Art class

Sam the spiderman

This is Lara's illustraion of Sam in his spiderman outfit.
Some days Sam lives in his spiderman outfit!

Winter school holiday

Besides the usual school holiday programs and playdates, Lara did some other fun activities during last school holiday:

Baking:
I was trying to get Lara into this kids baking class a friend told me about, but it was booked out for the rest of the year. Luckily, the friend who told me about it invited Lara to join them for a class they booked last year! Lara made some cinnamon and raisin scrolls, a yummy pizza and a koala bear with chocolate paws. The kids were all very creative and there were rabbit, star war battle field and a Roman among the creations. While the kids were busy baking, the adults had some yummy brunch and coffee. A great afternoon!



Origami:
The origami workshop was run by the Janpanese foundation to celebrate "Tanabata, Japanese Star festival. The gallery it was held were decorated with colourful origami from previous workshops. Kids sat down to a story about Tanabata (a love fable originating from China about god/godess meeting over the milky way once a year), then divided into smaller groups to learn the art of origami. Have just recovered from a temperature, Lara only tried simple things like a lantern and a frog. Friend Sue's creative girls attempted a more intricate origami box.

Art Gallery of NSW:
I also took Lara to the Art Gallery for a Torrens Island art workshop during the holidays. I was sipping coffee at the Gallery cafe and waiting for Lara to finish her workshop in the morning when I heard over the speaker about the free guided tours. I decided to join the 'Highlight of the gallery' tour and learned so much about some of the paintings! We had a yummy lunch at the same cafe then stayed on for a free 'how to draw' workshop. All the kids got paper and pens and learned to draw faces in the right proportions. I think the how-to-draw workshop made a great impact on Lara because she now wants to be an illustrator when she grows up!

It's time to think about the next school holiday!

Practice before school

It has been a little challenging to get the violin practice in every night. I tend to leave it too late and Lara too tired by then. I'm trying again a short 15 minutes practice before school and see how we go.

I want to be a writer

Lara wanted to be a doctor when she was about 3, during a period when she got sick quite frequently. She liked to take temperatures, applied bandaid and gave out pretend medicines. She wanted to be a teacher after she started Kindy last year. She enjoyed conducting classes in her bedroom with her soft toys and sometimes Sam as her students. She gave out colouring and homework for Sam to do, unfogtunately, Sam didn't always like to be her student. Lara wants to be a writer now. She is forever making a book or writing a story.

Here is one story she wrote (cover):

Start of story:
The little Tree and The bee hive:
chapter One:
There was a little tree with a bee hive on the bottom branch. It was the only tree in the world. and it had lots of frinds (friends). but one day, all of the birds and bees went away. So the little tree was very lonely.
One week later, the tree got Some new frinds and new flowers. Which made the trees very happy.
(Lara is still leaning to start a sentence with a capital letter) ....


Lara is happy when she has a pen and paper. When there is no paper around, she draws on napkin! She did this when we had coffee at a cafe.

Water-related picture diaries

Oct 3 - It was school holiday. Lara watched a show in Opera house with some school friends, had a yummy $5 pizza meal (with unlimited drinks) and played at Darling Quarter.I joined her just before the Darling Quarter play. What a fun day for Lara!


Oct 5 - Lara spent a fun morning at Collaroy beach with Evie and Ruby. As it turns out, we will probably be spending our Christmas Day this year at the same beach!


Oct 28 - We spent a good part of the day in the zoo. The seal show was a real winner (we were waiting for it to start with Lara's class pet Spottle in the photo). The kids spent the next few days pretending to be seals and performing tricks like the seals did.


Nov 2 - Lara started during-school and after-school swimming in term 4. Friday was a great day for lessons- it seemed to be quieter than the start of the week, Lara received more attention in the class (only 2 kids in her class).  Lara's progressing well and almost swimming, but she is still scared of diving at the deep end. She didn't swim last winter but I'm considering letting her swim through winter next year.

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.

A thing or two about violin

Lara is doing well with her violin. Even if some days we could only fit in a 10-minute quick practice (when I'm too tired to play or no energy to supervise), Lara is progressing well now passed the middle of book one. She is learning 'Andantino', 3 songs away from minuet 2. Bach's minuet 2 was the first violin song we heard when we sat in at a lesson back in Oct last year. I can hardly believe Lara is nearly playing that! The young fingers are very able - Lara can move her fingers faster than me now...

