Iman and Ranya Q1 Developments

It feels just like yesterday that we celebrated the arrival of 2015, in just a blink of an eye it is already April. Time move so fast, sometimes it feels like all I ever do is try to catch up. Anyway, Lan and I attended the munchkins "Report Card Day for 1st Quarter of 2015" two weeks ago.This post is dedicated solely for Iman and Ranya :)

Teacher Nisya took us through the twins activities in Tadika, highlighting their current skills and things that needed improvement. I'm happy to hear that the girls have started to socialized and does not follow Ryan around as they used to. They're also learning to share and listen to instructions and doing a lot of activities to developed their fine and gross motor skills.

Iman Khadeeja

In terms of speech, I would say that Iman is the more advanced of the two. Her speech is clear and very precise. Iman enjoy singing and dancing and is very quick in terms of memorizing lyrics and steps. Currently her favorite activity is playing with play dough and cutting and pasting paper strips. In summary she like making loads and loads of mess.

She's able to recite Al Fatihah,Surah Ikhlas, doa makan, tidur and naik kenderaan with assistance. Other development includes knowing her numbers and ability to understand instructions in both English and Malay. However, she will usually converse in Malay. Iman has very little patience for coloring, but that is slowly improving, at least nowadays she tries to keep her colors within the lines :)

This little princess has an opinion about EVERYTHING. From clothes, shoes down to the color of her headband. She love to imitate everything I do and is currently obsessed with make up and wanting me to put on innai on her feet -__-  I'm ok with the innai but is very much against the idea of makeup. We keep on telling her she's beautiful and don't need the extra enhancement unlike me who's old. Her reply to me was priceless 'Kakak tau kakak comel, tapi kakak nak jugak pakai makeup sebab kakak nak cantik macam mummy". It was difficult to say no to that :p so we compromised a tiny bit by allowing her to put vaseline on but only on weekends (and only if she asked for it).

Ranya Fatimah

My little drama queen :) Ranya loves her books. Sometimes I will catch her quietly sitting in a corner turning pages to her storybook. She is also the first to pick up a book and will make me repeatedly read to her everyday. She is quite eloquent but since she has a very manja way of speaking, it sounds a bit pelat and babyish. However, Ranya is able to pick up new English words at a faster pace in comparison to her siblings.

When it comes to arts and craft, she choose to do things her way. For example when we were doing cut-off  body parts for her school project last week, she insisted on turning the mouth upside down because "her doll is angwyy". Since it is her project I relented. Like Iman she's mastering her surah, doa's, numbers and alphabets.

Ranya is also the most sensitive of all my children. Every little thing will set her off and her favorite line after getting a scolding from Lan and I is " Mummy/daddy tak sayang dedek, dedek nak balik rumah atuk, mummy/daddy gemuk". 

I'm also happy to report that both twins are currently potty training and is 80% out of diapers. Thanks to the encouragements of their caretakers in Taska. Accidents are now so much farther in between. It is a bit more challenge when we go out but Lan and I just need to be patient. Potty training twins should be an Olympic event of its own :)

Now that the twins are in preschool, I need to make sure that my time is evenly divided to ensure that I can sit with each child and check on their progress and identify their talents and weaknesses. By doing so I'll be able to determine the most appropriate learning method for them. Since each child is different, the way they process information may be different too. Some kids learn through visual, while some may thrive more when their audio sensory is stimulated. It is not enough to just want and raise a child as individuals, you have to be ready to treat them as one too.

Alhamdullilah, for everything that Iman and Ranya have achieved so far and I pray for the ease of future developments. Our main priority at the moment is to instill as much manners and discipline in them, something we're currently struggling as there's is now 3 of them to keep up with, but we try. Inshallah with time and patience, we will get there :)

Note: All photos are credited to the Teachers of Tadika Ceria Az-Zahrah

Iman and Ranya takes kindy...

Rushing to post these pictures of Iman and Ranya I got from their "school" FB page. Learned a very painful lesson last weekend when all my pics from my hp was accidentally deleted because my SD card became corrupted *cries* Thank god I had saved a bunch of pictures from our recent activities into my office laptop last week.

Currently, posting my pics on my blog seems to be the safest way to store pics especially since we hardly make hard copies of pictures anymore. Sadly on the same day my hp decided to go crazy, I had to also bid farewell to my personal laptop of 8 years. Hopefully I will manage to retrieve the pictures in the laptop hard drive soon :( Yes, it is in fact a series of  unfortunate events *sigh* Good things to come? Hopefully *inshaAllah*

Anyway, check out the following pics of the twinnies school activities for the year 2014. 

