Time Table Of A SJKC Student In A Before Or After School Care Centre

Children At An After School Care Centre

Some time ago, we wrote about the Life In A Before Or After School Care Centre of a SK Student to give parents an idea of what goes on behind the closed doors of such a centre. We promised to write another post for SJKC students. This one is the schedule of the SJKC students in the afternoon session. So they would be sent to the day care centre before school starts.

This post was contributed by Little Oxford.Daycare & Tuition Centre

Note: The center opens at 8 am officially but teachers may be there earlier to greet and receive the children around 7.30 am or slightly earlier depending on parents' request.

8 - 9 am Children start arriving. Once the students arrive, teachers at the centre will start to check their school bags for homework and guide them if they could not complete the night before.

9.30 am - 10.30 am Tuition for one subject

10.30 am - 11.30 am Tuition for another subject
(The subjects depend on the timetable given upon registration)

11.30 am - 12 pm The children will start to pack their packs and take turns to shower and have lunch. They will usually enjoy a free moment for some story books and games until the transporters come to pick them up for school. Transporters will send them right up to the school gate for safety reasons.

Note: Usually parents will pick them up from school themselves but there are parents who prefer to wait at the centre and pay extra for the transporter to send them back to the centre for pick up.

Parents will usually pick up the dirty clothes in the morning while sending, or some will pick up the dirty clothes in the evening.

The above is the timetable of a SJKC student in the afternoon session who goes to a before school care centre.

As for students from SJKC in the morning session, their time table is same with  the SK one but in different classes due to the difference of syllabus.

Children Doing Homework At An After School Care Centre

Related posts:

• Life In A Before Or After School Care Centre Of A SK Student
• What To Look For In A Before Or After School Care Centre

6 Free Halloween Apps For Young Kids

 It's almost the 2015 Halloween weekend. If you are looking for free fun Halloween apps for your kids, here are 7 Halloween Children's apps we managed to find which are cute, fun and most importantly, free!

1. Halloween Party by PlayTales is available for both Android and iOS devices. This is one of those fun interactive books that come alive with things that move and make noises and stuff. That is the fun thing about reading an interactive story book, something you can't get from real books. You can choose to read the book yourself or have the book read to you. I would choose the second because of the way its read, spooky voice, background sounds and all.

2. Donuts ABC Halloween by KooLearn is an interactive English learning site for kids. In this app, kids can brush up their vocabulary on all things Halloween by playing the various trick or treat games. You can download it here for iPhones and iPads from the iTunes store or Google Play store for Android.

3. Halloween Zombie ABC Game For Kids is a Halloween app for kids who like to play with words. It include word games like word search, find the missing letter, match the image with the word, words formation and more. The game developer is Maria Dolores Garcia Ferre. Download links for this Halloween Word Game app from iTunes and Google Play.

4. Hello Kitty Edition. Halloween Dress up is delightful for the Hello Kitty fan young and old. So may cute outfits to choose from. You can pick some accessories to go along with the outfits too. The outfits are so adorable, just like Hello Kitty. Couldn't find it on Android so this link is for iPhones and iPads only. 

5. Halloween Stories - Read along collection of interactive story books by MangoSense Pvt.Ltd. has 5 interactive stories for kids to read on their own or be read to. As with many story book apps, the stories are fully interactive with games, puzzles and more. The stories included in this app include titles like "Ghost Story", "Five Trick-Or-Treaters", "Once There Was A Monster", "When I Go Trick or Treating" and "Monster Maddie". Found on iTunes only.

6. Find The Difference Game by Cora Games is good for kids who like to play spot the difference type of games. 4 scenes are available for the free version. Each scene has 3 levels of difficulty. A simple game with nice graphics. Download links for iOS and for Android are available.

These 6 Halloween games, stories, puzzles, educational apps are fun for kids and should give them a variety of fun activities for this Halloween 2015.

