BB - Sofi is 4

Sofi turned 4 last weekend ♡

We celebrated at my mom's in Nilai to cater larger crowd that we invited (but mostly none came, hah hahaha). From now on, Sofi's birthday party is family-only party until she gets her own friends that she wants to invite ok - no more open party. I was so bitter last weekend I felt like canceling the event, but it was not 'my' party and we did have fun eventually. Seriously, I can't believe now I had to care whether I have friends or not just so Sofi has same-age friends to play with. 

Anyway, it was not my day, it was Sofi's day and I'm glad she had so much fun.

Thank you to my ma & siblings for all the homemade foods ♡- I requested a potluck party so we each had to make something ourselves. I woke up at 5 am just to make trays of macaroni + cheese, Aja made quiche and peach strudel, ma made mi kari, bubur jagung durian and prepared fruits, Azmi made the cake, the tarts and the cupcakes, and Azura made the sandwich. 

We all wore Ma's purple Zanubah shirt, so it coincidently match Sofi's Twilight Sparkle theme. This is the year she 'requested' for her little pony's birthday party. So we all played along with the purple theme as well. She was so excited to be the main character of the event - she wanted to wear 'the party hat', or 'the cape'. She knew it was her birthday, her cake, her candle, her spot. All, quite interesting for me to watch because she is my total opposite and she's developing her own personality that is alien to mine. She is so expressive and she voices it out, while I'm timid and I don't say much in public. I'm figuring out a way to guide her the best that I can but she always surprises me. 

Look, look, look, all the homemade foods :

These are the little achievements or changes for the past year between 3 and 4:

• she started talking
• she started kindergarten
• she got friends at her school
• she improved in night sleeping (this took 3 years..) 
• she stopped wearing diapers altogether (no more night/poopoo pampers)
• she got obsessed with My Little Pony
• she chooses her own clothes nowadays
• she can ride her scooter up to 2+ km while I'm running
• she has her own 'makeup' routine before she goes to school
• she knows her ABC and 1-10 (in 3 languages)
• she can write her name
• she's very clingy to me (she used to be clingy with Af)
• oh, she exchanged her best friend 'baba' for the new pony plushie 

She has 2 more years before starting school, and yes, the toddler years went by quite fast once she gained more confidence in doing things herself. Lately, she's been saying that she is no longer a 'bb' (baby) and she is a 'big girl'. She told Af not to pokpok her to sleep because she wants to sleep herself or she will take the weighing machine, weigh herself and show me that she is now 'big'. I don't know where this obsession with 'growing up' came from, because I never really pushed her if she is not ready. 

Anyway, she's my darling and I hope I will be her best friend as long as she needed me to be.

Happy birthday, bb.

Kids : Sofi and her Arts/Craft Activities

As an artist, I have many sponsored art materials, and I know I don't really make as many artworks so I shared most of my art materials with Sofi. For the past 2 years, she's been playing a lot with various colour materials: pencil colour, water colour, crayons, markers, highlighters, acrylic paints, poster markers, poster paint, etc.

I know it's a bit too much for a 4-year-old, but most of the art materials are mine but she loves them to be on her table instead:

She started colouring around the age of 1.5 years old, and she loves to do it almost daily. By the time she is 3, there are so many fully-used colouring books around. We can't even catch up in buying more colouring books. One thing I make sure of is that she needs to finish colouring the whole page before turning to the next page. So there's no unfinished page.

Perhaps I also need to start teaching her to use blank A3 paper to draw from her imagination instead? 

Links to my fav art materials for toddlers :

• Stabilo Woody - love the chunkiness and the vibrant colours
• Stabilo BOSS Highlighter - yes, I know most people use highlighters for studies, but these highlighters set is so much fun to use with a toddler, chonky and vibrant, easy to clean
• Unicorn Poster Paint - also chonky, so easy to fill up a large paper, feels like crayon but more buttery, more colours here

One thing I noticed about toddlers is they have a small attention span so using tiny-tip pencil colours is a bit too slow for them. Use chonky colours instead. Also, painting is also fun for them (not for us to do the clean up later though). 

