Monthly Archives: February 2012

Letter of the week- F

Posted on by
Reply

E for Evan was a really big week here in the Tseng household and it was going to be tough for Letter F to kinda top it so took it easy and I gave it some space between both letters opting to do Letter F late in the week instead. And truthfully, I had to deal with a spanking new addition to the family too!

I opted to fo F for fox and flowers for the crafts but also to share that F was for fish, fan and flamingo. It was easy enough to entertain Q with these: we pretended to swim like fish about the house, spin like the ceiling fan (this the kid REALLY liked doing) and standing on one foot like a flamingo in my pink scarf.

We made a little fox and a big flower garden for the craft work- the flower one was a real hit cos there were tons of foam flower stickers to play with. And later that night we read one of our favorite books from the “Tales from Acorn Wood” series- Fox’s Socks by Julia Donaldson (of “The Gruffalo” fame) and Axel Scheffler (who also illustrated Stick Man).

Advertisement

Letter of the week- E

Posted on by
Reply

My obgyn did warn me that I could possibly go into layout any time now and so we got a jump on our letter of the week with an early visit to the zoo to watch the (E for ) elephant show. Well, also because Q really loves the zoo and I figured that with baby coming, it might be a while before we get to head out to the zoo again.

We also came back and played with our little Sesame Street toilet roll set because E is for Elmo too! And though I had originally cut the lil “e” to be for egg, Q kept getting it mixed up with “Chick” which I cut out to contextualize “egg” so I cut an Elmo out. Evidently anything red, roundish with eyes and a button orange nose is a universal Elmo.

Also, I did end up going into labour early- 36 and 4 days and we welcomed little Evan whose name also started with E!

Happy letter E!

 

Letter of the week- D

Posted on by
Reply

We embarked on the Letter D a day earlier than I planned (our schedule varies week to week thanks to my work) because we spent some time at my parents’ place and they have a brood of dogs scampering afoot there that Q just loves chasing after.

D, as you might know, is for dog. And also for duck, dinosaur, daddy, donut and dustbin. Funnily, when I was prepping for our letter crafts, I didn’t quite think of Dog. Instead, D was for duck *quack quack* and dinosaur *rawr*. And because we did this on Valentine’s Day, he learnt that D is also for Dear and Darling. 🙂

Review: Stick Man

Posted on by
1

Kid’s Fest 2012 brought in three shows: The tiger who came to tea, We’re going on a bear hunt and Stick Man. We had originally only planned to watch Tiger and Bear but since Q had such a great time at the two shows, we bought last minute tickets (at the door with ten minutes to go, no less) to catch Stick Man.

And what a gem of a show it turned out to be!

Based on the hugely successful book by Julia Donaldson, Stick Man tells the tale of an unlikely (anti)hero who lives in the family tree with his “Stick Lady Love and their Stick Children Three.” Stick Man’s adventure takes off when a dog steals him away and he has to somehow find his way home.

Brought to the stage by the acclaimed Scamp Theatre, the show mixes puppetry with actors and though I thought Q (and the other kids) would have problems identifying the puppet and actor as one, he really got into the show and even teared up when all seemed lost and Stick Man looked like he might never make it home and applauded when he finally did.

Though I was most apprehensive about this show, I ended enjoying this the most. Not just because I felt the way the Scamp Theatre engaged the children was brilliant but the show gave me an insight to Q, his emotional maturity (for a barely two year old anyway) and his thought process seeing as he felt the need to jabber out loud all through this show.

An utter gem of a day.

This is why I love George Carlin

Posted on by
Reply

This is why I say George Carlin was a genius…

From the naked mind of George Carlin

1. When cheese gets it’s picture taken, what does it say?
2. When someone asks you, A penny for your thoughts, and you put your two cents in, what happens to the other penny?
3. If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn’t it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted?
4. When someone is impatient and says, “I haven’t got all day,” I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?
5.I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks so I wondered, what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?
6.If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?
7. Is a vegetarian permitted to eat animal crackers?
8. What if there were no hypothetical questions?
9. Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?
10. Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
11. Why do croutons come in airtight packages? It’s just stale bread to begin with.
12.I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.
13. Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
14. If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?
15. Electricity is really just organized lightning.
16. Women like silent men, they think they’re listening.
17. “I am” is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that “I do” is the longest sentence?
18. Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.
19.If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?
20. Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?
21. Why is the man (or woman) who invests all your money called a broker? 
22. There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.
23. As a matter of principle, I never attend the first annual anything.
24. Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.
25. Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
26. I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

Letter of the week- C

Posted on by
Reply

Now in our third week, we on to the letter C.

While I wouldn’t say Q is a Sesame Street fan, he is fairly acquainted with the major characters of the show, especially Elmo and Cookie Monster and he can sing “C is for cookie” like the best of them. So, after watching several videos on Cookie Monster singing his famous song, we embarked on Letter C week.

I took the chance that W (the daddy) was home so I set both boys down to work on the crafts for the Letter C.

C is for crab, cat, cookie, cans, cockerel and car. And because the phonic sound for C is both “Ker” like in CAR and “Ser” like in CITY we took the chance to highlight that using mama’s and yiyi’s name: Christine & Cecilia. Mummy’s name begins with C too but “Ch” is a little less obvious.

Review: We’re going on a bear hunt

Posted on by
Reply

We were duly excited about going to watch “We’re going on a bear hunt” because we love the award winning book of the same name.

And indeed, Michael Rosen’s book about an intrepid family’s adventure to find a bear was brought vividly to the stage through Sally Cookson’s direction and Benji Bower’s engaging musicality as they- complete with a funny puppet “baby” (that kinda looks like Tin Tin if you ask me); wade through the gigantic swishy swashy grass, the splishy splashy river and the thick oozy, squelchy squelchy mud. The stage work was compelling, the actors engaging and funny and the repetition of the book’s famous lines- which the kids in the theatre all duly chanted after, added to the interactivity of the show.

“We’re going on a bear hunt. We’re going to catch a big one.
It’s a beautiful day- and we’re not scared.”

To be honest, I got a little nervous as the show approached the part where they were going to meet the bear- especially when they dimmed the lights and Q got visibly nervous/excited knowing what was going to happen but having no clue what to expect. In any case, they drummed up enough suspense to reveal a hilarious gigantic funny looking bear that kinda lumbered around. Maybe in part, he was relieved, but my hardly two year old ended up laughing his head off at the big bear chasing the family all their way home.

We enjoyed the show immensely and Q even asked, several days later when we were doing the activity pack the Polka Theatre Company put together for when they hosted the show, to watch the show again.

Two thumbs up!

Letter of the week- B

Posted on by
Reply

After learning all about Letter A and we were very good in highlighting all the A stuff around us, we picked up from where we left off with Letter B. We thoroughly enjoyed our alphabet journey last week and Q was very excited to run with Letter B.

And so this week we learn that B is for Balloon, ball, butterfly and basket… And that B goes “Buh”.

If you notice in our picture, we originally made B is for Bee for the uppercase B. But Q kept getting the butterfly and bee mixed up even if the Bee was in full Bee Yellow and had a sting whilst the butterfly had more colorful wings. He actually told me that there were yellow butterflies too (and he is right) so we switched out. For some reason he also said that B is for Benny the Bull that lives on Benny’s Barn- a familiar character for those of you whose kid loves Dora the Explorer, so we printed a Benny coloring page too.