I’m very pleased to annouce that after being here for almost 1 and a half years, we finally found a church that we enjoy going to! Occasionally we go to the Baptist Church in town but it’s really big (ok not as big as SJSM) and full of old people. The teaching is good but just a very foreign feel to it, not very intimate. With the amount of teaching and ministry we get on the base, there really wasn’t a really desire to go to church on Sundays so we normally just stay in.

James found out about Soul Church through a doctor in town and we decided to go check it out with the Freestones. It’s on Sunday at 6pm.

When we arrived, the kids were eating fish and chips for dinner and Sophie happily joined in with Toby and Eli. Little Soul (the kids’ church) start at 5.45pm and they serve fish and chips for the kids! Woo hoo! That’s a real draw. It’s not a big thing for Sophie because she’s not into fried fish or chips BUT I thought it was such a cool idea! We had a good chat with the pastor’s wife who was also in charge of the children’s ministry. She was really enthusiatic and very nice. Sophie was fine for a while and when dinner ended and they went for dancing and worship time, she came to get me. So I joined in for a bit. It was SO FUN! We danced to some cool bible verse music with cool actions (no hillsongs here, yey!). After that they did some craft and then watched TV. When Soph was more settled, I went back to the main service which was just next door. The following week, she was totally fine on her own which was great.

Soul Church starts at 6pm – extremely seeker friendly timing. It’s great for us because after a long week, we can sleep in on a Sunday and spend some family time. Service is short, ended by 7/7.30pm and very simple preaching. In fact, they are in their Commitment series and the pastor was challenging the congregation to commit. Soul is a part of the Mosaic church in the US. They started as a home church, a church plant and grew. They just started meeting as a service recently. The pastor has a full time job but he and his wife took the challenge and planted the church in Matamata. It really reminded me of early HeartBeat days where everyone knew everyone. Lotsa youths and young adults. Prob only about 60 people each week. So much potential for growth here. Just felt like God gave me a burden to pray for the staff and leaders and a passion to serve in anyway possible in this growing church. We like the family atmosphere.

We’re looking forward to spend more time to get to know the people here and grow with them over the next year. In fact, I know I really like it because I’m going to miss it when we’re away and Sophie keeps asking when we’re going back.

Desperate cravings call for desperate measures!

Gin and I surveyed some dim sum restaurants in the surrounding towns (Hamilton and Tauranga) and they are pretty alright. Nothing compared to those back home BUT like I always say, "It’s as good as it gets, don’t complain!" We discovered that the kids down the plain Chee Cheong Fun like soup! Before I can get to it, it’s gone!

So I decided to search online for a recipe. Can’t be that hard right? Like flour only…

Well, I actually managed to find a pretty idiot proof recipe (I think i need to call my blog idiot proof recipes.com)! I followed it word for word (minus the fillings and garnish) and I used a normal plate to hold the Chee Cheong Fun in the microwave. I find that letting it stand for more than 1 minute is better for rolling. It’s a bit different for different microwaves so have to experiment a little.

For the sauce, I improvised and made my own using ABC Sauce (Kecap Manis), bit of Soya Sauce, bit of Sesame Oil and sesame seeds.

Voila! All ready to eat! It’s close to what we get at home at the hawker centers (in my opinion, even better than the supermarket ready ones, prob coz I made it myself! Ha!) but still not quite it BUT like I always say "As good as it gets!".

(P/s other thing I’m trying to master is the breakfast fried bee hoon you get at hawker centers that you eat with fried egg, luncheon meat etc… can’t quite get it right yet. Can’t seem to get the right taste and dry enough. Anyone with some ideas, let me know?)

As mentioned in the previous post, I had in mind a daily plan but as I implemented it, I decided to improvise and added daily chores into our early morning routine.

Now that we do not have to rush out of the house for classes/meetings in the morning, it gave us some time to do some chores like washing the dishes, cleaning the house etc. At first I was doing it by myself but then I thought "Sophie can wash dishes!" so I got her to help and she’s amazing! Over those couple of days, she helped to wash up our breakfast and lunch dishes, with some supervision from me. Of course she uses too much detergent, figures out that putting a spoon under the tap makes a fountain and that squeezing lotsa soap makes it all the more fun and she leaves the water running BUT BUT overall, she gets the job done! While she does that, I can wipe the dishes and put them away! So so cool! Best part is she enjoys it! It’s a bit stressful for me I must admit at times when she handles the glass plates but I’m thankful she’s rather careful.