Hari Raya 2014 Celebration

The twins are the one in pink jubah with pink hairband. Short of circling their heads, I really don't know how to make their presence in this picture stand out hehe

Everyday school and Arts & Craft Activities

Iman and Ranya rarely sits together during class activities, I wonder if the teachers consciously separates them or if it was their own personal choice. Oh well, whatever makes you happy my little darlings

  3 more months before they move to big girl school to joing Abang Ryan. Praying for the best hehe *Amin*

 Review of our trip to ICity Shah Alam is up on my travel blog -->  iCity Adventure

Kidz Paradise, Klang Parade (Review)

I'm always on the look out for new and fun activities for my children. As much as I personally LOVE shopping, I try to limit activities involving plain shopping excursions, makan-makan and movies. It is ok once in a while but doing it weekly does nothing for the kiddies physical, mental and emotional development (Disclaimer: This is just MY personal parenting style, please do not take this as a criticism in any manner, lain orang lain preference-nya ;p) 

Anyway, I was reading the review of this indoor playground on several blogs and I was interested in trying the Cassia Seed  pool, and since they're now available in Klang Parade, why not,huh? My verdict? I totally loved it. The kiddies spent close to 2 hours playing in the pool and later trying out the rest of the playground. You have to be careful with the children curiosity in trying to "taste" the  cassia seeds though.

The charges is a bit steep in my opinion (especially in my case :p) RM 25 (weekday), RM38 (weekday & public holiday).We decided to try the package which cost RM150 (7 visit any day) - this will stretch to 2-3 visits for my family. Setting aside the rates, if you're looking for activities which involves triggering your children 5 senses, this is an activity to consider which I highly recommend.

Check out their website: Kidz Paradise

Look at the smile on Ryan's face

Iman having fun :)

Dig dig dig Ranya....

Iman's favorite activity of the day: Pool Ball or is Ball Pool?

Hahaha mummy can't help but try it out too :)

My tiny bit of validation...

Last 2 weeks on the 21 June 201 was Ryan's Report Card day. I was nervous as hell despite him being only 5 years old :p I was imagining the worst case scenario but was of course praying for the best. Alhamdullilah my fears was unfounded because Ryan is doing very well in school.

According to his teachers he's thriving academically, emotionally, mentally and physically. Ryan is a very well mannered boy and listens to instruction well ( I'm mentally wondering why is this not applicable at home? haha) He's also very helpful and loves helping his teacher to clean up the classroom after playtime (How come kat rumah mummy kena jerit2 dulu baru nak kemas ye, abang?)

Academically he's on par with his peers despite of his phonological issues.He's been scoring perfect marks for the past 8 weeks for his Fun English assignments and is able to present in sentences rather than words as was expected for his class. Teacher Ana also said that he has improved on his speech and is not as pelat as last year *alhamdullilah* The best part is despite his limitations, it does not affect his self confidence as he will readily offer input during classes :) I'm so proud of this little boy.

This awesome little boy have also been fasting from 7.30am to 5.30pm for the past 2 days. It was such a huge surprise for me because we didn't ask him to do it, though I did explain to him the basics of Ramadan.  When I asked Ryan WHY he's doing it, his reply to me was "sebab semua orang puasa and Ryan nak masuk syurga dengan semua orang" MasyaAllah good enough of a reason for me, love. May Allah continue to bless his little soul :)

 Ryan acting as Imam during school solat time :)

 Picture a bit grainy because I copied it from his report card hehehe

My parenting journey has its ups and down, with Ryan being the first, he's a bit of a guinea pig to us and sometimes suffers from incompetencies and poor choices made on my part and Lan's. Maybe I over think sometimes but I'm constantly afraid that I'm not doing and giving enough attention, opportunities and care to my children so when I do get positive input from a third party it really meant a lot. At least I'm doing SOMETHING right :) 

We still have a longggggg journey ahead. Here's to hoping that we'll be making more positive choices in relation to parenting my 3 little angels *inshaAllah*

Salam Ramadan, everyone. May this Ramadan help us to become even better Muslims than yesterday :)

The one on Fire Station and Inherited Kiasuness

I love arts and crafts. It is just one of those things that I don't mind having to cleaned up the mess after. I can sit happily one whole day doing one of my creative projects: scrap booking, refurnishing old furniture, finger painting with the kids etc. 

