Weekly round up #2

Holiday season will end very soon. I have to start preparing myself for a new school year. (and my children's school year too). Have been wondering how I am going to keep this blog going, as I need to get ready to face another busy year. I expect next year to be more challenging, as I am taking more exam classes. I have not taught exam classes for 3 years.
Another challenge is on balancing work with family, as I need to keep up with Joy's ever increasing learning needs. As she grows older, I have more things on my list, to teach and to check off. She is still wearing pampers at night. (feeling much ashamed about this), she still needs to work on taking off and wearing her own clothes. So far, she could only manage to take off her pants and wear it without help. And she really need to learn to feed herself. She can't use the spoon properly yet, let alone to feed herself. My MIL is still feeding her IF she is around during meal times. Me? Its half force and half feed. (or she will never get anything into her mouth.) Did I mention that she is very thin? Definitely not genetics.
She needs to learn to take care of her own school bag and her books and things. (her cute classmates and nice teachers always help her and she never worried about her bag when its time to go home.) Not that she ever worried about it. She would have gone home without even realizing that her bag is still in school. - and she never even glanced at her bag at home!
These are only some of the long list of goals I have for her... (Apart from opening her mouth and Talk and Communicate with us. - This is the first on the list, marked with a big red star!!!)
As Jay is going to play school next year, I am ready to embrace the joys of having him enjoying school and telling me all about it. Sooooo missed it with Joy. At the same time, I still have to be careful with my parenting skills, as not to make Jay feel left out, when I need to pay more attention to Joy. Please pray for me.

So, I thought, perhaps I'll just update this blog weekly or biweekly of what is happening around here. I'll have to get myself reorganized first. But since blogging have a therapeutic effect on me, I will try my best not to neglect it.

 Here is what the kids are doing this week.

One of the few moments when they play together NICELY. Joy is trying the shapes puzzles, with Jay looking  on.  I did not manage to take the photos of them playing the piano together. They look so sweet together.

One of the free shapes puzzles apps.

Angry Bird. Ironic. I've promised myself not to have these birds into my house. But I caved.  The kids loved them. So I printed this clip card from 1+1+1=1. But I used reusable stickers for this. I just write the numbers 1 - 6 on each of these cute froggie memo stickers and they stick on the correct birds. They both got this right on the first try. And has been asking for it a few more times.

Joy came home from school with this.  It's supposed  to be made by her, but I doubt it. Sorry, girl.
She loved it and wont take it off or even let little brother touch it. He is so envious.

So, daddy came to the rescue. They made a 'clown' hat together, with shapes I cut  from various construction papers.  He still needs help with the pasting. he is not comfortable with the sticky feel from the glue.

Daddy helping Joy hand over hand to paste.

Then, its the sister's turn to be envious. She threw hers on the floor and went after Jay's. She wanted daddy to  modify hers.  She picked up hers and handed it to daddy when daddy asked her to do so, so that he can modify it for her.

Which one is nicer? Hubby and Jay made the one on the left. He looks like a clown wearing it. Go figure. And the other one is after modification. Not much, but Joy chose the shapes she wanted to add on.

from another angle.

Other than these, Jay has regularly asked to do his 'workbook' and Joy's too. So I need to change the content very often. We are finished with the letter L. He recognized the letter and found various places with the letter, plus the vocabularies I introduced - ladder, lion, lamb and leaf. We are going to letter T next. It will be his favourite - train. By the way, we made a big train spelling his name. He can 'almost' get the spelling right. He needs more practice, so I hung the train above the TV. He gets to see it everyday, and practice. 

On the other hand, Joy needs more time to warm up to the 'workbook'. She still prefers the hands on materials instead of the marker.