Writing, reading and drawing

I didn't really teach Lara to write before kindy started. Lara learned to trace letters in daycare but was not taught the alphabets. I was happy to leave the formal learning until school started. Lara slowly learned to write all the letters (capitals and smalls). After two terms, she now writes quite well, with most sentences started with Capital letters, only occasionally mixed up capital and small letters.On a good day, Lara writes neatly with letters in similarly sizes and the right 'finger spaces' between each word.

A couple of school mums had commented to me about how neat Lara's writings were.  I saw her improvements when I saw the 'Hansel and Gretel' story she wrote. Lara has good imagination and writes interesting sentences. She received a deputy principal's award last term for her story on "yo you and the zoo". The occasional mistakes, like writing 9 like letter P or 2 the wrong way (more like a 5) were alright as long as there are improvements.


So far I have taken a relaxed attitude towards sight words (the 100 words they have to learn in kindy?). There are so many things to do between the time we get home (sometimes close to 6pm!) and bed time, including cook dinnner (while look for food to give kids to eat, they are just very hungry when they get home!), eat dinner, get Sam to bed (usually Simon's job), practice violin (with Lara), homework (some nights), readers, bath/brush teeth and bed time story. Sight words are usually forgoteen! Lara was not the slowest, but not in the top half of the class as far as sight words are concerned. While we read readers, I noticed Lara can sound (with guesses or help from the pictures) most words, even those not in her sight words. My execuse is I'd rather her learning the words properly from a book than memorising them on a sheet of paper. Most of the time I feel Lara has enough on her plaste already and she is doing well at 5. Other times, I wonder whether I should perhaps spend more time with her on reading and writing.

We receivd Lara's first school report at the end of last term. I admit I was a little disappointed that everything was 'meet expectations' and all efforts were 'satisfactory' but there was no 'exceed expectations' or 'extraordinary efforts' in any subject. Simon reminded me that he didn't 'get it' with maths until 10 or 11. I did quite well from primary school, but we didn't start school until 7 in Taiwan. I have to remind myself that Lara is still very young at five years old, and that it is more important she enjoys her childhood than worry about the grades.



Lara enjoy drawings, painting and drafts. Her drawings of animals are more correctly-proportioed now. She needs to learn to be patient and not get too upset when her artwork doesn't turn out as she likes sometimes.

Siamanges and the goat rescue

Continuing on about our recent holiday...

The highlight in the zoo was the Siamanges. The siamanges have throat pouches that can inflate to make loud resonate sounds. Here is a short video we took while these apes howled. The mummy Siamanage carried a two-week baby on her tummy and the daddy Siamanage ran round showing his arm muscles to warn us off. The kids loved them!



The highlight in Mudgee was the goats. We spent some time in this place called 'Leaning Oak' patting goats (or more correctly, one goat in particular). This friendly goat followed us around like a dog. She had a collar on so I thought her was a family pet. We later found out that only the 'naughty' ones get to wear collars (so people can get hold of them easier). This friendly goat made an attempt of eating everything the kids thrusted into her mouth and seemed to enjoy the attention. She did some funny jumps away from Sam, other than that, she followed the kids around while they looked for 'food' for her to eat. 




After lots of patting and photos, we went inside to try the goat cheese. I bought a block of brie and some goat cheese in pesto (yummy!) and we chatted to the lady owner about her goats and sheeps (one of them had babies the night before). Just before we were about to leave, we heard strange high-pitched sound coming from the shed. The next minute, the owner lady ran out from the tasting room into the shed shouting after her that the goats are in disstress. Then she ran out and asked if Simon could go and help her. It turned out that two of the goats wandered into the shed and fell into the underground water tank. The cover to the tank broke and the male owner in fact left for town just after we arrived to get new covers for the tank. The water tank was very deep and luckily Simon was around to help the goats out. It was nice now back at home we talked about the goats while eating the lovely cheese (wish I have bought more!!).

[23 months] Talkative

Sam knows many words and talks all the time.

You have to decode what he says though. "Nanni" is 'Iin the night garden', his favourite program and "Nonni" is 'Thomas'. "Ta-tu" is thank you and "You-ee" is lolly. He was introduced to lolly during the long car ride this holiday and every 2 minutes, we heard 'you-ee?' coming from the back seat. He also asked 'why' when we asked him to do things, no doubt getting this from Lara. He is great at passing things to Lara and like all kids, will choose the biggest food item while passing the smaller potion to Lara. In the morning when I tell Lara to 'get ready to go' if we are going somewhere, and if Lara is not 'getting ready', Sam would go up to Lara and shouted 'weedy to doe wa wa'. In fact, he really like to shout 'instructions' to Lara. (probably copying me...) He calls himself 'Nam' and like any two-year-old, he likes to do things himself 'Nam do it' he says.

Sam likes to sing 'ee-i-ee-i-o' in 'Old MacDonald had a farm' and he does all the animal noises at the right place. He dances every time the volin music is on. He also knows the tune to 'twinkle', 'lightly row' and some other violin songs and humming every time the CD is on or Lara is playing. We don't let him touch Lara's violin in case he breaks it, but I'm thinking of making a 'box violin' using a ruler and a tissue box for him later. This is him playing violin with a friend's daughter's violin (a cheap one she bought overseas as a toy for her daughter)

July holiday

We just came back from a 5-day short break, a couple of days in Dubbo and a couple of days in Mudgee. It was not a great holiday because we all got Sam's cold. In fact we were all sick before we even left home. The first day driving to Orange was the worst day. When we stopped at a petrol station at 2pm there were snow pellets dropping from the sky. It was very very cold. Not a good weather for Lara who already had 39.5C fever the night before. In fact, her fever would last 5 days. Rather than going to the zoo, we took her to see a doctor the first morning we were in Dubbo.


The first night in Orange was not great. I was very tired from a day of driving with temperature and a very sore throat myself. Simon went out to get some food for us (in the freezing cold). Most of the restaurants didn't open on Sunday and the food he eventauly found was barely edible. While he was gone, I had my attention somewhere else for 5 mintues and Sam managed to get hold of a red crayon and drew all over the cream carpet in the hotel room. We spent the next half an hour trying to get the marks off.



Despite Lara not wanting to do much and threatened to throw up, we spent one afternoon and a half at the zoo. Dubbo zoo was big but there was minimum walking involved and it was very easy to get around in a car. It was very relaxing being with the animals. We got very close to the giraffes, heard the lion roar, witnessed the Siamanges and their baby in action. The view from the Savana viewing platform was amazing too. We were also lucky that the Mudgee wine-tasting part of the trip was at the end. We managed to taste and bought some wines and Simon managed to rescue a couple of goats on the way!

We are very glad to be home though.