Ilyasak's reading journey

Ilyasak has ventured into quite a bit of Roald Dahl's books. I am so glad that he could now read thicker books with many words on a page. Although, he still needs someone to guide him along every page just to ensure that he has the correct pronunciation as well as to understand the meaning of certain words which were difficult for him to comprehend. He has yet to master the art of reading without putting a bookmark on every line so as to reduce his tendency to skip a line. It can be quite tiring for me to actually to give my fullest attention (checking on every single word) at each reading session but nevertheless I am very happy to do that.
To date, he had completed, 'The enormous crocodile', The minpins'( he hated this book actually), 'The giraffe, the pelly and me' ( it's boring in his opinion), 'The twits' ( he adores this book), 'Esio trot' ( another book which he really adores) and 'The fantastic Mr Fox ( a 'so-so' book to him).
These are all books with pages less than 130 pages so they are actually short novels with quite a fair bit of pictures to aid young readers like him along.
His current read is 'James and the giant peach'. He is into the 5th chapter and I must say that this book will the toughest of what he has read so far because there are now fewer pictures and about 141 pages. Thankfully, the plot of the story is interesting unlike 'The minpins' and 'The giraffe, the pelly and me'.
Though I foresee that this journey (rowing 'James and the giant peach') will be quite difficult but we will still strive to ride through the book and complete it and insya Allah we will get there.

A dish whipped out in 30 minutes

I did this simple dish sometime last month which is a fairly simple all-in-one dish- stir fry bee hoon.
We ( Balqis and I) rushed home after our library trip during Ilyasak's time in school. I was lucky because the time was extended to 1 pm instead of the usual 12 pm because he had a field trip to the science centre which warrant us an extra hour.
Nevertheless, we got back at 12.30 pm and immediately headed to the kitchen to fry the noodles. All the stir frying took me less than 30 minutes. Fine! I cheated a bit, I boiled the beef strips and soften the bee hoon before we left for the library.
Well, it was still an achievement to me considering that I usually spend quite a lot of time in the kitchen- yeah, I worked like a tortoise when it comes to cooking and cleaning. 

Past the 3km mark

Yeay!! Made it past the 3 km mark and finally stopped at 3.2km at 26 minutes. I know it's not a big deal to some but it definitely is to me. I used to think that I will faint or collapse on the threadmill if I ever exceeded 2km. So here is to many more future runs on the threadmill. Certainly making full use of the 'bomb' I spend on it.

Keeping fit + an impulsive buy

I started exercising quite regularly after Balqis turned a year and a half. Suddenly, it dawned upon me that I should do something about my health since I hit the big 30 and also constantly reading or hearing about people in their early 30s getting 'stroke'. That is enough to scare me. I start watching my diet and in checking what goes into my mouth. I stopped indulging in my prata, thosai and 'nasi campur' fixes and anything in the name of unhealthy food. I reduced my habit of dining out during breakfast on a weekend. I stopped scooping biryani onto my plate during weddings and functions. The maximum biryani which goes into my mouth will just be 2 spoonfuls.
With all these reasons, I made an impulsive buy a week before ramadhan. I bought a threadmill! It took me quite a while to get over the fact that I made an impulsive buy over something which cost me above $1500 and its not even a Gucci bag which u dreamt if day and night. I must be out of my mind... but the hubby coaxed me that its my health investment considering that its quite difficult for me to find the time to go jogging outdoors since the free time that I have usually is at 4 pm daily when the kids are napping. That would be the time when 'mr sun' will be shining ever blazingly and I can't be leaving them unattended while I go jog.
Therefore now, with my threadmill position right in the master bedroom, I can jog anytime I want. All I need is a mere 25 minutes and I am done. I don't need to get properly dressed and all. No excuses for not exercising.
To date, I have not treated it like a 'white elephant' and has been making good use of it. So here is to many more runs on the threadmill and targeting to hit 3 km.

