Lauren's first book.

This is Lauren's first story and book, and I am so proud. I started the writing thing late with her, as opposed to Angelica, so I am super happy that we got the ball rolling. It's pretty random, her story, like how Angelica's were in the beginning. See my previous posts under the tag "writing". Enjoy the randomness!

As dictated to me by Lauren:

This is a story about a castle, some woods and a splish splash wave (which makes no appearance in the story whatsoever, so I'm expecting a sequel).

There was a big evil in the forest. He came out on a horse with a long tail.

There was a princess with really long hair called Rapunzel.

Then the horsey with the long tail came from the forest.

 And she is the princess with the long hair. Her name is Rapunzel.

The end.

Hope that makes you smile. I was smiling the whole night!
Happy new year!

Christmas Carols by Angelica Ling

This week, we're working on story maps. It's like a mind map for writers that I read about online. You map out your storyline as you make it up. I tried it with Angelica, as it's been a while since we did writing activities.

As she tells the story of the witch and the princess, I got her to place the characters on paper, along with their actions in the story.

Christmas Carols by Angelica Ling

"There was a witch and a princess. The witch decided to steal the princess'  singing voice, and have her a potion that tastes like barley. When the princess drank it, the witch took her voice. So the princess made a potion that tastes like strawberry. But it's not to take her voice back from the witch. It's just so that she has a new voice. Now she can sing Christmas carols! The end."

Below is her illustration of the story.

We'll try to do more of these story maps, because it helps her to visualise the story in its entirety before she illustrates it. The way we used to do it was more random - she's make the story up as she went along, which is good as well. This is just another way of approaching it.

Go slow

I try to get my kids to help out in the kitchen when I cook. Angelica has also recently expressed an interest in slow food, ever since she found out what fast food meant. "Does this mean we eat the food slowly, or what?" she asked one day, at McDonald's. I told her slow food meant we cook it from scratch, from natural whole foods, instead of eating processed foods such as commercial patties, nuggets and fries. 

Burger patties, chicken nuggets and fries can be slow foods too, if we make it from scratch. 

So now, she insists on helping me make slow food. They help me with pastas and salads, when we have them on the weekends. Lauren is my official "leafer". I just give her two heads of butter head lettuce, and off she goes. They still won't eat the salad, which they consider yucky, but makers eventually turn into eaters, right? And salads are a great way for them to help in the kitchen, as it doesn't involve flames, and there's no way to do it wrongly. If anything falls on the floor, we'll just wash it and it's good again.

Part of the slow food movement is also about growing our own. I've started a little herb garden in the backyard, but we have yet to plant vegetables.

When I saw the sprouter at the local organic shop, I decided to try it. I got a sprouter and alfalfa seeds, and the kids have been having a blast with it. In fact, I think it's the perfect way to introduce kids to planting our food. All we do is sprinkle a tablespoon of seeds in the sprouter and keep it watered for the next two or three days. The seeds sprouts fast and the kids love checking in on it every morning. Now they're asking to "grow more stuff". I'll introduce them to planting in soil next. We have some vegetable seeds waiting to be planted.

More planting adventures to come!

Where there's a will...

  

Lately, I've been thinking about eating less meat. I don't think I have the stomach to go completely vegetarian/vegan, but perhaps going meatless for some meals is possible. So I've been experimenting with salads. Salad are such blank palettes on which to layer flavors, and need never be bland and boring. On a family barbecue over the weekend, while everyone was busy marinating pork ribs and dipping chicken wings in honey, I thought I would make a kick-ass salad that rivaled any barbecued meat in taste. 

I cut up half a medium-sized pumpkin and roasted them in the oven. I sprinkled the slices liberally with olive oil and sparingly with salt, and put it to roast at 250 degrees centigrade for 10 minutes. After I took the pumpkins out, I put in mushrooms, with the same treatment. Next time, I must remember to put both in together; the mushrooms were a last minute decision.

Halfway through, I was interrupted by the kids, who wanted to make sushi. Here, my little sushi maker was busy at work. I mixed cooked sushi rice with organic black sesame seeds and organic seaweed flakes. The kids have a new Hello Kitty sushi mold, and they will eat any cute food, so sushi it was.

Back to the salad...Here's my little set-up for the picture. After roasting the pumpkin and mushrooms, the rest was just assembly work. I used butter head lettuce, rocket, zucchini, tomatoes and a store-bought sesame dressing. We made some pineapple pops for the barbecue. It was just a matter of slicing the pineapple into discs, sticking a skewer through it and throwing it on the grill for five minutes. The cooked pineapple is sweet and juicy, and the kids love them.

I had just a couple of ribs (I'm only human!), but loaded up my plate with the salad, Hello Kitty sushi and pineapple. Baby steps, ok? Baby steps.

Planting and painting

We have a new project! Planting a little vegetable patch. Recently, I found in my wedding gifts four bags of seeds. It was part of my dowry. Lest you think it's some archaic Chinese tradition, it's more a representation of the traditional Chinese dowry. My mother gave me a couple of enamel basins, an enamel potty, a set of teapot and teacups, yards of fabric, soap holders and four bags of vegetable seeds. In the olden days, a new bride is expected to bring her own wash basins and fabric to make her own clothes. The seeds are to plant so that she can contribute to the kitchen table. But I digress.

