J Summary (5Y8M18D) - Perler Bead Day

At 5 years old, J likes perler beads. He made a few of them at the kindergarten, and he was particularly in the mood for them today. He spent almost the whole day making them, 9 out of 11 of them today.

He started paying attention to symmetry, and tried to make his patterns in a symmetrical way. I helped him, when he faced problem with two of them, one mainly due to mis-count.

I spent my time ironing the whole day... ok, it wasn't so bad ;-)

It is available from Føtex supermaket for 20 DKK for s small pack with mold. The whole bucket is also available from IKEA. You can also find them in Amazon:

 

J's Lunchbox

Top from left: Chinese fried rice with chicken, oyster mushroom, egg, cabbage, carrots and cucumber; red pepper bell and carrots; liver pate with roasted onion on rye bread; Crab salad with fish eggs on rye bread, blanched broccoli sprinkled with salt, Danish fish cake; cucumber; promenade; blueberries and a card on behalf of Florian away on business trip :-)

All packed into the luchbox ready for tomorrow :-)

Updates 24 Nov 2014:

When he came home, I asked him, whether he had a pleasant surprise and whether he liked the card.

J said, "Mommy, what is the card for? Is it because I have been a good boy? Can I exchange the card for a smiley and then for cash?"

Mommy: @@@@!!!!!!??? Our son's love language is definitely not words of encouragement.

J's Lunchbox

Fiskefrikadeller; blueberries; apple; raw kale dressed with olive oil, Japanese sesame dressing, lemon juice and salt; nuts, goji berries and fig; pasta, carrot; and sitr-fry chicken

Conversation Starters with Seniors

Photo credit: http://www.girlfriendzmag.com/2013/05/tips-for-terrific-visit-elderly-loved-one/
We are preparing ourselves to serve as volunteers to visit old people. It would be a challenge, as it would be in Danish. But what could we talk about? I have done some research and here are a list of ideas that I have gathered:

http://www.agingcare.com/Articles/questions-to-ask-elderly-parents-147907.htm
http://conversationstarters.com/101.htm

Here are some tips when visiting elderly people:

https://www.caring.com/articles/visiting-elderly

Celebrating Birthday at the Planetarium in Copenhagen

Here is information I am archiving for celebrating birthday at the Planetarium (in Danish only)

http://planetariet.dk/oplevelser/b%C3%B8rnef%C3%B8dselsdag

http://planetariet.dk/sites/planetariet.dk/files/pdf/B%C3%B8rnef%C3%B8dselsdag.pdf

J's Lunchbox

Fiskefrikadeller, blanched broccoli sprinkled with salt, ricola, lever pate sandwich, carrot, mandarin orange, blue berries, surimi, promenade and apple

How to Encourage Your Child to Play with Lego?

Our Lego play table for our Lego week

When we have playdates, I noticed that the boys are not so interested in playing with Lego, but iPad, TV, blablades, etc. What a pity, such a wonderful toy Lego is, and it is not being selected. The problem with modern life, I guess, with all these electronic gadgets. But LEGO is such a wonderful fun and educational toy, that we should encourage our child to play. Here are the benefits of LEGO:

Benefits of LEGO

1. It builds concentration skills, when your child learns to follow the manual. 

2. It teaches sequencing skills, when your child learns to follow the manual.

3. It builds spatial skills, when your child builds 3-dimensional models. 

4. It develop creativity, when your child builds his own models.

Even for us, I don't think that our LEGO at home is played with often enough. Recently, we went to a friend's place, Wei and Yi, and learned this from them. They placed lego bricks in open containers on the table, ready for the children to play. What a fantastic idea! That's when I realise that our LEGO is always kept in closed containers, and not displayed out for J to play. So we got inspired to turn our desks into Lego "playtable" and have a Lego theme week.

5 Tips to Encourage Your Child to Play with LEGO

Here are 5 tips how to encourage your child to play with Lego:

1. Have a critical mass of lego bricks, so that your child will not feel frustrated running out of bricks.

2. Organize the lego bricks so that you get an easy overview, and do not have to spend too much time searching for the pieces. But do not over-organise that it becomes too tiresome to look for the specific pieces. Here is a post on how to organise your lego.

3. Create a "Lego play table" by displaying the lego bricks on a table or floor in open containers, so that it looks inviting for your child to sit down and play with them. Make it a Lego week and leave the lego displayed out for a week.

4. Inspire your child by sitting down together with him in the beginning to build something together and thereafter leave your child to build on his own.

5. Choose a small set to inspire your child to build following the manual. You can read more here:

http://momlearnings.blogspot.dk/2014/12/the-advantages-of-small-lego-set-lego.html

6. Display the models built in a line so that your child gets inspired, as he builds his own models or improvise on the old ones.

Display the models build previously in a line near the playtable for your child to get inspired and learn, as he builds his own models.

