While waiting for parents to pick up end of the school day, one of my girls pulled my hand and said, “Teacher, come with me, I want to show you my boyfriend.”.  I paused and surprised as this girl is just 4 years old.  She pulled me to the other side of the children who were sitting and waiting.  Then she pointed at a boy (6 years old) very shyly and giggled, “That’s my boyfriend!”.  The boy saw her and smiled at her.  I asked the boy if this girl is her girlfriend, he said, “Yes!  She is my girlfriend.”.  I looked at them and wondered..aren’t they grown up too fast?!

What will be your reaction if your little girl or boy told you about his/her girlfriend or boyfriend?

First of all, there is no need to panic or over worried.  Talk to them and listen to them, you will discover their perspective on the issue.  The two children above do not know exactly what is the meaning of girlfriend and boyfriend.  You will realize that the friendship is pure and they are just being nicer to each other; or one being so nice to him or her that he/she feels special and appreciated, therefore in return he/she also being nice in return.

However, we do need to observe their behavior when both of them are together.  In this case, I was told by another teacher that she kissed the boy on his cheek.  After a day or two, the girl met the boy again.  This time, she became too excited after talking to two teachers about her boyfriend.  The two teachers were laughing and showing much interest of her boyfriend, it gave her the impression that this is fun and teachers also like it.  So, she become too excited that she kissed the boy again and again on the cheeks and lips.  Well, it’s more to peck on the cheeks and lips.  We stopped her and asked her to sit separately from the boy.

In this incident, we are to be responsible as well as we create a mental picture that the boyfriend and girlfriend issue is fun and we enjoy it very much.  Young children love attention.  Our inappropriate response has encouraged her to react in that way.  She thought that we would like her more if she kept showing her affection towards the boy.

Do not mislead the child in this issue as we find it cute to see young children talking about his/her girlfriend or boyfriend.  Like the case above, she was misled that adults approved of what she is doing and enjoyed it.  However, she was punished after she has tried to show off her affection in front of the adults.  She was confused.

Guide the child with positive affirmations.  Young children might not understand if we are too eager to explain what is the real meaning of boyfriend or girlfriend.  Instead, tell him/her that you are glad to know that the boy or girl is special to him/her because he/she is being nicer to each other.  Then tell the child that perhaps he/she can be nice to everyone as well so that everyone also feels as happy as he/she is.  This can be a way to divert his/her attention on the issue.  We are guiding the child to develop positive social relations and social skills.

If you have any other ideas on this matter, do share with me.  I love to hear them!  Enjoy reading!

Do you realize that the weather is getting more and more extreme around us?  In Malaysia, it is getting hotter every day.  The weather of the world is changing fast due to global warming.  Can we do anything to help and how can we start?  Yes, we definitely can do something for the Mother Earth!  If everyone of us do a little bit by recycling and save water/energy at home or anywhere we go, we are creating a better environment for our future generation.   We all are responsible and we are determined to make a difference from this moment onwards.

For a good start, we need to begin with ourselves so that we can be good role models for our children.  Lets cultivate love towards plants among our children today!  Planting is a fun, it helps to :

• nurture patience and responsibility among children in the process of planting and taking care of the plant.
• nurture the sense of care and love towards the environment.
• nurture understanding on the interactions of the environment to the growth of a plant, e.g. a plant needs sunlight and water to grow.
• teach children naming of parts of plants and their functions.

What are the materials that we need for our planting project?

• a plastic container
• soil
• spoon
• small jug or watering can
• small onions with little leaves on top
• a straw or chopstick
• a small cardboard
• glue

Put the spoon beside the plastic container.  Ask the child to put soil into the container with the spoon.  Transferring soil with spoon is also an activity to reinforce a child’s fine motor skills.

Use the spoon to dig small hole in the soil.  Then put the onion into the hole.  Cover the side of the onions with soil again.  Do not cover the whole onions with soil.  The top of the onions should be exposed to the air.  You may repeat this step and put few more onions.

