Slime Industry

Since the exams ended, JED have been on a high. As they go up in the years and the exams get harder, the relief is dizzyingly palpable. It drives us adults batty because they are bouncing off walls and occasionally that high energy becomes destructive. So it became a compromise of what we were willing to put up with and how to channel that energy into something that didn't involve beating each other up.

Packrat had a dinner and dance and his department wanted to go as Ghostbusters. So he decided to commission the kids on our floor to make him a litre of slime. He told them to come up with a business plan. They had to

1. Come up with a break down of costs and how much they need to charge to make a decent profit. Profit enough to pay all their
workers ( the head honcho being our neighbour and the workers being JED)

2. Create a prototype of the slime and get approval from buyer (Packrat). They ran through 3 prototypes because each suffered from the Goldilocks syndrome. One being too watery, one being too opaque and one being just right.

3. Once the prototype was okayed, they had to figure out how to multiply the materials in order to create the required one litre.

4. Even with the prototype, they had several failed batches and it took a large part of the day for them to complete it; just in time for Packrat to pack it up and bring it to the function.

5. They had to split the profits in an equitable fashion and since Muffin did the least amount of work, they wanted to pay him the least amount of money. Eventually, there was some under the table payment for Muffin to pay him off so that he would not disturb the peace by chucking a fit and demanding fair wages. 



For those who are late to the game and need a recipe, this is our neighbour's.

What you’ll need

Half bottle glue (Elmer's if you want it opaque, Chunbei if you want it transparent- They can be bought at Popular) (that’s 50-60 ml based on a 120 ml bottle)

Baking soda (1/4 tsp)

Contact Lens Saline Solution (Add in little amounts till the consistency is right- too much saline makes the slime hard!)

Food colouring (optional)




At the end of it, they were pleased. They made a bee-line for the mama shop where they spent their wages on ice cream and junk food. A true case of one hand in-one hand out and nothing for the bank. I guess that's the next lesson they would have to learn about being entrepreneurs. If they spend everything they make, they aren't going to have anything to help them make more money.

They haven't quite figured out how to spend money to make money yet, just to make money to spend. 

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Why Exams are Important Pt 2

So I get a message from Jordan's teacher yesterday.

She's been doodling a lot in class. Even when the teacher is teaching.

She's always been a doodler. She draws everywhere. Any time she gets her hands on scraps of paper, she'll doodle.

Sometimes, the doodling is effective because it helps her understand concepts better. Sometimes, it's just doodling for doodling sake.

Just a quick glance at her things all over the house, I found a variety of different sorts of doodles on everything from scrap paper to school test papers.

Hence, an annoyed school teacher.

To be fair, if I were the teacher, I'd be annoyed too since it's easy to assume that the child isn't paying attention when there is doodling. My own students do it as well.

Admirably, she admitted openly to the teacher that she doodles when she is bored (they've been going through exam paper after exam paper) and when she finds things hard to understand (that's how she unpacks things).

I also try and suggest to the teacher that instead of fully banning her from doing it and understanding that this is something that she does to process and to decompress, why not let her doodle as a form of note taking. To channel it into something the teacher can accept.

She seems to be open to that idea and I'm grateful.

Then, in the evening, I read about Nike's Chief of Design and how he doodles. All. The. Time. Part of me wants to send that article on to the teacher but the other part of me knows that's just being snarky. But it would be cool if her doodling allowed her to become chief of design, somewhere.

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Why exams are important

It's exam time. Again.

And that's usually when creativity flourishes most. When there is real work to be done, the mind wanders and interesting ideas and creations surface. It isn't really necessity that was the mother of invention. I think, more possibly, boredom.

One day, Evan comes out of school with his finger encased in paper. He says it's a dragon's talon. His friend made it for him. And he asks if I can find out how to make them. We YouTube it, I learn it, I pass on the information to him and promptly forget how to do it. He goes on to make 10 talons; he has to make 10, after all he has 10 fingers and makes a couple more in case he chips a nail. He's become a grand master of it.

It's a thing in class now. They're all little dragons that have started to spout talons. Poor teachers. The only things I cautioned him against was to NOT do it during teaching or work time and please use rough paper rather than buying a clean sketch pad from the book store for this.

The annoying thing is that there are talons all over the house and he refuses to throw it out. He puts them them on to claw menacingly at Muffin when his brother annoys him.

Then, there was this.

It's a creature. Not enough legs to be an insect or an arachnid but enough to be an Evan creation. It's made out of staples, magnets and an eraser. All things you find on the study table especially when you're parked there for extended periods of time.

He tells me it's science. He uses the magnet because that's how you get the staples to hold on. The eraser is important because that's how you anchor the staples and it's what forms the body.

Ingenious though extremely annoying because of the high wastage of staples and the random staples lying around waiting to impale the random, unaware adult.

He's proud of his creations and he brings them to school to show his friends. Honestly, these are probably going to be the things he will remember learning in primary school, not so much the fanciful and impractical Chinese phrases that he's had to memorise by the boat load. 

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Small Business Enterprise

Jordan's exams are over. The semi-pall that has shrouded our house for the last few weeks has lifted. Somewhat.