5 Easy Diwali Crafts For Kids Ideas

Trying out the Henna Hands Craft

Deepavali or Diwali as it is known in many parts of the world is coming soon. Time to get crafting with the kids. Here are some really easy and quick Diwali crafts for kids. In fact, these craft ideas are good for anytime and anyone, not only for Diwali.

1. Easy hand print peacock. I saw this on pinterest and immediately fell in love with it. It is so easy to make and the results are really adorable. Mine didn't look half as good as some of those on pinterest did because I took only minutes to do it for the purpose of illustrating this post. Just ask your child to draw a hand print and decorate. You can use water colours, glitters, real feathers, anything you fancy. Older kids can try with more fancy materials. Younger kids can do what I did which is using highlighter and sharpies.

Trying out the hand print peacock

2. Easy Handmade cards for Diwali for kids to make and give away or to decorate your home for Diwali. This handmade card idea is from Whatscookingmom. You can browse her blog for more easy home made card ideas. They are very good ideas and very easy for kids to make. You can do these as a last minute Deepavali craft. All you need are paper and for decoration, you can use shiny, glitter paper, glitter glue and lots of creativity.

Homemade Diwali Card Idea

3. Henna Hands - Here is another really easy but beautiful art for Diwali using hand print again. You can get kids to draw the outline of their hand print, then cut it out and decorate. Found this one on Thomas Elementary Art. Really amazing and so easy and quick. I love this one!

Henna Hands - An easy art using hand print

4. Paper Flowers Garland Craft For Kids by A Creative Project. Get the instructions from the link. This craft for children is not only fun, it helps you save on having to buy decoration as they double up as a nice home decoration idea for Diwali too. I like how this blogger alternated between flower and leaves for her garland. Very pretty craft indeed.

Paper Flowers Garland Craft For Kids

4. Diwali is the festival of lights so no craft project would be complete without a lamp or two. Here is one very delightful paper plate Diwali lamp craft for kids from Urvi's World: Child Art and Imagination. This paper lamp craft idea is really easy and quick and can be done by very young children. 

Diwali Paper Lamp Craft For Kids

5. Paper plate Rangoli or Kolam Craft Idea. Here are some free printable Rangoli Designs for kids to color from Best Coloring Pages For Kids. You can either print them out as they are to color or alternatively, why not get your children to draw out the design on a paper plate and decorate it in any way they like to make an instant mini kolam or rangoli.

Rangoli Design For Kids

I hope you like this selection of craft ideas which took us a lot of time to find and compile. These craft ideas are great for anyone, not only those who are celebrating it. In fact, it can be used as a lesson plan to teach children about culture and the Diwali celebrations.

You can find more Diwali crafts for kids here. 

6 Best Free Sites On Aesop's Fables For Kids To Listen, Read And Watch Online

Aesop's Fables are excellent stories to tell little ones as they are usually short, contain a moral about life and involves animals. Here are 6 best free online sites where you can find Aesop's Fables For Kids To Listen, Read And Watch. You will find famous stories like the Lion and the Mouse, The Ant and the Grasshopper, The Town Mouse and The Country Mouse as well as other not so common ones which are a gem to find and read.

1. Watch this Youtube Playlist. It is by HooplaKidz and it contains 46 Aesop's Fables in the playlist. Here's the first.



2. Aesop's Fables By Aesop on Project Gutenberg. On project Gutenberg, you will find over 50,000 ebooks free of charge. The original Aesop's Fables by Aesop is one of them. You can choose to read this on your desktop by clicking on the html version or download an epub version for your smart phones or tablet pcs or get the kindle version for those in the US.

3. If you like audio stories, then your child can have Aesop's fables read to them at Storynory. You won't find a long list of Aesop's fables here. However, you should take note that Storynory is an excellent site for audio stories, you can browse through the site for 100s of audio stories.

