and love you gave to mummy. . the more mummy can do for you. 

At one,  you can say 'baa'. You called your daddy /ba/. You can shout on high pitch to seek the attention you want.  You crawls. Your favourite food were avocado, dragon fruit, pumpkin puree, zuchini+sweet potato puree, types of porridge and mother's milk. You ate veg/greens too.

Your favourite activities were donkey riding mummy, bathing,  swimming, flipping books, playing toys and biting everything you can grab in your little palm. You can clap too.

You weight 9.8kg and your height was 67cm. You have grown so much.  What an achievement. :)

You gave me more reason to be a better person, to continue to learn and to love selflessly. 

I love you!

Lots of hug & kisses,                      

Mummy                           

You can read more on his birthday preparation

Baby J : 1st Birthday (Behind the Scene 1)

Baby J : 1st Birthday (Behind the Scene 2)