The homeschooling books that I ordered from Sonlight arrived in the mail yesterday!!! Almost 30 kg full of books!

Ooo there was so much excitement in the house! Sophie was happily checking out the books and so was I. She could recognise some stories from the books. They were the books that we already had back in Singapore but didn’t bring with us.

Ok more about what I bought: -

I decided to buy the P3/4 curriculum from Sonlight. First of all, because it is such a costly affair, I had to think long and hard about which curriculum to go with.

Several reason why we decided to go with Sonlight:-

One, it’s a Christian company and that’s the foundation of the books and curriculum they choose and plan. Two, they are very big on reading. They believe that children learn best through reading good books, not just textbooks. Hurray for that! Three, they include most subjects e.g language arts, history, science and they recommend third party Math curriculum. Pretty comprehensive. James was quite insistent on us trying to use a complete curriculum so that I don’t have to spent so much time planning and figuring out what to do in our first year of homeschooling. So nice. Four, great support and internet community. Very impt since we’re away. I had a real good experience with their customer support. And lastly, they give a 25% discount to missionaries and hurray to YWAM because all I needed to do was mention YWAM and immediately I got a discount, without even needing to give any proof! So it cost us about S$400 including shipping from the US. I think that’s pretty good considering the amount we needed to pay if we sent Sophie to nursery. Plus they are such great books that we can use in the future.

Next, I deliberated a long and hard over whether to get the P3/4 or the P4/5. The former is for 3-4 year olds and the latter for 4-5 year olds. I "browsed" the books through Amazon and decided on P3/4 instead. I was really tempted to go for P4/5 because being the kiasu Singaporean, I wanted to move one standard above where Sophie was at so that she can grow into it. And P4/5 also come with ABC learning books, readers, some interesting science books and 4 IQ building books plus a year-long curriculum all planned out. Super tempting! However the Read-Aloud books were, I feel, far too difficult for Sophie to sit through. Quite a few of them were Chapter books. I think at 3, that’s a bit too much.

SOOOOOOO, I decided, we’ll do well with the P3/4 read alouds. I prefer that Sophie doesn’t get put off reading and that she enjoys the books. There is a social studies one (Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day), science related books (Our Animal Friends At Maple Hill Farm and A Flip Flap book on Body from Usborne), a couple of sorting and puzzle toys. P3/4 doesn’t come with a year-long weekly curriculum, only a 3 trimester reading list with suggested activities, a little like Before Five In A Row. But it’s great coz with our schedules, I can be a bit more flexible.

For learning to read, Math and Chinese, we’ll just supplement with some workbooks. Btw, Popular back home is great for these pre-school workbooks. We’ve got one for Math and a Chinese. Btw, these Chinese workbooks should come with Pinyin for the instructions. Got me there man! I am also planning to buy Reading Made Easy, comes highly recommended.

We’re all set for the year! Sophie’s been asking to read the books ALL THE TIME!

Anyways I think that whether we homeschool or not, the reading list from Sonlight for each grade is still a great reference for books to borrow from the library/buy for our kids. Btw, P3/4 also came with a story book published by Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF) on a missionary’s experience! How cool is that!

So if you are looking for good books to buy, do take a look at the Sonlight list first. Another good book list is from the next step up from Before Five in A Row called Five in A Row.

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Aiyo so cute! James found it on the base, a couple of houses down from our place.

Sophie was careful not to go too close in case it runs away so we looked from a bit further away. She learnt that from the book Play With Me where the little girl in the story tried to catch the wild animals but they all ran away but when she sat still, they all came to "play with her" and sat by her.

I’ve been wanting to blog about this for the longest time. Christmas is a great time to gift children with bibles.

