We started the morning with some random drawings on Sophie's whiteboard. I took the opportunity to encourage her to talk about her drawings. After we have almost worn out the dry erase markers, Sophie took out her normal markers to work on paper. I sort of guided her verbally in her drawing, but she did it entirely on her own.
Sophie : (scribbled something pink) Monster! Mama : Oh… and where are his eyes? Sophie : (added 3 dots) Here! Mama : Wow, scary monster! Sophie : (scribbled something blue) Bird! Mama : Okay, where is your bird? (handed her a brown marker) Is it in a tree? Sophie : Yes… (scribbled a brown line) Mama : (handed her a green marker) And what about leaves? Sophie : (added some shorter green lines) ... Mama: (offered a yellow marker) You want to draw a sun? Sophie : (drew a circle) Sun!
Sophie : (scribbled some brown lines) Owl! Mama : Oh, that’s an owl and it’s in a tree trunk… (pointing at the vertical brown line) Owls come out at night, would you like to draw a moon? Sophie : (grabbed the grey marker from my hand and drew a huge moon) Moon!
Mama : So what are you drawing now? Sophie : (continued scribbling) …
Sophie ignored me and stopped drawing. She insisted that her works must be displayed so we put it up.
I bought Sophie this Peg Board Set some time ago when she showed interest in marker caps. She enjoyed taking the cap on and off so I thought she might like putting pegs into holes and taking them out. However, she could only do it properly now. Sophie never failed to amaze me with her imagination though.
Sophie loves to play pretend but today was the first time I heard an actual conversation between her and her imaginary friend.
Sophie's Friend : Oh no... sticker (is) gone! Sophie : Don't worry (stroking her own left hand), we'll find sticker! Sophie's Friend : You will? Great!
During lunch, I got pretty angry with Sophie, as usual, when she refused to chew and swallow her food. She would hold it all in her mouth like a chipmunk until she could not do it anymore then gag and spit the food out. It did not help when Ah Gong and Ah Mah kept challenging my authority. In the end, she got so upset that she actually spoke in a sentence!
Sophie : Please, Mummy... don't make me mum-mum (eat)!
I have seen "contact paper" mentioned many art books but I could never find it anywhere in local stationery store. Yesterday, I chanced upon "self-adhesive plastic sheet" (Popular at Bukit Timah Plaza) for wrapping books and I thought it is probably close enough to "contact paper" so I bought 2 rolls. Today, I tried it out with Sophie (fingers crossed). I think it is quite useful for young children doing collage work since no glue is needed. However, I feel that it is better to have a frame to hold the plastic sheet in place.
I cut a frame from an ordinary brown cardboard and let Sophie scribble about. I tried to bundle a few crayons with a rubber band so that she could experience a new way of drawing. However, she was not very keen so I left it as that.
After I fix the plastic sheet onto the frame, I gave Sophie some of the leftover glitter dust from our previous open-ended art to "sprinkle" over the sticky side. She was very eager to work with glitter dust although I must admit I was pretty worried about the cleaning up. Then, I gave her black glitter dust and she would probably empty the whole bottle if I had let her.
Lastly, Sophie placed a golden ribbon in the picture and I quickly sealed the picture with another piece of self-adhesive plastic sheet. It turned out quite nice actually.
I like the fact that the end-product looks different when it is placed against a different background.
End Product
For more creative ideas, visit Mommies Little Artist and check out what other mummies do with their little ones.
Every night, just before I give Sophie her milk, I would say, "Goodnight Sophie!" and she would say, "Goodnight Mummy!". Now she would also pat my tummy and say, "Goodnight Baby!".
Unfortunately, I have not been feeling well the whole week so I just let Sophie do random painting for art. Hopefully, my condition improves because there are so many things I want to do with her.
We took out Sophie's big threading beads today for her to try threading. She has not been very enthusiastic but I wanted to see if her motor skills has improved. Of course she started off with playing with them like stacking blocks. Not too bad because it meant that she can stack pretty well now.
Although not proficient, Sophie can thread a lot better now, compared to a couple of months back.
Sophie is beginning to enjoy putting together Lego and Clipo... FINALLY! I actually like Clipo because she has to align the pieces properly before she can fit them together.
