Tired Boy

Lately the weather was quite hot, so went to buy thicker curtains to stop the sunlight from coming in. Ben actually found this lovely red "hairy" chair and wanted to put on an apron to sit on it! Then he pretend to fall asleep. Yah...the funny things that our boy love to do.

Ben has been attending a Chinese playschool on top of his Hegeru. It is quite heavy in terms of cost since both will cost us RM800 per month! So will be stopping Hegeru soon since it is just an hour a week. Very expensive.

But in terms of what he can do, we are quite happy that he is currently adding Chinese words into his vocabulary. He can say in Mandarin - mouth, ear, nose and eyes. And in terms of recognition, he can recognise "ren", "pa pa" and "ma ma". But most importantly for us, both the Chinese playschool and Hegeru gives him exposure to other kids. We can see the difference in him as I am happy to see that he actually makes friends in his Chinese playschool. Both boys will shout "BYE BYE" to each other! :)...

In terms of letters - he can recognise capital letters but not small letters yet.

In terms of numbers - he can recognise up to 20. My target will be for him to recognise up to 100.

In terms of speaking - it is pretty clear. We are pretty surprised with his reasoning sometimes. Example today, house is undergoing renovations now and my husband asked whether he would like to help the 2 workers. And Ben replied, "No thank you as I am not a builder since I dont have tools!" Can you believe that???

Food - he is still a picky eater unfortunately. Keeping only to rice, sausages, chocolate cereal and anything sweet. However he seemed to prefer outside food. :(......

Milk - I have been trying hard to stop milk bottle for him since his tooth decay is really BADDDD. At first, I was expecting serious fight-back from him - shouting and crying, etc....but actually it was not that difficult at all. One has to be patience and get use to his screaming, etc...then divert his attention (sigh...tv). I should have known better and stop his milk bottle much earlier. I have been trying to replace milk into cup but not successful.

Behaviour - he is still very active boy. Running up and down. :)...I guess Ben will not be Ben if he stops running around. I guess those overseas trips will have to wait a while.

Photos of Ben and his Ice-Cream Cones

Ok, managed to get some photos of Ben finishing his ice-cream cones. Bear in mind, without the ice-cream! :)

In-door Outing

Keep forgetting to bring my camera out.

Today was quite a hot day and instead of the usual outing to the park, brought him to Sunway Pyramid. Not too sure how but we ended up wandering around the shopping mall. Boy, the mall sure is big. Ben was complaining hungry but I could not find any food shops open at 9:45am. So we wander around until found, phew! Bread Story. Bought a hot dog for him and we shall this place which looks like an in-door circus with a Ferris Wheel. So we sat down there and he ate his hot dog. Poor boy must be very hungry as he kept saying that the hot dog is delicious and wallop the whole thing! Usually he will pull out the sausage and throw away the bun for Mummy or Daddy to eat.

Then after eating, we wander into Giant. Yes, I did not realise there is also a Giant supermarket there in addition to Parkson and Jaya Jusco (did I left any other major shops out???). Ben saw ice-cream cones and insisted on buying it. I kept telling him that it is just the cone and there will be no ice-cream on top. He kept wanting it.....he turned down the other stuff I offered him - Ribena water, biscuit, chocolate and a small Lego toy! Pengsan.

Later we went out to the in-door park and he sat (for the first time!) on his own in the musical cartoon car! But of course, it cost me RM3....!

Then he saw bumper cars and he wanted to have a go on it. I had to accompany it. He did not like that at all when I started bumping the other cars! Cost me RM10! Aiyoh! But I have to admit that the impact from the bumping was pretty hard - could feel my waist complaining a bit.
After that he was pretty tired and wanted to go home. In the car, he attacked the ice-cream cone box......again, he insisted on having it. So fine, I let him have it. I could hear him crunching away the cone (emm...without the ice-cream...) and when I asked him "Huh? Ben, the cone is nice?" and he replied..."Yes, Mummy, the cone is like biscuit...".....I pengsan again! Ke ke ke...

Anyway it sure saves me a lot of money as 10 cones cost only Rm2 plus...!