Water the onions using a small jug or watering can.  Do not put too much water till the whole container is flooded with water.

Make a “My Plant” sign.  Cut a small piece of cardboard.  You can ask your child to write “My Plant” on top and then write his/her name below it.  Stick the card on a straw or chopstick.  Ask your child to stick the sign in the container.

It’s done!  This is my onion plant!  Help your child to put the container under a shady area and remind your child to water the plant every day.  Spend time every day together to see the growth of the plant.  Choose any botany related topic to talk about every day.  Show the different part of the plant and explain the functions of each part.

This is my plant on the fourth day!  Can you spot the difference?  The leaves are growing taller and the roots are growing more and longer.  Enjoy the activity!

Today is a special day for all mothers around the world.  I wish all the mothers out there to have a wonderful quality time with their loving family.  Mother’s love should be cherished every moment and every day.  Nowadays, mother has to take up many roles at a time - mother to their children, mother to their husband, wife, working mom, cleaner in the house, financial planner for the household etc.  The responsibilities are just overwhelming…yet mother manages to make sure that her family is taken care of!

How do the mothers manage to carry out so many tasks at the same time?  Mothers can do anything for the sake of their family!  The love towards their children and family provides the on-going energy for them to keep going and doing.

I see my mother…growing old each day..yet still unconditionally care and love her family so much!  No matter how old we have grown up, we are still our mom’s baby.  We are old enough to take care of ourselves, yet she will say, “Let me do it, you won’t know how to…”.  I guess she does enjoy in a way for able to take care of us.  We are not always around with her all the time due to long hours work.  Therefore, those tasks that she is doing for us compensate the time we are not together as well as being able to feel close to us.  That’s my old fashioned mom!  She has her own way to show her love towards us.  In return, we love her as much.  The longest and most precious love in the world is from our mom!

Thank you for the sacrifices that you have done for us all these years enabling us to feel love and secure all the time.  We know that we have a home all the time no matter how tough is the world out there.  I wish all of us can do the same for our mom when she needs us anytime, anywhere!  Just be there!

Happy mother’s day!

Have you ever asked your child’s teacher why does she teach?  You might hear different reasons when you ask different teachers.  Some will say that they teach for money to support family.  Some will say they love children and they want to be with children.  Some might not know why they teach.

“Why do we teach?” is important to each individual teacher to remind herself of her responsibility and obligation towards the children and also the parents.  Teaching is not just about making sure that the child achieves excellent result academically, but guiding a child to a positive emotional development as well as spiritually confident child.

I always want my children to know that they can rely on their teacher in school once they are separated from their parents.  It’s the feeling of security that helps them progress tremendously in all areas of development.  I let my children know that they can talk to me whenever they need to.  It’s the listening ears that we spare them to ensure that we listen to what they say and they can trust us.  Trust makes a person feel secure too!  Listening ears help children to let go their emotions that might bother them.  I believe no matter how young a child is, he/she deserves the right to talk and to be listened.  Their inner needs must be fulfilled instead of material needs. This helps to boost the child’s confident and self-esteem.

We teach because of our passion towards children.  This passion guide us through all sorts of challenges we face throughout the teaching journey.  Passion drives me in my journey.  With passion, we give our best to deliver our love and care for our children.  As for me, it carries me through to achieve my mission - to allow the children to enjoy their school life, to develop positive learning habits and to cultivate positive behavior and attitude - caring, responsible, independent, respectful and confident.

Teaching is not just about delivering knowledge or information.  Teaching is also about reaching out to each young souls.  This requires lots of patience and love.  Each day of teaching life is challenging as each child grows with changing behavior and attitude.  Patience helps us observe the little changes.  Observation helps us modify and change our teaching strategies from time to time accordingly.  Therefore, we have to be sensitive and alert towards our environment at all time.

