Exams Are Over!

Final examinations for Big Bee were over 2 weeks ago, and we rejoiced jovially. Not that we were cramming and mugging in a last minute way, as I prefer a consistent approach to revision. But it was liberating not to worry about academic homework and just indulged in whatever we wanted! 

Hence, we enjoyed a marvellous weekend - and an extremely busy one too! Here were what we did: 

Saturday, 15 October

1) Big Bee's ballet open house

She will be taking her Grade 3 CSTD exams next month, and moving on to Grade 4 next year. Time truly passes fast! In Grade 3, her solo sequence was a lot more complex, and the main tenet of performance ballet must be showcased - that brilliant, glorious, carefree dancer smile. I remember my younger days as a dancer in school when a megawatt smile could easily distract an audience from wrong dance steps! However, Big Bee, being at a self-conscious age, was so reluctant to smile, so she was dancing the entire sequence with her usual serious yet sweet look. Let's hope she puts on a big smile for the examiner in a few weeks' time! 

2) Shopping! 

We had an early scrumptious Mexican lunch, and brought the Bees shopping in Plaza Singapura, replacing their old shoes and stocking up on cute stationery. The Bees were ecstatic, although I was having a hard time controlling shopaholic Little Bee who wanted to buy almost everything she fancied! I had to request that she learned to make decisions and choose her purchases wisely. 

3) Delightful Afternoon Tea

Shopping was indeed tiring work, so the Bees were fatigued by 3pm, during which we chanced upon a lovely, cosy cafe where we had a peaceful and relaxing afternoon. The Bees were lounging on the comfortable sofas, whereas Hubby and I could sip our refreshing Moroccan mint tea in serene repose. They had both reached a stage when it was such fun chatting and bantering with them, and I felt like friends with them! 

4) Movie Time! 

After tea, we adjourned for a 4.20pm movie - Johnny English Reborn! The girls were thrilled and were enthralled throughout the entire movie. They were squirming with anxious anticipation over some thrilling and suspenseful parts, which was really amusing to Hubby and me.

Sunday, 16 October

1) We woke up bright and early for a breakfast at Rider's Cafe, where we munched on delicious fried eggs and bread, sipped coffee and stared with captivation at the myriad horses around us. 

2) We stopped by Botanic Gardens for a little while, and wandered along the sprawling verdant meadow beside the tranquil lake where we used to breakfast beside little cygnets. We decided to amble towards the new Botanic Gardens MRT and took a ride on the Circle Line spontaneously, much to the Bees' delight!

3) We took about 3 stops to Bishan - just a swift ten minutes! - and strolled gleefully around Junction 8 for a little while before heading back, still amazed at how fast we could reach Bishan from Botanic Gardens. The Circle Line was so new and uncrowded, and the Bees enjoyed themselves tremendously. 

4) Headed home for lunch, before scooting out in the afternoon to my in-laws' house for an afternoon visit, where the Bees frolicked and pranced around with their thrilled grandparents.

5) Went to our old regular restaurant haunt by the beach at South Changi (which had recently been renovated), and were captivated by the boundless sea that strayed right up to the diners, as well as the enchanting lavender-clad twilight that was mysteriously descending on us. Dined on yummy Indonesian food. 

What a f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c weekend, and we need not even go for a holiday, as we could get all these fun in Singapore! Will write about some of these places in more detail soon. 

The King Of Fruits

Hubby and I love durians. I have a wonderful love affair with my favourite fruit since young, when my 大姨 (my mum's eldest sister) would bring bunches of these pungently fragrant fruit to my house - for free! - from her farm in Sembawang. The country farm that we used to frequent and play around as kids had sadly been taken over by the government, but my love for durians persisted. 

I love digging into the fruit, feeling the velvety smooth exterior of each fatly endowed seed, and then biting right into that rich creamy texture while inhaling the pervasively beautiful smell of durians that many could not endure. I love licking my fingers after a yummy feast and sniffing the remnants of that amazing fragrance on the tips of my fingers long after our feast had ended. 

My parents played a huge role in my persisting love affair with durians, always creating a hullabaloo whenever my father bought durians home. We would then stop everything we were doing, lay newspapers on the floor, and sit around these thorny delights, sinking our teeth into the succulent seeds, and discussing which ones were the tastiest. My parents would always save the best seeds for me - especially those with really tiny seeds and a lot of the fruit. We would then drink tap water from the husks of durians, believing that this would dispel the "heatiness" from consuming the fiery king of fruits. Strangely, my brother was (and is) not a fan of durians, despite all these domestic reinforcements! 

Hubby and I wanted the Bees to share our common love for this delicious fruit, so we buy durians occasionally for them. So many young people I met these days have a natural and sad aversion to this fruit, so I am delighted that the Bees love the smell and taste of durians as much as we do! Yippee!

We particularly enjoy sessions when we could eat durians at the durian stalls, when we could just snatch the fruits from the husks, ravished the seeds and just threw them into an adjacent box on the floor. The Bees love this ritual, and I foresee we would all be looking forward to the next durian season! 