Lara went to a Suzuki violin funday a few weeks ago. It was for Book 1 & 2 kids, there were around 20 kids there. We met an experienced teacher Mrs Haywood (whom I was trying to get in touch with) there and saw how she taught. It was good value for only $10 one hour. Playing with other kids just made it more fun and the hour went very fast for Lara.

A small hiccup last week when Lara broke the bridge of her violin (she was being silly trying to play the wrong way). It meant no practice for 3 days, extra time spent to get the violin repaired on my day-off and $65 out of pocket (another shop was going to charge $95). Luckily there was a spare 1/8 violin we could borrow to do the lesson on Saturday morning.

At around the same time, I got a call from a teacher I spoke to earlier. She invited us to her student concert at her studio as she might have a spot next term. She has more advanced students, one of them played Vivaldi's Winter at the concert. She's located in Cherrybrook (a little far), but we will see what happens after the trial lesson.

Lots happening!

First term of school

I can't believe how fast the first term of school went. This blog entry was changed from first week of school to first month then the fist term of school!



The few weeks leading to Lara's start at 'big' school were busy days. Not only was I trying to get everything ready (uniforms, shoes, socks, school bags, swimming gear, lunch boxes to name a few - there were a lot of things to buy!), I also planned special activities for Lara, we went swimming and skating, went to the beach, had playdates and watched 'The Muppets'. Lara was very excited with the prospect of going to school 'every day'.

Lara's first day at school was smooth and uneventful. We had our cameras and took a couple of quick pics but as advised we didn't make a big deal of it. We left Lara as soon as she settled in the classroom. It was good as there was no time for Lara or us to get too sentimental. Getting upset or emotional would not help Lara or us in this situation.

Lara made some new friends and seemed to take this new school thing matter-of-factly. She loved school and complained about school being too short. The first couple of weeks of school was perfect. Then she got sick, vomiting, temperature and had to stay home for 3 days. After that it was complaint of tummy aches. To cut a long story short, the recurren tummy aches, we found later, was due to not drinking enough water (apparently very common in school kids) not bullying as I suspected.

Swimming classes started at week 2 and homework at week 5. There were readers to read every night and sight words to revise (when I remember). My life was extremely busy with class funcitons, playdates and plays-in-the-park, pencil-shapening and literacy volunteering. There are special days to remember (Harmony days all kids wore orange, healthy-lunch-day $5 but no lunch etc), lost properties to find (Lara seemed to lose at least one item of clothing every week), and so many notes going back and forth. I felt like I have two part-time jobs!

Even though I am busy with work at the moment, I'm very happy about this short break called school holiday! Somehow I managed to volunteer to do more reading and pencil-sharpening next term!! Hopefully things run smoothly next term.

Holiday swimming lessons

Lara did school holiday swimming lessons for the last two weeks. The lessons took place in the big school Lara will go to this year, so she got used to going to school (to swim) every day!



Lara can't swim yet but she has improved a lot and is very close to be able to swim by herself. Her water confidence increased dramatically in a very short space of time, most importantly, she enjoyed the lessons very much. I'm going back to work so she won't be able to continue the lessons for long. I try not to set up too many after-school activities for Lara but I have to keep swimming lessons now that she's so close to be able to swim! One of the resolutions that is on my list (for 2 years?) is to swim reguarly myself. Hopefully, I'll be able to find a pool to do that this year.

Ballet concert

Lara had her ballet concert on the first Wednesday of December. 'Sleeping beauty' was this year's production and Lara was one of the little red riding hood. This being her second concert, Lara seemed less overwhelmed and quite excited about being on stage. She 'directed' a younger girl to the right place on stage and didn't forget any of her dance. The 2 Saturday rehearsals plus a dress rehearsal on top of the normal lessons made us all very busy (& tired!). Prior to the concert, Lara said she wanted to do gymnastics with Matilda next year but she has since 'changed her mind' and told me she really wanted to do ballet next year. She was very inspired seeing the other big girls dance. All my hard-work (yes it was hard work taking Lara to all the rehearsals) was worth it when I saw how much she enjoyed the concert.

The little red ridding hoods get ready to get on stage!


Unfortunately, I'm not sure doing ballet would be possible next year. I found out Lara didn't get a single day of after-school-care next year despite me making every effort to hand in the application form early. I found out by accident, no one in the school bothered to inform me! (this is another story, don't get me started) I can't even work out Sam's daycare for next yer let alone trying to fit ballet class in there as well. Hopefully when things settle down, we'll be able to continue ballet.