So when I found out that Ryan is expected to build a 3d object as a part of his Parent-Child school holiday project, I totally jumped at the chance. I went online finding for inspirations (and at the same time practically hijacking the whole project -_-) In the end after a toss between a papier mache dinosaurs model from the Jurassic era and a fire station, the boss Ryan Daniel decided to go with "Fireman Sam's House " :p Mummy have to keep her "dry ice" volcano plans for next time (mak dia memang kiasu sikit haha)

First order of plan is to get Ryan to start drawing a "blueprint" for his fire station. To tell you the truth, I never plan my "creative projects". I'm more of a trial and error kinda girl and I tend to experiment a lot. This is of course not the trait that I would like my 5 year old baby to inherit, so I explained to  him my general plans and told him to draw his expectations on a piece of paper :) See?  a lesson on structure, something that his mummy struggle with until today hehe

:)

Next we collected 2 shoes boxes, tape, straw, alimium foil, milk cartoon, art blocks and started assembling his fire station and fire truck.  I did most of the assembling because again, the plan is mostly in my head and there's no way I would let Ryan play with sharp blades. Ryan helped me with the taping and wrapping.

I got this idea to build the fire truck after watching an episode of "Art Attack". So easy ok, parents should try it at home :) It took me less than 15 minutes to assemble this.

The next day while his little sisters were taking their afternoon naps, Ryan and I started painting the models. The painting was 80% done by Ryan, mummy just did some touch ups and I tried teaching  him some lessons about "shading" which he totally ignored.

After the paint has dried, we started assembling the "things that can be found in a fire station". We searched for pictures in accordance to the scale of our model and printed it out. Ryan later cut off the printout and started assembling and pasting it on his model.

Final product. Alhamdullilah. Ryan and I worked hard on this project and we're both so happy with the results. Thank god we didn't do some half way job because most of the other parents and children put in a lot of effort in their art work too. At least I know Ryan can stand tall and won't be embarrassed during show and tell.

 

Atuk also brought him to the Klang Fire Station so that he can have an idea on how a real life fire station looked like. Ryan enjoyed the trip and was so happy that he got to ride on a real fire truck :)

Thank you Mr. Fireman!!!not only are they busy saving lives and putting off fire but they also made this little boy felt so welcome with their hospitality that Ryan can't stop talking about his trip to  anyone who would listen.

Anyway, stay tune for next year, we shall see if mummy can find the energy and ideas to create not one but THREE models for all 3 children. Memang kena cuti seminggu la jawabnya nak buat :p I know some people would say "Alah, suruhla Lan buat satu" . I'll be like....

Not that I don't trust my husband's creativity (or lack of it hahaha) but I'm a too much of control freak to let that happen :p Sorry, B. You can clean up after we've made the mess if you want....

Ryan : Kindy Activities Updates @Tadika Ceria Az-Zahrah

How time flies and we're already in the 2nd Quarter of 2014 :) Time for a quick update on the activities that Ryan has been involved in school so far. My little boy have been quite busy, we've enrolled him in a "Bijak Baca" and "Pra Tahfiz" classes which takes place after his morning session kindy (Monday- Friday). He is also still attending his speech classes every Saturday. 

Quite a hectic timetable for a 4.5 year old, huh? But he's enjoying it and Lan and I think this would be a good training for him when he enters Standard 1 in 2016 (InShaAllah) His Tahfiz classes have also tremendously helped improved his speech and he is also able to memorize Surah Al-Fatihah, 3 Qul and the first 5 ayat of Surah Yassin. MasyaAllah I've never been more proud of this little boy. 

The feedback I've been getting from his teachers/therapist have also been very positive.As much as I'm delighted  to hear about his development in the academic department, what really made me really happy is the input on his attitude on learning. He is very determined to learn new skills, love asking question and very hardworking.The only problem with this little boy is he's a bit kiasu and competitive (god knows where he get that trait from :p) 

His "pelatness" is a blessing in disguise. He knows that he needs to work harder than his peers when it comes to his speech so he does not take things for granted. Alhamdullilah it helped shape him to be the cheeky, intelligent and hardworking boy that he is today. Anyway after hours of going through the pics from his school FB photo archive, I managed to collate some pictures of my little boy in action :)

Classroom Activities

Sand Castle Building Activity

Personal Hygiene Week : Learning how to wash their own clothes

Trip to Tesco 

To learn about personal safety (not to speak to strangers etc) and halal food

Kembara Alam @ Kuala Selangor

2 days 1 night, Sleepover/Camping activities with his teachers and classmates. They visited Pantai Remis and Bukit Melawati to learn about nature and independence 

Activity of the day: Making their own photo frame using shells they collected from the beach. A picture of Ryan and his "jerung" group with his class teacher/chaperon - Teacher Ana

Camping/picnic session in Pantai Remis

Solat Jemaah in one of the Masjid in Kuala Selangor

:) 

Collection of artwork during his weekend away : A Counting Nature Book, Windmill and photo frame

FINALLY after 1 month, I managed to complete the promised "update list". Looking forward to May 2014. I have so much plans arranged and we all know it is my favorite month being my BIRTHDAY month and all (hahaha how's that for giving out subtle hints???)  Anyway have a good week and do enjoy the upcoming Labor Day...