Children were coloring picture of a girl in a sari.  My conversation began when the little girl was coloring the picture.

Me   :  Do you have sari at home?

Girl  :  Yes.

Me   :  That is very nice.  Who bought you the sarree?

Girl  :  My daddy bought.

Me   :  Can I borrow your sari for the party next week?  (I asked jokingly)

Girl  :  I buy you a sari because you are a nice girl!

I’m so touched because the little girl has graded me as ‘nice girl’!!  That’s a credit from a child!  It’s motivating too!

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Objective of making Christmas greeting card

• Nurture our child’s family values
• Teach our child to express gratitude and love towards his family and friends
• Teach our child the meaning of Christmas
• Occupy our child’s time in a meaningful activity
• Reinforce our child’s fine motor control such as cutting with scissors, pasting etc.

Our Christmas card making session begins

Prepare the materials that we need for the card making session.

• Red colored A4 size cardboard paper
• Black colored paper
• green and silver shining wrapping paper
• glue
• scissors
• foam tape
• ice-cream stick
• Liquid paper/correction pen

When you select wrapping paper, do ensure that the paper quality is thicker.  The thicker paper enable a child to have better control when he does cutting or pasting.

Fold the red A4 cardboard into half.  Then take out the black paper and draw a big triangle shape (about 11cm height x 13cm width) to make a Christmas tree shape.  Inside the triangle, use a pencil to draw few smaller triangles.  If your child is able to handle scissors well,  then get him to cut along the outline of the big triangle.  He may reinforce his cutting skills on straight lines.

Take out the green and silver wrapping papers.  Draw few small triangles (3.5cm height x 4cm width).  Again, you may ask your child to cut it out along the straight lines.  Paste the small triangles onto the black paper accordingly.  The triangle boxes that you have drawn earlier is set to be a guideline for the child so that he knows that he need to paste inside each box.  Let him choose the colors to put inside the boxes.  I’m sure he has his own imagination of Christmas tree!

Paste some foam tapes at the back of the big triangle.  Leave it one side first.  Prepare an ice-cream stick.  Put some glue on the stick and past it on the red folded cardboard.  The ice-cream stick is to make the tree trunk for the colorful Christmas tree.

Ask your child to peal off the foam tape behind the triangle.  Paste the big triangle on top of the ice-cream stick.  Make sure you do not cover the whole stick!

Lets make some snow!  Ask your child to make the snow effect using a correction pen or liquid paper.  He just need to make some dots on the red card.  It’s fun because I’ll be imagining myself in the snow with my beautiful Christmas tree!  If you have a craft scissors, you may use it to cut the curvy shape at the side of the card.  If you don’t, we can just leave it as it is.

Turn on the Christmas songs.  Talk about what you going to plan for this coming Christmas - things to shop, things to decorate, places to visit, dinner for the family and so on.  Allow your child to give his opinion of ideas too!  It’s a best way to improve the communication and bonding between the adult and the child.

Let your child decide to whom he wants to send the Christmas card that he has just made.  Write few lines inside the card.  If your child still can’t write the letters, you may write with a pen, then get your child to use a colorful pen to trace the letters.  Send out the card!

Enjoy the process of the card making session.  While making a card, we also try to reinforce the child’s fine motor control, that’s why they are cutting, pasting and tracing involved.  We also ensure that our activity can help nurture our child’s development.

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Teacher or caregiver is also facing the same situation.  Moreover, she has to handle more than 1 child at the same time.  Taking care of other people’s child is huge responsibility because parents trust us that we are able to take good care of their child when they are away.  Due to the trust, we ensure that we deliver the service and provide the best for the children.  Taking care a group of children from different background is real challenging.  End of the day, you might see me with the kitty hairstyle in the picture above!  (smile!)

I found that we need to know how to distress ourselves from time to time especially we need to deal with children every day.  Moreover, most of us do not breathe properly.  Most of the time we do not breathe equally on both nostrils.  Therefore, oxygen and carbon dioxide are not transported properly within our body.  In long run, our body feels tired, stressed and getting weak without us realizing it due to the shallow breathe.

I have been practising Alternate Nostril Breathing lately.  It helps to restore our health in long run.  It only takes us 5 to 10 minutes every day to practice.  We can even do it together with our child.   The activity is healthy and fun.  We can encourage a better bonding with our child by doing the activity together.  At the same time, we indirectly creating an exercise regime with our child.