When we are done, we try to do one chore a day e.g. vacuuming/cleaning the windows. I try to assign her something that she can do like spraying soap and water and cleaning tables or silly things like wipe the doors. While I do the real work. Of course she doesn’t really know she’s not doing much but she loves it!

I hope we can keep this going because I doubt we’ll ever have a maid in our lifetime and I’m hoping if we start young, she’ll see that doing chores is what a family does together and not something that only mum does or a kid must be given a reward/paid to do it. Also I’m really hoping that she’ll be a good help when baby comes along. Hopefully the novelty doesn’t wear out! Will let you know

I like Charlotte Mason’s homeschooling philosophy but I don’t think I have fully grasped the fullness of it yet. This is how the Simply Charlotte Mason website describes it: – "A method of education popular with homeschoolers in which children are taught as whole persons through a wide range of interesting living books, firsthand experiences, and good habits."

There are essentially 3 parts to the education she prescribes – living books, experiences and good habits.

Living books are books that are usually stories written by an author with a passion for the subject and the subject comes alive. For example, Sophie has a book called "The Little Rabbit" (It is part of the Before Five In A Row reading list. She’s almost read it to death! The edges are bent and slightly torn.) It’s a story about how a little girl’s pet bunny gives birth and the life of the bunny. It’s a really simple story but the pictures are real photos. From it, one can learn about the life cycle of a rabbit, differentiate a pet bunny from a wild bunny, know what rabbits eat etc. It’s not a dry textbook or encyclopedia. Sophie loves encyclopedia type books as well but reading living books triggers her love to know more and understand more. 

Experiences – Charlotte Mason believed in providing a child with real life experiences. Reading from a book is not enough. Experiencing nature and culture is also needed. Sophie gets that a lot here but not sure how to fully implement that when we return for good to Singapore.

Lastly, teaching good habits - I’ve not figured out how to incorporate this fully into our lives yet but we’re getting there. Charlotte Mason has a whole list of how to do this and it’s a pretty hard read and almost seem archaic. BUT BUT so much truth to it. Just needs real discipling and vision to implement it.

Well, we’re starting somewhere. Not every book we have in the house is a living book but we pay a lot of attention to the kind of books Sophie reads. The Sonlight P3/4 books that we bought somewhat subscribes to the Charlotte Mason philosophy but in comparison, I much prefer the Five In A Row books and manual. There are some stories in the Sonlight books that are repetitive (e.g. the Fairy Tales) and Fairy tales, I find, are rather gruesome! E.g. stomping giants, ugly witches and magic potions etc.

Nonetheless, for this season, we’re reading Fairy Tales, for exposure sake. It’s quite fun re-reading these stories for myself too! Just to share some stuff that we’ve been doing with these stories: -

Jack & The Beanstalk

We painted some plants and planted some herbs. I meant to do a little booklet with Sophie about parts of a plant and life cycle of a plant but the internet failed on me so didn’t manage to get materials in time.

Sleeping Beauty

We made a castle out of a tissue box, toilet rolls and egg carton. I sewed a pillow for "sleeping beauty". Took out the lovely princess dress up cut outs that Steph gave Sophie for her birthday last year and she played dress up with them for a bit.

Now that school is over and most of our friends are gone, it’s time for us to resume to our grand plans of homeschooling. If we remain here for the next year, it kinda means that I can only homeschool Sophie 6 months in a year because school/creche is on for 3 months at a time, twice a year. Realistically speaking, counting going home on holidays and mission trips, I am probably only schooling Sophie a good 3 months a year! Eeeks! Well, we’ll see how it goes.

We started in April when school was slowing down and Sophie was so thrilled. We’re into Fairy Tales right now so we do 2-3 stories a week. So far we’ve read Emperor’s New Clothes, The Gingerbread Man, Sleeping Beauty, The Ugly Duckling, Jack and the Beanstalk.

Our Daily Schedule

8 – 9 am – Breakfast, Clean up, Chores (We read our Weekly Bible Passage over breakfast and sometimes we listen to stories/music.)

9 – 10 am – Homeschool – that essentially means reading a story, doing activities related to the story, writing, and phonics.

10 – 11 am – Free play and snack (I need a break ah! Normally I cook or bake something here. She doesn’t really like just playing on her own so she’ll just have her snack and then hang around and help out.)

11 – 12 pm – Craft

12 – 1245 pm – Outdoor/Friend Time/TV (Depending on the weather)

1245 – 2 pm – Lunch

2 – 3 pm – Quiet TIme (This means I take a rest and Sophie either reads on her own or takes a nap)

3- 5.30 pm – Daddy Time (It’s the hols now so Daddy is a bit freer but once he’s working again and Baby No 2 is here, we’ll need to figure out what to do here.)