After our sand and gravel art, I thought it would be great to make a picture for Papa. I painted the shape of a Christmas sock using white glue and let Sophie sprinkle coloured sand over it. Then she pasted some cotton wool on top and added glitter glueon the sock. At first I thought it would look nice to just squeeze the glitter glue around to form random designs, but Sophie was so used to "rubbing over" the glitter glue that she smeared it all over before I could stop her.
Later in the afternoon, I let Sophie create some letter prints with her alphabet stamps. Then I picked those that we needed for the words and cut them out.
I think we are starting to be lazy. Both Sophie and I could not seem to get our engine started again after our little break. Nevertheless, I still made a point to do some shopping at Art Friend over the weekends. I bought some red and green sand and gravel for Open-ended Art this week. I thought it should not be too tough, considering that Sophie could handle glitter dust well enough last week.
I gave Sophie some dinosaur stencils to work with, thinking that it would be easier than painting freehand. However, sand and gravel were a lot harder to manage than glitter dust. Sophie also found the containers too heavy to lift. And of course, she wanted to paint the glue all over the entire stencil instead of just one dinnosaur.
It took a lot coaching and practice before Sophie understood what to do. Even then, she could not really handle the sand and gravel on her own. And she had to constantly fight the urge to dip her fingers into the excess sand and just play with it.
Still, I think she did a decent job with the given conditions. I could tell that she would probably have enjoyed it better if I could allow her to have her way with the sand and gravel. Unfortunately, I think she could only do it if we had a yard or somewhere outdoors.
Cleaning up was a nightmare. The sand and gravel, unlike glitter dust, could not be picked up by a damp cloth. And since Sophie ran off once our activity ended, she brought some of it with her to other parts of the house. The excess glue made washing a lot tougher too. I guess it was inevitable. Good thing Sophie liked the activity - my only consolation.
Do visit Mommies Little Artist to check out what other mummies have done with their little ones this week.
We visited Oh Chin Huat Hydroponics Farm about 2 weeks ago and came home with a butterfly kit. They have a small butterfly lodge. The kit consisted of a plastic container with a netted cover, two caterpillars, some leaves and a piece of instructions stuck onto the container.
Sophie could fix all her 3D puzzles finally! Initially, she could not understand magnetism and she could not visualise how the 3 puzzle pieces fit together to form the animal. Now, she could get it right easily. How amazing! Time to move on to more challenging puzzles...
Sophie is allowed to scribble anytime she likes. However, it took me months before she becomes "well-trained" in the "protocol".
Step1: Take out the markers or crayons from the drawers (or the whole drawer) Step2: Take some paper from the drawers Step 3: Sit at the table to start scribbling
She can only use the markers on paper and not anywhere else. Occasionally, she would forget and start scribbling on the table and she was then made to wipe off the ink. Ah Mah thought I was too "liberal" with her sometimes. She would freak out whenever Sophie took out a marker or drew on herself. Yet she was perfectly fine with her leaving ink marks on the table or the wall!
We almost forgot about Open-ended Art due to all the hustle and bustle of Sophie's Birthday throughout the week. In fact, we did this in the morning before we headed to Naenae's house for her birthday party. The theme this week for Open-ended Art is "Blue And Silver" at Mommies Little Artist. Do drop by to check out what other mummies do with their little ones.
I intend to let Sophie do her art and craft work at her work table from now on. It is a rather intimidating move as she can now mess up the whole room with her new found freedom. However, it is inevitable I feel. So, today we did the craft with glitter dust and glue. I mixed some blue fingerpaint to the white glue and she painted it onto a piece of A4 paper. I had to use an A4 paper so that it could fit into the tray. I was hoping to contain the glitter dust that way. I find it great to witness how Sophie learn to use the glitter dust. She could even tell me I had missed a spot!
And she was so eager to do it on her own that she got frustrated when I tried to guide her hand. She would deliberately move the glitter dust container away from my hand and when that failed, she passed it over from her left hand to her right. So cute!
After two practice attempts, Sophie was given the green light to do it on her own (almost). She painted the glue onto the paper and sprinkled on the glitter dust like there was no tomorrow!