We go extra miles to satisfy a child’s inner needs.  I just finished a class with a boy this afternoon.  I spent extra hours with him to make a space craft.  I asked him to invite his younger brother to join us.  Both of them are just so excited and thrilled.  We enjoyed the process of making the craft.  We talked about the space and he learns the names of each planets even much faster.  We may not make the most perfect and beautiful space craft, but the effort and laughter that we put in together make it the most valuable craft.  When we are just doing a very simple act, but we manage to cultivate many beautiful values into a child in the process - responsibility, respect, helping each other, sharing of materials and so on.  At the same time, we help the child to know that learning is not a boring activity, but it is fun and interesting.  I love  to spend quality time with young children, as they also remind me to be patient and more loving.  The most satisfying aspect in the craft making this afternoon is that I see two happy little faces at the end of the day.

Dealing with parents is another challenge in teaching career.  I never find it difficult to be with young children.  However I do find it challenging in dealing with adults.  Most adults have their own perception and mind set.  We can be successful in our career, but do not mean that we are able to deliver what a child really needs.  Most of the time, a child might just need our shoulders to lean on, or a pair of listening ears, or just our time to play with them and so on.  There are parents who are opened to any information about their child, but there are parents who can’t accept any remarks about their child.

Teaching other people’s child is a huge responsibility.  Nurture them as our own.  Every moment we are practicing good behavior and manners as our children are observing and might imitate our action as well because we are the role model.  Therefore, teaching is also helping ourselves to be a better person.  Who is the teacher at the end of the day?  Each of us!  Children are our teacher too as they keep remind us to behave appropriately too!

I have not update any post for the past two to three weeks as I am very tied up with school work.  It is indeed a challenging year for me!  Being a teacher is about giving our heart and soul to the young children so that they enjoy school and they are emotionally secured even though they are away from their parents for few hours.  At the same time, parents are relieved to be able to rely on someone to take care of their children when they are away.  Most important, I do enjoy the every day life with these lovely children.

I saw one of the teachers in school have made a very simple but nice craft for her children.  Therefore, I like to introduce to you this simple-to-make craft.  We are going to make an igloo!  Before we start the craft, lets talk about igloo and eskimo to enhance our child’s general knowledge.  Also introduce the beginning phonetic sound “i” for igloo, especially children who have started school.  This helps to reinforce the child’s language development.

Materials

• disposable bowl
• a cardboard
• cotton wools
• white paper
• scissors
• glue
• cellphane tape

First of all, lets cut the door or entrance on the disposable to represent entrance on the igloo.  If your child possesses a very strong fine motor control, you may allow hime to cut on his own.

Take out the cardboard.  Wrap the cardboard with A4 papers if the cardboard is not white in color.  Leave it aside after work is done.

Cut the cotton wool into small square.  You may cut a cotton wool into 4 small pieces of cotton wool.  You may ask your child to prepare it at her workplace.

Paste the bowl onto the cardboard by turning the bowl facing the cardboard.  Asked the boy to paste the cut cotton wool onto the bowl.  Let it dry once it is done.

Children love this craft a lot as it is simple.  Some even take their animal models to begin their pretend play with their hand made igloo.  I hope you enjoy this craft and have a good time with your child.

While waiting for the parents to pick up after school, I was chatting with my children at a corner.  I read them a small book about emergency vehicles such as fire truck, ambulance, police car and so on.  After story telling, I tried to find out how much these girls grasped.  Therefore, I started asking questions..

Me  :  “If you see a thief or robber, who would you call?”

3.5 years old girl  :  “Taxi!”

I expected answers like father, daddy, mummy, police…but never a taxi!

Me  :  “Do you know how an ambulance siren’s sound like?”

The same girl  :  “Hee..Hee..Hee…”

I just can’t stop laughing.  She is so innocent!  I really enjoy my moment with all of these angels!

• I was browsing through www.oprah.com the other night and I found this article on the site “Money Lessons for Kids“.   I agree that we should educate our children about money when they are still young.  It’s important that our children understand where and how the money is earned and spent.