Somewhat because Evan's exams aren't over yet. But it isn't stopping them from celebrating.

For Evan, any opportunity to play is a good thing. For Muffin, he is celebrating the fact that his play mates are free to play with him and he doesn't have to do work just so that his siblings don't complain that he is too free.

First order of business, was to literally, set up a business. Or rather 3 businesses.

Each kid decided on a business they were about to start.

Each kid came up with a business model including pricing, opening hours and rules and regulations.

Jordan set up a music school that promised that anyone could be a musician.
Evan set up a photo studio with his business partner, Eevee. 
Muffin was setting up a spa. He was CEO. Jordan was the massage therapist.

Working hours took into consideration school hours. Obviously, they weren't giving up their day jobs for this.

Their family benefits were great.  We got discounts and there were always freebies for those hapless enough to engage their services.

 

So we came home to signs on their door last night declaring their businesses closed for the day and early this morning, the sign had changed.

 

We found out that they subscribed to the belief that the 'early bird catches the worm' because they were all up at six this morning, voluntarily, for a business meeting before their businesses opened for the day.

Unfortunately, they didn't take factor in the size of their consumer base so there wasn't a lot of business to go around.

That didn't fuss them much. They closed early and went to the park.

 Their jobs certainly afforded them a great amount of work-life balance.

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Holiday Adventures 2: The One with the Birthday Party (1)

This post is part of a series for the twins' Harry Potter birthday party. There's too much for one post. This one is about the creative little bits that we created to make it more Harry Potteresque. There'll be others to come.

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Traditionally, we celebrate the twins birthday early in June. Having a birthday in June is great when you want to be anti-social and want nothing to do with people you go to school with. But the twins are far from anti-social. They love their friends. They love playing. And they love parties. So, having June birthdays means it's tough to find a time where we can catch a majority of their friends. This year, they asked for a Harry Potter themed party because they love all things Potter.

Unfortunately, we don't have a large backyard where we can play pretend Quidditch games and I don't have the time nor the constitution to create Hogwarts in my living room or a nearby rec room. The next best thing was to find them a venue that we could use where they could pretend to be Potter characters.

Tangentially,  they all do gymnastics with Dreams Gymnastics, where Jordan spends an inordinate amount of time. Because of that, we've gotten to know the coaches really well.  So I asked them if they ran birthday parties and they said they did.

Excellent. An open air gym with all the space in the world for kids to make all the noise they want to and tire themselves out nicely. An added bonus was that the coaches were Harry Potter fans and knew exactly what we had in mind without us needing to tell them. Or rather, they told me they had it under control and it was a surprise for the twins.

So, the energy I would have needed to actually plan the party was all humming and buzzing to do something. All that, I needed to get out of my system. I did what any crazy mother would do. Channel it into making goodie bags that looked like broomsticks. I don't care if Martha Stewart has done time in prison, she still has great ideas and it looked like something someone like me, who had failed art, could manage. Instead of using twigs, I used full-sized plastic wands that I ordered online with brown sandwich bags I pulled out of our pantry and I was off. I filled it with stickers, snacks, tattoos and the wand then tied it up with twine. Me, the one who disappointed my mother with my lack of artistic dreams, created something that approximated a broomstick out of non-broomstick material.

Harry Potter inspired snacks including Giant Pocky sticks as well as jelly beans and chocolate frogs.

I wasn't the only one feeling some creative edginess. Packrat too and far surpassed himself when he came home with invitation cards. Yes, we're traditional that way. Paper invitations hand delivered instead of an electronic one that could be shared in a Whatsapp chat group. Packrat's idea of an invite was a replica of the Platform 9 3/4 train ticket on thick stock parchment-like paper. The point was an invitation that they could touch, feel and use as a bookmark after. My only wish is that he printed more because I would have liked a couple for myself.

This image was designed by the twins' coach and it fit perfectly onto the invite.

On top of that, between him and our very creative friend, L, we had House and Hogwarts stickers for both the 'Sorting' as well as for a strip to take home.They looked very real and every door in my house is now adorned with one.

There is  one thing I love about the twins' and their friends' love for the Potter universe and that is how truly it unleashes creativity in them (there's enough of that to fill another post). One of Jordan's best friends from school took it upon herself to bake Potter inspired cupcakes. Chocolate Frog cupcakes, Broomstick cupcakes as well as two Snitch ones for the birthday twins. Even though we had store bought cupcakes for the candles and song, we ended up using these instead because they meant so much more to the twins.

Part of all the fun was actually in all these little things. They did add very much to the colour and to the excitement of the party. But I'm pretty sure I can only do once every couple of years.

#nopartyplannersforus. 
 

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Experiment 1: Nature study

The twins are doing science this year. They spent much of last year excited about doing science this year. They read, they watched videos and they spewed scary non-sequiturs about poisonous/ deadly animals. They taught me the difference between a poisonous creature and a venomous one.

Unfortunately, school science is not just about remembering crazy facts but actually being able to make observations about these creatures or phenomena. That bit is what we've been trying to help them bridge; articulating all their weird, random bits of information into coherent observations.

