Sisterhood

There is one thing that really warms my heart so much recently. That VERY thing is simply to see my two gorgeous daughters loving one another. My baby girl simply adores her elder sister and her eyes literally sparkle when she hears and sees her beloved jie jie. In fact, her hands and legs will be kicking so vigorously that I often thought I might drop her! And as for the eldest girl, she always tries her best to make her baby sister laugh by playing peek a boo nonstop and picking up her toys! We went Tokyo recently and jie jie missed her mei mei just the very first day!

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A Milking cow stops her fresh milk supply finally!

Just spoken to a mummy about expressing milk as a homemaker. My baby doesn't latch on well as she struggled alot. I hated grabbing her neck like a poor struggling puppy forcing her to latch on. So i resorted to expressing milk days and nites knowing how much breast milk will boost her immunity. The truth is expressing milk as a homemaker is not as easy as it seems cos I often had to withstand my screaming baby who apparently hated me for sitting there collecting her milk painfully!! So many times I have to appease my crying baby with one arm and holding the expressed milk apparatus. So often I have to also killed two birds with one stone by talking over the phone with that background expressing milk noise or catch up with my latest updates abt world affairs!

I'm so glad that I have persevered for 6 mths. At least this was the basic requirement and I reached the mark!!!! I used to have at least 5 bottles of expressed milk in the fridge till my milk supply gradually dropped. There were so many times that I was so discouraged when I see only one bottle left the revolving milk "conveyor belt". Somehow know I need to press on. There were so much to do running errands, running my home business, cooking, coordinating this and that, grocery shopping, feeding my baby.......

However, like what I encouraged a fellow mummy, just press on. things will get better each day and this amazing strength in us will simply keep us going!

From A milking cow resigned recently

Techniques to inculcate values to your children

Seize everyday scenarios to teach them the cause and effect ramifications of various behaviors. Eg: Replay the behavior and teach your child the appropriate behavior

Discuss with your child about moral values . Studies have shown that time spend discussing with children have a strong correlation with moral behavior. Great time to assist our children to make right choices when we discuss small crisis that happen to us and how we have reacted

Praise when we catch them doing something food so as to reinforce the GOOD behavior. Acknowledge and reinforce the good behavior immediately help them to associate the good behavior with acceptance and recognition.

Self checks on our own reactions to everything living, In addition, we should also assess when our child regresses or misbehaves, it could be parents themselves have been rushed., or preoccupied or maybe just too many transitions have happen

Reward children immediately when good behavior are shown. Rewards charts/ specific awards such as plaques or announcements are great examples to acknowledge the good behavuir shown,

Memorization of short phase about good values. Books that teaches values are great ways to help them to remember those short phrases such HAVE A GOOD ATTITUDE!

Why is Phonics IMPORTANT for preschooler?

Phonics is the foundation for success in early reading. Early reading gives your child a HEADSTART in his academic endeavor. So what is phonics all about? It is an approach to reading that begins by teaching letter sounds, then progressively progresses to the blending of those letter sounds to form syllables and words.

English words has 45 sounds; 21 words of which are vowels sounds. Children are taught consonants and short vowels sounds first in three months of a usual phonics preschooler class. With this training, a phonics trained child has the word attack skills to recall in excess of 1200 words, But a child who is not taught phonics lacks the rudimentary skills to decode any word outside his memorized list. He is likely to read only 1500 words when he reaches the fourth grade!

National Ready Panel found that phonics is fundamental in beginning reading. Further research has found that

1) Systematic and explicit phonics instruction is more effective than no clear phonics instruction at all.

2) Explicit phonic guidance is most effective when taught in preschools.

3)Systematic and explicit guidance in phonics improve children’s word recognition, spelling and overall reading comprehension skills.

4) Systematic and explicit guidance in phonic teaching benefits learning disability children the most especially the dysphasia and dyslexia.

To conclude, substantial research has shown that well read readers always use phonics to decipher the codes of new words. What better skills can parents give their precious ones than to equip them with phonic skills to start off their academic endeavor.

Parenting Guide

This is one parenting book that is highly recommended and I look forward to start my new year with this!

One of the review actually said this, "You honestly owe it to yourself to read this book. If you have ever paged through a Consumer Reports before buying anything, consider the value of a child and the value of your own sanity. Beg, borrow, or buy this book."
I guess the last sentence convinced me that I should read it for my own sanity purposes!

ClickNRead Phonics