I learned that making them do art is good for strengthening their attention span. Imagine looking at a 3-year-old painting at her desk for 30 minutes straight, undisturbed. It's, an amazing view. I never thought she can be that focused while painting.

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Anyway, for the latest 3 weeks of her school holiday, I bought her a set of Kumon's first-step workbooks. Sofi is almost 4, so I want to hone another motor skill which is to cut paper and paste. She tends to be more crafty & artsy so using scissors would be a great skill to add. As an anxious parent, I started with basic kiddy scissors without the blade (but she manages it just fine).

In this set, there are 12 workbooks suitable for toddlers 2+, mainly on these topics: Let's Color, Let's Cut Paper, Let's Fold, Let's Sticker & Paste. Each book contains 40 sheets. It is a nice school holiday activity for toddlers >> Kumon Workbook Set Here <<

In the first few books, all activities were guided. I need to explain, help, and guide her in the learning process. The Kumon's colouring book section is a bit too easy for her so she didn't like it that much.  I think she loves cutting using scissors the most (probably because it's a new tool for her) and she took a few weeks to master the skill. Now she can do all the activities in most of the books by herself. She will sit in front of the tv, watch Peppa Pig, and do the cutting activity all by herself. She can also cut and use glue to paste. She doesn't like the folding part yet so I'm keeping those Kumon's folding books for the time being.

These are all the books that she already finished in a month :

And here are the paper activities that she cut, paste and stick (I put them in a box) :

I also don't force her to do activities that she doesn't feel like doing, for example remembering the alphabet, or tracing them. She has her own desk and art supplies, so most of the time, she chooses which arts/crafts activity to do herself. 

Other tips : She also has a big file that I use to keep all her artwork from school so she can see them back when she wants to (so I don't have to stick it on the wall). I also bought her cute luggage, that's where she can put all her stickers. So she won't stick stickers all over the place :

Links to more activity books :

• Gakken Activity Books (useful & visually nice, but too fast and only can be used once)
• Usborne Wipe-Clean Activity Book (this is one of Sofi's fav, she reused this so many times)
• I Spy Learn & Go (nice illustration but less activity than the Usborne one)
• Busy Book (locally made, nice illustration, not Sofi's fav)
• My First Sticker Book (nice to play, until they stop sticking up on the pages)

As you can see, I love buying her books. I always experimented with different kinds of books: colouring books, sticker books, busy books, activity books, etc. Personally, I think by 2 years old, kids are ready for their arts and crafts activity - fully guided. 

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As for reading, I try to make it a habit to read before sleep time or downtime (around 6 pm+). I let her choose her books and read for her. I started reading to her when she was 3 months old, and I always surrounded her with books so I guess she's used to it by now. At this moment she is still in the 1-5 simple lines per page era. I bought a lot of books that are too advanced for her, so usually, she isn't interested. Picking up the right book is also a learning process for me. 

 

Moving-forward :

• I think having a cellophane tape dispenser will help her in cutting the tape, instead of having to rely on me to cut the tape for her
• Plus, I think I can now upgrade her kiddy scissor to a proper kid's friendly scissor (with blade)
• And I will buy a blank A3 paper for her to draw

Little Stories 214 : Nani

My current best friend every time I went back to Af's hometown in Raub is his 9 years old cousin, Nani. I first met her 2 years ago when she was 7-ish and she's still in her innocent age when every thing she says are cute and innocent. We will hang-out together most of the time, it's like having a young sister all over again :D 

I usually bring back new activity books and my younger sister's old novels for her to read because I wanted her to start her reading habit. Ha. I know that I started to read extensively when I first started to read by myself so I'm just trying my luck here.

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Last weekend when we were both in the car, we had a conversation about school and math :

Me : Kg..
Nani : Kg tu kilogram kan?
Me : ml ?
Nani : ml tu mililiter.
Me : km ?
Nani : kilometer !
Me : cm ?
Nani : Centigram ! 