The wonderful thing about science is that it's all around, especially now as they tackle living things as a topic. I discovered one morning after dropping the twins off that one of their schools faced a bank of wild vegetation. Peering at the various plants and trees by the pathway, I noticed with a great amount of glee, an army of different sorts of trees and shrubs as well as leaves housing spiders and leaves folded downwards because of sacs of spider eggs. Time to bring them on a nature ramble.

That's when I decided that I was going to make their textbook real to them. Part of what the twins are doing is to identify the different characteristics of leaves. Once again, it's about observation. So, armed with the scissors from my very guniang Swiss Knife and a plastic bag that Muffin had carelessly tossed at the back of the car, I braved commando mosquitoes and started clipping off different leaves.

So yesterday's revision for next week's Science test was to set up their leaf scrap book, identify and list the various characteristics of each of the leaves after pasting them in. Of course from the academic point of view, it's a small section of what they need to know but it was fun and they'll remember it past their use of the scrap book.



Another part of the topic required them to learn the functions of the different parts of the plant. They could learn it by heart or they could see it. I opted for them to see how plants and their system for transporting water worked. To do this, all that was necessary was food colouring, big jars and leaves of Chinese cabbage.

They marvelled at how quickly the water was transported to the tips of the leaves, how the tips of the leaves coloured first and how extensively the network of veins was. And the added bonus was that it was very very pretty. 

If these questions were asked next week, it would be a bonus. If they didn't, at least they'd know how to make very pretty coloured flowers next time. 

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An Ad Campaign

One of the series of books that JED have been incredibly enthralled by is Judy Blume's Fudge series. The dad in the book is in advertising (this series was obviously written in a different era) and there are references to advertisements, jingles and selling products in the book.

At the same time, I've been meaning to make some insect repellent out of essential oils. Today, I sat down and did it while they were doing their homework. Naturally, JED wanted to know what I was doing and wanted to help. While doing that, I asked if they wanted to come up with a name for the repellent I was making. That was how it started. JED, Jordan and Evan especially, wanted to 'invent' a new product to sell (In one of the books, Fudge as a pre-schooler obsesses about how he can make money). So we started talking about how to go about doing that.

With my sketchy knowledge about advertising, I talked them through the 3 phases.
1. Create the product.
2. Market the product.
3.  Sell the product.

Phase 1- Create the product.
1. We talked about the important features of what we were doing. We were going to create insect repellent. It would be made from essential oils. It would keep away mosquitoes and bugs. We needed a name for it. They came up with Monster Bug Spray and put it to a vote. It was a unanimous decision (Unanimous, a word they learnt from the book)

Here's the recipe.
- 14 oz of witch hazel
- 15 drops of citronella oil
- 12 drops of lavender oil
- 15 drops of lemongrass oil
- 15 drops of tea tree oil

They were little apothecaries. They dripped the oils with a little pipette and Muffin helped me pour the mixture into smaller bottles. They loved the smells of the oils wafting. They loved being the testers as I smeared overflowed drops onto them. Muffin made labels for the bottles carefully including a picture of a monster on each one before sticking them on.

Once we were done, Jordan and Evan insisted we start trying to sell it.

Phase 2- Market it.

I told them that people would only buy a product if they knew about it. So they had to advertise it and convince people that they needed it and how their lives would be much worse if they didn't. Jordan suggested making a poster to place outside our house (print media). Evan suggested making a video and posting it on Facebook (audio-visual and social media) so people knew about it.

 

(Watch till the end where there's even a wink!)

They wrote out the ad so that they wouldn't forget the lines. I added suggestions.
1. Speak in short sentences.
2. Make it catchy.
3. Have a slogan. (I had to explain what a slogan was so I showed them Nike's Just Do It and MacD's I'm lovin' it! slogans)

I give them credit for trying to incorporate all that into the script including a slogan at the end.
"Monster Bug Spray! Keeps the bugs away!"

Then they set up the scene for the advertisement. They moved in chairs and turned on the lights. Jordan wore a For Sale T-shirt and a wink. Evan, more introverted, gamely played her assistant but chimed in with a smile here and a word there. All I had to do was video it. So I did, trying my best not to let my giggles wobble the phone too much.

Phase 3- Sell it.

This is where we're at currently. Jordan's poster advertised that our current promotion was "Buy 1, Get 2 Free" whittled down from "Buy 1, Get 3 Free" which I told them would make us no money and we'd probably lose money that way.

We're going to put up the poster on our main door to attract customers apparently. Its attraction is that it's natural and home made by the family. I'm to put the video on FB (They've learnt of the existence of FB) so that the people who don't live around us will know about it and come from all over the world to buy it. (Fat hope.)

I'm not sure how many bottles we'll sell if any. I told JED that we'd have to trial it first to make sure it did indeed keep the bugs away (otherwise our advertisements would be lying) and the Health authorities would probably want to check that we didn't put anything bad in it. But whatever it is, we have a Beta version now.

Their first product and ad campaign, Monster Bug Spray ©️JED coming to a chemist near you, all in a day's work. I don't think we'll win a Clio Award though.

