TJC sports day

The event was originally planned to be held at the Kelana Jaya Stadium but due to the recent haze situation, the kindy decided not to take the risk and moved it to the Sports Arena @ Sentosa, apparently belonging to Dato’ Lee Chong Wei.  It was a good move, as the haze did return slightly a few days that week, though the arena wasn’t really the best place for the event.  There was a lack of seats for parents, and since it’s an indoor, confined area, the photos didn’t turn out that well too L

Anyhow, the theme for the sports day was Space, and during the march in, each class held a placard with astronauts, spaceships, etc.

 Marching in

Waiting for the start of the event

 Showing me her cheeky face

After the speeches by Pastor Daniel Ho and the principal, the event started with a performance by the 5-year old children.

Immediately after that, the games began.  The name of each game was also aligned with the theme with names like Alien’s Busters Workout, Strike of the Jedi, Star Trail, Space Hop, Wall-E & the Space Granite, Space Escapee, Astronaut Relay and Meteor Shower.

Alien's Buster Workout - crawl like an alien, jump on the hula hoop and throw the ball into the basket

Strike of the Jedi - running zigzag on a spaceship, and strike the ball with the light saber

Star Trail - balancing the ball on a platter, collecting hula hoops and placing them back again on return

Space Hop - hop on the hula hoop, collect a ball and place it into a basket

Wall-E & the Space Granite - skipping through the hula hoops, and balancing a ball

Astronaut relay - hopping with a ball between the legs and balancing objects on the head and hands

Yan Yan took part in the Space Escapee game, and I thought her team came up first but it was recorded as 2nd place.  Oh well!  Every one gets a medal anyhow!  

Yan Yan getting ready for her event

Space Escapee - crawling through the tunnel, and throwing ball over the net 

 She was mighty pleased with her performance

Scoreboard

There were games for parents too.

 Parents game 1 - stacking a pyramid

Parents game 2 - dressing a robot 

Waiting for the prize giving ceremony 

(L): Getting her medal (R): Children examining their medal 

With her classmate, Sean.

 Yan Yan was so proud of her medal that she was showing it around to everyone at babysitter’s home.  But her enthusiasm with the medal lasted all but one day J

Yan Yan turns four

Yan Yan turned four on Monday.  And since her papa’s birthday is just two days apart, we celebrated both together with a family dinner last Sunday at myElephant.

Birthday girl 

Me and my precious 

 We ordered our fave durian mousse cake again.

The girls with the babysitter, and her sisters and niece.

Yiu Yiu drew this on the mahjong paper covering the table while waiting for our food 

Yummylicious food - Top from left: myElephant's platter, green mango salad with crispy fish, green curry chicken. Middle from left: pan fried mixed greens, myElephant's special deep fried chicken strips, BBQ chicken fillet with lemongrass.  Bottom from left: steamed tofu with Thai soya sauce, snow fish, tomson with fish

As Yan Yan has been exposed to several celebrations of her classmates in kindy earlier this year, she has asked to celebrate with her friends as well.  I was initially slated to fly to Bangkok on Monday morning, and return on Wednesday evening, and Thursday being the kindy’s sports day and Friday a public holiday, I thought we would not be able to fulfill her request.  Just before my ticket was issued last week, I was informed that I only need to arrive at the hotel on Monday evening so I quickly changed my flight to a later one, and began the last minute scramble to organize a small celebration for her…things that mothers do for their children!

First was to get clearance from the kindy, as the SOP is to inform the kindy as least seven days in advance, and I was like sending a request to the kindy only on Wednesday night!  Luckily the kindy was kind enough to accommodate this last minute request.  Next was the quest to look for someone to bake the cupcakes.  I contacted several bakers I know and eventually placed an order with Jenn, the mother of Yiu Yiu’s ex-classmate in kindy.  At RM 95 for 25 small cupcakes, I thought it was a pretty good deal.

Next was the party packs, and luckily I didn’t have to work over the weekend and had time to go shopping and prepared the packs.  Each party pack consists of a sticker (for boys) or temporary tattoo (for girls), a mechanical pencil, a small tub of PlayDoh, KitKat and Mamee.

On Monday morning, I fried some nuggets and off we went to the kindy.  We had the celebration earlier, about 9am, instead of the usual 10am at break time, as the children had their sports practice after that.

