Her first pair of Spectacles

This year, on the first day of school, I took a peep into her classroom and saw my girl squatting/kneeling down right underneath the board to copy something from the white board. She looked like she was being punished.

Upon further investigation, I found that the real reason was because she could not see what was written on the board. We quickly took her to have her eyes evaluated by an optometrist. Sure enough, she required glasses. If I am not mistaken, her power is about 140/50 plus 100 for astimatism.

She chose the rims she liked and seem happy with it. Now, she looks just like a regular Chinese School Student.

She wears her specs in school but not at home unless it is for watching the tv. I have to teach her how to be responsible for her specs, where to keep it and how to clean it. We ask her to remove it for gym classes but she must remember where to keep it and to remember to put it back on again. Having specs is an added responsiblity for a child. Now, she has to remember her eyewear in addition to her stationaries and tumbler each day. I get her to remember to put it on at the same time everyday, right before she wears her school shoes and she has a special place to keep it so she can always find it there instead of losing it.

On the first day when she wore it, she said the boy next to her told her "Eeeeeyeeea why you wear specs one!" I told her she can say the same thing to him "Eeeeeyeeeea why you don't wear specs one!" She had a good laugh about it and said she will tell him "Eeeeeyeeea why you like Ben 10 one!" Good. At least her sense of humour is intact and she is not affected by teasing or negative comments.

Building Family Traditions

"Why do you bother to spring clean your house, decorate it and buy Chinese New Year cookies?"

Each year, for Chinese New Year, we balik kampung or return to my hometown to visit my relatives. When we return we hardly entertain any visitors at home. Friends in similar situations (which is quite a number) often say that it is unnecessary for them to do spring cleaning, decorate and buy cookies. They say "I just close up my house and go away. Why should I bother. I won't allow the kids to eat so much junk food so I won't buy cookies. Besides there is no one visiting. So why should I clean up and decorate as well. I don't have the time."

However, I feel it is very important for us to do these things. We do it for the kids naturally and in doing so, for ourselves too. Now that the kids are older, we have started building our own family traditions.

So it is important to us to do these things. We involve the kids every step of the way. When we spring clean, their job is to clean the car and the porch. When we decorate, they help to make the decorations and decide where to hang them. They help to choose their favourite cookies that they can only eat once a year.

The whole family goes shopping together for new shoes and clothes. We try to limit buying clothes to just once a year so that it will fell really special. If you buy throughout the year, then it is no longer special or something to look forward to. We don't just buy the clothing for them. We take them along to try them on. They love this. They love choosing their own clothing. They also love to help me and my husband choose ours.

On new year's eve, after a bath, we let them wear new pyjamas to herald the start of the New Year. We eat our own reunion dinner, only the four of us. Cooking at home is a must. No eating out. Having dinner at a restaurant is not a reunion dinner to us. This is the only time when husband joins us at the dining table, so it IS a reunion. The rest of the time, he eats in front of the tv. We don't join my relatives in my hometown for a big noisy reunion because my husband is not so comfortable with that. As his wife, I learn to respect his likes and dislikes so we have our own quiet one.

After dinner, the kids help me to pack money into angpow packets. I help the girl put on some nail polish to make her pretty for the New Year. We try out our Chinese New Year cookies and eat some mandarin oranges.

On the first day of CNY we don our new clothes and visit the same places and people. On the 2nd, 3rd, days etc, we do roughly the same things we do every year.

We started this, our very own little family tradition a few years ago. The kids are familiar with it now and they look forward to it very much. So do I.

Online Garfield Games - Garfield's Scary Scavenger Hunt

One day my kids said "Mummy, please search for Garfield games for us to play online." So we searched for "Garfield Games" and we found this game. This game called Garfield's Scary Scavenger Hunt is perfect for Halloween. If you are searching for scary Halloween games, this is it!

The music is scary and the game interesting as you take Garfield from room to room in the Scary Haunted House in search of muffins and doughnuts for Garfield to gobble up at the end of the game. I also enjoyed playing the game together with the kids.

The kids also liked the Garfield PingPong Game. Since then, this site is my kids' new favourite online games site. My boy enjoyed the car games. The best thing is the car games actually work! Most of the time when he plays car games it would stall or halt the pc! However the car games on this site works. The adventure games and sports games are fun too.

I would certainly recommend this online games for kids site. Its called FunnyGames.co.uk Thumbs up from MG. :)

Online Games for kids with Chinese New Year themes

I like to create the excitement of coming festivals with my kids by talking to them about it, showing them old photos of past festivals we have celebrated as well as allowing them to play online games with the festival theme.

Parents searching for Online Games for kids with a Chinese New Year theme can try this out.

Here's an online game that my kids enjoy. Its Kai-Lan's Paper Lantern Game. Kids get to decorate an online paper lantern for a virtual lantern festival. (This game is also suitable during the Lantern Festival.)

This game is one of ten games from Ni-Hao Kai-Lan's Games from NickJr.com. Enjoy!

Homemade Chinese New Year Decorations from Angpow paper

As a child, I loved Chinese New Year. Now, as a parent, I want to make Chinese New Year as memorable and happy for my kids as I can.

The kids love crafting and they love being involved. So, we start off by making them excited about the coming New Year by doing some Chinese New Year related craft. We make DIY Chinese New Year Decorations out of angpow paper.

We spent an afternoon making homemade angpow decorations. DIY Angpow lanterns can be very beautiful. The ones here are really amazing and gorgeous. I also loved the ones hung up by fellow blogger Julian last year. Oops, I think it was two years ago, judging from the date of his post. :)

I was too lazy to post up step by step instructions, but I can point you to one or two sites which has good step by step pictorial instructions for the angpow handicrafts.

We made our angpow fish following the instructions from this site. My girl suggested that we string them up by stapling them together because she had seen her teacher do it at school. When we were done, we counted that we had 33 angpow fish in all. Chinese like this number. When spoken in Chinese, it sounds like "rise and prosper". Hehe.

Oh, and here is my very first 12 angpows lantern. Its cool isn't it? My girl doesn't think so though. She said it was ugly. Hahaha. I followed the instructions from here. Halfway through, it looks like a hat. The kids had a fine time walking around in the angpow hat and were disappointed when their hat turned into a lantern. Haha.

We also made some simple 6 angpows lanterns. At first I forgot how to make them and they turned out looking like boxes. The kids fought over who should keep the angpow box. lol. Later on, memory kicked in (I had turned them inside out at first) and eventually, even the girl can make them. It is very simple to make.

We also made these simple cut outs angpow lanterns. These are even simpler to make. I have posted the instructions to these in my earlier post: Paper Lantern Craft for Lantern Festival. Just improvise with angpow paper instead.

Finally, here are some angpows we clipped together for hanging onto plants.

We made them from all the angpow papers we had saved from last year. We got so many varied types from friends and relatives. We also collected quite a few from banks, supermarkets, fast food stores etc etc. We haven't collected any this year yet though but I think the retailers and banks should be giving them from about now since it is only 3 weeks more to Chinese New Year.

This year, Chinese New Year 2010 falls on 14 February 2010 so there is double celebration. After all family reunions and celebrations is all about love.

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