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Playing with Possibilities at the Playeum

I have an eight year old who is obsessed with the right answer. We didn't teach it but there's an inherent need to make sure the answer is right. So we try our best to send across the message that getting things wrong is okay and it's part of learning. Part of it is inherent, the other part of it is bred by our school system where there is always a right way, right answer and attaining that is highly rewarded. That's good for some things. But not so good for others.

In such a system, some things fall by the way side. Divergent Thinking is one of them. Divergent Thinking is the ability to see many answers to the same question. Not entirely the same thing as creativity but where new ideas and new ways of doing things come from. This idea, I learnt from Ken Robinson and is something that we struggle to make known to the twins, especially, who are already entrenched in this culture of right and wrong.

How do we do try to do that? We don't dictate how they play. When they ask what they ought to do next, we ask them to go figure it out for themselves. We find toys and opportunities for play that are open-ended.

One of the opportunities that was given to us recently was an invitation to  Playeum; The Children's Centre for Creativity at Gillman Barracks. Unlike most indoor play areas, there aren't set ways to play. The closest I've seen to this is Kaboodle Kids, a play gym entirely made out of foam blocks. But Playeum worked on a theme (The Art of Speed) rather than a particular type of play.

The entire centre was broken up into different spaces where you could do different things. The theme of speed basically meant that there were a lot of wheels associated with the play. Along side the wheels were troughs and troughs of Lego and play pieces for the children to assemble what they felt might work on the various ramps. 

And that, was the great testament to divergent play. No one knew what was the perfect way to build a contraption that would survive the steep ramp without an explosion of Lego all over the place. Every child, including mine, went back again and again, adapting their vehicles trying to figure out what worked better. Eventually Evan worked out that it was all in the wheels. The black wheels with threads offered too much traction and it didn't gain enough speed down the ramp; that meant it couldn't jump the divide between ramps and his creations often crashed and burned in what we started to fondly refer to as The Valley of Broken Dreams.

When he figured it out, he taught it to Muffin and Muffin ended up creating a zoom-worthy vehicle that ended up as a blur no matter how many shots we tried to take of it. It was interesting to note also that despite the fact that Evan told Muffin how to build his vehicle, their vehicles looked markedly different and while Muffin watched how Evan built his, he went off to create his own.

 

We were late to family lunch because we stayed longer that we'd expected to at the Playeum and while regaling what JED did there, a question that surfaced was "So what did Jordan do since it was all Lego and cars?" My instinctive retort that needed to be suppressed was "Who says girls can't play with cars (and Lego)?".

Because that was precisely what Jordan did for most part of it; play with the cars and later on with Lego and marbles. I had expected her to be at the Workshop table where there was a buffet of recyclable materials, fabrics, glue, markers etc. And that in itself was a terrible assumption on my part. She didn't even venture there because she was busy trying to race cars down another set of tracks; in this space, you could adapt the tracks as well as create the vehicles. She twisted, propped up, laid flat, looped and curled the track, watched how her car responded to it and adjusted it accordingly. We have a million pictures of her building a mini roller coaster for her car without it going off the rails and none of the Workshop area, unfortunately.

She can't look!

An interesting observation was that despite the number of times their cars crashed, broke into a million pieces, the kids just went back the drawing board and tried again, always adjusting, always swoping out parts and using different things to see if it worked better.

Jordan and Evan also tried their hands at building their own marble runs while taking a break from the ramps and cars. Even with this, they used ribbons, straightened and twisted paper clips to 'tie' the 'tracks'. Tracks here being old tubes of cardboard or plastic pipes or tubing. Evan got a bit frustrated when his creations wouldn't hold but there was a gleam of satisfaction every time he dropped a marble in and it came out at the bottom.

So they ended up with a morning of play which wasn't dictated by anyone. It was just theirs. When asked which section they liked the most, they were unanimous in their vagueness. They all liked 'building the stuff', which was really all they did.

There were other areas as well though JED didn't spend a lot of time there. It wasn't as if they weren't as fun. In fact, the Dark Room was one of my favourite areas  because I love shadows and making pictures or shadows. There was also the Workshop space I mentioned earlier where we could make whatever it is we wanted with the available tools. Packrat spent much of his time building cars to try and outdo the boys. I don't know if he succeeded though.



At the end of the day, one thing Ken Robinson had said resounded "if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original" and it had truly been a morning of their coming up with their own original creations and where there was no right or wrong way to do it. Any place that does that is good for anyone's soul.

Details of how to get to Playeum and other nitty gritty but important pieces information. 

Location:
Blk 47 Malan Road
Gillman Barracks #01-21/23

It's near the Hort Park and it quite far into the barracks so be prepared to trek and clock steps or drive.

Mon to Fri from 7:00am to 5:00pm

First Hour Free Parking

$0.50 per 30 min for the Second hour

$3.00 per hour for the Third hour onwards or part thereof

Saturdays from 7:00am to 11:00am

Free Parking from 11:00am to 7:00pm

$0.50 per 30 min

Mon to Fri from 5:00pm to 7:00am (next day)

Saturdays from 7:00pm to 7:00am (next day)

$0.50 per 30min (capped at $2.00)

Parking is free on Sundays so that was great. 