Violin practice and concert

Lara had her violin concert last Saturday. She was included in the group twinkles at the last minute because she has not done all the twinkle variations yet(note 1). It was good training and great to see Lara trying to play the twinkle she has not yet learned by ear. There was a small group practice just before the concert. This was the first time Lara played with other kids (she played with me at home). Even though the other kids are more advanced than her, she did her best. The home practice sessions after the concert were very good and less tears. It's like a driving force, a goal (she already picked out a song she likes in Book 2) to work towards. I like the concept of group lessons in the Suzuki method, and look forward to more of these in the new year.

The home practices had been up and down. Practice was easy at the start, because it involved singing songs and playing games. I remembered the fist time Lara practiced the left hand at home. She thought she could not do it therefore refused even to try for 3 days. I'm glad we got over that hurdle! We usually spent about 1/2 an hour a night practicing violin. Most of the time, I got Lara to play the twinkle variations she alreay learned 4 or 5 times (each twinkle was about 1 minute long so that's 5 minutes). I don't know where rest of the time went. My next thing to try is perhaps to make practice a little more productive but keep in mind that music is just games and play for kids at this stage. Rather than a block of 30 minutes, I want to try 15 minutes of practice twice a day. Still trying to figure out where the second practice could fit in.

I went to check out some violins last week. I had to decide whether to rent the violins for another 3 months or buy a new/second-hand one. I don't know a lot about violins so the risk of getting a second hand one might be the set up fees on top of the violin. Lara is on a 1/8 violin at the moment and as she grows, we'll have to change violin sizes. Anyway I was talking to the violin dealer and I told him how Lara cried at home practices a lot, not because she didn't want to practice (she was usually the one who reminded me to practice) but she was frustrated she couldn't get the sound right. The violing dealer told me he got a lot of school violins for repairs. "One of the hardest thing I had to do is to clean the tear marks off" he said and showing me where the tears fell on the violin. So Lara is not the only kid who does this.... I have great admiration for any kids who play the simplest tunes because I know how much work is needed behind the scene...Here's a snippet of Lara's violin concert.



note:
Twinkle variations:
A - Busy Busy Stop Stop
B - ? (not learned yet)
C - Long little Long little(or Run Mummy Run Daddy)
D - Pineapple Pineapple
E - Running little catepillar

Paint bedroom

Lara helped me paint her bedroom today. I have wanted to make the kids' bedrooms more 'kid-like' for some time, but procrastenated until now. To minimise work, I've only done one feature wall. It is blue, Lara's favorite colour with free-hand clouds on other walls. Sam's bedroom will have a similar theme, maybe I'll do that next week. Lara helped me with the first coat, but was 'too tired' so she watched Harry Potter while I painted the second coat. Where was Sam? He was in family daycare. One of these rare days where I can spend some quality time with just Lara.

ps colour: dulux - sky babe

Siblings bath time 16-Oct-11

For a little while, Sam cried every time he went into a bath. I suspected he had a little nappy rash that stung once and that put him off bath for qutie some time. Now he really enjoys having a bath with Lara and Lara loves bathing with Sam. They still fight and sometimes the bath ended in both crying but generally they play well together.

Lara's artwork

Lara uses a lot of colours in her drawings. Pictured above are roller coasters. Teachers and parents in daycare all liked and commented on her artwork. Lara sometimes gets frustrated though. She was colouring the sky blue the other day and exclaimed "Mum my arms hurt and I'll never finish the sky!". I suggested she draw a 'smaller' sky so she could finish it without aching hands.



Lara is also very interested in drawing birds. She has been doing aboriginal painting in daycare and this is Lara's interpretation of aborigianl parrots. She enjoys drawing/painting a lot and can sit down for longer periods of time doing it.

More kids pictures

Lara and Sam have been getting along well. They still fight for toys (whatever toys Lara's playing with, Sam wants the same one too), and have small accidents (like the time Lara fell on Sam, or Sam hitting Lara or pulling her hair) but I think they enjoy each other's company. Lara is quite protective of Sam and is as gentle with him as a four-year-old can be and Sam's eyes light up when Lara is around.







These photos always bring a smile to my face, sometimes tears to my eyes and most definitely light up my life.

Parties

Last weekend was the party weekend because Lara had two birthday parties. Simon didn't feel well so I took both kids to the first party. I took Lara to the second party while Simon looked after Samuel the next day.

