The Little Red Brick Show (SG50 Edition)

Date:  Aug 28, 2015

Some friends told us about it.  

And today is the last day of the exibition.

It is at the National Library.

This blog is for those who has miss it.

Usually Friday night is the kids and the Smith Girls playdate time at home.  Today, let’s do a special outdoor playdate visiting the Little Red Brick Show.

The first thing that caught my eye is this Duxton HDB.  It looks so real.

Then, these old style houses looks pretty amazing.

I told them kids, why can’t they build something like this.

Got to love those roof and water pipes.

Take from another angle.

Looks so realistic.

How about this Katong bread store.

And they have the hawker stall below and beside the house.

How about this old house.

My wife grand father stay exactly in this kind of houses last time.

It is amazing.

Look at this tinkgkat and biscuit.

Wow.  This is the biscuit Kay Kay and most of other kids love to eat.

Wha hahahahahaha.  So real the color.

Some tower somewhere in Singapore.

PSA.

SBS Transit bus.

KTM train.

Another train.

Chinese Opera.

Learn Mandarin with the Lion.

Singapore VR man.

Read the description.

Racial Harmony.  Cool, the painted the kebaya.

Made using Legos.

Zouk Playground?

How about the Army camp.

The red big head police car.

The lights.

They really enjoy every thing made in Lego.

Here come the Astroboy.

It’s dinner time.  Let’s eat!

Let’s eat dinner.

Resolution for the next few playdates.

1.  I have to rearrange the legos into COLOURS sorting instead of shapes.

2.  The kids will need to make something that is very Singaporean.

 

 

Taekwondo Poom Belt Chater 3 Chapter Assessment for Jay Jay

Date:  Aug 24, 2015

Yesterday was Jay’s Poom Belt Chapter Assessment grading for his chapter 3 patterns.

As usual, the very confident Jay Jay learned all these patterns on his own, and we have no ideal what he has been learning!

The owner of J.H Kim Taekwondo School is a person who really knows how to do marketing and capture parents’ heart.

For the first time ever, the head master Rivas allowed the parents to witness how their kids took the poom belt chapter assessment.

There are 18 of them made it to the Chapter 3 assessment.  Seems like the number is dropping, that is why no wonder, he wants the parents to appreciate more what their children is learning and hopefully keep the child interests in learning Taekwondo more prolong.

 They sure do a lot a lot of warm up.  This includes those normal stretching exercises.

It also includes almost 10+ different kicking exercise.

Like what I say every time, I want Jay Jay to keep fit, and this Taekwondo lesson are one of the high fat burner exercise for him.

Hopefully in future, when he faced with bad guys, he knows how to kick like this.

I didn’t know he can jump so high.

He actually jump high enough to create the good kicking power.  But I guess later, when he choose his punch to break the board instead of kicking shows he lacks a bit of confident in this kicking as well as the fear of feeling pain kicking the board.  HaHaHaHa...

This is the first test of the day.  Be able to perform chapter 3 poomsae (pattern).  8 months later, when he takes the 2nd Poom, he will need to know all the four chapters.

No problem at all.

The next test is the sparring.  Three rounds.  Here is round 1.

It is kind of fun to look at these non-contact sparing.  Look at how Jay Jay quickly evade a kick and the return another kick to opponent.  Quite cool.

   

This is round 2.  A different opponent.

Looks like they are hitting or kicking each other, but they aren’t.  Cool!

In fact, I had a lot of fun watching this.  

Third match.

Another high kick.

Back Thrust.  But where is the oppnent? hahaha

Third test.  To break the board.  oh.. no… break 2 boards.

And after competed all three assessment, they got a nice certificate to prove that they completed this stage.

After half an hour of hard work.  He finally got his certificate.

Well done Jay Jay.

Let It Go Butterfly

Date:  Aug 23, 2015

One day, Blue Blue, my blue eye cat, was caught playing with “something” in his paws and mouth.

