I requested to host this week’s playdate again, as we’ve got another appointment in the afternoon, and I wanted to let Noah take a nap before heading for it. Thankfully, all the mums in our group are very accommodating, and agreed to come over to our place again.
For free play, I laid out a mix of English and Chinese books, as well as some stacking blocks which a friend recently passed to me. Mummy L was the first to arrive, so Noah and Faith played together while waiting for their friends to arrive. Faith patiently stacked the blocks, while Noah kept using his toy car to knock them down.
The stacking blocks
Playing together
I offered to read to them, to prevent Noah from destroying the blocks, but after a while, they opted to “read” by themselves.
The books
“Reading”. Someone was obviously not paying attention!
After the other children arrived, we sang the Good Morning Song, and I was impressed that E could sing the song with us too. The other children were happy to simply wave at each other, but that’s already a huge improvement from our first session, when they just watched us sing and wave.
Good morning!
We moved on to sea animals this week, and I gave the children a card each from the Melissa & Doug Alphabet Splash Cards
. They then took turns using the water pen to discover the picture on the card, and I think they were all quite excited about it.
Water Wow Splash Cards
Painting
Mummy L read ‘My Red Balloon’ by Kazuaki Yamada, and even brought a red balloon to burst during the storytelling! I thought that really helped the story to come alive for the children. The mums kept marvelling at how much the children have grown over the past few months, as they all sat and listened attentively throughout the entire story.
Story time
Getting ready to burst the balloon
I also loved the penguin craft that Mummy L came up with, as it was so simple and cute. She gave us four black circles of varying sizes, two white circles, two yellow circles, and a red semi-circle, to create a penguin. I erm, missed one of the white circles, which meant that Noah had a different looking penguin. Oops.
What the penguin should look like
Noah working on his penguin
One of these is not like the others…
Mummy J read a Chinese book about a little penguin who refused to sleep at night, and again, the children were captivated by the story. Noah, in particular, used to walk away whenever it was time for Chinese, but now, he is able to sit down for it, and even participate in the singing of Chinese songs. In fact, he asked me to sing the Chinese song for him that night during dinner, and happily did the actions for it too.
Chinese story-time
Singing the Chinese action song
After Chinese, the kids had a simple snack of Cheerios, biscuits, and yogurt drops, while the mums snacked on some peanut pancakes that I bought.
Praying before eating
Mummy E was in charge of Practical Life this time, and the children loved the cutting station as usual. They also got to work on some sorting, latches, general skills, and puzzles.
Sorting
Cutting
Latches
General Skills
Puzzles
We forgot to come up with an activity for the Big Muscles Movement, so we decided to let them do what they loved most: running around. Three of the four kids absolutely adore chasing each other around, and would do so whenever they get the chance to, while little Faith would run after them and tell them, “No running!” Too cute!
Running Around
Taking a break
After all that running around, I had a tough time getting Noah to calm down enough to sing the action songs and the Goodbye song. That evening, however, he kept asking me to sing their action song, ‘My God is so Big’ with him. Guess he was paying attention, despite squirming around a lot during the song!
Just a few more sessions to go with this little group, before they all head off to school next year…
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