Benefits of Alternate Nostril Breathing for both adult and child

• increases lung capacity which enable those with respiratory illnesses such as asthma to heal
• promotes detoxification in our body system as it increases the exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen
• calms mind and reduces stress
• reduces emotional and nervous anxiety
• improves body immune system
• balance the breathing in both nostrils to stimulate logical thinking (left brain) and creative thinking (right brain).  This is very helpful for a child’s development

Steps of performing Alternate Nostril Breathing

1. Sit in a comfortable position with your spine straight.  If you are sitting on a chair, make sure your feet touch the floor.
2. Raise your right hand (or dominant hand) to your chest.  Tuck in your index, middle and ring fingers into your palm.  Straighten the thumb and the little finger.
3. Move your hand nearer to your nose.  Place the thumb on the right nostril and the little finger on the left nostril.
4. Close the right nostril with your thumb and inhale air through the left nostril.
5. Release the thumb and press the little finger on the left nostril.  Exhale the air through the right nostril.
6. Continue to press the little finger on the left nostril.  Inhale air through the right nostril.
7. Release the little finger while press the right nostril with the thumb.  Exhale air through the left nostril.  This is called one cycle.
8. Repeat steps (4) to (7) for 5 to 10 times.

Do you find it simple?  Practice it every day and you will notice a different.  When you are doing this, your child might just want to imitate you.  Therefore, it helps to nurture our child’s health in long run!

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Once I returned to my previous taught school in the afternoon about 3.00pm just for meeting, thus I went straight to the room and start doing my work, normally I came by at 1.30pm and take my lunch there as I’ll helped out with the after-school program till 5.00pm.

A little 2 ½ years old girl came by to say hello. I can see that she is making progress as her conversation skill improved. She used to repeat all things that you said to her, such as “Good morning, Erica!” Then she’ll reply “Good morning, Erica!” After several quiet minutes, she pat my shoulder and asked,” Ms. Goh, you don’t eat lunch today? Are you hungry? You want biscuits?” I was stunned. That feeling is sweet as her little care made me feel cherished.

I just realize that this little girl is so observant. I begin to recall that she is the one that say “hello, Ms. Goh!” and follow me all the way to the kitchen every afternoon and I’ll usually tell her, to return to her work that I’ll come back to her after I have my lunch.

Never belittle a 2 ½ years old that will in return showed you that you’ve yet much to learn from her to be observant and sensitive to show that you care.

Cheers!

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Materials for background

• painting paper
• sponge - cut into small square that easily hold by child
• poster colors - green and blue
• foam tape or glue
• wet cloth
• plastic table mat or newspaper
• scissors

Protect the table with a plastic table mat or newspaper.  Prepare a sponge and the poster colors.  Put a wet cloth at the side for wiping when necessary.  Get the child to sponge the color on the painting paper.  Sponge blue on top representing blue sky, while green at the bottom representing grass.  Children love sponging of colors!

Leave it dry for awhile under the fan or sun before we proceed to the next step.

Take out the house and tree that we have made earlier.  Put some glue or foam tape at the back of each shape.  Paste them accordingly on the sponged colored painting paper.  The work is done!

Talk to your child about the picture that he has formed.  He might tell you an exciting story out of his imagination by adding some strange characters such as dinosaur, robot etc.  You will adore your child’s creativity!  Treasure the quality time spending together with your child.  I bet both of you will enjoy the weekend together!

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From left to right : the names of the monkeys are “Hear No Evil” (covering ears), “Say No Evil” (covering mouth) and “See No Evil” (covering eyes).  What are they trying to tell us just by knowing their names?  They are trying to tell us to do good deeds in our every day life!

How can we relate these monkeys to our child’s behavior?  We serves them as reminder to our child that we need to do good deeds every day.  In fact, they remind us how to be a good role models to our little ones.  Some pointers :

• No gossips, don’t talk behind your friends back
• Always see good in everything and everyone
• Say good things to people
• Be polite and have good manners - say please, thank you, greeting etc.
• Helping others e.g. helping mummy to clean up room, helping friends to put back materials onto shelf etc.
• Respect others e.g. wait for turn, sharing of toys etc.
• Taking care of oneself e.g. clean up toys after use, brush teeth before sleep, feed own meal etc.
• Be responsible of own action
• Be honest

End of the session, you may do the action with your child in a form of game.  For example, when you say, “Say no evil”, both your child and you have to close the mouth with both hands.  The game is to remind them of what they have learn.