I found out the seeds are actually sawi (mustard greens), bitter gourd, lady fingers and long beans. So my girls and I decided to plant them.

The girls are quite excited about our little garden project. Being city kids, and having a fastidious grandma, they hardly get to play in the dirt. This is like Christmas come early for them! And they're quite good little gardeners. Lauren lovse shovelling dirt into tiny flowerpots and Angelica is having a blast arranging the pots.

We'll show you mroe of the seedlings once they have sprouted.
And when we're not planting, the girls are rediscovering their first love - finger painting. Angelica did a lot of that when she was younger, and Lauren is now getting her first taste of all that gooey goodness.

In the beginning, everyone insisted on not getting their hands dirty, so I handed them some brushes.

But of course painting is that much more fun when you CAN get dirty.

I recently set up a little painting area for the girls outside, and installed a ceiling fan, which has been a godsend. Now the girls can muck around with their paints and chalks without worrying about making a mess. And they spend less time in front of the TV.

Happy time and a talking pony named Pinky

Hello there,

My last post was 20 days ago! Tsk Tsk! My apologies.

I got up early to write today, and cleared my work area. There's still a lot of things, but at least I have space for my laptop and a doodle pad. While I was clearing, I found a story written by Angelica, which I had put aside to photograph and got lost in all the clutter. You will see it later in the post.

Right beside me is my new project, a visualisation diary. Children think in pictures, and have such active imaginations, I thought it was worth tapping into. They are the best at visualisation, which is what top athletes and successful businesspeople do to achive that final goal.

Two days ago, at the playground, we were the only ones there. The weather was cool and windy from the rain, and the only sound was an Indian song blaring from the radio at the guardhouse. Angelica and Lauren were swinging crazily, "almost touching the leaves on the tree branch up there, Mommy!" If I were up on that swing, I would be seriously scared. But the girls were exhilarated, wide grins plastered on their faces as the momentum took them back and forth on the swing.

It was the perfect time.

"When you close your eyes and swing like that, does it feel like you're flying?" I said.

"Yes, Mommy! Like I am a bird," said Angelica.

"Like a bird," echoed Lauren.

I asked them what they heard when their eyes were closed.

Angelica: I can hear Indian music!

Lauren: Dancing music!

Me: Can you hear the birds?

Lauren: Yeah! And a duckie. The duckie is talking to the birds.

I asked them to smell the air as the rain had just washed the grass. And feel the wind in their hair.

That took about 10 minutes, discussing what they heard, felt, smelt and saw when they opened their eyes.

I told them this could be their "happy time".

Later that night, I was playing hide and seek with Lauren, and she fell on one side of her body. She bawled! Usually when she cried, there was no getting through to her, until she stopped. And she always took a long time to stop. I picked her up and asked her if she was ok. Her head shook from side to side and she sobbed "I'm not ok!"

I then asked her if she remembered her happy time earlier today.

"NO!"

I asked if she remembered hearing the dancing music.

"NO!"

I asked if she remembered the duckie talking to the birds.

Amidst sobbing, she said "Ya!"

Did she remember swinging?

"Ya!"

What were the birds saying?

"They want to mum mum (eat) fruits."

By this time, she had stopped bawling. That exchange took five minutes. It was the fastest she had ever calmed down! After that, when I asked if her arm was still painful, she said no.

Try this with your kids. Find their happy time, and use it the next time they have a boo boo, need a jab or are feeling down. Do share with me if it works for you!

And here's Angelica's story.

Surrealism and a little accidental Picasso

Freeing your mind from rational thought, allowing creativity to flow uncensored - those were the ideas behind surrealism, an art and literary movement that started after World War 1 in Paris. After the devastation of war, writers and artists rebelled against regimentation, seeking release in expressing their creativity literally without thinking, thus allowing images and ideas to flow uninterrupted, unhindered by rational thinking. In 1924, French poet Andre Breton started the first Surrealist group in Paris, comprised of writers, poets, and later artists. Major Surrealist artists are Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Frida Kahlo and Rene Magritte.

Now doesn't surrealism sound like how children approach art? Uninhibited, unrestricted and anything goes. So I pulled up some Dali paintings online, and showed them to Angelica. We talked about dreams and fantasies. We also talked about cartoons and how anything is possible in them. Cats and mice can talk (Tom & Jerry), mice can do ballet (Angelina Ballerina) and so forth. 

This is her first surrealist project. Though she is only 5, this painting is pretty grounded. Everything is where it should be. You'll be surprised how much of "real life" we impose on kids, through school, unimaginative play and conventional rules, making them lose "fantasy-like thinking" early on.

Below is her second attempt. Things are still pretty much where they're supposed to be - sun in the sky, girl on the ground, etc. But I gave her magazine pages that she can cut the shapes out of. So she has a little girl wearing grown-up high heels, a flowery sun and patterned clouds. The girl has a mushroom for a hat, and the butterflies are as big as birds.

We'll do more projects on surrealism in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, when I came back from work yesterday, I was presented with this accidental Picasso. Accidental because it started out as Angelica drawing a girl with a rectangular face.. Hers is the black and pink markers. Then Lauren (with the blue marker) drew in the face, added one eye to the original closed eye with lashes and voila!