The ‘fish tank’ at Leap Schoolhouse

I have to admit honestly I don’t look forward to going to playschool with Samuel. I don’t know how other moms do it. To me, it’s so routine and tiring. All those jumping up and down holding the baby. And I can’t see how I can value add. So to me that’s no difference whether I’m going or my mum is.

But now I have a change in my attitude. I start to look forward to going with Samuel to his playschool. Which is why i’m happy with Leap Schoolhouse.

Recently they added a variety of creative activities to the curriculum. And if you are a frequent trial playschool mum, you know what I mean. Most school curriculums are either flash cards, story telling, art and crafts, sing and dance or gym. So it’s really the teacher that made the difference.

In this case, I really love Samuel’s teacher. She really cares about the babies. She will be going around holding them and I can see she really adores playing with the babies. When she do her interactive song and dance, she made eye contact with all the toddlers and really dance with all her different hand signs to show how easy and fun this can be for the babies. Even now at home, I still have the tune, one, two, three, four, five, jump in my head. As we all know, babies are always monkey see monkey do. 🙂

This is totally different from the typical teachers you see in other schools. Some of them gets frustrated and some look like they are just so jaded that they are memorizing their speech. Others can’t wait to move on to the next activity. Of course the fact that she has a NIE degree is even more assuring. 😛 I have nothing against other trained teachers but personally I believed in local education.

Besides, Teacher Angelene is always so chirpy and animated. When she’s doing a story telling, she is one of those who can tell the same story again and again and each time it’s just different. You could tell she caught all the babies’ attention. Everyone became so well behaved and is really listening to her story. Nothing beats a good storyteller. I love how they have selected all these short stories that come with animal sounds. The woof woof, meh meh, baa baa just kinda of flavoured the whole story and makes it sounds so interesting. When my mum came home and told me that they have a new story. I almost tried to force her to tell me the story (usually without avail).

All these new random creative activities really provided a holistic overall experience. Not to mention, it encourages motoring skills. For me, I can’t stop wondering what’s up this week. For example, last week they made us (the parents and the teacher) hold a piece of big, colourful parachute. Kinda of like a umbrella without the frame over the delightful toddlers. And while we raise and wave the rainbow piece of fabric over them, the babies start to stand up to reach out to touch these colors. Although Samuel was fearful of the fabric that touches him every now and then (which means I was forced to go under the parachute), I was having fun and that includes all other toddlers 🙂

Even at gym, it can be straight forward walking in routine, Teacher Angelene is spontaneous. She would encourage the babies to play with the balls (like in pilates :P), to walk/crawl at their pace, to explore. She would demonstrate how to go through the tunnel herself and is never too conscious about expressing herself. When the teacher look like she’s having fun, you can bet the babies would join in.

So this week when my mum told me about this new ‘fish tank’ that the toddlers have to fish things out of it to drop it. My curiosity is piqued. I kinda of ‘interrogated’ her over and over again to tell me what is this fish tank. Needless to say I could only wait till it’s time for the school to get to the bottom.

The 'Fish Tank'

At Gym

My boy's Project Work

Teacher Angelene

I can walk, push and chew off stuff

I have been meaning to write. But instead of a single topic or idea where I could expand on. I found myself stranded with statements that are insufficient for a blog.

Walking:-
Sam has been pacing up and down the whole house using the airplane walk ‘n ride walker toy as support. He was so happy that he laughs nonstop and as he continue to walk and walk. When he runs into obstacles like his airplane being blocked by the baby seat or sofa (there’s always baby stuff all over the place), he turn and look over for our help to move it since technically he could only stand and hasn’t learn how to reverse. There were times I wish I could get him a jumperoo or exersaucer that could probably help with his walking and spare him all the pain of landing on his butt. But he already have a bouncer, a rocker and this walk n ride toy (can you imagine fitting all these in our small apartment). Besides, I’m not a very protective mum. I believe in no pain no gain.

Pushing:-
Sam’s grandma has been telling me these horrible stories of Samuel pushing other toddlers out of his way. And so I decide to make a trip to the school. Have to admit I find preschool a really boring place. Most of the times, I feel like a misfit. It’s a place filled with sahms and their stories circled around their beloved babies. I am probably one of those who talks about my baby too. But somehow I never manage to fit in. I became an observer in his preschool. And so I found out the teacher is not the same as the one I have signed up for during trials. Apologies for not remembering their names but I’m pretty sure the teacher is not impatient and kinda of rude like the current one. She seems to have ‘No’ glued in her vocabulary and instead of teach, she’s busy moving babies around and policing them, ‘Sam! No biting of chair!’ ‘Arthur! Don’t touch the radio! No!’ Whatever happened to encouraging babies to explore with a positive attitude’? At the same time, I realised all babies push each other out of the way. It is more of a instinct than on purpose. So while I’m happy that Sam is not displaying aggressiveness, I’m also disappointed with the school, I called up the school to provide some feedback which I have to say was not very well received. Guess either I choose to pay $300 more to infamous Julia Gabriel or stay on. At this point, I’m not very convinced that school is making any impact on Sam so my choice is probably to stay on until 18 months where there will be more choices of preschools.

Chewing off:-
Not that I’m not expecting baby to do that, just thought they will start destroying when they are around 2, the horrifying toddler age. Samuel has been pulling everything apart. From pulling down the laundry basket which is foldable to dragging his baby stool everywhere in the house. Yesterday I even caught him tearing his own diapers apart and chewing them off. I don’t know what is his obsession with papers. I literally had to dig open his mouth to get the diaper piece out. When that failed, I offer to trade his diaper piece for a Gerber puff. And this greedy baby would usually open his mouth willingly and so I could remove the wet diaper piece in time. If I would to do a statistics piece, I reckon he would have eat up 10 gm of paper per week that includes any paper he can find, usually the easily available tissues.

Samuel at Leap Schoolhouse

Samuel trying to wack open the box

Samuel totally thrilled about walking

9 months

By now baby can crawl really fast. I brought him to trial class at Leap Schoolhouse and he zoomed across so quickly that one parent was commenting ‘here comes the commando’. He was the youngest in class, the only baby that is still crawling while others were walking. Yet he’s fearless. He tried to crawl forward to catch the soapy bubbles and it did not bother him that other babies were running all around him. And when the teacher shown him flashcards asking him which is the airplane. He leaned forward and picked the correct one. Daddy says my face was glowing and I look so proud. Next, he caught the teachers’ attention by swaying his butt to the music. He is always so bubbly. A lot of teachers came by to play with him.

These two weeks ever since he could call mama. It has been mama mama constantly. Occasionally he would call out dada or papa or mum mum randomly.

I should keep a log of the dates he started greeting us but becoz I was so overwhelmed with the new house that I haven’t been blogging.