I’ve been looking for a bible for Sophie. We started with The Rhyme Bible Storybook (For Toddlers). It served us really well. It has 4 lines per page and it rhymes! Really a joy to read. Many times Sophie memorized the stories and read it back to me. But funny how she doesn’t like some stories and she will choose her fav. Guess what are her favs? Her top three:The parable of the sower (can’t figure why), birth of Jesus (coz got baby), Jonah (always a good story to teach her about obedience! I think she likes it coz of big fish). Oh… and she likes the story about the boy with 5 loaves and 2 fish (coz got little boy who gave to Jesus).

But she’s now 3 and for non-biblical books, she’s into long stories so I figured she can do that for the bible too. My ideal children’s bible is the NIV in full form with pictures for every chapter but of course it’ll be too big a book! Sigh…

I finally found one that I like a lot. It’s the Read & Know Bible (Publisher - Lion UK). It’s meant for older kids I think. But it’s cool because it has lots of details that toddler bibles do not have and the illustrations is more realistic. Yet it is pretty readable for a 3-4 year old who like books. It’s got mini bible encyclopedia pages with pictures of crops in bible times, the temple, etc. It really helps to open Sophie’s eyes to biblical times. It’s a huge jump from The Rhyme Bible but so far she loves it coz she is really into details and asks far too many questions. But most times it’s too much to read so I skim and just let her look at the pictures. Sometimes when I’m lazy, I switch back to The Rhyme Bible and it is interesting to note how she can link the stories between the two books. Oh yes and how cool that the author’s name is also Sophie.

The best part about this bible is that I learn a lot too and it tells a lot about the character of God through the narration. It doesn’t just tell a story but it gives you an idea about how God feels too and it’s pretty accurate. We’ve had this book for about a month now and I think Sophie’s understanding of who God is is actually growing!

Her godparents gave her the Sprout Bible which coincidentally I bought her when she was a wee baby just coz I was at SKS and I can’t resist buying books at SKS. But I didn’t bring it with us to NZ coz we just had too many things. So it was great when it came thru the mail for her birthday! I really like this one too because the stories are short, illustrations are GREAT and it has reflection questions for the kids at the end of every story. Sophie is at the age where she does think about these things and I find the questions very effective to get her to think deeper. We brought it with us to Christchurch. (Thank you godpa n godma! Great buy!)

Updated as of 17 Dec, Wed (I’m done! We’ll keep the rest of the toys! Let me know if you want to loan them.)

We’re selling off Sophie’s pre-loved toys and books over the next few days. I will keep updating this list so keep coming back to look for new items for sale. Everything is going at at least 50% off. Do click thru the links to see what they look like. Most of them are in 90% perfect condition, some even come with original boxes but none are brand new.

TO BUY: If you are keen to buy, pls leave a comment with your email add. Self Collect at Holland Village, West.

TO BORROW FOR FREE: If you have my number on your handphone means you are a friend, you are more than welcome to loan any of the items below for at least 6mths. Pls call or sms me directly.

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1. Madeline
Sophie loves Madeline (er… as a result of my influence of course. :)). She’s been reading Madeline books and watching the cartoon (from iTunes). We’ve got Madeline’s Rescue (Borders) and Madeline’s Christmas (Books Actually). Madeline is like a girl hero - she’s the smart one that always saves everyone! And of course she’s french. I love hearing her speak.

2. The Rhyme Bible Storybook
This is a must read every night. We’ve been reading it so much to Soph that she is now choosing which ones she likes to read again. Her fav stories are Zacchaeus who climbed up the tree to see Jesus, Jesus told the disciples to throw the nets into the sea and they had a big catch, Noah and the boat. We like this coz every story rhymes! Very cool to read. We got this from Angie’s online bookstore.

3. Ready, Set, Brush
James’ auntie got this from Borders for Sophie for her birthday. It’s REALLY cool - it’s a Sesame St book that is a pop up book, kinda "interactive" where you can brush the character’s teeth etc. It was a great book to encourage Sophie to brush her teeth.

We went to watch The Very Hungry Caterpillar & Other Eric Carle Favourites by the Mermaid Theatre from Nova Scotia, Canada (check this link for the video). It was staged at Victoria Theatre.