Picking Arabic again

Recently, I made the decision to pick up Arabic again. After much research on some centres which offer the language, I picked one which charged reasonable monthly fees. Coincidentally, this centre was recommended by my ex-collegue and and my bestfriend. It was also the centre which my mom took her Arabic many years back. Such a coincidence isn't it? My mom was motivated to pick it up again when I told her that I had already signed up for the course and my bestfriend signed up with me for the course as well. Hopefully, I have the 'istiqamah' to stay on long in this class.
I had 4 classes so far and it had went on well, and am motivated to even revise the stuff which was taught. I even taught Ilyasak and Balqis what I learned so they pick up some basic Arabic too. I planned to research some Arabic learning materials suitable for kids also. I really hope the 'fire' to learn and teach my kids stay on for long till we achieve a certain level insya Allah.

Botanic Gardens

Ever since, I took both Ilyasak and Balqis to Botanic Gardens recently, Balqis has taken a special love for this place. All because, she was surrounded by some 30 ducks which fascinated her to bits. Probably, because its a rare chance to come up close and personal to those duckies in an urban country like Singapore where children grow up in concrete buildings instead of 'kampong' houses.
She spend most of her time interacting with the duckies instead of scooting on her scooter like her brother. We saw a few children feeding the duckies despite the signage of 'no feeding of the animals'.
Anyhow, we plan to visit Botanic Gardens again on another weekday hopefully to fight the weekend crowd.

Balqis scoot!

My girl can finally scoot on the 2 wheeler skate scooter. Yeay! At 3 years 5 months, I must say that its an achievement worthy of an applaud. It's true when experts said that early exposure to a certain skill can do wonders. All I did was just gave her ilyasak's old two wheeler for her to play but that was when she was 2 and a half years. She ended up pushing it around and was not very keen to scoot.
A few weeks back, she asked to be given the skate scooter to play (ilyasak 's old scooter -the 3 wheeler was long gone and so she borrowed his current scooter). I did and she scooted a bit but again more of her pushing the scooter around.
Just four days ago, we decided to scoot at Botanic Gardens but made a trip to Vivocity instead since Balqis had no scooter. We scouted for a reasonable priced scooter hoping to find one reasonably priced. It was a gleaming red sleek scooter just like the brothers only with the wheels a tad smaller at a steal. It was only $29.90- how great is that! She was happy and so was I.
Both of them scooted in the open area just outside Vivocity and also ventured at Sentosa's board walk (although no scooting is allowed). They had so much fun scooting around and we even contemplate to enter Sentosa if not for the blazing sun.
Balqis had been scooting since then.

The lack of Ilyasak's pictures was simply because that it is almost impossible to get a good shot of him nowadays. He moved so fast that we had a difficult time capturing pictures of him.

Kitchen gadget

I have always been a fan of kitchen gadgets. I am all for spending that extra bit of cash if it could speed up my tasks in the kitchen.
Recently, bought an apple corer and it has been of a great help to me although it requires more strength when I need to wedge it through the centre of the apple. Once, the wedging is done, cutting the apple will be such a breeze.

Alphabet stamps

This is one of my great buys- the alphabet stamps. It was on 20% discount at Toys'r'us and I just had to purchase it. It has been of great use to us thus far.
It helps Balqis with her spelling and phonics since she is not able to write yet.
The stamps are used by Ilyasak when he wants to take a break from writing. Yes, he is not so thrill as yet when it comes to any activity which requires writing (something which I need to work on urgently since his handwriting is far from legible and the fact that he is going to primary 1 next year is enough to make my heart palpitates)
It's for my use too if I need to create some cards or do some scrabooking stuff.
Best of all, it's made of wood which guarantees long lasting usage through generations definitely and gives it a vintage look.