When you get close to see it, it was a bright green caterpillar, may be drop from the leaves in one of the pot in our balcony garden.

My wife thus place teh caterpillar into a plastic container.  Of course, we place some leaves and water in it.

Few days later, the green caterpillar ate quite some leaves before turning itself into a pupa.

Another few days later… which is today.

Jay suddenly shouted and say “Mommy, mommy, the butterfly has come out…."

And there you go, the butterfly that we saved from Blue Blue’s paw.

As it is just came out from the pupa, the butterfly is learning how to flap its wings.

It is actually quite a nice butterfly.  Very pretty.

She still flapping the wings.  And she is ready to fly.

So, we have decided to “let it go”.

So that the butterfly can find a new home in our herbs garden downstairs.

We let Kay Kay do it.  So, Kay Kay will let the butterfly go, and let her has her freedom.

She was a bit scare in the beginning, but as soon as she flapped a few times of her wings, she flew off.

Bye bye butterfly.

Of course, I did not waste this opportunity for Jay Jay to learn his Chinese Composition.

So, I quickly draw out my iPad and ask him and the brother to think about the Butterfly event, and write a small passage of it.

So, the journey from home to Millenia Walk is only 15-20 minutes. 

As you can see, this is what he comes up with.  Not too bad.

I recon that this will give him may be 5/10.  So, thru out the day, we discuss about the whole event.

Instead of “my cat”, I asked him to think, where is the cat?  Where he (the cat) finds the caterpillar?

Instead of “let it go”, how he fly away?

What about the conclusion, any thoughts he wanted to write down?

During lunch time, we talked about it.

After he took his Taekwondo grading, we talked about it.

While going from Millenia Walk to the Turf City, before the drawing class, we have another 20 minutes or so, for him to work on it.

And this is the revised version.  

Much longer version.

He knows learned the important thing of “describing”.

Describe our cat is naughty.

Describe where our cat found the caterpillar.

Describe why the cat is naughty?  See the caterpillar, wanted to bite it.

Describe the how he tell mommy about it.

Describe how the butterfly is scare and don’t want to fly out.

Tell who is the one brought the butterfly downstairs.

Describe how he touch the butterfly and make it fly away.

Describe what was his feeling?  Happy.

Describe why?  Because he let the butterfly regain his freedom.

This is a very short event.  But writing it down involves constant thinking and asking questions about the 6 “Ws”.

Who?

Why?

When?

Where?

What?

How?

And after we have done with the Chinese composition, I will let him speak out from his mind in English.  Again, asking him to “describe”.

He won’t learn it straight away. 

But I am sure, thru the training, and exercising, he is more confident and grabs the concepts of writing.

Writing is about describing.

Writing is about asking the 6 “Ws”.

Why I love to read the Hardy Boys Junior Files for them every night.

That is because these Hardy Boys books focus in asking the 6 Ws to solve crime.

Hardy Boys: http://miniliew.blogspot.ch/2015/07/hardy-boys.html

And I show him a way how to use technology, the Dragon Dictation to quickly jot down the chinese sentence thru speaking.

First you learn how to pronounce things correctly.  Second, you quickly write down the Chinese senates.  For words you don’t know, as long as you can read, you can use the Han Yu Pin Yin to find the words.  In P3 Chinese composition, they are allow to use the dictionary.  Be it hard copy or electronic.

Hopefully, thru these methods, I can help my boy to improve his writing in both Chinese and English.  Yeah, Dragon Dictation can change the languages to English or Mandarin.

Quite cool.

Dragon Dictation:  http://miniliew.blogspot.ch/2015/08/learning-chinese-composition.html

And lastly, you notice that the brother Kay Kay is sitting besides.  Do it in front of the siblings so that he or she can be inspired and wanting to follow his brother.  :)

加油吧！My sons, if you guys can make it for your Chinese, don’t forget about the efforts your daddy put in to teach you guys.  :)