Tayla's party @ Queen Elisabeth reserve. The park is fully enclosed, with bike tracks, a variety of play stations, nice undercover seating area and toilets, everything you need in a playground. I believed Lara had a great time because it took me a long time to get her to leave.



Sean's party. Lara had fun playing games with her friends.

So many ideas

Lara was talking non-stop one morning and I asked ger to "stop talking for a minute" and she replied "I can't stop talking, because I have so many ideas in my head"!

Lara knows all the months in a year now., she sometimes forgets May.

Lara asked a lot of "Am I four/five?" quesions. These questions usually led to "so I can do xxx now?" or "xxx do this when she is four!". Lara likes to "tell jokes". One of the her jokes is "What have legs but can't walk?" The answer "Chair legs".

Lara has very definite ideas about what boys and girls should wear. When I picked Sam up the other day, he was in daycare's socks (pink). Lara screamed "Mum take the SOCKS off Samuel. They are GIRLS SOCKS!!!". Lara wanted to marry me or Samuel some days. She also told me "When I am 13 and when Sean is 13, we will be married all afternoon and all day".

I read "Hansel & Gretel" to Lara a while ago. I took the opportunity to ask her at the end of the story "if an old woman said I have lots of sweets in my house, please come in, would you go in?". Lara said "No". Good answer. I then asked her "if a nice man said come inside my car I have a lot of toys for you to play, would you go?" Lara answered "Yes" without hesitation. Have to work on that more.

Sam was coughing the other day and I said "ohhhh poor thing". Lara bursted into tears "you didn't say ohhh to me!" she later explained. Lara regressed a lot ealier this year, she baby-talked and liked to pretend she was Samuel, she's better now. Lara hated going to bed when Sam was still up at night. For some reason, Lara and Sam always want to play the same toys. I can forsee more "fighting for toys" episodes in the future.

Lara is my little helper. She helps me to look after Sam by getting me things for Sam, checking on him adn playing with him, she even saved Sam from breaking one of Grandma's ceramic pots. Lara is also my little translator telling me "When Sam says ma ma ma ma,it means he wants milk".


Lara doing craft with Shani.

We were at Simon's friends for lunch a few weeks ago. Shani, one of the friends who is a school teacher teaching year one this year, spent some time talking to Lara. She said Lara's gross motor skills are very good and that Lara's good with art/drawings, and has great imaginations (Lara made up a rhyme and story for Shani). She thinks Lara is ready for school!

Can you buy me drums for my 5th birthday?

Lara spent a long time playing with Uncle Andrew's drum set during the long weekend.

Easter egg hunt and other activities

We went to daycare's Easter egg hunt on Sunday. Someone donated over 600 eggs in Lara's daycare so there were chocolate eggs everywhere! The kids made egg hunt baskets during the week for this occasion. The egg hunt started at 10.30 and finished before 11.30. Lara was very good and kept saying "we have enough eggs now" after only 3 or 4 big eggs were collected. We had to rush home because I had some friends over for lunch at midday.

Kids are so busy these days with so many activities revolved around them. I don't actively organise too many extra outings, there are enough playdates and birthday parties already. I'd like to keep some days for relaxing at home for Lara (& Sam and me!). Here are some of Lara's activities from last year that I forgot to report:

14/Nov/2010- Lara @ Wizzy World (Lochie's birthday party). Imagine this. A very hot day(35C) and a not well-ventilated place with lots of excited kids. It was much warmer indoors. Imagine this : Sam was hot & hungry and I was feeding him. Lara was on one of those giant slides and was crying at the top because she was too scard to come down! Not an enjoyable afternoon for me. but it was the highlight of Lara's Sunday.



30/Nov/2010 - Ballet dress rehearsal. At 4pm on a raining Tuesday. Picked Lara up from daycare at 3pm. Drove in poring rain and got wet even before we arrived. Luckily found the venue and a car space without getting lost. Rushed to put Lara in costume, hair in a bun and make-up. Lara was a little overwhelmed but excited to see the big girls dance. Luckily Sam was at home with Grandparents recovering from a small cold. I was so exhausted afterwards that I went to bed at 7pm leaving Simon to put Lara to bed!

11/Dec/2010 - Daycare Christmas party. Lara had face painting, tattoo stickers and painted a ceramic ladybug with Annie. We saw Santa running across the road when we arrived, he was late like us! Lara was given a little soft toy froggie at a shopping centre by a Santa. She was confused after we saw another Santa somewhere else "Why is this Santa looking different to the other Santa?"