Road Trip to Malaysia 12 - 15 Dec

We tagged along our friends on a road trip to Malaysia. This time we headed for Port Dickson, Sunway Lagoon @ KL and A'Famosa at Ayer Keroh all in 4D3N. A total of 7 cars and 8 families sped their way up. We headed out early at 5.30 am and only stop over for breakfast at Machap.

Frankly, we were the odd one out as the rest of the families have always met up every now and then, and we really only know the Lians. It's heartwarming to see how Keziah could mingle easily with the rest and Cheryl never fail to keep Keziah in the loop despite having all her gang of friends around her. In fact, the two were always hanging out together. How simple are kids' friendship!

First stop: The Port Dickson Mini Zoo. Yes, mini as it says but animals are always amazing to the kids.

 

The kids were so fascinated over feeding the goats that they practically picked up all the leaves on the ground to feed them.

 

 What's Abel plucking? Starfruit! First time seeing starfruit trees! Guess what, the goats ate them too.

A lunch of seafood.

 We were at Avilion for the day. It's one resort we were never tired of going back to again. Coincidentally there was a carnival going on and the kids had some fun with simple games.

 Wet and wild as usual.

 As the sun went down….

 The two 'monkeys' got wild in the room after a shower down.

 Never fail to appreciate the sunset.

 We were all so tired so it's hitting the nearest place for dinner. A simple local fare. The fish was yummy though.

13 December

We headed down to Sunway Lagoon and arrived at Sunway Pyramid Hotel.

The room was fantastic. Cozy and we had great view of the other hotel and Sunway Lagoon from our window!

 

Without further ado, we headed for the theme park. We explored the Wildlife Park.

Interesting animals in sight! Hedgehogs, Star Tortoise, Red and Green Iguana (first time Mommy knew there were red ones around), Wallabies, Skunk and many more. Mommy also learnt something new that turtles have flippers and tortoises have legs while terrapins can live both no land and water. Such a trivial truth but Mommy just missed it!

 Abel certainly had no fear of feeding the animals and petting them.

 

Now, it's Amusement Park time. Rides for the old and young.

Then it's all soaked in the Water Park!

The complete group photo of all 16 adults and 14 children!

Sumptuous dinner at a Taiwan Restaurant at Sunway Pyramid Mall.

 Just a stroll around the mall after dinner and guess what the kids found?

 The lovely night scene...

14 December

An early morning walk before we left for A'Famosa.

Off we go to A'Famosa. Real countryside with condo style living.

 After settling down we drove off to Malacca for lunch at Jonker 88 which was well known for its desserts.

15 December

We ventured down for go-karting in the vicinity.

The kids were all excited to go on it. However our dear girl was just happy being the beauty to accompany the beau. All all had great fun being driver or pillion as they feel the win breeze past them.

 

The happy kids!

Our water babies just didn't get enough of water. So off we headed for Seng Kang Swimming Complex to explore the pool, one of the newest with exciting water features for the kids.

Till the next trip!

More letter d and water cycle

Today we listened to the song "Raindrops keep falling on my head". Wasn't quite an appropriate song for little ones coz there were just too much words. Nonetheless we enjoyed the song. We tried to create drops using a syringe. It was definitely fun for the kids however we couldn't quite see the ripple effect. Next time would have to try out using milk in the bowl and probably some coloured water in a bigger syringe and see if we could observe the ripple effect with the bigger droplets.

We dripped a few droplets on a paper and asked the kids to predict what will happen. Following, we tried to mimic the life of a water droplet as it evaporates, condenses and falls back to ground in a water cycle. The kids had so much fun with the drama and giggled so much.

Next is craft time to create our own water cycle. Mommy cut out a cloud and Abel did some hole punching followed by threading. 

 Keziah was busy filling up her raindrops with words beginning with letter 'd' and cutting them out. Ok, she needs to improve on her handwriting but getting better with sounding words out. We learnt some new blends: -ing, -ong, -oo, dr-.

Keziah and Abel also created a sun out of crepe paper which were pinched into small balls to exercise their finger skills. Last but not least, was to piece them all up. Keziah decided to add in some sand and waves drawing with a little help from Mommy in blending. Finally, Mommy filled in the terms.

Alice in Wonderland @ Forum

We never fail to go for shows at Forum in the holidays coz they are always very satisfying. Mini musicals of a good 30 mins, short enough to catch the kids attention with the essence of what a musical or play is.

This time round it's Alice in Wonderland. We went along with K's classmate for the show this time round and the girls had great fun, not missing Abel out!

All the characters were in full suit and came out entertaining the kids with a tea party filled with Christmas songs. The characters were to solve a riddle before Santa would appear! What to get in place?

Alice and Rabbit...

Then came Mad Hatter

Rabbit and the Red Queen of Hearts

The kids were all so engrossed! 

They've got everything in place -  the characters and the tea party all set and waited. But no Santa! 

What's missing? Just the need to hang up your stockings and go to sleep. And there he is!

Letter D and homecraft

Mommy started a series of phonetic sounds activities with the kids, targeted especially at Abel to revise his letter sounds as well as to get Keziah to blend/spell simple words beginning with them. Now, we are at letter D. We did a treasure hunt round the house for things starting with 'd' sound. Then a look at the word chart to see how many we have found. 

Using these objects, Mommy tried to play some linking memory games with the kids. Keziah caught on quite quickly but Abel can only do a few when he's interested.

 This time we talked about different breeds of dogs. Which are those that we have seen and which was their favourite.

 Sang some simple songs

We had been doing memory verse for some time with the kids and now taking the opportunity to fit our letter hunt as well as word recognition, we did a jigsaw to assemble the verse. Mommy introduced the "ing" sound to Keziah.

Nothing beats reading! Mommy also borrowed several books from the library:
1) Usborne beginners - Dogs (non-fiction book which the kids found it rather dry)
2) It's a quacking time: Tells of how a family of ducks waited for a duck egg to hatch. We learned about their lifecycle from egg to duckling to adult duck.
3) A dog called Rod: A girl who desires to have a pet dog imagines how her dog which she named Rod would be like, unlike all other dogs.
4) Baby Dragon by Amy Ehrlich: Keziah loved this book. It tells of how a baby dragon waited for her mother who left in the afternoon to visited his grandma to return the next morning. How children should never wander when asked to wait eventhough it may seemed ever so long.

A dog puppet: Simple to do. Mommy cut out all the parts and got the kids to assemble and glue them on a paper bag with some guidance and a picture of the completed work. Not too bad but certainly needs perception of space which Abel was better at. (Top: Abel's and Bottom: Keziah's). We wrote the word "dog" at the back and used it for some simple puppet play and singing the "Doggy with a Bone" song.

Keziah pulled this craft which we bought last year. It was a 3D puzzle of the Red Riding Hood scene. All they had to do was to punch out the styroform pieces and fit them by matching the number on the corresponding pieces. We tried to tell the story with it to see how much the kids remembered of it from when we last read it.