Cleaning up was not too bad. I am glad Sophie could follow through without losing interest. Papa was around today and he got a glimpse of how his little girl do art and craft - unedited.
Sophie turns two today. It feels great to know that I have done a pretty decent job raising her so far. She was only 2.67 kg when she was born 2 years ago, but today she is 90 cm tall and around 12 kg. Sometimes when I look at her, I cannot believe she is actually my daughter. I must have done something really good in my life to have deserved a little girl like her.
Sophie has a wonderful sense of humor, a really vivid imagination and a relentless approach to problem-solving. She is also very affectionate and compassionate towards others, especially her grandparents. Everything else seems less important. The fact that she still does not self-feed or fall asleep on her own without her milk bottle and my little pinky.
We kept her birthday celebrations simple this year. Today, Ah Gong and Ah Mah came over with her birthday cake and two helium balloons after her nap. She went absolutely crazy with the balloons, especially since they were of her favourite Disney characters (Minnie Mouse and Tinkerbell). She almost could not let go of them! She was also very excited about the birthday cake and candles. She really enjoyed blowing off the flames on the candles. Together with the new bicycle that Ah Gong has bought for her, she looked all grown-up and ready to hit the road.
After that, we headed to Auntie KK's place for a Christmas gathering. Although we did not intend to throw Sophie a birthday party, we thought it would be nice for us to bring a cake. In the end, everyone still got her birthday presents. Many thanks to Auntie KK, Auntie Jessy, Auntie Pei Ee, Uncle Andy, Auntie Jean, Auntie Annie for the wonderful gifts. I was so tickled that most of the gifts are Crayola art materials. I think they are meant for me, not Sophie!
I am still trying to finish posting all the entries (prior to 11/12/2009) for Sophie's World but from now on, we will be posting all our entries here. I also have a new personal blog Hanalohgy.
Thank you for your support for the past two years!
What a way to end our "Letter of the Week"! Sophie was not a wee bit keen on doing art today. As a result, we made do with whatever she was willing to do, plus a lot of what I HAD to do...
End-Product : "z" For zig zag & zipper
Do visit Sophie's new blog to have a look at the complete set of "Letter of the Week".
The last letter we had to complete yet I did not feel particularly motivated to do it. I wonder if it was because after this week, we would have no more letters to do. We have spent 26 weeks aka 1/2 year on "Letter of the Week" (excluding the two-week Aussie break) so naturally I find it almost difficult to end the activity. Of course, we can start again... But it would not be quite the same.
Alright, enough of my melancholic drama for the time being... back to the letter "Z". I did not have much cardboard left after I cut out the letter, so I could only draw part of the hind legs for this poor zebra. Luckily, Sophie did not seem to mind much. Besides, we added some grass later on to cover up.
Maybe my lack of enthusiasm was contagious. Sophie did not seem to care much about the activity either.
Oh well, the end product looked decent enough although it could have been more eye-catching if I had picked a better background colour. I can never get it right...
We watch a lot of PlaySchool on Australian Network and I like it better than Hi-5 or The Wiggles. It promotes creativity with its clever use of common household items as props and toys. The music is gentle and soothing, unlike the upbeat kind heard in Hi-5 or The Wiggles. Sophie loves the boats she saw in the program so I made her a plastic bottle boat to play during her bath time. And here is an animation of a song we heard this week. There is a fingerplay that goes with it but I cant find it online.
After yesterday's attempt, I decided to give this week's theme another shot. I made two brushes for Sophie last night - one of twine and the other of nylon string. I taped a few strands together and inserted the bundle into a straw (cut into half) before securing it with more tape. So she would paint with a "broom" and a "mop" today. Hopefully, she would work with sponges too.
Strangely, Sophie refused to do art this morning. She ran away from me and took out her Playdoh instead. No matter how hard I coaxed her, she just would not let go of her Playdoh. So we negotiated a little and she did the background for today's art with a roller sponge. Fortunately, it had to be completely dry before we work on it further so I let her carry on with her Playdoh.
I think she is currently obsessed with cutting and she is trying to practice cutting Playdoh until she feels she has mastered the scissors.