Ticketing:
Child (1-12): $20 (It's a non-profit organisation but they have to keep putting out resources and pay for utilities!)
Accompanying adult: You play for free.
Not open on Mondays and Christmas meaning Haze days are a great time to visit them.

We are most thankful to Playeum for the the time and space to create, tinker and make without instruction manuals!

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Multi-sensorial reading for the reluctant reader

Before the biological clock kicked in making me want kids, on one of those occasions when a hapless elder asked why I wasn't having kids yet, I flippantly retorted " not until someone can guarantee they won't hate books". I don't think the hapless elder understood that there was some genuine fear in that statement. She probably thought I was just being rude. I really wasn't. Not entirely anyway.

I spend a lot of time and money ordering books for JED. People tell me to go to the library but they like re-reading their books so much that we end up always borrowing the same books and they are reluctant to grow their repertoire at all. We discovered last year that audio books were a great way to introduce new books to them. And we haven't looked back since especially now that we've discovered this brilliant app called Overdrive that allows you to borrow electronic and audio versions of the book from your local library. I download the audio version and blue tooth it to the car radio and the kids are spell bound.

The one who loves the audio books the most is Evan. He's an auditory learner, he sponges up what he hears (not so good for us when us adults talk and use non-kosher language) and thoroughly immerses himself in it. After the Roald Dahl that we started with, we moved to the How to Train a Dragon series which he loved and got him started on the novels after. His How to Train a Dragon series is a very well-worn, well loved set. Jordan and Muffin however, only just tolerated the 11 book series and jointly put their foot down when he wanted to re-listen to the entire set again once he was complete. They and myself included were Dragon-ed out by then.

The thing with audio books is that how riveting it is depends very much on the reader. We tried to distract them with Kipling's Just-So stories which I had read to them before but they wouldn't bite because the reader was a yawn. We tried many others but we kept falling back on the Roald Dahls and Dragon ones. We had the Harry Potter books in store but we had initially wanted to wait till next year when they were a bit older but with all that bickering in the car, we caved and started them on it.

Can I just say that the Potter series is great? Stephen Fry reads the books and he does different voices and he makes his voice echo-ey or ghoul like depending on what was needed. The twins love it. Muffin isn't as keen on it but we suspect it's because the story is so dense, he finds it difficult to keep up.

Evan started to ask for random car rides just so that he could hear more of the story until I told him he could open the book to where he stopped in the car and read on. This was a holiday morning and at 11am that morning, he was still in pyjamas because he hadn't stopped reading. It was then that I recalled how big a phenomenon the Potter books were when they released, to the point that television viewership numbers always dropped after a Potter book got released.

Based on what he had heard and read in the first book, Evan came up with his version of Hogwarts. It was truly comprehensive with the towers, the dungeons, the 3-headed dog and even the Philosopher's Stone, only missing out the Quidditch pitch which he said he would work on next.

To round it all off, we sat with them and watched the movie. Now, that was a bit too intense for them, especially the ending though Packrat and I realised that watching it with JED was a different experience from when we saw it for the very first time all those years ago. All the special effects were readily appreciated. The highlight of the movie was obviously any part that had flying brooms for Evan and Jordan wanted to go to a school where the staircases moved. Muffin wanted a hat like the Sorting Hat which could talk.

Unfortunately, not all book experiences can be multi-sensorial. But it really isn't a bad place to start.

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Comic Drawing: The new past time

Part of JED's reading diet consists of my entire collection of Calvin and Hobbes as well as science comics. I'm not averse to letting them read comics though I have had people 'tsk!' me and tell me that they ought to be reading 'proper' books.

They love comics. They love Calvin. They want to get up to the same sort of shenanigans that Calvin gets up to like bathing in the toilet bowl (No.) . I remember all those years in college chuckling at Calvin and Hobbes and love that they derive such joy from it, though I suspect they don't get everything at this point.

Anyway, they all try to draw comics. It can't be that hard to write a story in a few panels, they think. They succeed to varying degrees but only Jordan will let me photograph them.

Then I find this link that provides blank comic templates. They have panels with speech/ thought bubbles and they have some with more panels and some with less. I print a stack and bring them home.

There is silence for 30 minutes with a lot of sniggering and Jordan produces this. Evan produces a self-deprecating one with his last panel ending off with a stick boy thinking "Scrap!" and cannot stop chuckling. But he crushes it up and throws it away, promising me a more coherent one soon. They beg for more comic paper.

I teach them to sign their names at the bottom of the strip like Watterson did. And I tell them how much I enjoy reading their comics, because I genuinely do.

And the best part is that they are each other's biggest fans. They wait anxiously for each other to finish and grab it from under the pen to read it. They chuckle, they laugh, they discuss how to make it funnier and that makes them laugh some more (it is often toilet humour, but I pretend not to hear it.)

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Playing with Dirt

JED are coughing. Badly. And to be honest, it was my fault.

2 weeks ago, I sent them out of the house because I wanted to take a nap. It started to rain when they went down to play. And instead of coming up, they went on playing in the rain. First with boxes that they tried to shelter themselves with and when the boxes got soggy, all the pretence of caring went out the window.