Yan Yan with her classmates

Her classmates singing the birthday song

Her class teacher leading the students in praying for Yan Yan

Yan Yan was a very happy girl on that day – I bet she felt like a superstar having her classmates shake her hand one by one before passing the party pack to them.  Too bad I don’t have any photos of that, as some of the photos were corrupted when I downloaded them L  By the way, I overheard one boy saying that “My mummy says cannot eat Mamee.  Mamee is a junk food.”  Haha…I must have upset some mums that day, introducing junk food to their children.

This was the present she chose from ToysRUs for her birthday – of all things, a baby set, despite already having a toy baby and dozens of soft toys at home J

Artworks (#26 – #30)

The next five pieces of Yiu Yiu's artworks:

Chicken 

 Teapots

 Fat person

Shadows

Kitchen

Artworks (#21 - #25)

It’s been sometime since I last posted Yiu Yiu’s artworks.  This series was done sometime around CNY, so the theme was around CNY:

Face

Snakes

Mandarin oranges

CNY cookies

Cacti

Art projects

These are some projects by the girls:

1. This was a letter created at Yiu Yiu's art class, and the teacher snail mailed the card to our house.  Sweet!

2. This was a combination of handicraft and painting with the “bear butterfly” crafted using some clay-like material.  Yiu Yiu took several 1.5 hour classes to complete this project.

3. And these were the Mother’s Day gift from both of them – a card from Yiu Yiu which she made at daycare, and a heart that Yan Yan made in kindy.

Teacher’s Day celebration

A week or two after the school holidays, there was a Belated Teachers’ Day celebration.  Yiu Yiu class teacher volunteered her class for a performance, which I think is such a nice thing to do to provide the children an opportunity to go on stage and showcase themselves.  I'm guessing the teacher needed to take the extra efforts to choreograph and organise practice sessions with the children.

To show my support, I sneaked out from work for a while to catch her class performance.  She did a split with another classmate, but unfortunately, it was over in a split second, and as my camera was not at the right setting, it turned out all blurry.

Signalling to her classmate before their turn to go upfront for their split

 Solo violin performance by a Standard 2 student

Performance by her gymrama mates - these are the older girls in her gymrama class.  Hmm...I wonder if she'll be good enough to have a chance to perform/compete someday.

Wushu performance by her classmates 

Class photo

With her BFF, who happens to be my colleague's niece

Girls’ progress at school

Yan Yan is not doing too well in kindy apparently!  At the recent Parents-Teachers Day, I was informed by her class teacher that she categorized her in the slow learner group!  After half a year in kindy, she still doesn’t know her ABCs and 123s L  The teacher asked if I spend time coaching her at home, and the answer is an obvious, deafening NO!

Yan Yan, unfortunately suffers from the second child syndrome.  Hard as I try, Yan Yan just didn’t quite get the same undivided attention her elder sister got when she was younger.  There was no flashcards, no baby books, and no teaching of ABCs and 123s before she went to the kindy.  I just didn’t, or rather can’t, do everything I did with Yiu Yiu, with her, simply because I didn’t have the time nor energy!

The teacher advised me to spend more time coaching her, and take every opportunity to teach her things, e.g. reading out loud the number plate of cars as we drive.  So it’s time to bring out the flash cards and the Grolier Fun Thinkers set we bought two years ago.

The Grolier Fun Thinkers set, in the foreground

Never too late to start, I reckon, as every little bit counts.  Only problem is, how do I juggle work, housework, coaching Yiu Yiu with her homework, and spending time with Yan Yan on this?  I can only try…

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Yiu Yiu on the other hand, is doing pretty ok.  She was placed within top 30% out of 593 students in Standard 2.  There is visible improvement in her BM and Chinese this year.  I can see that she doesn’t struggle as much in reading and comprehending both languages.  She fared a lot better in her BM this round, compared to the last term whereby she was pulled her down drastically by BM.

Kindy mid-year party

Yan Yan’s mid-year party came amidst a busy period for me and the theme was “Occupation”.  I left it till very last minute to try to look for a costume and few of the shops we contacted either had all their occupation-themed costumes rented out, or some were too large for her.  I tried hard to think of stuff at home that we could pull together something for her, and decided that she should go as a gymnast.  Easy, just wear her jie-jie gymrama costume, and paired it with the rope apparatus J

Unlike previous years, parents were not allowed to stay for the party since classes are currently being held in a smaller temporary building (the management is reconstructing a larger building for the kindy).  By the time we arrived, the teachers were already shooing parents away so I wasn’t even allowed to go into the classroom.  I had to plead with the teacher at the door to let me in for just a couple of minutes, which luckily she kindly allowed.  So I just quickly snapped a few shots L  Lesson learnt: must arrive early for the year end party!