Andrew has decided to learn piano…as to which method (Suzuki or European???) we still haven’t decided yet. So far, he has learned to play Mary Had a Little Lamb and is starting to learn to play Twinkle Little Star. He enjoys playing his songs but not so much the theory. Andrew also enjoys going around the house “playing” tunes on his recorder.

Cibo has become our little princess who loves to dance and sing. She looking forward to her weekly ballet/tap classes and loves to twirl and sing around the house.

Jansun has yet decided what he will take..he really wanted to do basketball but nothing is available for his age group until the New Year.
We wanted to get the kids into yoga but unfortunately the times conflicted with their other schedules. We hope that Jansun will think about learning piano as he too learned Mary Had a Little Lamb with very little instructions and mainly on his own. Jansun is definitely a self taught “learner”. Many things he does surprises me … without formally being taught how to write his Alphabets, he is able to learn on his own and he also learned how to count on his own as well…largely due to the influences of his brother.

Our little baby Soleil is doing lots of things these days….she definitely lets us know what she likes and dislikes. Some of her favourite foods include pears, apples and veggies. She does not care for papayas, bananas and plain ol’ rice cereal. Soleil is quite the adventurous these days crawling to explore her small world which includes every grain of tidbits that fall on the floor!!! She is also quite the chattery type…yes and one of the many “babbles” she says is “mum mum” :p The older kids can’t wait for sister Soleil to grow older so they can play with her…or get hair pulled by her )

Here is a photo of the aftermath of the attack of Soleil on our computer!

So far this year Andrew has come up with many ideas as to what he wants to learn…some of his learning plan ideas include..building a remote control car, a remote control robot, skating, counting past 100, reading a chapter book by himself, sewing, etc…Okay, mom will have to stop procrastinating and start working to put these projects together for him!

We just finished a Safety City course yesterday and Andrew seemed to have picked up most of the valuable information regarding how to cross the street and riding a bike.

We also had a good time helping Baba making dumplings and enjoying eating them afterwards.

We also made chocolate chip cookies too! Here is our favourite chocolate chip recipe:

Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies

SUBMITTED BY: Debbi Borsick PHOTO BY: Allrecipes
“Everybody wants this recipe when I take them in for a carry-in. To make them award winning, my daughter, Tegan, made them for a cookie baking contest and won a red ribbon! You can use any flavor pudding you like for this recipe.”
RECIPE RATING:
This recipe has been rated 6,375 times with an average star rating of 4.6
Read Reviews (5,146)
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PREP TIME 15 Min
COOK TIME 12 Min
READY IN 1 Hr 40 Min
Original recipe yield 6 dozen
SERVINGS

* 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 2 cups butter, softened
* 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 2 (3.4 ounce) packages instant vanilla pudding mix
* 4 eggs
* 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 4 cups semisweet chocolate chips
* 2 cups chopped walnuts (optional)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Sift together the flour and baking soda, set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar. Beat in the instant pudding mix until blended. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. Blend in the flour mixture. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips and nuts. Drop cookies by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Edges should be golden brown.

Finally, our bug hunting adventure faired quite well, the kids learned a lot of new bugs, and we also learned how a fly sticks onto our ceiling. We also played our “metamorphisis”(spelling???) bug game where the kids pretended they were different types of bugs that you can find in our backyard. We also tried to put a cookie trail for the ants but it seems the ants are not interested in mom’s homebaked cookies. So we were not able to see how ants are able to communicate with other ants when they find food treasures. However, we were able to find lots of ladybugs and Andrew even had one climb into his shirt! Our bug adventure this week seemed quite fun!

Looking forward to next week’s activities….what do you do for activities in your spare time?

Once baba was upstairs, he will find the chocolate bar cake we put together and a tag that says “Where are my presents?” At this time baba will have to go on a treasure(gift) hunt for his presents that the kids have hidden.

The kids were excited to help baba find the presents they have hidden and decided to give him hints by playing the “hot/cold” game with baba.

Finally, present opening time and best of all, chocolate bar time! and as usual our lovely family photos.

How does your family celebrate special occasions? Would love to hear!

We found some rather good bargains for the kids…lots of summer wear and nice cargo shorts were selling for only $4.99 and tshirts were going for $1.99! We of course, grabbed our share of the bargains! We went to Body Shop and picked up some lotion for grandma and our favourite orange scented body wash and strawberry scented lip gloss for the kids…with this purchase we got as a gift a cloth Body Shop bag and another body cream with Vitamin E free! The service at the mall was very good and friendly, however, we feel the mall should have gotten some better decorations and made it a bit more livelier…the decorations were somewhat blah…and old house feel…with all the hype about this mall, we were expecting it to be looking close to some of the new malls in Asia! But our first impression walking in was “same-old, same-old” feeling….kind of like walking in to any other mall.