Of course, I got into a lot of trouble with the maters for having got them sick. But they all came home wet, freezing with a sparkle in their eye.

I like them doing that. Not the getting sick but the other thing. I think they don't get to do it enough. My childhood memories were about walking in huge drains in my apartment complex and ending up somewhere totally obscure and having to find my own way home. I harbour memories of great resentment because my brothers used to go out in the middle of the night to walk in the cemetery with torch lights- without me. I felt I was missing out. Their excuse, our mother would have killed them if they brought me.

It's easy not to do that. The grand maters are full of fearful tales of abduction, outrage of modesty and that the world is full of bad people. They aren't allowed to take the lift up themselves and they aren't allowed to be downstairs on their own. Part of me is fearful, conditioned by them. Packrat does a great job insisting that I chill and let them be. It's not easy. It's easy to err on the side of bubble wrapping JED.

In our world, it's easy to stop them from going near anything dirty, smother them with sanitiser and regale them with cautionary tales of danger and accidents.

But even I know that it's hypocritical for me to behave that way. One day, on the way home with Evan, I stopped short and stared at, what was to him, a bush. He tugged me along but I wouldn't budge, staring at some leaves. Then I pointed out to him two leaves, stuck together and told him a spider lived inside. He didn't believe me till I gently pulled the leaves apart and there, cowering inside, was a very pretty black spider with silver stripes. He asked me how I knew that there was a spider there and when I explained to him that spiders made homes in leaves and I hunted them when I was young, he was suitably impressed and wanted to know how to do it.

The twins go out of the house on their own quite a bit and they know they have to look after Muffin if he goes along. They're usually somewhere down the corridor and downstairs playing. They know not to go anywhere near the road and they have made friends with other children in the block. They come home with treasures of swords, light sabres, spears (long sticks) and cannon balls (coconuts, don't ask.). They come back dirty, sweaty and grubby.

My plan for this holidays will be fewer paid workshops and camps and more 'free range' fun. After all, I have read too much about how the cleaner our kids are, the lower their immunity is to allergies
(I draw my line to not bathing every day though), how kids in the woods (wild) are going to be extinct soon and the need to disconnect to ignore all of it.

Some places that kids have been set free and where I've had to stop myself from actively cringing and stopping them from playing how they want to play.

1. The Green Corridor. Lots to explore. Wild chickens, squirrels, forget me nots and thick vegetation. Sticks, whacking the bushes and raising an army of insects. Only thing that is necessary, industrial strength insect repellant for the commando mosquitoes that attack in packs.

2. Botanic Gardens. 

JED know Botanics like the back of their hand. But they always find new things to do there. I'm just the driver. Recently, they spent a good hour at a spot they love, first picking out leaves and sticks from the water and stirring up the mulch from the bottom of the pond then sticking their hands into the water to try to lure fish into their hands with fish food. Evan's thrill of the day was when a fish swam into his hand and he badly wanted to close his hand around it but was worried he'd crush it. I wanted to stop them, every one of them. Dirty water. Hands in mouth. Salmonella. 

3. At home and at grandma's.

We just leave them be. Especially at Grandma's where there are flower beds, soil, drains and lots of pails set out to collect rain water. Sometimes, there's the sloshing of water, sometimes there's the sound of a shovel or their bare hands digging up the ground and sometimes there's just a lot of clomping around. Occasionally, they end up doing chores (without our asking) where they sweep up leaves in the driveway or wash the driveway or windows with collected rain water. They come in grubby and they come in wet.

I don't make many comments about it except to tell them to change out of their wet clothes, wash their feet and hands.

That's the one thing I can't quite bring myself not to do yet; to ignore the fact that they have dirty, gross hands. 

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Exams are over and it's PLAY time! - A review for Kaboodle Kids-

The exams are finally over! Finally. We don't know how they did and we won't know for a while but for now, it's time to go a little bit berserk. The house is flooded with Young Scientists magazines and there is Lego and Magformers strewn all over. The noise level is also decibels higher.

But they deserve the break.

As a treat, I packed them all off one afternoon Kaboodle Kids one afternoon. It's an indoor play gym at Big Splash. Actually, I wanted to go more than they did. I was curious about it because it was a play gym unlike any other and that in itself piqued my interest. Here are 5 ways it was different.

1. It was all blue. Unlike other play gyms that are a cacophony of colours which sometimes assault your senses, this just had blue bits. Lots of blue bits.

2. And they truly were just bits. No ready made structures. There were no slides or ball pits (though you could technically build your own ball pit). All the bits fit and connected to each other. So it was up to JED and their friends how they were going to build stuff. That way, they built their own fun.

3. Everything was foam. Giant foam noodles, blocks, wheels, balls, everything. That meant they were light and the noodles were malleable but at the same time they were heavy enough (especially after it was built) to stand on its own. And if the entire structure collapsed onto anyone, everyone else laughed because it was comical and it didn't really hurt at all. In Muffin's words after his entire marble run collapsed onto him "Not pain!"

4. There was no set way to play. Evan spent a lot of his time building a giant spider or what I saw as a contraption a mad scientist would use to suck up your brain juices. Jordan and her friends, built a fort that became their castle and Muffin loved that the walls of the castle connected into a huge room length marble run.