• Most parents nowadays are trying their level best to provide and satisfy the material needs for their children e.g. toys, clothes, accessories, mobile phones, vacations, golf equipment, piano, playstation and so on.  Most children do not know how much these stuff cost.  As they get them too easily, they do not know how to appreciate what they have.  Eventually they build a mentality that they just need to ask their parents to buy anything that they want.  For instance, my nephews always demand their father to buy new mobile phone or playstation.  Whenever ask if they know how much these stuff cost, they just shook their head and walk away.  They don’t even want to find out because it’s the adult’s responsibility to purchase them as they are still schooling.  As they are so used to this lifestyle, they tend to become more financial dependent to the adults in future.  Moreover, we are living in a world of advertisements and commercial, they have influenced our children perception about acquiring material goods.  Therefore, it’s critical that parents begin educating their children money management skills.

Money management is important for each individual and family.  If we do not know how to manage money, we are unable to plan our expenses and earnings.  Most probably we spend more than what we earn.  We become broke before month end.  To learn money management, we first need to understand how money works.  If we are able to educate our child to understand money management - earning, spending, saving and even making small contribution to the poor and needy, we are raising up financially responsible children.

We can begin teaching our child about money as early as age 3 in order to foster positive attitudes and habits about money.  Money lessons can be carried out by taking every opportunity in our daily lives, from shopping, paying bills, withdrawing from ATM, banking transactions, cutting out discount coupons and so on.  This also means sharing more time and communicate more with our child.

How to begin our money lessons for our child?

• Talk to our child.  Share with him how we make an earning and how we plan to spend our money.  For instance, we need to pay the school fees, buy food for the family, pay electric bill etc.

• Be a role model as a well planned financial planner.  Take our child to groceries shopping.  Make a list of things that we need to buy together with our child.  Show our child how to make a good choice that can help us save, e.g. buying the same products that are on sales or given discounts.  Explain our purchasing decision to our child.  We can fill up and submit a free/discounted product entry with our child to show him an alternative to save money.

• Set limits and learn to say “NO” to our child.  Do not overindulge our child by providing every material goods that they want.  For new parents, we can’t resist buying things for our new born even though the baby might not need it.  Therefore, we need to learn to control ourselves too.  Buy only goods/products that our child need such as book, pencils and so on.  If the child like to have a new video game for instance, we may teach him how to save his own money for it or how he can make an extra income.  They will learn to appreciate more in this way.  Say no to our child if he demand to buy something that is unnecessary or he already have at home.

• Teach our child to manage his allowance.  We can give a small amount of allowance to our child and teach him how we can use it effectively - saving or purchasing something that our child needs.  We are teaching mathematics at the same time.  We can provide a piggy bank or money box.  When the money accumulated to certain amount, we can take our child to open up a savings account.  Show him the process and let him feel the excitement to have own savings account in a bank.  At times, we may encourage our child to take part of his allowance/savings to spend it on grocery shopping.  We do not force him to follow our wish, but we guide him.  Let him make the decision.  Let him learn from mistake if he made the wrong choice.  All we need to do is stand by him when he needs us.

• Teach  our child good spending values by buying an ice-cream for mommy for instance or join in to purchase a treat for the family.  We also teach our child how to donate part of their savings/allowance to the needy or poor.  This way we are fostering the values of helping others and doing kindness to help others.

Teach our child about money in a fun and supportive way.  We need patience and consistency in order to educate a child with money management skills.  At the same time, we are strengthening our relationship with our child if we are being supportive and encouraging.

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Valentine’s Day will be arriving next Saturday!  Do you have any plan on that special occassion?  Are you going to celebrate it alone with your beloved hubby/wife?  We can be more creative and involve our child in planning this special day together.  This is one way to nurture our child’s love towards his family members.

If you are the mother, we can suggest our child to make a Valentine’s craft for his daddy.  Plan with our child how to make this day special and unforgettable for daddy…maybe prepare a dinner for him, buy a dozen of roses for him on that day.  This is romantic!  I have a simple Valentine’s craft idea to share with all of you.

This craft can be done by the child with only minimum adult’s assistance.  The child is able to expand their creativity and produce a fine beautiful craft with their own effort.  My children in school loved and enjoyed the process of making the craft!