When she was more willing to do some painting, she was quite unstoppable. She finished the painting in 7 minutes.
Okay, I feel that this piece of work is definitely more "Hans Hofmann" than the ones she did yesterday.
End Product 3
Late afternoon is definitely not a fantastic time for Sophie to do anything that requires focus and cooperation. She was running all over with paint in her hands, threatening to touch everything in her path.
The yellow was somehow lost in the white and pink, but it was fine because it was meant to be the background.
End Product 4
I think we are quite done with Hans Hofmann for now... Do visit Mommies Little Artist for more great ideas on this week's theme for Open-ended Art.
This week's Open-ended Art is based on the works of Hans Hofmann. His style was pretty much an unique blend of Fauvism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism. I did not want to do a collage with Sophie because I thought she might like to paint more. And I chose to start with a more "Abstract Expression" and less "Cubism" style with Sophie.
I was looking for a comb everywere in the house for this, but we ended up with a fork instead. And since we were going to use a fork, I thought we could use a spoon as well.
We could not really achieve the same effect as Hans Hofmann in Colour Poem No 6 but I thought Sophie did a good job anyway. And she actually enjoyed the process so it was good enough for me... for now!
The end product took some time to dry because we used a lot of fingerpaint.
End Product I
Curious, I let Sophie do another piece without much intervention. I wanted to know how independent she could be. She relied a lot on my cue to start doing her craft, as if she was waiting for my permission... (Opps, I do tend to be too strict with her).
Sophie's work actually looked better BEFORE she finished it... some of the patterns were lost after she rubbed her hands over the paint. Anyway, still looking good...
End Product II
Do check out Mommies Little Artist for more great ideas by other mummies. I think we would try again tomorrow...
I must admit, "v" for valley is a little abstract for Sophie. She kept saying it was a mountain... which was not exactly wrong.
I think we would do away with smocks in the future. Sophie hates wearing a plastic sheet over and who could blame her? I probably would let her wear an old t-shirt or something instead.
I was not too thrilled to make a Vulture for "V" but I could not think of anything else. Besides, Sophie had just seen vultures in The Jungle Book so she could identify with it.
Unfortunately, our vulture looked more like a cross between a flamingo and an ostrich. Oh well...
We were still raving about the slick stix so Sophie used it on the "V", together with the dot paint.
Nothing seems complete without glitter glue. I was glad to see that Sophie was back on track with her craft work... as if Australia never happened.
It did not look finished, but we were quite done with it. I was hoping to cut down on my "intervention" since she could handle most of the work herself.
And the end product looked decent enough... not too scary like real vultures do.
I have been waiting for Sophie to be ready for lapbooks. Then I realised she would be as ready as I was willing to let her be. So a few days ago, I started on her first lapbook based on Owl Babies by Martin Waddell. Sophie loves the owl babies almost immediately when I first read it to her.
I thought I could make the lapbook for her and let her use it like an activity pack. However, she was already playing with it before I put it together. She wanted to be involved in the process so I had to distract her by playing with her, using it... So, she could match the animals to the babies by the time we were done with making the lapbook. How interesting!
Just bought a kitchen set from Ikea and thought I should talk about it a little… It is made of wood (mainly) with some battery operated hob features. The bottom part cost $129 and the upper shelf cost $49. Unfortunately, it does not come with accessories so I had to buy everything else separately. I have always wanted to get Sophie a proper kitchen set because she loves “cooking” since 15 months old. But they are either much too expensive or made to last probably at most, a week or two (based on how Sophie plays). So, imagine my excitement when I saw it at Ikea.
I guess Ikea can manufacture and sell it much cheaper because it is very much like a piece of furniture, just smaller. I feel that toy companies are ripping parents off with their super expensive kitchen set. Some are made of plastic (not even wood) and it can cost up to $300 a set. At first, Ah Boh saw it at Ikea a few months ago and wanted to buy for Sophie, but they were all sold out (too good a deal). Although it is technically meant for children 3 years and above, I know Sophie is ready and her birthday is in December. Perfect! However, it is really hard to assemble, with many small parts to put together… Who needs Handy Manny when we have Papa? Poor Papa, he took the entire afternoon to fix it up!