5. The entire room was as messy or as built up as the children wanted it to be. At one point when Evan and the girls had concentrated all their efforts on building their structures, Muffin was racing back and forth, slip-sliding around in his socks because there was just so much space for him to do so.

We were there for a good 2 hours and it would have been longer if it wasn't closing time. The only way I managed to drag them out of there was to promise that they could go look for the chickens that roosted near the beach. I also had to promise that we would come back again.

I loved the place. Simple as that.

Primarily because
1. It was a play gym that subscribed to the same play philosophy as I do. Don't tell them what to do, just let them figure it out, do it play how they want to.

2. I could play too. I could build stuff too, me-sized and JED were thrilled because in most play gyms, Mommy's too big to follow them around inside not that Mommy would want to.

3. It was bright. There were windows all along the side which meant there was a lot of light. But that's just me. I have a thing for natural light.

4. It wasn't an entirely huge area that I lost sight of JED but big enough for them to lose each other and that meant lots of fun playing Hide and Seek.

5. It was near the beach. Anything near the beach makes me feel like I am home. That's what happens when you grow up in the East. Take the girl out of the East but never quite take the beach out of the girl.

Stalking the chickens barefoot, to be quieter. No chicken was fooled. 

The only issue I think I had with it was that there was a lot of unhappiness when other kids who had also paid to play came over and inadvertently destroyed what JED were doing. And when they got tired towards the later part of the day, the unhappiness turned into sullen moodiness. But then again, my message to them was suck it up and play with others or accept that your structures might get destroyed.

We'll probably go back again at some point and in truth, we think it'd be a great place to hold birthday parties because you get to book out the whole place and build and play to their heart's content.

If you pop by at Kaboodle Kids and mention you came by them through our blog (the Diaperblog), you'll get 10 % off regular admission rates  till the end of June.

Here's to lots of fun and lots of building.

Postscript: We are thankful for Kaboodle Kids sponsoring JED's visit and everything written here is our own two cents' worth. 

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The math that adds up

The other reason why we pulled the twins out of the Nazi Chinese school was this.

A friend of mine, Liz,  set up an enrichment centre last year. It's called BlueTree Education. Muffin went there in December for Santa Camp and they all fondly call it Santa School, which has a nice ring to it. Anyway, I've always liked all the stuff that they did there. If ever there was coveting for enrichment classes, this was it. Not because it would explicitly guarantee them good grades but because the classes seemed to framed around the creativity, critical thinking and imagination. All things I believe in. Then Liz asked if the twins wanted to try out their Math programme.

I hedged because the twins have a very packed school week. That and the fact that although an educator, I don't want to buy into the tuition culture more than I have to (the 'I have to' part is the Chinese) . Eventually, my curiosity got the better of me as well as Jordan who has actually been bugging me for Math class, we went to pay Liz a visit one early Saturday morning. Liz doesn't actually teach the class. The class is taught by another ex teacher.

I dropped them off and ducked out, happy to have 90 minutes to do non-kid related things. When I got back to get them, they were chomping on a chocolate chip cookie each and looked extremely disappointed that I was there.

By the time I managed to wrangle them out of the centre I'd blown my 10 minute grace period with parking,

So what did this have anything to do with why we pulled them out of Nazi Chinese School?

1. It showed that enrichment centres/ classes weren't made equal.
2. It showed that classes could be engaging for the children and they could actually want to go to class and have fun there.
3. It showed that there were different ways of teaching children and to build their confidence.
4. It showed that learning didn't have to happen by rote and didn't require beating the child down to do it.

And why I liked the BlueTree Math specifically?
1. They used manipulatives. Both Jordan and Evan are visual learners though Evan is able to do rote a little bit better. But nothing helps them understand the concepts and apply them as manipulatives do. I've always been a big fan of manipulatives and spend a lot of time looking at what to get on Amazon.

2. Math games that teach both speed and accuracy.

3. Not a ridiculous amount of homework but a doable set. On top of that, the homework set they take home is consolidation of what they've done in class. Same sort of questions, different numbers and different levels of difficulty. So there hasn't been excuses of  "I don't know how to do my homework!" and much more willingness to practice. That's also meant they've become more confident with their Math and the positive cycle going on now is nicely self-perpetuating.

4. The teacher is encouraging and affirming of their efforts. Evan used to come out of Nazi Chinese ecstatic. But his ecstasy came from the fact that the 2 hours of torture was over. Evan comes out of class here beaming, telling me what games he's played and how much the teacher encouraged and praised his effort.

5. Jordan, who has always felt that her strength has been in English has become bolder with her Math because  it is explained in a way that she understands and as a result, she gets them right. That makes her dare to try more challenging questions. It makes me smile to see her take on her Math, that she struggled with a little bit more than Evan and it reminds me of this ad about reminding girls that they can be pretty brilliant too.

All good things.

So for now and while they say it's fun and they want to go, we'll let them do Santa School (BlueTree Math) and learn something while they're at it.