The Bees indulging in a "maosanwang" (or was it XO?) durian some months back

The Colourful World Of Bugs

Little Bee's curriculum theme in school (Minibeasts) and our homelearning theme (Lifecycles) had converged a little last term, and I found it a lot funner and easier to build on top of what she had learned in school into our homelearning. 

As we built our lifecycles lapbooks with information about butterflies and ladybugs, amongst other insects, these knowledge was reinforced through her art and crafts of minibeasts done in school, like some of these below. 

A fluffy caterpillar and colourful butterfly

A ladybug necklace

Laughter IS the best medicine!

This evening, as with most evenings since the end of Big Bee's exams last Thursday, I decided to just hang loose with the girls. The 4 of us indulged in a silly but really fun game, in which each of us tried making one of us laugh - without tickling or prodding! 

So, lots of crazily funny faces, hilarious jokes and statements, as well as uproarious actions were emanated from our bed in the master bedroom - which ended up in an hour of giggles, chuckles and guffaws. 

Love this intoxicated bonding! 

1 Scene, 3 Renditions

Big Bee had been fascinated by the short brush strokes painting technique of Vincent van Gogh, as well as his brilliant use of colour blends and psychedelic hues since May this year, when her art teacher in primary school introduced his techniques to her class. During the mid year exams, they had to produce a painting in Van Gogh's style, and her art piece was graded top in the class, much to our pleasant and unexpected surprise. 

Subsequently, after we visited his exhibition in the ArtScience Museum and through idyllic evenings at home, she would randomly paint the same scene using a similar brush stroke technique but different colours to reinforce the influence of colours on the mood of a painting. Well, of course she doesn't know the impact of colours and their influence on the mood of a painting in depth yet, but I am happy that she is experimenting with painting during non-study times at home, as painting is an excellent way to destress! 

Here are 3 renditions of a similar scene that she had done. Like me, she is particularly fond of landscape painting - I think it helps us dreamy souls escape into another tranquil world. Which version do you like best? :)

This was done in class during as a mid-year art exam, using oil paints on canvas

Done right after visiting Van Gogh's exhibition, using poster paints

Done on a lazy weekday evening, using oil pastel crayons

Making Sentences

Little Bee is a highly visual learner, so she truly relishes learning new Chinese words through flashcards, before reading story books with these familiar key words. 

Through the 四五快读 series, she learned to create sentences using the flashcards. Sometimes, we played around with the flashcards and created nonsensical but really funny sentences. At other times, she would be quietly arranging the word cards into a sentence like the one below, called for me to read...and melted my heart :) 

妈妈爱我和爸爸. She insisted I must take a photo of her and her heartwarming sentence! 

Happy Babies

Tomorrow will be the last day of Big Bee's P3 final exams, and she is eagerly looking forward to it! (And so am I...and hubby as well, haha). In fact, she had already made plans with her best friend for a lunch in school, followed by a playdate at our place tomorrow! Soon, it will be outings after exams when they grow bigger, sigh.

We had been very busy revising with Big Bee since last weekend, and had not been spending as much time on homelearning with Little Bee, poor her! In time to come, by next year, we would hope Big Bee could learn to revise on her own...

So, we are definitely looking forward to imminent happy days in the long year-end holiday, back to lazy weekend afternoons of romping in the parks or having scrumptious tea or just lazing by the beach. Yippee!

The Bees at a cafe on an idyllic Sunday afternoon...

Heuristics For Math

With final exams looming next week, I try to be calm and composed when encouraging Big Bee to revise her work. I am a firm believer in constant revision, and not last-minute cramming, so as not to stress the child (although I was the direct opposite when I was a student as I operate much better under adrenaline rushes, haha!). I also believe in regular revision so my child will not be put off by this entire concept and philosophy of examinations. 

Besides, with longer days at work due to a new but exciting portfolio, Big Bee and I typically have less than an hour of revision each night, as I also set aside time for fun bonding, which is a lot more important than aggressive mugging for examinations. I want my kids to associate me with loving fun and not as a kiasu mum worried about exams results!

Hence, I am thankful that Big Bee is rather self-motivated (can be improved further, though!). I give her homework to do before I leave home for work, and she usually completes them when I am back in the evenings. I am also highly grateful that my Mum is around in the day to keep an eye on Big Bee, although the latter usually takes advantage of her nice granny whenever I am not around, thus resulting in a frustrated granny! She is a lot more disciplined and well-behaved with me around though! 

I am also heartened that Hubby is entertaining Little Bee to the max as I focus on revising with Big Bee these couple of weeks. Teamwork is indeed a fundamental key in a successful marriage. 

I am digressing actually. I meant to write about a couple of interesting Math sums in an exercise that I am currently marking after Big Bee had completed it. These Math sums are quintessential demonstrations of the heuristics and modelling methodology that most parents complained about (many very much prefer algebra that we had been used to). 