5.30 – 6.30 pm – Dinner

6.30 pm – 7 pm – Bath and Stories

7pm – 7am – Sleep

Schedules are great but I’m not really good at keeping to it. I try to flow with Sophie as well. The schedule just keeps me sane and aware of what I’m doing. It helps to give Sophie a structure and what to expect. For example, she’s starting to understand what I mean when I say "Free Play time!" The thing about being an only child and being 3 going on 4 is that she loves to do stuff and play pretend. But she needs company and that means me most of the time if her friends are not around! She’s not so keen on doing her own thing if I’m around. In structuring a free play time, I’m hoping that it’ll give her some space to discover things on her own and learn to play on her own for a bit.

Our Weekly Plan

Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays are English story days. I incorporate Social Sciences and Science into these days, depending on the topic at hand.

Wednesdays are Chinese story days.

Fridays are Creative Math lessons and outing days.

We don’t school on Saturdays and Sundays.

Sophie could spell her name even before she could recognise alphabets. That was only coz I kept repeating it to her.

Recently I found out that she can spell Toby, Evan, Cow, Dog! I didn’t even know that kids could spell before they can read or write?!! Is that normal? I’ve not intentionally taught her how to spell these words but I think she picked them up when we read. "Cow" really surprised me coz one day she drew a cow and then wrote the word "cow" under it.

This homeschooling business is a lot more complicated than I thought. I keep thinking there must be a process to all this, e.g. recognise alphabets, learn sounds, write (Montessori book says that they learn to write before reading), read, spell. Sophie seems to have got them all jumbled up and I’m confused. Wish I had studied some early childhood education degree rather than my econs/euro studies degree.

Anyways, I’m happy she’s picking up things along the way.

James created a outdoor house for Sophie over the weekend.

He sealed up part of the balcony using bits he found around the base and made windows for the light to come in using transparencies (remember those things before computers?). He even found some whiteboard for writing on and a frame for a pretend door.

Very very cool.

I’ve always imagined for us to have a place for Sophie to play outdoors, yet within the confines of home. We’ve been doing lotsa craft, painting and drawing outdoors. We even started a small garden starting with planting herbs.

I really like this picture.

Kristi, who is 6, really likes to play with Sophie very much and they play really well together. Last weekend before Kristi and her family left for Auckland, I got them to take this picture. I was quite glad Sophie was actually keen to take the picture with Kristi coz sometimes she’ll just run away.

It’s hard when friends come and go on the base after each school ends. This time round, we made sure that we talked to Sophie lots before her friends started leaving and she was ok saying bye. I hope we handled all the farewells better than we did the last time.

I declare that Passing The Parcel (the one that has a little gift with each unwrapping) IS THE BEST preschool birthday party game EVER!

Ooooo the kids love it! We’ve been playing it at every birthday party.

Oh yes! Our wonderful tenants are moving out at the end of June! They have been just GREAT!

So our beautiful 3- Room flat at HV (right next to Cold Storage) is up for rental. Pls pass the word around.

We would love to have someone we know or at least known by our friends to rent it. We prefer to rent it to a married couple OR a family with one young child. One year or more rental period.

For more information, pls email us.

School has ended!!! Today is our first day back to being base staff. The workload is a lot lighter when the school is not functioning. Just a couple of work duties and other adhoc things to clear up. Once I get my act together, will blog more.

Meanwhile, here our homecoming dates: –

2 May – 8 May – Brisbane, Australia

8 May – 5 June – Singapore

We’d love to meet up with as many of you as possible, esp those flying in and out during this time! After that we’ll be gone again for another year. Really hope to catch up during this trip home. See you all real soon!

Oh yes! And I’m so pleased to announce the launch of the new Family Ministries NZ website!!!

James has been working so hard on it over the past two schools on the side. While everyone does base maintenance, he’s been working with Dave, another student, to develop the new site that is fully wordpress based and very customisable and easy to maintain (= even I can maintain it ).

It comes complete with a blog, photo gallery (linked to Flickr) and Facebook link! Ooooo and even iPhone compatible! Wah my hub is so smarty pants.

It’s so shiok to look at it. If you note closely, you can see Sophie’s drawings on it too!

If you wanna find out more about the schools that we’re staffing in and look at our base pictures, the website is the best resource. Pls pass the word on!!