Talk about what are the good things that we can do at home, in school or in shopping mall.  Ask your child to give you some ideas.  Let him think about the questions and allow him to give you his answers.  This is to educate the child to be more creative instead of waiting for adults to give him answers all the time.  It also stimulate their intellectual development.  Some examples :

At home

• Help mummy set up dinner table
• clean up toys after play
• help daddy in car wash

In school

• do not push friends
• do not snatch from friends
• wait for turns
• listen to teacher’s instructions

Shopping mall

• do not play hide and seek
• do not follow stranger
• do not talk to stranger
• do not run far away from mummy or daddy

Write down what your child said in a piece of paper.  Get your child to thumb print on the corner to let him know that these are the rules that he needs practice.  Display the paper on the fridge or his room to remind him of the game that both of you have experienced together.  Make it fun!  Children learn from fun way.  Print out the 3 wise monkeys from internet and get your child to color them.  Make a paper puppet!  This will help reinforce the child’s memory on the lessons of three wise monkeys!  This is a very easy and fun way to nurture our child’s morality!

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Self-discipline develops by self-reliance.  It is acted out of the child’s free will instead of by force or demand by adults.  A child learns to obey a rule on his own will.  Self-discipline requires patience and time to be successfully cultivate in the child’s good habit or behavior.   It cannot be achieved instantly by scarring or forcing them through punishment or rewards.  A child who exhibit self-discipline is independent and matured because he knows the consequences of his own behavior or action.  Self-discipline too safe guard our child from bad influences and elements surrounding him in the environment.  Therefore, he decides his own behavior or action.  How can we encourage positive self-discipline?

We need to be role model to our child.  Our own behavior and action give a huge impact on the child.  The child “looks” at us all the time.  For instance, we throw rubbish on the floor instead in the dustbin, but we scold our child when he also did the same.  That’s not fair to the child, “Why adults throw on the floor and yet demand me to throw in the dustbin?”!  Sometimes, I see some adults don’t even bother to pick up the rubbish that their child throw on the floor and show a good example to the child on the right way to handle rubbish.  We do not want a future generation who contribute even more rubbish on the floor.  If we don’t, we begin to practice the right behavior and be role models for our child.

Tips to positive discipline

• Listen to our child. Let them explain.  Most of the time, a child does not know that his action is inappropriate at certain time.  After listening to your child, you may let him know how can he behave in the same.  When we are patient enough to repeatedly remind him what is appropriate and what is inappropriate, the child will learn make his good choice of behavior.  If he don’t, he is just trying to tell you that he needs your love and quality time to spend with him.  Adults who are able to provide sufficient love to a child, the child is more stable emotionally and his behavior is calmer and his thinking is more matured.

• Mutual respect between adults and child. Adults must learn to hold their temper and try not to take drastic action like spanking or shouting the child in front of the crowd.  I do know at times how the little one can be a devil.  If we did, we should admit our mistake and apologize in front of the child.  The child will learn to respect you as well as learning the appropriate action.

• Set ground rules at home and outside home. This is to avoid conflicts of what can and cannot do at home and outside home e.g. supermarket, playground etc.  The rules have to be reminded from time to time in front of the child to refresh and reinforce his memory.  If the child or even adults break a rule, then he has to learn to take up the responsibility and adhere to the related consequences.  For instance, the child is suspended from any TV programs for a week if he found not completing his homework.

• Reason with our child. Most of the time our child does not understand why adult does not approve his behavior.  We need to educate him with patience by reasoning with him.  Talking and communicating is the best solution because we can’t read a person’s mind.  This is to build a mutual understanding between the child and adults.

• Show the child the appropriate way to do something. Role play and story telling will be effective.  I always use story to deliver a message to the young children.  This is because they love listen to story.  At times, they tend to behave like the character in the story.  Also, if most of his friends approved certain behavior like sharing toys instead of snatching, the child who initially loves to snatch will eventually get the message and learn to control his own behavior in future.  For children who doesn’t know social skills such as sharing and waiting turns, show them and teach them how easy to just ask politely to get something we want; how we learn to share and friends will be more willing to share things with us.  It works!