The food court was a mad house…we tried looking for a spot to sit and eat but had absolutely no luck…we see all these poor souls walking aimlessly around with trays of food in their hands looking for somewhere to sit…eventually after 15 minutes of searching we decided to give up and leave the mall to find food elsewhere.

We tried to take some decent pictures of our trip…good luck!!! Well, here are some that somewhat turned out! Enjoy. We do look forward to going back when all the kiddies and big people are at work so we can walk through the mall peacefully!

Supposed to be a oil pump behind us

Ranch Section of the Mall

Overall, the kids had a good time and looks forward to going back to see the other half of the mall.

Already we have started Andrew in making his own snacks and meals.  Andrew loves cooking and baking.  Often he will participate in making our family favourite chocolate chip cookies, rice krispy squares and he especially loves roasting his own marshmallows.  Here we are this morning making one of his favourite sandwiches for breakfast, a banana cashew butter sandwich.

Ingedients:

2 slices of bread (whichever type of bread you like – toasted or not)

2-3 slices of banana

1 good tablespoon of cashew butter

Spread the cashew butter on the bread and place banana slices on, cover and ENJOY!

What are some of your child’s favourite recipes?  Would love to hear about them!

Not only do I think homeschooling is great because it gives me quality time to spend with my children but it also saves me the extra “worry” if my children were to learn in a classroom setting.  I do not have to worry about my children being bullied and not knowing how secure the classroom environment will be – especially with all the news about “children” bringing guns to schools, teenagers with hit lists, etc.  My children have the freedom to go outside and play when they choose, go out to the garden to look for bugs when they choose, or even make some yummy cookie recipes too!  We learn math not only through traditional “math exercise books” but we also learn math through “shopping for treats” at home and counting butterflies and bumblebees.  Learning is so fun and enriching for us that my children actually look forward to our “makeshift” “classroom”.

These are some of our daily activities:

It is so wonderful to have this opportunity watching my kids grow up.  Any homeschooling moms out there who would love to share their experiences?  I would love to hear about them!

As parents, I am sure you all agree with me when I say it is quite a challenge to “keep our kids” from being too commercialized during celebration times like birthdays and Christmas.  I do try but sometimes I too cave in to buying the “action hero” figures and toys and those “disney” princess items.  So this year, we have decided to celebrate birthdays with “make it” gifts.  Meaning you can’t “buy” your gifts, they must be “made”.  I loved all my presents from my kids this year and I am so happy to see that my daughter loved her princess birthday cake.  My cupcake birthday cake was fantastic and I loved watching my family work together to make this cake for me.

My husband also made some wonderful dinner yummies for me and bought my favourite fruit – Durian How I love that stinky fruit!  We have one more birthday to go – our sons…better start plannng now. 

Would love to hear anyone with ideas to celebrate “homemade” birthdays as well….share with me!

2.  A “twist” on good’ol Easter Egg Hunt.  We decided to make it a bit more challenging I decided to tie 4 strings of yarn to a doorknob and made spiderwebs in the living room.  The object of the game is each person chooses a string of yarn and has to wind up the yarn to get to the end of the it to find out their “surprise”.  The kids loved it – it is quite cute how the younger ones got all tangled up in their spool of yarn!

3.  Growing plants or flowers are always fascinating for our kiddies.  We decided to grow wheatgrass egg hair.  They are so funny looking the kids loved it.  Now they are anxiously waiting to grow veggies!

Water Music (My kids loved this – I don’t think the dog does though ( as she kept hiding and running around in a crazy manner!)  The kids decided that instead of rubbing your finger slowly and gently around the glass top, they could make different pitches just gently sliding your finger over the edge of the glass instead of around it.

The second project we did for water was demonstrated by their dad.  You fill a glass with water (pretty much to the top) then place a fairly thick piece of paper to cover completely the glass – the magic….with the palm of your hand, keep the paper tightly over the glass and turn the glass upside down!  The paper stays on the glass and no water will spill from it eventhough it is upside down.  Try it, our kids loved and tried to do it but their hands were too small…so we got a nice water bath!!!

Looking forward to next week’s theme!

1.  We bought a small restaurant which we have saved from previous owner.  We built this restaurant up from literally nothing to something.

2. My new sweet bread recipe.  As my son is allergic to all cow’s milk and he so loves to eat bread, I decided to make my own.  This recipe is perfect for breads, buns and cinnamon rolls.  If you would like the recipe, just send me an email and I’ll be glad to share with you.

3.  Our best addition is the youngest addition to our family, our little girl.  We are so blessed with another daughter.  She is truly our pride and joy.  We are very tired but happy parents.

Cheers to all and hope your New Year is faring well.