I did not want to overwhelm her with all the features of the kitchen set, so we started with something she was already quite familiar.
Next, we tried something new. I let her practice transferring with a pair of tongs. She had to remove the pair of tongs from a hook that is attached to the kitchen set and that took some practice. I was happy to see her manipulating the tongs so well (first attempt) because it meant we could try chopsticks soon.
When Sophie seemed comfortable with her kitchen set, I introduced her to the storage space below the hob and sink. We tried to take the pots and pots out for cooking and washing. I plan to take her through the steps of food preparation slowly until she can function independently.
I have been saving this "net" (for wrapping fruit) for the longest time, but last night while we were brainstorming for ideas, I completely forgot about it. Fortunately, Papa remembered and thus, "n" is for "net". However, I thought a net is only meaningful if it is used for catching or containing something... So, I added some fish as well.
Some of the fish were made from "bubble sheet" (I'm not sure of its proper name... opps!) while others were made from plain paper. I did not want them to be too elaborately done because they were not the main focus. However, plastic eyes were always a must...
I think it helped that Sophie watched Finding Nemo (a couple of times) during our trip. She could grasp the idea of fish in a net easily. Okay, TV is not all bad...
This was our first letter after we came back so I wanted to keep it as simple as possible. I did not know how Sophie felt about her craft time after a 2-week break. We could only choose among "N", "V" and "Z" since we had already completed the rest. So, we ended up doing "N" for Newt. Imagine how relieved I was when I found out that a newt is more like a frog than a lizard although they look awfully alike... to me at least.
Did I mention the new set of Crayola Twistables Slick Stix that we had bought for Sophie just before our trip? I am such a utter fan of Crayola now... somehow they have got all the right stuff together. They are as convenient as colour pencils, minus the sharpening and breaking; the colours are brilliant and easy to apply because of the creamy texture. Great for Sophie but not so fantastic for our pockets - $9 per set of 5.
Sophie was rather cooperative, contrary to what I initiately thought. Of course it helped that we used her favourite stickers for this part of the craft. And we stopped to play a little as well.
I noticed that Sophie seemed a little more focused than before. She did not deliberately paint out of the letter and she could work longer. Can she be growing up?
It was such a painless session that I was almost reluctant to end it. Maybe she missed her art and craft routine... we shall see if tomorrow's craft as equally good.
I probably should have picked another background... somehow I always have problem with background colour...
This might not seem much to blog about, but it was a great milestone for Sophie. For the longest time, she was stuffing food into her mouth and gagging when she could no longer hold it in her mouth (like a chipmunk). That was partly why we could not let her feed herself. We have to give her a small portion at a time so that she could not put EVERYTHING into her mouth. Today, she pinched off some of the bread to eat and I was close to tears! Looks like we are making progress after all! Must be the french fries in Australia...
I hope I do not sound too biased... but Sophie looked so sweet with her hair all nicely pinned up and tied. And she was so kind to let me take a few shots before ripping everything off her hair... Sometimes I wonder if she would ever be feminine... With a mum like me, I doubt so... hahahaha...
Anyway, her hair is getting long and her fringe irritates her eyes so I am thinking to cutting it short MYSELF this time.
We are finally back home after 10 days in Australia (Brisbane and Surfers Paradise). Papa has ordered me not to blog about it before the trip so that nobody would know our house was vacant. It has been a great holiday and I shall blog all about it soon... after I catch some sleep.... zzzzzzz....
For this week's Open-ended Art, we did a Henri Matisse inspired collage. Do visit Mommies Wise Little Bookworms for more wonderful ideas... I should have read their blogs before I attempted to do ours. I had a hard time trying to figure out how Sophie could possibly do this with minimal help. Although I have seen Matisse's works before, I still needed to look up his biography and style in various periods of his artisitic career.
In the end, I decided to let Sophie create something similiar to his works after he got diagnosed with cancer and started to use a wheelchair. I really admire his extraordinary creativity and spirit. In the last 14 years of his life, he created beautiful cut-outs which are probably more remembered than his earlier works. My elder sister died of lung cancer around 8 years ago. She was only my age and she never got her second chance to life.