Positive discipline produce long term rewards to both child and adults.  Children will eventually behave well if they are understood and cared for.  Children who are loved and trusted by adults, tend to behave appropriately out of their own will.  We need love and patience to nurture our child’s discipline!

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People around me seem to be surprised when they came to know that I’m working as a preschool teacher. For sure, each time the question of “what do you do?” pop-up, I’ll find myself feeding their curiosity regarding the decision of mine till at times I find myself having doubt in trusting myself either. I’m not a good student back then, what will make me a good teacher now? With that, the conversation usually ends with exaggerating remarks from them such as, “Oh, you must be a caring and loving person!”.

I am still able to recall my very first day of joining a preschool. It was a total disaster. I’m handling baby class then, children cried because of stranger anxiety that made me feel like crying too. Water spilt all over that mess up the classroom and caused a child to slip and fell on the back (expect more tears). One little Dracula bite and the other child were crying in pain. I felt so helpless and sorry; things happened too fast that it is out of my control. Adding on to that, I’ve been kneeling down the whole day, catching and chasing after them, repeating the same old nursery that they requested over and over again but then left you sing alone… I‘m just down disappointed and I really cried when I got home because things are not as what I’ve imagine…

Two years since then, things are getting much better for me now, after realizing that I must prepared myself for the task, it won’t come as it is because we are talking about educating and nurturing the future little men than comes from different background and environment. I learn that I need to have more exposure and access to the expertise as often as possible because often I’ll find myself out of ideas very quickly. As time goes by, I’ve slowly patch up the puzzle. Preschool teacher is so much more than a job. It’s an overwhelming job with long-term consequences for the children. I’m not just a teacher, but also a role model, “jie jie” ( means big sister, as one of my child usually address me as), and caretaker all rolled into one.

The workload might tow me away but it’s the children that I missed the most whenever I move on to another new school. Their little words always help to lighten my day and are carved on my hearts just like footprints left on the shore. They are always so eager to tell you things whenever they see you again. They’ll show their care and concern in a way that will surprise you most. And above all the hard works, I often received hugs as a token of appreciation.

For those who might interested in joining this workforce, it is advice that you get more practical experience, volunteer, work along with team members, get in touch with other teachers to share and exchange ideas will ease all the troubles. Some people might have the general perception of preschool, and most people see preschool as a form of lucrative money-making field (It is not!) neglecting the importance of “life lesson” that will help to prepare the child for their later stage of life.

Sincerely I don’t know if I’m a caring or loving person but I knew that being tied to a desk and working nine to five wasn’t for me. Think about all the children in my class now, someday they’ll think of me just like how I’ve always remembered my first preschool teacher, Mrs. Fong that read stories to me, that sang songs and rhymes to me, and played with me. This is what keep me move on without regrets. I’m glad that I’ve given the opportunity to grow and learn to be part of someone’s childhood. “I’m a preschool teacher.”

So let’s together learn… I’m not teaching you, you’re not teaching me; together we’re going into it deeply. (By J. Krishnamurti)

I am personally touched and enjoyed reading her sharing.  Zheng Yi, thank you for being my guest today.  I hope she is able to share more in the future.

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Lets name our activity today as “My house and My Tree“!  (I believe you have better names for it!  Share with me!).  The idea is shared by a colleague of mine, “Thank you so much!”.

Objective

• Create recycling awareness
• Refine the child’s fine motor control - tearing, cutting using scissors
• Having good time with craft work

Materials

• magazine
• scissors
• manila card
• glue
• marker pen
• plastic table mat or newspaper

First, we need to draw a house and a tree on the manila card with a marker pen.  Then cut the shapes with a scissors.  If your child is able to handling scissors well and have been doing some cutting activities, you may ask your child to cut along the outline of the shapes.  This activity will help to reinforce his cutting skills on straight lines, curve line and slanting lines.  It is a very good exercise for his fine movement!  We can also invite the child to draw their dream house or favorite tree on the manila card too!  You will be amaze how creative your child can be with his imagination!

Note : When the child is working with scissors, you need to be there to monitor to avoid accident!

Next, we need the magazine.  Choose the pages with colorful pictures.  Before tearing the magazine, do help your child to understand that he can only tear old magazines.  Also, he needs to ask permission to do so to ensure that you or other family members do not need the magazine anymore.  If we miss out this step, your child might get the idea that he can tear any magazine he wants at home in the future!