Eric Carle is one of Sophie’s fav artist and author so she had no problems settling in. She was nicely propped up on two booster cushions and sat on her own throughout the show. The puppeteers were REALLY good. The show was almost an hr long, not sure I was so captivated I didn’t really know what time it was when it ended. They showed The Little Cloud, The Mixed Up Chameleon and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. All of which Sophie has read except the first one.

I really enjoy watching these shows where kids are the main audience because they are SO spontaneous! It gets really noisy thru the show when they start shouting out the names of the animals but so fun!

Some time ago I mentioned that Wednesdays are Chinese Days at our home.

We used to just read books and listen to CDs and attempt to speak (argh!). But since I bought a set of flash cards, I’m planning to revolve the activities around the topics from the set of flash cards (Tots Can Read - in English and Mandarin). I really like this set coz it’s big and comes in booklets too (blind can see kinda big, which means I can’t lose them!), it’s got the words and pictures separated so it helps the kiddos to recognise the words, and it comes with Hanyu Pinyin. Bit costly but can look around for second hands. The English set is a bit sad tho - instead of saying Older Brother, Younger Sister, it reads Big Brother, Little Sister. Argh. Oh wells.

This week we did Jia Ting (Family) and Shen Ti (Body).

Using paper plates and coloured foam from Popular, I cut out face parts for Soph to stick on three faces - Dad, Mum and Baby. Ok… the faces are not very different but….. so funny lah… hee… I had fun cutting out the parts the night before. It really helped to emphasize the names of the facial parts coz I had to keep repeating for her to pick up the right ones to stick on.

After she was done with the faces (which she totally enjoyed!), I did the rest of it while she did something else. I made a house to stick the faces on and stuck on the words.

Here’s the end result! (Oh… Ignore the little play dough on the side, I didn’t even realise it was there when I took the picture until blogging! Soph must have added that in later! Hahah… )

Top Left: At Borders reading with Daddy

Top Right: Reading at lunch. She loves this book although we got it for Evan. If she turns out to be a bookworm, it’ll seriously be my fault.

Bottom Left: Checking out the canal. Pretty nice lah even though it’s a canal.

Bottom Right: Sunset Way

I love the weekend. That’s when we have James all to ourselves.

Yesterday we had a lazy Saturday doing our favourite things - bookshop (Borders great sale at 45% off w the coupon & card), leisure lunch, Macshop, lazy around at home and then early dinner at quiet places.

James was so sweet. He spent the morning reading to Sophie while I scoured around for good buys. After that, we had lunch and then I put Sophie to nap in the sling (Yes! I dug out our old red sling to give it a try) and it worked. She was asleep in a few minutes. But I couldn’t walk around too much, too heavy, I need to figure out how it works. We need to try this in prep for our aus trip coz we forsee Sophie’s not going to be able to fit into the baby bjorn. While Sophie napped, James happily combed thru the Macshop and I rested.

We got home and Sophie continued napping on me. I slept together with her on top of me for almost another 30 mins before she woke up! Nice!

We had dinner at the revamped Sunset Way. It’s been a while since it has been redone with restaurants like a mini Holland Village. But we’ve never been even though it’s so near to us! We like it coz it’s quiet, it’s close to a playground and near the canal where we saw many people doing their evening jogs and exercise. We liked the vibe - down to earth and casual. A great alternative to overcrowded and too hip Holland V.

I’m serious. That’s the name of the book - Let’s Sticker & Paste! I think they need some help with their English. These Kumon people.

Anyways but we’re really enjoying this book coz it’s so idiot proof and so systematic coz I’m so not systematic. Like I said in my previous post, it’s extremely helpful during that 3-5pm timeslot where nothing seems to go thru my mind except "I need sleep, I need sleep!"

Ok, how does the book work?