4. What I like about Aesopfables.com is the way they list the Aesop's Fables. You can easily go down the list and read the story with the moral that  you want to highlight to your child because the moral of the story is listed right next to the title. You will find a total of 640 fables to choose from in all.

5. For those who wish to add a lesson after reading the fables, here is a site that includes a fables glossary as well as quizzes for the Aesop's Fables featured on the site. This is good for improving vocabulary and testing comprehension so besides teaching kids about good morals, you can turn it into a mini English lesson. You can make it more educational by asking them questions after they have read the moral stories. Here is the url to the site. http://www.mcwdn.org/fables/fabindex.html

6. Tales With Morals tells kids about the famed story teller Aesop himself on its page including facts about Aesop like "When was Aesop born?", "Who is Aesop and what did he look like?"The fables listed there comes with images and each page is printable. You can print them out to read or make them into a book for your child.

School Parties Food Ideas

This post is for Malaysian moms with school going kids who would probably have to plan what types of food to make for their kids to bring to school for their year-end school parties around this time of the year.

Home made individually wrapped choc and almond muffins
posted with permission of one of the moms in  my FB group

School Parties Food Ideas For Malaysian Mothers

1. Fried Rice
2. Fried Mee/ Mee Hoon
3. Fried Koay Teow
4. Sandwiches
5. Cake
6. Muffins
7. Cupcake
8. Curry Puff
9. Fried Chicken
10. Cookies
11. Nuggets
12. Sausages
13. Doughnuts
14. Fruits
15. Jelly
16. French Fries
17. Hash Browns
18. Meat Ball/Fish Ball
19. Snacks
20. Packet Drinks eg Ribena/Chrysanthemum with straw

In other words lots of finger food, individually wrapped and home-made if you are up to it just like the one you see in the picture, made with so much love and makes things so much easier for the kids. If you can get your child to help in preparing the food, even better! As the mummy who made the red eggs packages below said, "these takeaways form memories besides filling their tummies and yes, never forget the teacher and the general helpers too."

In my list you will notice some unhealthy food but then hey, its a kid's party and it is only once a year. So, I'm inclined to close one eye to that just once. 

Another example of party food prepared by a member of my FB group shared with permission.
Red eggs for her child, who was celebrating her birthday on school party day with her classmates.

How Much Food To Make

Many Malaysian classes have around 40 students plus and minus depending on the school or area. So do you make one for each child? 

Let's see. If your child's class has 45 students and all 45 sets of parents make 45 of everything for the child to bring to school, there would be a lot of excess and wastage. 

So as a general guide, for things like fried noodles, fried rice etc, make 1/2 or quarter. For smaller finger foods, it is okay to make one each for everyone but no issue if you were to half the portions because you know what, you may have many kids bringing in the same food stuff so everyone will get their share. So in a class of 45, you can bring 20 or even a dozen and you do not have to worry that your food isn't enough to go round.

Some teachers will plan ahead and draw up a food list, then get a show of hands to see who will bring what and request your child to bring foods that has  been "assigned" for him to bring. That certainly makes things a lot easier. If not, just remember the rule, half the big portions and it is ok to bring one each for small items. 

How Much To Spend On The Food

It really depends on your budget. Some parents will go all out and order a happy meal for each and every child. As a general guideline, some parents feel that RM1/child is fine. This decision is personal and depends on you.

Advice For Your Child

Usually there will be excess food and teacher will advice your child to bring some food containers to bring home some food. 

• Teach your child to separate the foods properly so they won't spoil. This will avoid food from going bad when they mix all the foods in one container, fruits, cake, rice, jelly, all mixed together!
• Teach your child to avoid drinking yogurt drinks that have been left un-refrigerated for hours.
• If you are concerned about unhealthy food, then teach your child to choose healthy foods.
• When it comes to snacks or junk food, teach your child to check the expiry dates before eating.

Have a great party!

For your child, school parties will be something he looks forward to after all the time spent studying and getting his results so a little effort will make your little one happy.