Ramadhan activity: playdough mats

Fished this idea out from some of the homeschooling blog but I tweak it to be in tune to Ramadhan. An activity when they can fill out their time and mummy can space out while they are at it. However, the downside of this activity is that it creates quite a fair bit of mess from the bits and pieces of the dough. It gets frustrating when the bits and pieces of dough gets stick on d the floor. Well, I don't intend for this activity to be one of our regulars. I just hate the mess!

The piece above is Ilyasak's- the boy simply did not have the patience to sit through and fill up the intricate details of the mosque. He was just happy to plonk all the blob of play dough to the mat and be done with it.

The piece above is Balqis'- she had a bit more patience to carefully fill up the entire mat. It is probably because girls tend to have more patience and are more meticulous in nature.

Acrylic 'firefly' painting

We did this as part of the post activity after reading 'the lonely firefly'by Eric Carle.
One important note is to stay away from any kind of fabric that you do not wish to stain cause it ain't going to come off. Well, I did stain Balqis' quilt cover because silly me conduct the activity a tad too near her bed.
Nevertheless, we had fun on one of the ramadhan afternoons. I also discovered that acrylic paints produce such strong and vibrant colours as oppose to poster paints.

Peace 'no war'

One of those rare peace time when both the brother and sister were playing in peace without any shouting, pinching and pushing. I an so blessed if this moment can last for at least 15 minutes.
The picture was taken when both of them were enjoying one of the imaginative play using the completed Lego models. Sadly, this session lasted only 10 minutes before the sister came running and screaming to me with complains.

Malay spelling sans 'ejaan'

Ilyasak started his ejaan about a month ago and he has it fortnightly (thank god). I have been helping him to prepare for the spelling and it dawned upon it on its importance of getting the perfect spelling for those words tested. How useful are the words kentang (potato) and cacing (earthworm)? What is the likelihood of him using these words in his writing in future? Though I have no qualms about having spelling on high frequency words where a child needs them more for his writing rather than words of lesser importance.
It was pure torture for both Ilyasak and me because of the weak grip of the language. Blame it on me for the lack of practice on the language as oppose to English.
I do hope that he will pick up the fluency of speech in the language in school. In the mean time, I have to work more on improving his Malay and most of all to make him love the language.

Running shoes

The hubs bought a new pair of running shoes to replace my old ones. It's real pretty and definitely no excuse for me to not exercise.

Hokaido milk bread

Finally, I pulled out my bread maker which had gained the status of a 'white elephant' in the house. Made Hokkaido milk bread using this recipe. I had this big plan of making it into small buns but ended up baking it into a loaf instead simply because I wasn't familiar with the buttons on the bread maker. Nevertheless, it was edible and in fact tasty due with its subtle milky taste and soft texture.
However, I do need to invest in a good bread knife as the slices were pretty ugly when cut using the normal knife despite me using the 'sawing' method.

I got hooked in baking the milk bread that I baked another loaf ( still can't figure out how to do the bun style yet) just two days after my first attempt. It simple and fuss free because all you have to do is dump the whole load of ingredients into the bread maker, 'start' the machine and 3 hours later, you get a fresh loaf.

The down side of baking your own bread is that its shelf life is pretty short as compared to those commercially bought simply because of the absence of preservatives.

Lego plane

Another of his Lego creation with the help of the manual of course. Something about this piece which made me proud of him was that he attempted it with minimal help from us though it was not his first attempt. This Lego set was meant for children with a minimum age of seven and he is only five. I really hope his interest in Lego stays for long as honestly I did not want it to deviate to some computer games or TV. I am quite happy with his lack of interest in TV but he does request for his nightly bonding time with Mr iPad which I try to keep to a minimum.

A boat in the making

Abi wanted to create a boat from scratch. It sounded quite insane in the beginning and I thought that it would be just some plan which will be ditched.
Boy, was I so wrong, he actually carry out his little project and now his boat was almost 3/4 done. He plan to build it and powered it with a motor to turn it into somewhat a remote control powersed boat. It was his idea of his bonding session with Ilyasak.