Materials

• a paper cup
• a straw
• red and pink colored paper
• painting paper
• poster colors or water colors
• pain brush
• old newspaper/ plastic mat
• ribbons, sequins, beads and other used craft accessories
• shining wrapping paper
• Valentine’s wrapping paper
• scissors
• blade/knife
• glue

Step by Step

First we paint the paper cup with a paint brush.  Ask your child to choose his the color he wants to paint on the paper cup.  My children were happy that they get to choose their own color(s) as most of the time, the adults decide the color(s).  They are concentrated in painting as they are putting on their favorite color(s).  Leave the painted paper cup to dry at a corner after it is fully paint.

Wash the paint brush.  Again, ask your child to choose his color(s) that he wants to paint on the painting paper.  Look at the child on the picture, he was so focused and enjoyed his painting.  Put the paper on aside to let it dry while we proceed to the next step.

Draw two big heart shapes (8cm x 7cm) on a red colored paper and two smaller heart shapes (6cm x 5cm) on a pink colored paper.  Cut the shapes with a scissors.  If your child is able to cut on their own, let him do it!  You may write some words on the pink heart shapes.  I’ve written “Be my Valentine!”.  You may ask your child’s idea on what to write on it.

Paste the two red heart shapes back to back on the straw.  Then paste a pink heart shape on one side of the red heart, then repeat the same on the other side.

Use a blade or knife to make a small cross on the painted paper cup.  We need to do it on behalf of the child as it is dangerous to avoid cut/injury.  Show our child on how to insert the straw through it.  Put it to a corner while proceeding to next step.

Check if the painting earlier has dried.  If it is dried, then ask your child to put his hands on the painting and trace his hands.  If your child developed strong fine motor skills, he can trace his hands on his own.  Then ask him to cut out the shapes along the lines.

Take out the beads, sequins, ribbons and other craft accessories that you may find at home.  Let your child decorate his hand shapes using his own creativity.  Leave them to dry once they are done.

Like to share this with all of you.  This girl just decorate the shapes with flower.  She actually told me that she has painted a long neck dinosaur on the painting paper.  She is so careful and focused.  I found that her decoration is very clean and sweet!

Take out the paper cup again.  Paste the hand shapes on the paper cup, side by side.  It’s done!  A simple but nice Valentine’s craft.  Give to daddy and mummy, to tell them that you love them with hugs and kisses.

This a creativity produced by a boy.  He is the only one that request yellow color to paint his cup.

This is also produced by another boy.  Look at his creation!  It’s lovely.

Two more creations that are using ribbons and beads.  Children enjoyed a lot with this craft and they can’t wait to show their parents.

On the next day, you may even prepare a small Valentine’s card with your child.  You just need to cut out some heart shapes or other shapes that you may find in a wrapping paper (or get your child to cut).  Then as your child to paste on the A4 red paper (folded into half).  My children kept saying, “This is for my mummy and daddy!”.  I will be so touched to receive all these on my Valentine’s!  Just romantic!

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I heard lots of parents grumbled that they have a hard time to have a peaceful outing with their children, especially eating out!  Most of the time, I saw either a mother or a father will eat her/his meal, while the other one will take care of the children.  You may see parents chasing their children in a shopping mall or restaurant.  You may hear parents shouting at their children in order to keep them behave.  You may see children crying or throwing tantrum and the parents are just stressed up.

I have had a very active child in my previous class.  Her concentration span is very very short.  She didn’t like working with materials.  She liked to disturb her friends by snatching their materials or scribbled on their paper/worksheets.  She was rough with her classmates. Children would avoid her when see her.  She kept sneaking out from the class and played in the toilet.  Other teachers complained about her and she was being punished on the thinking stool for many times.  The parents realized her problem in school as she also showed the same attitude at home.  They even went to a child psychologist for evaluation and consultation.  After few observation, the child psychologist told the parents that the girl is normal.

