A few months ago we bought Ryan a book from MPH called Zoo Animals. It only cost me RM16.90 and it’s really worth its value in terms of providing education and fun for all of us.

This book teaches about animals and there are plenty of them to learn about. We adults learned something from the book too. We also discovered a fun part to this book.

There’s actually a little “treasure hunting” in this book. Illustrations of animals crowd the pages of the book and on each, the author slips in a little surprise by putting in things that do not belong and we’ll have to find them.

You’ll have to find hidden dinosaurs amongst zoo animals, flying objects amidst metal buildings by the park, mammals mixed up in aqua life, etc.

Some of them are easy enough to find at a glance, so Ryan can easily spot them too. Some are more difficult, even for adults to spot them, it requires lots of patience.

Nevertheless, we are still having fun with the book as we have yet to find everything we need to. Am thinking of going back to the book store to see if they have more of the same series. I think I’m more hooked on the treasure hunt than Ryan is!

Try out this book. And if I find more I’ll let you know again

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Ryan loves watching Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, the show about a little Chinese girl named Kai-Lan and her grandpa and friends. Actually I encourage him to watch it too because the show teaches children some basic Mandarin words one episode at a time. The songs are pretty catchy and fun too and he’s shown quite a bit of interest in learning them and even wants to find Ni Hao, Kai-Lan books to read.

Unfortunately, the show only starts at 10.30am on weekdays on Nickelodeon. It’s a bit too late for him to catch as we have to send him to the babysitter’s place so that we can get on with work. At the babysitter’s place, there’s no Nickelodeon channel for him so he tends to miss this show.

The only solution I thought of is to get him some Ni Hao, Kai-Lan DVDs so that he can watch them anytime he wants. The challenge is that I don’t see this show being sold at shops that offer lots of other children’s educational cartoons.

Anyone knows where to get this show on VCD or DVD in Malaysia? In a desperate attempt, I decided to buy from Amazon.com but upon check out I was informed that those particular items I ordered cannot be sent to Malaysia. How disappointing. So I don’t know where else to find it.

Hopefully someone knows and can share with me here…please leave me your comments here if you have the info. Much, much appreciate Love and thanks from Ryan and us.

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I spent the entire day away today, only coming home just after 5pm to spend the evening with Ryan. Though I feel some guilt sometimes for being away on weekends, but I know that taking this weekend away to learn something new and valuable is worth the sacrifice.

I attended a workshop that continues for another full day tomorrow. In this workshop, I learned about how we use the brain to our advantage. Although this workshop is for my work purpose, I found that it can be so easily applied to raising children too. And children will definitely have much to gain being trained from young to use their brain power to develop them into having a mindset that’s empowering.

So I’m going to implement it right away and make full use of it with Ryan. See, it really was a weekend well spent for the long term gains I get out of it.

I have to go to bed soon as we start again early tomorrow morning with the next session of the training. Don’t want to miss the start of it as we’re doing some interesting experiments first thing we get there. I’m quite tired out from the whole day sitting there and learning, so I think I’ll pamper myself with a sleeping mask tonight to relax. But before that, I need to get started on my new acne treatments tonight too. Don’t know why I’m breaking out slightly around my nose and inner cheek area.

Looking forward to yet another great day of learning tomorrow, not to mention practicing it too!

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I was talking to Ryan’s babysitter about some schools that we preferred over others and our intention to send Ryan there in the future. She was previously a teacher and she was telling us how some parents found difficulties in getting their children to their preferred schools.

She told me a story about how a parent she knew donated some school furniture like desks and chairs to get goodwill from the school and finally managed to get their children in there. Wow! Is that really what people have to do these days to get into good schools?

Have you heard of any similar stories about gaining entries into schools?

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Ryan is going to turn 3 in a few months and up to now, he’s never really been socialising much with other kids. He does play with adults and older children, but never kids at his age.

We’re thinking of sending him to play school next year but before that, I thought it might help to send him to some interactive sessions like Gymboree to get him used to the idea of mixing around and learning together.

Anyone has any thoughts on this? I haven’t checked out what are the options of such classes for kids his age, I only know and heard of Gymboree. Any similar ones which you highly recommend?

We’re also trying to encourage Ryan to pick up Mandarin language. He speaks only English now and doesn’t quite want to learn Mandarin even when the babysitter tries to teach him a few words here and there. I suppose he finds it a bit of an alien language after being exposed to only one language so far. So if there are some of these classes where kids are also encouraged to pick up a second language, that’ll be great for him too. Or at least be exposed to other kids who speak Mandarin so that he will want to learn the language and communicate with his new friends.

How fast kids grow these days…I can’t believe it’s been 3 years since he came along. From the days this blog talked about him as a baby, today I’m talking about education and school already.

It won’t be long before I start talking about college and university too, huh? But that’s looking too far forward…by then not sure whether this mummy still has the stamina to blog, more likely being online to search for wrinkle cream write-ups like prototype 37c reviews. Haha!

But I’m sure I’ll have a blast of a time being a mummy all through the stages of “growing pains”…

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