:D

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While we were waiting in the car and she was reading a neon signboard along the shoplots :

Nani : U..R..U..T, URUT.. T..A..H..I, TAHI. "URUT TAHI" ! 

The whole car laughed when we heard this.
It was supposed to be "URUT THAI".

Now everytime I saw a Thai Massage signboard, it will remind me of URUT TAHI.

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Little Stories 211 : Toilet

School holiday has started. 

We share our office with a company that does trainings and workshops. Since it is a school holiday, they started having coding and fun computer classes for the kids around age 7 - 12. So we've been having hyperactive kids everyday. Ha. 

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I was having stomachache since the morning and been visiting the toilet several times. During my third visit, there were 2 girls entered the toilet with me. So I chose the first toilet and one of them chose another one. They were still chatting and I kept silent, listening to their conversation.

"Do you know that grown-ups can take a really long time in the toilet?", one girl shouted right in front of my door.

"She can hear you, you know", the one in the toilet replied.

"Yeap, I know".

=.= 

 *So it reminds me of this.

 

Apps : Young Kids & Mobile Apps

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Although I don't quite agree with kids under 12 to be engaged with game consoles and other devices, I am very much interested in how kids interact with those devices.

I got curious over how their brain processes it, how they familiarize certain patterns and steps, how they explore it. The fact that they can interact with those games even though they can't read, always fascinates me. 

Good mobile applications for kids don't even need instructions to explain the flow, because most kids don't read at a very young age and it is hard for them to focus on reading when they are too excited to play the game right away. *I remember skipping the conversation parts between players when I played Pokemon Red - teenage years. I bet that goes to everyone else too, except for curious-avid reader I suppose. 

I don't have a chance to be around young kids that much, so I suppose my finding's accuracy will be highly downgraded. At the lab, I usually watch Fayyadh explores my iPhone. I watch him trying games after games to meet his interest. Most of game apps are strategy or puzzle based so they are not quite suitable for a 5 year old. 

This writing is based on one of the good application I found interesting enough for young kids : Toca Doctor by TocaBoca & my humble observation. What I have in mind is a simple set of mini games to be completed that kids can relate to. I bought the app just because I was curious on how the full version will be, and how different each mini games will be - there is a lite version you can try, just type in "Toca Doctor Lite".

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Mobile Applications for Young Kids :

1. Interface.

Kids are attracted to simple, colourful interface.  I love the simplicity of it. It kind of reminds me of activity books I used to have when I was very young, back when there is no such thing as mobile application of course. 

2. Mini games

Kids are easily distracted, so a set of mini games might help them focus on each small task. In Toca Doctor, a player is required to examine a patient and solve simple fun puzzle. I played the whole set, it was super easy for me, but quite engaging. There are 21mini games to be completed.

eg : Broken bones need to be connected and bandaged or brush your teeth to kill the germs, clean up  wound and put a plaster and those simple stuffs. 

3. No instructions

The game is straight forward and simple. They point to each point that need to be inspected, and kids can solve it right away. I didn't even need to explain anything to him. 

4. Relate to real life

In this game, they ask you to be a doctor. In another game by tocaboca, called Toca House that let the player help 5 friends do chores at home : cleaning up, doing dishes, ironing, mowing the lawn in 19 mini games. It's easier for them to understand simple tasks when they can relate to it and much easier for us to explain.

eg : Why we need to clean the wound?
Because we need to avoid infection. 

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Ps :
Parents need to be aware of the type of games they let children play. Children are a bit like white canvas, parents are the artist with paints and brushes in their hand.

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It's amazing how technology is taking over the world.

I work as a conceptual designer for mobile application and during my free time, I explore the beautiful wonder of arts in current digital medium mainly in tablets and smart phones. One of my favorite topic is children's application. I'll share my finding here from time to time. Enjoy the geeky side of me ! :D - azreenchan