To understand, see the above pictures from left to right. The first few pages comes with stickers that the kids can stick according to themes. It gets harder in the next few pages where you have to stick for example, a orange triangle on the middle of the carrot in the right place. And then, it gets harder when you need to cut up the missing piece, let your kid put glue on it and stick it onto the right space. It’s great to develop their pasting skills and concentration.

Cons?

- The thing about this is that I need to sit right next to Sophie to do it with her. It’s not one of those things that I can just leave her and she can do it by herself.

- The other thing is these books don’t come cheap. It costs almost $10 per book, only makes sense if you’ve got a discount of some sort which we did.

- Oh and one more thing, my itchy hands keep wanting to make sure she’s got it right, which is not really the main point. But one thing I realised is that Sophie’s got quite a good spatial sense (not sure if I got the word right) as in she can pretty much spread out her stickers and not paste them too close or over each other and she knows where most of the stickers go.

All in all, it’s quite fun and you can go thru it pretty easily. There’s even a Book 2. Have fun!

Our collection of Chinese stuff for Sophie

Top Left: Pre school readers from Popular, published in Malaysia

Top Right: James’ books from ancient of days

Bottom Left: Cds with Chinese sunday school songs from my MIL

Bottom Right: James’ books which my MIL transformed into flash cards

I had almost 10 years of Chinese language lessons in school plus I had tuition (outside help) for almost just as long….. BUT BUT BUT……………….. I’m having real difficulty reading Sophie’s pre school Chinese readers and I really can’t catch the Chinese songs I play for her!

Anyways… I thought I’ll blog about this coz I heard her say this today

"Mummy, I want to drink he shui!"

What on earth is "he shui" i was thinking? I kept asking her to repeat until I finally realised she said "he shui" as in drink water in Chinese. She’s totally mixing up her languages! So funny! That prob explains why I’ve been having difficulty understanding what she’s saying recently.

See… Wednesdays are Speak Chinese days for Sophie and I. Not that we speak Chinese a lot. It’s precisely because we don’t that’s why I needed to fix a day to remind myself to speak whatever broken Chinese I can to her.

What’s Speak Chinese Day?

We
- play the Chinese Cds (very ching chiong but very good for Sophie)
- read Chinese books and flash cards
- attempt to give commands and communicate in Chinese

It’s hilarious sometimes. I’ll say

"Ling Jing (her Chinese name), ni yao bu yao he shui?" (Sophie, would you like to drink water?)

And she says

"Yes!"

She totally understands me but she always replies in English! And it’ll go to and fro. She’ll speak to me in English and I’ll speak to her in Chinese.

I bought a couple of Chinese readers from Popular that has Hanyu Pinyin and only one sentence per page. Plus we have some flash cards from James’ old books. Yes! My mil kept them. She cut them up and laminated them! I’m so glad she’s a chinese kindy teacher.

I really hope Sophie’ll grow to enjoy the language as I am now, finally.

I’m not big on animals BUT since going to the Animal Resort & Zoo with Sophie and friends plus James getting his hands dirty with Crystal Red Shrimps, I find myself becoming more curious. Ok I must admit it’s still on an intellectual level (so interesting!), not emotional at all, I still jump when a dog brushes past my legs. Hiak

My fears aside, I’m keen to get Sophie excited about animals! How?

1. BOOKS

Recently, armed with Borders discount coupons (30%! plus 10% on the preferred card = 40% off! Yipee!), I bought Sophie two books related to animals - First Encyclopedia of Animals by The Usborne and Madeline Loves Animals.

The first book is more for me. Haha. But Sophie has taken to it! She loves pointing to the animals and asking what’s this? And I love it coz it gives the correct names for the animals e.g it’s not just an eel, it’s a Gulper eel or it’s not just a shark, it’s a basking shark. Cool beans! And I read the details just for fun to her e.g. Snails have a hard shell they can curl up in. This protects their bodies from enemies etc.

The second book is so funny! I loved Madeline as a kid. Madeline is a cheeky but smart little girl who lives in a boarding house. In this book, she goes around saying hi to the butterfly, throws bread for the birds etc. And one sentence across two pages! Great!

