Regina Natie ♥ // We laugh, smile, love: Activities with toddler

Showing posts with label Activities with toddler. Show all posts

Sunday, August 31, 2014

#16 Little Twinkle - 1st Day of Playgroup and The Perfect Bag

It's Little Twinkle's first day of (unaccompanied) playgroup - 25 Aug 2014 (Mon)!

First day of playgroup - "Little Twinkle" seems to be coping well and was oblivious to our departure, despite us trying our best to get her attention to say goodbye (wow!). However, after they cleared the toys, "Little Twinkle" started to look out of the door as though searching for us (i think...).

First day of playgroup - the real situation behind the scene...

Being first-time parents, we didn't know what are the essential things to bring. So we packed quite a fair bit into our adult backpack, and bring it to her preschool. My thumb of rule: it's better to over-pack rather than realised that we miss out something and ended up she kick a big fuss.

At the preschool, we then realised all her classmates have their own kid bag. It's kind of a discipline for them to put their own bag into their own shelf. (some of the little boys even went to take their own bags and bring it to me to help them unzip, which they then take out their "treasure" aka cuddly toy to show me. Haha...)

So immediately after "Little Twinkle's" class (half day on 1st day to try out), we brought her to find her perfect bag at Takashimaya. :))))))

She fell asleep when we reached Takashimaya, so we decided to look around for her bags first while she sleep. We found 4 bags based on her likes (animals and kitty), durability (i.e. it can last till K2), size (able to put in towel, clothes and water bottle - the necessities as advised by the preschool teacher).

The 4 bags that we have found for "Little Twinkle"...

When she woke up, we excitedly show her the 4 bags that we have found, thinking she would like them.... Haha...

Mummy: look, there's your favourite - owl! Do you like this owl bag? (excitedly pointing to skip hop bags)

"Little Twinkle": ... ( hesitate in silence)

Daddy: how about the bee? It looks sooo cute! (Pointing to the bee bag, excitedly as well)

"Little Twinkle": hmm...

Daddy thought that "Little Twinkle" agrees, and proceeds to let her carry it on...

"Little Twinkle": (after wearing for 2 seconds) 不要.... (and she proceeds to take off the bag)

Mummy: how about the owl bag?

"Little Twinkle": no...

Mummy: hmm then how about elephant? ( leading "Little Twinkle" to see the 2nd bag that we found)

"Little Twinkle": (ponders for a while and...) no...

After a few rounds, Little Twinkle kept saying no despite the countless of time we tried to "hardsell" the bags.. and suddenly...

"Little Twinkle": this... (and she pulled out a bag that was totally not in our selection... it's a mini pink trolley bag...)

*our eyes roll...*

Mummy: You sure you don't want owl bag or kitty bag?

"Little Twinkle": this... (still pointing to her mini pink trolley bag)

We didn't really expect to buy her a trolley bag, because we thought it's cuter for little kid to have a mini backpack. Haha... so it's a bit "out of our acceptable range" or "out of the box" for us... we tried to introduce her to other backpack and she still insists on having her mini pink trolley bag. (she called it the duck bag even though we are not sure why it looks like duck to her. haha...)

"Little Twinkle" with the mini pink trolley bag that she has chosen - in which she called it the "duck" bag.

Thinking that perhaps she just prefer a trolley bag, we tried to introduce other trolley bags to her. She tested them out and still prefer her "duck" trolley bag. Really determined!!!

"Little Twinkle" testing out other trolley bag, and was still prefer her "duck" bag aka mini pink trolley bag.
Very determined to get her "duck" bag.

It's really interesting to us actually, we thought that she may not really know how to choose, but in the end she chose something totally on her own and stand by her own decision. So we decided to respect her opinion and wanted to buy the bag, but it happened to be the last piece at that moment and was covered with some wear-and-tear scratches. So the salesperson told us that the new stock will be coming in 2 weeks time and she will call us when it's here. So "Little Twinkle" shall continue to use our big bag before her "duck" bag arrives.

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Thursday, March 13, 2014

Little Twinkle #10 - Groceries Shopping!

Last night after work, our helper told me of an emergency - Little Twinkle's milk powder was running dangerously low!! So we immediately rush down to Cold Storage right after dinner.

On mission to obtain milk powder

Didn't know the Cold Storage at Great World City is huge! Little Twinkle was pretty excited and pointing to items that she saw, touching them, saying their shapes / names / colors (with whatever vocab that she has). It was pretty amazing to see how she tried to communicate what she saw!

There's a whole big section all catered to baby products and food! And much more varieties of baby yogurts that I don't see at other supermarkets as well! *pleasantly surprised* Little Twinkle didn't really fancy the previous yogurt (yobaby brand) that i bought for her, so it's great that there are other choices over here that she may actually like. :)

Yobaby brand
- Little Twinkle tried and doesn't fancy it

Yotoddler brand

Vaalia brand

Rachel's brand

Mundella brand

I got the Mundella brand (pear flavour) for Little Twinkle to try given 1) it's the lowest sodium content, 2) I thought pear flavour would be refreshing (as Little Twinkle didn't really like vanilla), 3) the size is small enough for her to try out. Hopefully she will like it. :)

Little Helper at work

Nowadays Little Twinkle is always very willing to help out with tasks, so we always try to let her help with small chores (i.e. carry the lightest item - a pack of batteries in this case) and she would be most happy to oblige. Good for us too :)

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Sensory Play for 1 Year Old #1: Empty Bottles

This was unintentional - we were drinking yakult and Little Twinkle insists / whines to have the yakult bottles, so I decided to wash the empty yakult bottles and let her play with it.

And Little Twinkle managed to play with the empty yakult bottles for a good 40 minutes! Impressive! I didn't expect empty bottles can be so attractive to a 1 year old. And this will help us reduce some expenses on buying toys *ka-ching* :))))

let me test whether it's hot

see my finger skills!

let's see what lobster can do to it

I wonder what is the effect if I knock them together

let me try the taste...

how about blowing??

look mama, i can support with my mouth alone!

hmm...what else can i do??

mama, how about you try it out for me?

I continued to take photos when she wanted to pass me the empty bottles. So she stand up and walks towards me and camera. Oh oh...

mama, help me with the bottles

After this intriguing (to her) play experience, I enthusiastically told our helper to keep different shapes and sizes of the clear bottles we used going forward. Since Little Twinkle is so interested with bottles at this stage, we will collect the bottles and rotate them for her to play with (and saves money from buying new toys! hahahah).We did the same thing 2 days ago and filled up an empty bottle with colourful peddles which Little Twinkle really likes much.

Just googled and realised there are many things that people used to fill into empty bottles for baby/toddler to play with! This is so cool! Such discovery bottle toys can easily be recycled from materials around the house which is cheap and easy to make!

Some DIY sensory discovery bottles inspirations:

1. Water with brightly coloured Hama beads - for noise, color and movement