I took some corrugated cardboard and cut out some typical "Matisse-like" shapes. Then I attached a "handle" on each of the shape. I did not want to simply cut out the shapes with paper and let Sophie paste onto a surface. I prefer to make her work a little more - like stamping and making the prints before I cut them out.
The corrugated cardboard made a lovely, stripey design when she stamped onto the paper. However, they were not hard enough so she could not make complete prints most of the time. Thus, we had to make many, many attempts to "collect" a few "good" ones.
We had some paint left, so Sophie did some spontaneous works with it. I hoped to use it later as well.
And from all these, we picked those shapes that were more or less complete. I took a while to cut them out, quite tricky especially when a toddler kept demanding to take a look and join in the "fun".
By now, Sophie was getting restless so I let her roam around and play with her toys a bit before coming back to do the "real" work. Meanwhile, I thought it would make the piece more "Matisse" if I contributed a little (just a little... could not resist...) to the background.
Anyway, time for Sophie to do her work. I added some tissue paper squares as well. I gathered everything and did a bit of rehearsing to have an idea of the possible end product. Of course, I secretly wished Sophie would do a good job... Sigh!
Honestly, my heart started racing the moment Sophie picked up the glue stick. I had little time to react and it was tough to take a video clip while trying to manage her work. I was so surprised that she tried to glue the edges of those tissue paper squares down. I used double-sided tape so that they would not tear and I thought she wanted to rip them off... (sorry!). Then she started gliding the glue stick on different spots and pasting all the pieces of shapes that I handed her. I had to let her do it when her energy and ethusiasm was there... And I made a last minute decision to secure the pieces only after she was done.
That was not all. She got hold of her sticker labels and started frantically taking them off to stick onto her work. She was soooo fast and she used up ALL of them... Of course, some in her hair... on the floor and wherever else...
Papa said he was impressed by Sophie's progress over an almost 9 month period. He recalled how she was when we first started doing art together. Now she was able to do a much better job and I had to agree.
I struggled for a while with this because I was not sure if Sophie could understand. Then I saw a Jack-in-the-box in one of Sophie's board books and decided to go ahead with it.
Sophie was quite spontaneous with scribbling nowadays. In fact, she was quite “stubborn” with what and how she wanted to draw. It took a lot of coaxing to get her to do what I thought as “more attractive”. Actually, I probably should not have even tried since she was happy with her work.
It was great that Sophie loved squeezing the glitter glue from the tube and rubbing it all over. Glitter glue made everything look pretty and it kind of strengthened the cardboard as well. I tried letting her work without her highchair again today. It was alright although I had to occasionally pull her back to the table.
It was probably a miracle that I could actually finish making "Jack" while trying to manage Sophie. I used my SKII box because it looked good enough by itself. "Jack" did not look as good as I had hoped though...
Sophie was quite neutral towards "Jack" unfortunately. I guess she could not really relate it to the real toy since she has never seen one.
I was not too thrilled to make the letter "J" this week. Somehow, I never like "J" and the thought of making a jaguar did not help much at all. Anyway, I tried to experiment with different materials in hope that it would be less daunting for me. And I even let Sophie work without a highchair! How brave was that?
Who was Sophie trying to kid? Of course she knew that she had made a hole on the paper, but she continued drawing on the spot (full concentration and all) so that I would not know. Sneaky little fellow!
While she was busy dancing, I cut leaves and grass from the green construction paper. This was what I would have called "a happy problem".
Next, I tried getting Sophie to colour some corrugated cardboard (tree bark). Unfortunately, she had no intention of complying... What else is new?
I was going to cover the entire “J” with grass, bark and leaves so hand printing was totally unnecessary. However, I still let her have some fun or she would become grumpy. I was quite happy that she could place the jaguar's head in the right position. Yeah!
We spent quite a while to complete the tree but the effect was good. Sophie was not able to stay focused long but at least she did not run off again.
Finally, we completed the tree. I was exhausted so I just coloured the jaguar with markers and called it a day!
I made some leaves fall from the tree so that it looks more lively. Notice the little leave with a hole?