It was really challenging in the first month to keep her staying out from trouble in school.  I repeatedly guide her in her social skills - take turn, waiting on the line, sharing of materials, requesting materials in a proper manner and so on.   We saw her progress positively.  She became calmer and her concentration span is much longer.  She developed strong interest in learning especially phonics and numbers as well as writing.  She is more patient in her coloring and her skills improved tremendously after two weeks holiday.  She was able to color within the lines as she was able to concentrate and focus in what she was doing.

I spoke to the mother about her positive progress.  Both of us were excited.  The mother shared with me what she has done at home during the holiday. The tips was taught by one of her girlfriends.

Tips

Whenever she took her out, she would bring along some pencils, color pencils/crayons, papers, coloring books and story books.  She has her own activities while the parents were eating and chatting, for instance.  Her time was occupied with activities that beneficial to her development - fine motor skills, concentration, cultivating good learning habits.  The continuous effort by the parents helped their child to find peace within herself.

Most children are very active.  They will be running around or become playful because they are bored.  Activities that adults enjoy might not be enjoyable for the children.  Therefore, prepare some simple activities for the little one when we are planning for an outing.  Lets everyone enjoy throughout the trip and strengthen the relationship with each other in the family.  We will find taking children out is actually fun and enjoyable instead of becoming a nightmare!  We are nurturing a good habit at the end of the day without any frustration or struggle!

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It’s Chinese New Year!  We are having a week school holiday in Malaysia.  For those who plan to stay home and have a relaxing festive holiday, just plan some activities for our child to keep him occupied.  I just took my nephews to shopping mall today as they are bored at home.  Now I’m planning to take them to bowling this weekend with other family members.  I have a simple activity for younger children today - drawing pretty faces!

Materials

• Manila card/painting paper
• crayons/color pencils/water color
• wool strings- black, brown, pink etc.
• glue
• scissors

First, use a marker pen to draw an oval shape on the manila card.  The oval shape is to represent a face shape.  If your child is able to cut with scissors, let him cut the oval shape by himself.  Then asked your child to draw a face.  He may draw his own face on the paper, or his friend or anyone that he wants.  I did this activity with my children in the school.  They enjoyed it very much.  I then showed each face to them after the activity and we have had a good laugh.  It’s a fun and enjoyable activity!  All the faces are drawn by themselves without any assistance.

This is drawn by a boy.  He is able to draw eyes, nose and mouth on the face.  Did you notice that the eye on the right is a black eye?  When I asked him why black eye, he just smiled and didn’t answer me.  The nose is just nicely drew.

This face is funny!  Look at the nose!  It is a circle.  This boy has little hair, therefore, he seem to put lots of black wool string on top.  I managed to remove some as they are too thick.

What do you see on the face?  I asked a girl whose face is this.  She answered me, “Monster!  It’s a monster!”.  I asked the original creator about his face.  He told me that the two circles on each side of the face are cheeks.  The circle in the middle is the nose.  Did you notice a lots of triangles or circle near the mouth?  Those are the teeth.  Can you see how imaginative this child is?

This is created by a girl who loves pink very very much.  The face is pink and even the hair is pink.  She told me that she made long hair.  So you can see one side of the hair is long.  The red color on the mouth representing red color lipstick!  She used her “mommy’s” lipstick to make it!

Look at the strange looking face!  It is made by a girl too.  She has drawn two very big eyes just like her own big eyes!  When she is trying to stick the pink wool strings to make hair, she was distracted by friends and didn’t pay much attention.

This is a very cute face.  Look at the mouth.  She is trying to tell us, “Shhhh…be quiet!”.  The whole class laughed when I told them what I saw on the face.

This is a red face boy!  It’s drawn by a boy.  You can also see the big teeth on the mouth.  As his eyes are not cleared, I helped him to draw the eyes.

This is a colorful face.  Did you notice that the eyes are looking somewhere else?  She seems looking for something out there!

Do you enjoy looking at all the faces?  I love looking at them cos they made me laugh.  Hope your child enjoy this activity too!  Gong Xi Fa Chai!

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