Unlimited Fun @ Shopping Malls

School holiday is a great time to bring children to outings and enjoy family time together. I once heard from a Singapore tourist guide that Singapore national sport is shopping. The tourists laughed and I am puzzled but after some thoughts, I felt that it was quite truth especially during school holidays, families like to dwell in shopping malls as their holiday destinations. As such shopping malls make tremendous effort to bring in the school holiday crowd. 

I saw on the newspaper advertisement that The Little Big Club was having a show on this school holiday at One KM Mall as such my husband and I brought Peter to it because he likes Bob the Builder. It was a fun time and we got to see lots of character from the group. Mostly sing along with the characters such as Bob the Builder, Mike the Knight, Thomas the Train and Barney for 30 minutes. We didn't need to pay to watch the show, however, we did spend when we shopped around the mall. You may visit their website at http://www.onekm.com.sg/whats-up/mall-events-incentives/ for more information.

Another mall we visited was City Square Mall. They organised an event on Nick Jr characters. There were 5 individual Nick Jr character activity stations. In order to do the activities, a minimum spending of $40 in a single receipt to exchange the Wonderland Pass from customer service counter. There were Paw Patrol, Blaze and the Monster Machine, Bubble Guppies, Shimmer and Shine and Team Umizoomi activity stations. Peter watches Nick Jr channel almost everyday as such this event was a star struck for him. He enjoyed the event very much. There were more to this event such as meet and greet and stage performances by the Nick Jr characters but we didn't get the chance to join because they haven't started yet. You may visit their website at https://citysquaremall.com.sg/displays/uploaded/cms-promotions/CSM07-29-16%20Christmas%202016%20Nick%20Jr%20A1%20Poster%20R1.jpg for more information.

Just to share my experiences, these events are sometimes free or need a minimum spending to join. However, I believe that children get the chance to join sing along session, dramas, games and most importantly enjoy their school holidays. There are websites that provides information on children activities at shopping malls. One of them is this website: http://www.littledayout.com/2016/11/24/little-day-outs-star-map-shopping-mall-shows-meet-greets/

May you enjoy your hoildays!

  

Internet worksheets

Mid November and December are school holidays for my older son, Peter who is now in nursery two. His teachers give him school holiday homework. The holiday homework is to trace from A to Z. This is to strengthen their alphabets recognition and writing skill. Simple yet important homework for his next step in education because he may need to write words in his kindergarten class.

Peter school holiday homework

Thought of buying some tracing alphabets books for him to practise because teachers only give him a set of alphabets to trace. He finished the worksheet in about 10 minutes as such I feel that he can practise more during the holidays. The school holiday day is quite long and I do not wish him to spend it just by playing toys and watch television programs at home. 

Internet tracing worksheets

Then I search Internet for free tracing worksheets for him. To my pleasure, I found quite a lot of websites offering tracing worksheets that can be downloaded to print for free. This is an area I yet to explore. I believe that next time when I need resources, I can be creative and search the Internet for resources that are suitable for him to engage. As such I encourage you to also explore this channel for free resources for your children to engage too. Hope you like what I share and share with us about your experiences on Internet resources. Thank you 😊

Parenting Wisdom

Recently I had the chance to catch up with one of my friend who is a father of two children. One of his children recently scored her Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) with straight As. Besides having great results in school, his children are well behaved and talented in other areas such as drum and badminton. I am just curious on how to bring up such great children as such I asked him for advice.

His advices are one of the greatest advices I got on parenting. He advised me not to compare between my children and other children even among siblings. Because your parents love you because of who you are and not because of how well you performed. He said it would be very sad if  for parents to love their children because of how well they can performed.

He carried on telling me that his child did not score well at the beginning of the PSLE year. Then his child and him set goal and vision for the PSLE grades. They aimed a grade higher which is mostly Bs. Then they work towards the goal and vision. He said he will celebrate not because of their grades but on the amount of effort they put in to study. He continued saying that of course he can not be happy when they fail but if they already put in their effort and do their best then he said that is enough. He will celebrate with them. He said the child worth is more important then grades and he will show them unlimited love to them as such they will not be afraid to tell him their problems.

His advice did ring a bell in me that I remembered one of my friend told me that her child is a perfectionist and afraid of failure. This friend of mine told me that she will need to change her child mind set not to be afraid of failure otherwise her child will not be able to handle failure well in the future. I do agreed and supported her.

All in all, I felt that children are placed under pressure to perform well in school, however there need to be a realisation that grades are not to be used to measure a person self worth. Parent should not compare their children with others as children are individual uniquely made by God. Which one of the evidence can be easily found at our finger, our fingerprints. As such we need to celebrate our children effort to study and encourage them to work towards achieving their goals and visions that they placed for themselves.

Values Vs Money

Recently, my son, Peter and I participated in a Snow Globe competition organised by Fengshan Community Club. We are so excited about it that we searched on YouTube about how others were doing it, cracked our brains on how to make a unique Snow Globe. Then we decided to go to Daiso and Spotlight to get our materials to make the Snow Globe.

It was a weekend afternoon and was very crowded in Daiso as such Peter accidentally stepped on a hair band which was misplaced on the floor and broke it. He was afraid that he will be scolded by me and the shopkeeper. I did asked him to be more careful and I told him not to be afraid to approach the storekeeper to ask if we need to pay for it the broken piece. The shopkeeper said we need to pay for it as such I handed the money to the shopkeeper and she placed the broken hair band into a plastic bag for us. I was sad because I need to pay for something which is not what I want for. However, I felt responsible to teach my son a lesson to be honest by owning up what he had done wrong and be responsible to pay for what he had done wrong.

One of the broken pieces, I glued back the stand legs

Then we shop a little longer for some more materials and again he accidentally broke a clay Christmas decoration while handling it. Once again I told him that he need to be more careful when handling the items in the store and forbids him to touch any of the items. After that, I took the broken item together with the things that I wanted, to the cashier for payment.

Thought, it was not easy to pay for the things that I do not want but I felt values are more important than money as such teaching him to be responsible for the things that he did was much more important then the money spend. Overall money well spent and hopefully he will remember the values of being honest and responsible for the rest of his life.

Water Play

Peter loves water play as such we will bring him to the swimming pool once awhile to play in. Public swimming pools are great affordable place for children to play with water as I realised that some of the public swimming pools have playground facilities example slides and free fall. You might check out this website
https://www.myactivesg.com/start-out/families/top-5-public-swimming-pool-for-families

Recently, I brought Peter to a water playground located above I12 Katong Shopping Mall. It was a sudden decision as we were just walking pass the mall then I remembered that there was a water playground above it. We always bring an extra set of clothing for outings and for this time we were be using this set of clothing to change after his play. We were then used his current T-shirt as a towel and only let him wore pants to play in the water playground. I do keep his playtime short at about 30mins because he could get cold quite easily. All in all,  he had a great time playing with the water guns, water fountains and slide. You might like to check out other website on shopping malls water playgrounds too. One of the websites on this information is below

http://www.littledayout.com/2014/06/27/splashing-fun-at-shopping-centres-water-playgrounds-around-singapore/

When Peter water plays, he is excerising and having fun at the same time. During those water play time, We enjoyed ourselves and I hope that you will also enjoy yours too.