Reading ‘Preschool Chinese Readers’ With Darius – Book 1

Posted Under (Chinese Books, Darius' 25-27mths, Reading With Darius) on Friday, 3 September 2010 at 8:43 pm

I had mentioned this series of books in several of my posts. Finally had the time to write a few posts on it. Beware… with my tendency to explain theories and how we do it..This post is going to be looong and detailed! ^_~

For the ease of reading the title, I translated them but they are actually a series of Chinese Progressive Reader Storybooks called, ‘学前阅读计划’ published by Odonata Publishing Sdn Bhd (google their name for the url). I bought them in January this year with the aid of Hubby’s colleague in Malaysia by directly ordering online and delivering it to his house.

WHERE ELSE TO GET THEM?

  • Popular Bookstores in Malaysia – While waiting for my order to arrive, we went to City Square and discovered that the series was sold there in the Popular Bookstores.

Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Dreamycat

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Recaps ~ Aug Week 4

Posted Under (Darius' 25-27mths, Everyday Life) on Thursday, 2 September 2010 at 8:30 pm

Recaps of Last Week
Dated: 23rd of Aug – 29th of August 2010

I Want to Remember



…His Adorable Moments. Just two favourite shots of him this week on a walk with us on different days. The first one was when I walked with him. The second one was him walking with Daddy.


…Him Pretending Cars Parking. He now stands beside the high chair all the time playing with his toy cars. Daddy’s yellow car was abandoned because it was much bigger than his other cars. He would move them along and park them neatly in line. The second pic shows him moving the car beside the bus. It was on the left hand side of the bus, then it backed off and moved along the bus on its right side. I think he got the inspiration from his constant watching of the vehicles on the road while we were waiting for buses at the bus-stop.


…Him Walking Backwards and Giggling. Not sure whether he achieved this long ago because he did walk backwards a few times at home but not for long. This time, he walked for a long distance in order to ‘back’ up into me. He was trying to look half-way towards my direction and kept laughing and backing till he reached me.


…Him Moving the Buses Underneath the Chair. The first time he played underneath the chairs of our dining table. We left one of the chairs out just after dinner and were in the kitchen cleaning up. He then started moving his toy vehicles under and along both the chairs. He’s doing a lot of such ‘pretend’ play nowadays.


…Him Pretending that The Curtain is A Door. One day, he kept to the small corner beside the sofa and kept playing with the toy train. The theme of the week seemed to be “Under” as he kept moving vehicles underneath the openings of anything. The TV console, the sofa, the table. He pulled the curtains opened, moved the vehicles into his circle, and closed the curtains again, mumbling “open” and “close”. He repeated this action countless times till I had get him out of the place because he was itching and sweaty all over with the constant brushing against the curtains and staying at a hot area.


…Our Friday Outing. We decided to take him out for my work-clothes shopping on Friday morning since he wasn’t going to school. Hubby wanted to try Dim Sum for lunch and we ended up at Fortunate Restaurant (幸福饮茶) along Orchard Road. As usual, we couldn’t do without the iPod touch to keep him entertained while I fed him fried rice and some Dim Sum. I like the Xiao Long Bao and Guo Tie. Should have ordered more of those than all those prawn stuff. Hubby liked the crispy roll as its skin was so good to bite into.


…Funny Moment of Him Saying “Hello” to the mannequins! While I was shopping, Darius went around with his Daddy. He took hold of the hands of several mannequins and said, “Hawee!”to them (his version of “hello”). That was funny to watch. He is very enthusiastic about greeting people now. Any stranger he meets on the road, he will try to go up to them and say, “Hawee!” They just look puzzled, nonchalant and walk away since they do not quite understand that he is saying “Hello!”


…Him Exploring Other Parts of the Playground. I say so because he only like the stairs and slides of playgrounds. He usually does not go underneath and play with other stuff. Recently, he started staying longer at the playgrounds and in the above picture, he discovered that the metal keys could play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (we played for him). Subsequently, he always wanted to touch it and make music. At another playground, he played with these rolling bins and counted, “One, two, three, four…til ten” as he rolled. The numbers were printed on it.


…His Hair Standing on End. He was at a playground with Daddy where he was sliding down the slide repeatedly. When Daddy lent a helping hand to Darius while he was coming down, Daddy would feel some static charges on his hand upon contact. That was even one occasion when sound of a loud spark was heard. Darius didn’t seem to feel the shock/pain from the static though. Then when he went underneath the slide while saying ‘under’, Daddy noticed strands of his hair were suddenly standing up towards the bottom of the slide. There must had been strong static electricity flowing through the slide. Fortunately, the weather was fine that day else lightning might have struck the playground.

Written by Dreamycat

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A Rest Day for All Teachers

Posted Under (Darius' 25-27mths, Everyday Life) on Wednesday, 1 September 2010 at 3:52 pm

means…a fun day for all parents? or “awww…I wish he’s in school”?

I’m still trying to edit the videos for my ‘Reading Chinese Storybooks’ post and doing recaps for last week.

Meanwhile, it’s Teacher’s Day today and Darius has a holiday from school. As his CC doesn’t allow purchased gifts and only cards, letters or a stalk of flower, we gave his three teachers a card each written with a message thanking them for their care of Darius yesterday. Hubby wrote one and I wrote two. His new teacher really appreciated it and thanked me when I went to fetch him. ;)

Even though it’s a holiday, he woke up on the dot at 6:30am and both of us sighed in exasperation. He gave me a scare and woke me up when he climbed over me and hugged me. Then, he climbed over his Daddy, hugging him before climbing down our bed. When there’s school, we often had to wake him up. (he’s not so keen on school nowadays.) When there’s no school, example on weekends, he would wake up at this time! How does he know? =.=”

Anyway, we let him out of the room after Hubby brought him to pee and he played in the living room by himself while we slept back. Hubby was actually hoping to wake up at 7am today because he need not prepare so early for work if he did not send Darius to school. Plan totally foiled.

I slept til 8am and woke up to fed him some breakfast before deciding to go take a walk with him. It’s been ages since we spent mornings taking walks together, just the two of us.

So we went from one housing estate to another, exploring all the playgrounds. Darius had to fight for slides at some playgrounds with some kids but generally, he had a lot of fun sliding down and climbing the steps.

His Daddy had mentioned to me that he started being able to slide down well himself without help that day, so I decided to let him slide down by himself today. I found that he could manage the tall spiral ones very well and he was having so much fun that he kept going up and sliding down.

Sliding by himself on Slide number 1

This spiral slide isn't slippery enough and he had to use his leg to push himself downwards.

Slide Number 3 is slippery and he slid down fast!

I didn’t take photographs after that though we went to another playground as I wanted to just concentrate on the walk with him.

We spent a fruitful 2-hours walking and playing to the MRT station (normally it’s a 20mins walk). I bought Darius an orange juice from MacDonald’s and he couldn’t stop drinking it.

On the way back, he was so happy that he kept giggling and giggling non-stop. Even when he was showering, he also kept laughing. He could be tired because he tend to keep laughing when he’s tired. But, Hubby thinks that it’s because he enjoyed this very long walk with me. (though I do still  bring him out sometimes for an evening walk, I hadn’t done so for morning for a long time)

I’m starting work soon the week after next. We are intending to start him on full-time as trial next week. We will not have many opportunities like this anymore as my job nature doesn’t allow me to take leave easily. His Daddy will have to take leave to accompany him when he is off from school.

This day would be very much cherished and remembered…

Written by Dreamycat

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