On the contrary, I had begun to truly appreciate the beauty of heuristics when explaining such sums to Big Bee - as they are a lot more logical and visual, hence, much easier to understand, compared to the remote concept of algebra (although they will be acquainted with good old algebra very soon!).

Kids take to heuristics and modelling very well. It is also not rocket science for parents, and I learned the methods myself, just by browsing through her textbooks. However, this evening, as I was working through a problem sum with Big Bee, she came up with the solution much faster than me, much to my amusement! I used to be embarrassed if I could not solve a problem in front of my child, but these days, I will graciously tell the Bees that I am learning from them too. Parenting is all about learning from our children as well, and our children will definitely love it if they know they can help us. 

Anyway, here are the problems: 

1. Carena and Megan save some money every day. Each day, Carena saves the same amount of money, and each day Megan saves $1 more than Carena. After several days, Carena saved $18 and Megan has saved $27. How much does Megan save in 1 day? 

2. Alice, Susan and Jane have 270 buttons. Alice has twice as many buttons as Susan. Jane has 3 times as many buttons as Alice. How many more buttons does Jane have than Susan? 

(I know it is just sooo tempting to use algebra on this - I did use it at first! - but bear in mind the kids don't know algebra!)

3. Ali has 3 times as many marbles as Bala. After Ali lost 4 marbles and gave Bala some marbles, the two boys now have the same number of marbles. Bala has 22 marbles now. How many marbles does Bala have at first?

For Us, The Working Mums

Not many people talk about the issues of working mothers: the fatigue, the incessant mental juggle between work and family (yes, even at home), the guilt (both ways, at work and at home!), and the stress.

But as a working mum, I relish the challenge, especially the multi-faceted roles. I cannot live without my family, yet I cannot live without work that is stimulating. I cannot bear to leave the kids for work, yet I am thinking of work while I am at home sometimes. I cannot truly enjoy working, knowing I could've done a much better job mentoring my kids at home, yet, I know I will not give up on my work that excites my mind.

Life as a working mum is all about dilemmas. And choices. And decisions that we should never regret. Be it taking leave and immersing ourselves totally with our children, irregardless if our office needs us at work. Be it working long 12-hour days or travelling overseas for work, leaving our kids pining for us. Be it feeling truly tired yet peeling open our eyelids to stay awake to spend coupletime with Hubby, watching a home movie or just chatting.

It is always about choices and decisions that we make and never should regret. It is a long journey of constant "what-ifs".

And thanks to my good friend J, who sent me this trailer from Youtube for Sarah Jessica Parker's latest movie "I Don't Know How She Does It", it kinds of reminded me to savour the moment at this time when work is gruelling, when I have to help prepare Big Bee for her final exams, when I have to start preparation work for Little Bee's birthday party. But indeed, to be able to do all these and more, it just indicates that we are alive and healthy, that we have family and friends loving us, around us, that we can still contribute productively at work.

Little blessings in arduous times :)

Housing Of The World

Big Bee completed a project recently for school, titled "Housing Of The World", which I found really interesting. She researched for the various housing of different cultures - with a little help from me to focus her search to a few salient cultures - and did her own independent internet research for the write-up of each culture. 

More importantly, she learned about how different people in the world live, which opened up her eyes that the world is truly a multifarious, diverse place. Little Bee also derived much pleasure and knowledge while flipping through jie-jie's project book. 

Big Bee is the most intrigued by Mongolian yurts (and also because she discovered that Mongolians live amongst many horses, some of them gorgeously wild and free!). So, she is now persuading me to go to Mongolia for a holiday, so she could also live in a yurt, amongst horses! Sounds like a very compelling idea indeed... 

This pictorial reporting format - combined with internet and library research - is truly a wonderful way to teach our older kids about the many facets of our varied world :) 

Some other pages from her project book: 

Chilling Out In Marina Bay Sands

We watched the Mickey's Music Festival in the theatres of Marina Bay Sands on 11 September, but Hubby and I were not very impressed, largely because we felt disillusioned by the mix of current pop songs in the musical repertoire. We prefer the magical old songs of Disney, but those were jarringly mixed with rock beats this time. 

However, Little Bee loved it, and watched the entire performance captivated with rapture. There were also a lot of other kids who were bopping and dancing away to the fast-paced rhythms, so I guess it could be a generational divide that only Hubby and I did not enjoy it! Big Bee was utterly blase and nonchalant about this, solely because Miss Tween thought it highly uncool to be watching Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Disney Princesses in a show, haha. 

What Hubby and I enjoyed most was the relaxing lunch beside the Rain Oculus of Marina Bay Sands, where the kids were enchanted by the gushing water and incessant sampan rides drifting past us. We also particularly loved the ArtScience Museum, when we visited the Van Gogh art exhibition. 

It was indeed a fulfilling day - another instance where we need not travel out of Singapore to be truly entertained!

Here is Little Bee's super short diary entry on the musical show, and what she drew to depict it.

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Today, I went to the Mickey Mouse Musical. I dressed up as Cinderella. I like the show because I like Little Mermaid.