Tall Mountain

Letter Of The Week - "V" For Vulture

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.

End Product - "V" For Vulture

Owl Babies

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!

Ikea Kitchen Set

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.

Dora Guitar

Uncle Won bought Sophie a Dora guitar... Not sure if he knew, but we would treat it as her birthday present.

Letter Of The Week - "n" For net

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...

End Product - "n" for net

Mama (Hair Stylist Wannabe)

As mentioned earlier, I trimmed Sophie's fringe so that it would not get into her eyes and irritate her whenever the wind blows...

Letter Of The Week - "N" For Newt

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...

End Product - "N" For Newt

Eating Bread

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...

My Girl

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.

Paparazzi - No Camera

Ah Boh caught Sophie on video during their playdate session at Naenae's House... So funny!

Home Sweet Home

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....

No No No... No Guitar... Papa... Keep... Noisy!

Open-ended Art: Henri Matisse

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.

End Product - "Henri Matisse" Inspired Art

SG Idol

Letter Of The Week - "j" For jack-in-the-box

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.

End Product - j For jack-in-the-box

Letter Of The Week - "J" For Jaguar

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?

End Product - "J" For Jaguar

Lunch With Naenae & Ah Boh