Beautiful Outing at the Park

We got a bit tired of the travel to Sepang beach especially with a Ben sitting in the car for an hour - he tends to get a bit bored and asked to go out. Instead we found this wonderful place nearby which he can play sand and water.

Sand, sand and more sand...yahoo!

Dont forget the water.....

....Ben is like moving around a lot - so it was pretty difficult to catch a photo of him....

...at last, managed to catch this....you noticed the orange colour toy? He found it at that area...

....and the pumper....good investment since he has hours of fun with this....not cheap as it was about RM26.90 from ToysrUs.....

...and he continues to pump in the water......
...while mummy and daddy enjoy the sunset.

Artist in the Making

Ben loves painting and I bought some painting materials for him. You can see him hard at work here. Do take note of his blue Thomas train shirt! :) Hard at work....concentrating....note also he loves blue colour! The blue colour paint will finish first compared to the rest of the paint. Same with the colour pencil, the blue pencil is the shortest now.

Blue, blue, blue.....

hmmm...mix with a bit of white....

....and let's get it all over the paper....

...then tah dah....all done!

.....so happy with my results...

...hmmm...might have missed a part here....

Ben's Friends

This was taken in in-law's house...so cute hoh!

Ben's First Class

After listening so much from ex-colleagues about the wonders of right brain training, me being a kiasu parent signed Ben up for a nearby class which claimed to train right brain. It goes for an hour each week and cost me RM100 per hour! Yah...that is expensive. But I have been very curious about this program.

It was just an hour but wow, they do a lot of stuff during the hour! They have EVERYTHING! Phonics, Japanese words, Chinese words, Math, public speaking, speed reading, memory games and linking games. I think that is all if I remember right. Even I have problem to remember everything! haha.. I was a bit overwhelmed.

The only thing is I wonder in that ONE hour, we can do so much things (or it was more like I was doing the things) - whether this will increase or decrease attention span??? I mean if the subjects pass so fast, I will be so blur-blur until dont know what happen. Or to look at the other perspective, to get children attention, we need to move fast? I also dont know. Will see what happens during the new few lessons.


5 of us - kids with mothers sat down on the floor with our children in front of us. Then the teacher start off with a greeting very fast and smoothly - about the date, day, time and weather. However teacher's English pronounciation is not good. Then she flash cards on road signs - no turning, children cannot cross here, there....followed by flash cards on elements like the one below Xenon 54. Even I dont know what is that? Haha. Then to enhance photographic, they showed this on the screen for a minute and we were supposed to colour according to the show (my only issue is that Ben only like blue colour...so he wanted all blue colour). I was having problems with this since Ben was starting to get antsy. Subsequent to that we were supposed to also draw out the shape. I think this part of the lesson is called Mandala and is available at some shops which specialises in IQ toys.

One part of the lesson was also they gave us this shape and some pieces.

It happened that at home I also had this pieces so I can do this and showed it here.

Then this I had some problems as well. They showed 3 rows of numbers and then we were supposed to write it out. Of course, they showed it row by row. As you can see, I also had problems to remember here as well! Haha. And they expect Ben to do all of this?? He cannot even sit still.

There were Japanese songs as well and Japanese flash card. Then a sandpaper of this following word was also given where Ben used his finger to trace. Then we were given this homework to trace at home.

And another homework, follow the arrows to draw lines.

Other things that I can remember was dot flash cards (popularised by Glen Doman), artist flash cards with song about the artist (ours was Picasso), public speaking (Ben had to go in front and say his name to the rest of his class-mates), Chinese flash cards, speeding reading (a story was read out from a taped recording and then played again at a faster speed. I wonder is that how you learn speeding reading???.....)

Lastly a sticker was given for attendance. We stick it in an attendance sheet and later after we accumulate some stickers, we can exchange for some small toys!

And for paying RM100 registration fees, there is also a bag!

Yes, I do sound sceptical. But when I asked Ben whether he like the class, he said yes....and I am scratching my head.......because he hardly listen during class. I guess I will give it another few more lessons. But Ben seemed to be ready for some kind of structure - he loved to sit down and do coloring, etc....maybe I will go and find some kind class. Of course, a cheaper one! :)