2. REAL FISH

We got Sophie a fish tank on impulse! James woke up on Sat and decided let’s go fish shopping. Sophie got to choose some guppies and some other small fish which I’ve forgotten the names of.

3. CRAFT

We made ourselves a little play aquarium. I had stocked up some craft materials at the recent Popular sale - scissors, glue, ice cream sticks, construction paper, cardboard paper, foam etc.

We cut out fish from coloured foam and mounted and glued them on coloured ice cream sticks. Next we cut out the shape of water from foam and mounted and glued them on a construction paper. Simple! Sophie got to play with the glue and learnt to stick stuff together. She could pretend to move the fish and play.

But tt was a mess coz the parts of the fish were so small, it kept falling apart. And Sophie kept wanting to play with them before the glue dried. In the end, we were left with 2 fish. We started off with 4! Haha.

Sophie has a lot of books but there are a few that she loves and we have to read it to her a few times a day. Sometimes we go through this entire pile just before bedtime. I thought I’ll share them and also link them to a proper review.

At 18mths, she loves the following books, in no particular order:-

1. Veggie Tales: i Can! And So Can You! (4 Book Set)
Veggie Tales is a Christian based series. We borrowed a VCD for her to watch and she loved it! Kel n JY got her a set of cut out books of all the veggie tales characters. JY was going to Koorong and asked me to choose some books for Sophie. I chose this coz it’s similar to her Sesame’s Street set and she loved that. What’s more, this set tells her how fearfully and wonderfully God has made her and how special she is. I love that! Btw, the VCDs are great too! They are SO FUNNY! She doesn’t get the jokes lah but it’s very funny for me. Hahaha… I watch it too.

2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See and My First Book of Food by Eric Carle
This man is a genius. We love his books. They are so good that Sophie’s got them memorised. In fact, just after a week of reading Brown Bear, she’s memorised the sequence of the animals! That’s how well done the book is. Kids are SO amazing! They just get it. Once Borders has that 40% off coupon, I’m getting more!

3. Polite Elephant by Richard Scarry
I got this in Borders, KL when Sophie was about 3mths old because I would like her to be gentle and polite. However, the book has more than 3 sentences on each page. It’s a real story. That’s quite a bit for a 18 mth old. But the storyline is great and it’s got lovely Richard Scarry illustrations. Sophie only took to it a few months back and she’s been asking for it everyday since.

4. Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann
I think this is Sophie’s FAVOURITE book in this season. She always laughs and giggle at the right parts and she’ll even read to herself and makes the appropriate sounds at the right time. Hee… the book hardly has any words so I read it with a little tune and dramatised it with my own sounds. Now we even play a little game to spot the flyaway balloon - if you notice, there’s a balloon on every page.

5. Sesame’s Street Book Set
This was given by Godma. Sophie loves it! It’s got simple rhyme and all her favourite characters.

6. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
This is prob every child’s fav book although we don’t get it. It’s so simple but they love it. Now we also play spot the mouse.

7. Wheels on the Bus from the Ladybird series
Sophie calls this book - "wheels round and round". It’s got 5 rhymes that we can sing along to and do actions. She loves it.

8. Maisy’s Big Flap Book
It’s got 36 flaps! Sophie got this as a present for her 1st birthday. She enjoys opening the flaps and saying hi.

9. Happy Birthday Moon
This is a really long story. It’s a funny and heartwarming story about how a bear hears his own echo and thinks that the moon is talking to him. I’m so happy I found the book on Angie’s online store! I bought a VCD called "Good Night Gorilla and more bedtime stories" by Scholastic Video Collection. There are 4 animated stories. This is available at Popular Book store. One of the stories was Happy Birthday Moon. I saw the book on Angie’s site and decided to buy it. I didn’t realise that the story was so long! But the first time I read it to Sophie, she made me read it 3 times! Again! Again!