Create a "Lego play table" by displaying the lego bricks on a table or floor in open containers, so that it looks inviting for your child to sit down and play with them. Make it a Lego week and leave the lego displayed out for a week.

Close-up of the lego playtable

Close-up of the lego playtable

Lego bricks displayed in an open container





23 Nov 2014 - J playing by himself

Toy: Geomag

Here is another magnetic toy that encourages creativity that J loves to play at his kindergarten. He requested for Christmas. At the moment, he uses it to construct spin-tops.

Here is a video from our Little FECS playing with geomag:

It is available from Amazon:

27 Dec 2014 - Playing with his Geomag Christmas present

Updates 12 Jan 2015 (5Y10M7D):

J often complains that I don't play enough with him, that I only do Chinese, Maths and piano with him. This evening, after preparing the ingredients for dinner, I had some time, so we played Gromag together. J could build the shape all by himself, and even gave ideas of how to stable it with the pentagon, rather than the pentagon base that came with it, that didn't work so well. However, he had difficulty putting the panels into place. Daddy isn't very good at putting the panels too. Without the panels, the structure is too weak and easily collapses. They were giving up, and J said that it was impossible to build a sphere, until I tried it and made it work. It was actually very easy. One has to wait to hear the click to ensure the panel is in place.

12 Jan 2015 (5Y10M7D) - Building a sphere structure with mommy

Toy: Magnetic Magna-Tiles

Made by J and his kindergarten friend

This is such a great toy which the children in J's kindergarten love.  Magna-tiles are very open-ended and it encourages creativity. It can be incorporated into practically any game, a compartment where a kid can hide inside, a palace, etc.

It is very educational too all the way from preschool to learning geometry. It is also useful for teaching patterns.

By playing and putting together all the different 3-dimensional forms, your child gets to be familiarized with making cubes, making a square with two right-triangles, making a trapezoid with, three isosceles triangles, etc.

Donald Duck Comics

J LOVES Donald Duck comics in Danish since he was 4 years old. He could read it on his own in the morning and in the evening for half and hour or more. He could not read the word, but he understood the stories from looking at the pictures and he laughed a lot, when he read it.

I felt a little left out, since the comics is in Danish, and I wanted to share it with him in a language that I could participate. Thus, I am searching for the for Donald Duck comics in Chinese and English.

Donald Duck comic magazine is very popular in Denmark, and Daddy grew up reading it. And he passed this habit to J, for good or for bad.

At first, I was a little worried that he is attracted to comics and not more serious books. I was afraid that it would carnivorize the other good books, but Daddy said that there are very often also very good moral values behind the stories. It is better that he finds something that he likes to read that could inculcate hopefully the love for reading.

I found those below in English from Amazon:

 

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Duck

Learning Measuring, Fractions, Porportions with Lego Bricks

Structured freeplay - Exercising creativity, while getting a sense of measurement, proportion and fractions.

Structured freeplay is a oxymoron - how can it be structured and yet free? It simply means that some thoughts are being put into what materials and what initial inspiration is provided in the materials used in encouraging free play and the creativity that is generated through free play.

Here the child is led to be inspired with lego bricks and wooden train set, but the child uses his own creativity to build his own formation that requiring measuring and a sense of proportion and fraction.

Stuctured freeplay thus is a method melting Eastern sense of structure with Western sense of freeplay

Playing with lego alone or with wooden train set is not as fun as when they are combined together. Try it :-) 

One of life's greatest joy... Lego Duplo for the 2-5 years old... and ah hem... for the over XX years' old too!!!

Sometimes Structured Freeplay (SF) doesn't go as you plan, and could go a little off-track... i.e. here Daddy is having soooo much fun that, rather than inspiring and facilitating, Joshie is relegated to fetching the bricks for Daddy to build the train track.... who is having fun? Father or son?

Aaaahhh... it's nice to get our limited floor space back again!!!

Daddy and Joshie played and Mommy did the clean up!!!

While... it was too late for Joshie, way way past his bed time... but he won't get away so easily next time...

Well, truth be told, I actually love cleaning up... It is very relaxing... it is like cleaning my mind of clutter, while I clear away the physical clutter.

If play is the boys' idea of fun... clean up is my idea of fun

How blessed Joshie is to have a mom that likes cleaning up after play time, right :-)

J Summary (5Y8M1D) - Train Tracks

6 Nov 2014

At this age, J constructed the above track all on our own without our help.

For the other track formation that he designed, at some point, he had difficulty with measuring and to fit the proportion of the tracks together and we helped him. But it was good training to develop his measuring skills.

6 Nov 2014

8 Nov 2014

9 Nov 2014

10 Nov 2014

11 Nov 2014

Building with Daddy...

12 Nov 2014

21 Nov 2014

21 Nov 2014

J is crazy with wooden train set after I bought a set of suspension bridge and tracks. He plays with it everyday.