So dear Mister Six has entered the scene. You might wonder, what has the space between five and six been like? Well, to sum up, it’s been all about… LEGO . Transformers. Star Wars. Elephant and Piggie books. Books about LEGO. Reading Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton books together. Learning sight words. Toe holes in socks. Knee holes on pants. Second (sometimes third) helpings at dinner. Writing and drawing pictures about LEGO. Sweaty hugs after school. First visits from the tooth fairy. Holdings hands to cross the road (most of the time, still). Silly jokes at little sister’s expense. Hugs and sorry to little sister afterwards. I want to play by myself. I want to play with sister . I want to play by myself again. You listen to me because I am bigger. Okay, I’ll read you a story, little sister. Yes, I’ll help you mummy. No problem, I’ll take care of it , mummy. Can I do it later, mummy? More LEGO. I love babies. I like to play with babies. I like to play with big boys. I played tha...

And so finally we come to the last installment of my monthly play roundup series for the year. I’ve decided to combine November and December into one post as the second half of December usually runs into the holiday season with things starting to wind down. But I’ll do a separate post on some of the end-of-year celebrations and holiday highlights. But for now, here’s a roundup of the activities we’ve been busy with over these last couple of months… ‘I Need a Hug’ A recent favourite book we picked up from the library last month that we’ve read together umpteen times is ‘I Need a Hug’ by Aaron Blabey . The story is about a sad (and cute) little porcupine who really needs a hug. But then who would be willing to hug a porcupine. We made good use of our leftover playdough with some toothpicks and googly eyes to make our own little porcupines. The children adored their little porcupines and hugged them (gently) all day. We also gathered a few other animal toys to play out the story together...

So loving the warmer weather we’ve been enjoying this past month! It took some time to warm up but we’re definitely enjoying more and more of a springy-summery vibe in the weather. We’ve been heading outdoors a lot more over the past few weeks with lots more free play to shake off the winter chill in our bones. But we still manage to squeeze in plenty of semi-structured activities in between. Here’s a peek at some of them… ~ I Can Spell My Name ~ With a couple of the kids transitioning to kindy next year, I’ve started incorporating more literacy and numeracy activities into our programme. This is the ‘I Can Spell My Name’ activity tray magnetic letters and printed laminated cards of the children’s names. They’ve caught on pretty quickly. I usually leave the tray out in a common area so they can visit it whenever they like throughout the day to have a go at spelling their name. ~ Jonathan & Martha ~ We revisited one of my favourite children’s books , which I featured in this post...

I hope you enjoyed reading my previous post in my ‘real hobbies’ series. If you did, I’m sure you have been looking forward to this next post in the series. You’ll probably find this one very intriguing as it is totally different from the last one . So today’s ‘Real Hobbies’ post features: The Art of Hunting for Your Own Food We first met Joel and Sharolyn earlier this year through our church small group. They were warm and generous people who immediately opened their home up for friends to drop by and hang out. On one occasion, they invited a group of us over to sample Joel’s fresh homemade sashimi. The salmon sashimi was so melt-in-your mouth tender that we just couldn’t get enough of it. We started talking about food in general, including the where and how to get the best and freshest ingredients. Joel’s solution was mind-blowingly simple but bizarre--head out into the wild and catch your own ingredients! That’s when I found out all about Joel’s unusual hobby… HUNTING!!! So h...

We’ve been having some very strange weather last month which just couldn’t seem to make up it’s mind whether to jump into spring or hold back to winter. But towards the end of the month, I think winter is finally relenting and letting go of it’s chilly grip over us. Anyway here’s a roundup of some of the things we’ve been up to in September… Steamed Buns Our favourite cooking activity last month was making these soft, fluffy, white steamed buns with red bean filling. The homemade filling was from the adzuki beans I had used to make snowskin mooncakes earlier that month. We made the dough with pao flour (similar to cake flour) which was very soft and pliable and very nice to work with. The children said it felt just like playdough. **** Pattern and Counting Activity Trays Extending on some math and numeracy learning we’ve been focusing on recently, I downloaded and printed out a couple of pattern recognition and watermelon seed counting worksheets ( here and here ) for the childre...

After a final blast of wet weather last month, I think it’s quite safe to say that spring has finally sprung . We celebrated the new season the first weekend with a relaxed, chilled-out family BBQ at King’s Park. After we had our fill of sausages, we took a slow, leisurely stroll along the familiar stretch of the park looking down on the iconic view of Perth city. I think it was probably the first time we were looking down on that iconic view together as a family. We pointed out various landmarks and marveled over the beauty of our home city together. It felt really special sharing that moment as a family. I came across this quote which really sums up everything I felt so well about that moment… A mother discovers with great delight that one does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children; But because of the friendship formed while raising them.” — Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez . We recently finished reading both books in Enid Blyton’s ‘The Wishing Chair’ series....

We’ve been having lots of really wet days last month. Not your usual light drizzle. But full on stormy, pouring down with rain kind of weather. Too wet to play outside. Too stormy to go out anywhere. For a moment I wished I could wave a magic wand to make all the clouds disappear and bring out the sunshine and blue skies. Do you remember Mary Poppins? I absolutely loved watching that movie as a child (and still do). I remember one of my favourite scenes was when the children (and Bert) held hands with Mary Poppins and they magically jumped inside a picture and went off to have some funny little adventure there. How wonderful would it be if I could have some magical fairy godmother to whisk me away to some place else exotic and beautiful and WARM… perhaps to Bali or The Maldives. Summer in New York or Paris or London. Maybe Santorini or Nice. Even Singapore or my hometown KK… Anywhere but this miserable, cold, wet winter in Perth. I am just so DONE with winter here. Please be OV...

Over the July school holidays, my folks flew over from Malaysia to visit. It was just a relaxed, chilled out trip with no particular agenda planned. Just spending time together with us and their precious grandchildren. On one of the weekends, we went on a mini getaway down south (which in Perth-speak refers to the Margaret River region and located about two hours drive south of the Perth metro area). We usually stop by the usual suspects such as Busselton Jetty or the Margaret River Chocolate Factory. But there are definitely thousands of hidden gems tucked around every corner waiting to be discovered. I don’t think it’s possible for a single person to uncover them all. However I can do my little bit by sharing a couple of our own discoveries with you. I left most of the photography to my dad and his trusty Olympus DSLR. But I did manage to snap a few photos here and there to give you a little peephole glimpse of some of the places we visited during our trip. ~~~ Happs Wines I’m ...

My baby girl turned three last month. Three. THREE. It seems too big a number to assign to my little baby. Or maybe I’m just living in denial. Probably. Definitely. We should just stop right here. It’s a very good age to be anyway. Three is just perfect. We celebrated the occasion with a custom-mummy-made cake, specially requested by her highness. The theme was based on her current favourite animated film--‘Tinkerbell and The Legend of the Neverbeast’. (It should be noted that the mummy was pretty pleased with her own cleverness at putting together the various elements of the cake design all by herself). The grandparents indulged her with her very first fashion doll. They chose a Disney Rapunzel one because, in the words of her grandpa: “ I think she will find the hair is very nice to comb! ”. And as predicted, she has been combing Rapunzel’s hair very diligently almost every day until it’s all hopelessly frayed and tangled. And yet she zealously combs on. So what is ‘Three...