Young children (around 3 years old) loves working with scissors.  However, as young children might not be able to control the scissors movement well, we can tear the magazine into small stripes.  Then we let the child to cut the stripes into small pieces.  Use a child size scissors that have blunt end!  This is just to make the activity more fun as the young child have a chance to cut with scissors.  If he is tired of cutting, then we can ask him to tear the stripes into small pieces.

Next, protect the table with a plastic table mat or newspaper because it’s glue time!  Take out the tree and house shapes that have cut earlier.  Apply glue onto the surface of the shapes.  Ask the child to paste the small pieces magazine papers onto the shapes.

This is the end result!  My beautiful house and the tree!   Talk about the tree and the house with your child.  Let him do the story telling!  We are encouraging him to speak out to nurture his language development.  After the activity, do keep this crafts because we are going to use it next week!

Enjoy this activity with your child!

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Discipline is important in modeling a child’s character.  A child is said to have good discipline when he is able to control himself and behave appropriately in an acceptable behavior by the adults.  We have a set of rules or instructions that we need the child to follow so that he knows his limitation and his life will be in order.  For instance, a child is not allowed to run in the class to avoid accident happen.  Therefore, children in a class have to control themselves by walking in the class instead of running.  They are trained that they can only run in the playground or garden.  In order to discipline a child, means to instruct a child to follow particular code of conducts to maintain order in an environment.

Punishment refers to the practice of imposing something unpleasant on a child if the child is caught misbehaved.  It is the action that we take to get our child to follow our rules and obey to us.  Basically, punishment can be hitting, beating, yelling, slapping, canning etc. which cause fear or pain on the body parts of a child who is being punished by an adult.  Some adults believe that punishment will stop the child from repeating the same misbehavior because the child does not wish to go through the pain or fear caused by any form of punishment.

I used to see two boys were being punished by their teacher by standing outside the classroom.  They were just left outside for a long time unattended.  I saw them standing outside the classroom almost every day.  Initially I didn’t aware that they were punished as they looked relax.  They were crawling from one side to the other or they were touching here and there.  I even thought that they were lost or refused to go back the class so I tried approached and convinced them to go back to their respective class.  When I tried to do that, their teacher would suddenly come out from nowhere and told me that they are being punished.  I was told that their behaviors are unacceptable and needed to be disciplined.  My question is :  how effective is the punishment?  Do the children really understand why they are being asked to stand outside?  If they learned to be discipline, why are they having more fun outside the classroom compare to the inside?

Most of the time, a child needs time to understand the do’s and don’ts set by the adults in an environment.  We need to be patient enough to help him grasps the concept of self-control.  I believe that we should guide the child and let him make his own decision on he want to behave.  He has his own reason of his behavior.  Listen to his reason!  If his behavior is inappropriate, then we tell him why we find that it is inappropriate to behave such a way.  I find that this way is much more effective, but of course it needs time and effort which most adults lack of patience to do so!  This is called self-discipline instead of discipline by force.

One girl was scolded by her ballet teacher for not following the instructions.  She was very upset.  “I want my way.”, she told me.  Adult scolded the child because she didn’t do what we expect her to do.  At the same time, the child does not understand why the adult would not allow her to perform her way.  I called this miscommunication and misunderstanding!  Instead of scolding and judging her being misbehave, adult should pause awhile to explain to the child.  Listen to her and then tell her that she will get her turn to do her way after finished the lesson.  Reason with her get her to understand that she has to follow routine when the class is on, but she will be given a time to dance her way during free choice time.  If her dance movement is dangerous that she might sprain herself or hurt other children, we should talk to her why we stop her from doing the movement.  Scolding not only unable to create awareness and understanding, but it creates fear and disappointment.  Continuous scolding will destroy the girl’s interest in ballet dancing and lower her self-esteem.  Fear will be cultivate in the girl’s mind and slowly eaten up her creativity.

Nurture our child’s discipline is not an instant lesson, but it is a long process.  Punishment is just get the child to listen for a while, once you turn your head around, he will be doing another stunt act!  Punishment does not provide long term positive effect on a child, instead it creates long term negative effect on him such as fear, stubbornness, increasing anger and dissatisfaction, and so on.  We will talk about good discipline in the coming post.

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