 BlueTree Education is very kindly sponsoring the twins' Math class with them for a term. If anyone is keen to try their stuff, they offer free trial classes. I love what they do at English and Current Affairs Club too but for now, the twins need more play time than classes. 

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Peer Pressure; The Gadget Edition

Over the Chinese New Year season, one of mrbrown's updates was "Words I find myself saying the most to my kids during ‪#‎CNY‬: "Oi! Put the iPad/iPhone down!"

It was a refrain too true for us as well. JED know that iDevices aren't kosher when it comes to entertaining themselves. And they are all good about it until they are faced with some other kid whipping out their iDevice then everyone gravitates toward it. Moths, naked flame, that sort of them.

While they know the rules by heart, their sense of self-restraint is as strong as everyone else playing by our rules. Unfortunately, we are in the minority and that makes it hard for our soon to be 8s and newly minted 5 to resist.

We go visiting or, during the non-CNY season, go out with a bag loaded with non-tech entertainment. Crayons, colour pencils, paper, magnetic puzzles and books; all stuff that JED are happy to play with on a regular day at home. The problem is that these work at home because there isn't an iDevice for them to fall back on. But it's a losing battle that we end up always having to fight; an uphill battle when many around us whip it out as their first resort to resolve boredom. Analogue toys and entertainment don't stand a chance when they are put beside their loud, flashy and digital cousins.

We do need to state on the outset that occasionally, JED do get time on the iDevices, like the last hour of budget-non in flight entertainment- flights where we need a breather from the non-stop stream of conversation that they've held since the plane took off or when they've displayed incredible patience, maturity and resistance in a situation or when there are sharp instruments about and we need them to stay perfectly still.

The point is that we don't want them to rely on the gadget as a first pick antidote against boredom. Because truly, they are harder to parent with the gadgets as child-minders. We've seen how when Muffin gets too much screen time and we try to take it away, there is much screaming and tantrum throwing. We've seen how the twins fight over a gadget because each feels that they haven't had enough time on it. We've seen how they turn into mindless drones unable to answer the simplest questions when they are watching pissed off birds attack alien green pigs. Our solution then, is to remove offensive gadget for more peace round the house. And every time we are at gatherings where these devices reign supreme, we go home with more angsty, demanding and indignant children.

In desperation, Packrat and I eventually resorted to telling them to pick between being able to watch television at home (another rare and treasured occurrence) and crowding around an iDevice to watch someone build something or plant crops. Yes, perhaps it is replacing one evil with another. Our defence is the television is more easily controlled by us and JED have to always come to a common consensus as to what to watch before the television goes on. That and the fact that television is purely a public holiday or weekend indulgence for them.

It is a sad day when the least of all the evils is the television set and it is a viable alternative to 5 kids staring at the glow of one tiny device. 

We've tried everything.

a. Rationalising with them that non-screen games where they can include everyone else are more fun.
b. Lugging about the aforementioned bag of tricks.
c. Rewarding them for not being on the device.
d. Warning them of a future of rapidly increasing myopia.
e. Intoning the dangers of how these devices cause their brain cells to disintegrate and dribble out of their ears.

Sometimes one works better than the other, sometimes they need to work in tandem and sometimes none work at all.

While I love my gadgets as much as the next person, I really don't love how complicated it's made child rearing.

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Opti-Muffin

Muffin is into Transformers now, the same way he was into Star Wars last year. He spends his days playing with his toys, looking at pictures of them and trying to draw them. Obviously, his favourite Transformers character is Optimus Prime and he obsesses about how to draw the Autobot sign, how to turn himself into Optimus Prime and everything that was ever written about him.

So, today, he flips to a Transformers Manga comic that Evan borrowed from the library and asked for arms like Optimus.

Short of buying the costume (which will inevitably end up being too hot for him), he wasn't in possession of Optimus arms. He had used the long plastic container that contained CNY  love letters but insisted we cut out the base of it out, but it wasn't ideal because we wanted to put stuff in it, it would have sharp bits if we cut it and it didn't have smoke stacks.

Smoke stacks. Information that take up precious memory brain cells in my mind.

Anyway, he wanted arms. So we made arms with a box.

Things needed:
1. One Bata shoe box (Need not be Bata)
2. Scissors
3. Lots of thick tape
4. Cardboard strips to make the bracket to hold the smoke stacks (I can't say smoke stacks without rolling my eyes).
5. Marker pen
6. Toy golf sticks, recorders, anything long and can pass off as a smoke stack.
7.  Symbol of Autobot to copy. If only we could have traced them then Muffin wouldn't accuse Mommy of drawing uneven Autobots on his arms.

Instructions for those who have Opti-Muffin type kids,

1. Cut the box and tape them into triangles and make sure the arms can go through.

2. Create little brackets for the smoke stacks so that they won't fall through or move about. 

3. Draw signs

4. Use remaining shoe box to make breast plates because Optimus has breast plates. If you have time, you can paint them Optimus colours; red and blue. 

So half an hour and a lot of scotch tape later, we have Opti-Muffin who can transform at will. 

That ought to keep him busy for the morning plus he's got stuff to bring to school for Show and Tell. The other Optimus arm he tells me, is for his friend who is also Optimus Prime. 

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