Creating Our Very Own Family Traditions

Dragon Shape Helium Balloon

We do not have many old folks or family traditions carried forward from both sides of my as well as my husband's family. So what do we do? We make our own family traditions. It is easy and fun to create your own family traditions.

We like to create a family culture that the kids can remember when they grow up. "We used to do this when we were young.....". It is very nice to have memories like these so we try our best to give them good memories.

Good memories come from simple things.

For example, one of the things we do during every Chinese New Year is to buy cute shaped helium balloon for the kids on the first day of Chinese New Year. We've been doing this every since they were toddlers. Then we'll let go of the balloon and watch it fly in the sky.  I suppose you could say its our way of saying goodbye to the old year and hello to the New Year.

The kids love this and look forward to this simple routine each year. They'll go "... and after we do this.... we'll go and get our balloons. This year, I want a .... balloon." then they'll have a fine time selecting their balloons. This year being the year of the Dragon, we got a Dragon balloon.

Do you have any unique and special family tradition you can call your own? If not, why not create one?

Where to find Valentine's Day Craft Ideas for kids

Image Credit: Domagron Novelty

Valentine's Day is fast approaching and for crafters this is the perfect time for creating crafts with kids. If you are naturally creative, you can come up with just about any craft you can at any time using everyday household items. However, if you are not that creative like me, you need some ideas. Don't worry there are plenty!

Here is one place where you can go to find Valentine's Day Craft Ideas for kids. It's none other than the Squidoo Monsterboards.

So, what is Squidoo? 
Squidoo is a community website that allows users to create pages (called lenses) for subjects of interest. To me, it is like a cross between a blog and a website. You get all the goodies and beauty of a website with the unique and constantly updated content of a blog.

What is the Squidoo Monsterboards?
It is a leaderboard featuring the best of Squidoo. Some are updated live hourly using an algorithmic. Others are based on ranking or editorially curated, handpicked and static showing the best of the best lenses on Squidoo on a particular subject. It is rather like a summary of the best lenses you can get for a specific topic.

For Valentine's Day I would recommend 4 Squidoo Monsterboards that you must visit.

1. Best of Squidoo - Valentine's Day Love Stories
2. 45 Unique Valentine's Day Gift Ideas
3. 40 Fabulous Valentine's Day Crafts
4. Best of Squidoo - Valentine's Day Treats 2012

40 Fabulous Valentine's Day Crafts is the site to visit for Valentine's Day Craft Ideas for Kids and other Crafters alike. You will get plenty of ideas there for sure, from handmade Valentine's Day gifts to face painting ideas, ornament crafts, decorations, coloring pages, printables, knitting and crochet patterns for Valentine's Day and much more.

Though the monsterboard heading is 40 Fabulous Valentine's Day Crafts, it actually should read 40 Fabulous Valentine's Day Craft lenses for within each of the 40 featured Squidoo lenses, there are many more ideas, totalling much more than 40 craft ideas. The lenses are organized visually. You can view the headings by scrolling over the attractive pictures then head over to whatever Valentine's Day craft lens that interest you.

I am happy to say that two of my lenses are featured in the Valentine's Day Crafts Monsterboard while one lens is listed on the Valentine's Day Gift Ideas monsterboard. :)

If you are planning to make Valentine's Day crafts with kids, do head over to my Valentine's Day Craft Supplies for Kids Lens for some ideas on what you need for your crafts.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Water Dragon Year 2012

Happy Chinese New Year to all the visitors of this blog. The kids will be off for a week and daddy will be off for two so mummy will be too busy to blog. So looks like mummy will be having a blog vacation too by default.  Will be back soon!



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Cliques and Ostracism in School

My girl is 10 years old. Yesterday she told me that she was shown a “set of rules” by a classmate. You must follow these rules or I won’t be your friend. The rules include…

1. must have facebook account
2. must be Chinese

My Goodness! What sort of rules are those! They are outright horrible. I told my girl that these were very bad rules and she does not have to follow them.

At the moment, the situation is not serious as she is not really being ostracised but the thought did cross my mind that it may be a potential problem because my girl is rather timid and straight.

What would you say to my girl if you were me?

Communicating with Children

Kids, especially young kids communicated differently from us adults. Sometimes they find it hard to verbalize how they feel. In this case, you have to find other ways to try to understand on they feel. For a younger child, perhaps you could give them a piece of paper and tell them to …

“Draw me a picture of how you feel today”

For an older child, you could give them a piece of paper and ask them to…

“Write down how you feel today”

You may be surprised or amused to see the results.

I remember, how quickly time has passed. Last year, my boy was sick and  hospitalized for a week after Chinese New Year. When he was discharged and came home, he was so happy but he didn’t say (verbally in words) that he was happy. He made little cards, stuffed them into angpow papers and gave one each to all the family members. In it, he drew pictures of the sun shining and birds flying in the sky and he wrote….

“I am happy today. The sun is out. It is a nice day.”

For my son, it is very easy to communicate with him because his love language is touch. All I need to do is give him a cuddle and he is happy.

For my daughter, her love language is quality time. To communicate effectively with her, I have to really listen to her with no distractions. Then she feels loved and contented.

I think we have to understand our children, listen and talk to them in the manner in which they are most comfortable in, in order to communicate effectively with them.