Book IT Program

Our preschool joined Book IT Program. It's very inspiring for me to read books to my kids.
Here are some very good tips from their website.

Tips for Reading Aloud

Before:

Preview the book and practice reading it. Introduce the title, author, and illustrator. Tell briefly what the story is about.

During:

Hold the book so your child can see the words and illustrations. Vary your tone, volume, and pitch as you read. Pause occasionally to explain, comment, or look at the illustrations.

After:

Discuss the characters and what happened in the story. Ask questions that provoke thought. Help your child relate the story to something personal or another story.

More Great Tips

• Establish a regular time and place. Reading every day for 20 minutes is more beneficial than reading for a longer period of time on a less frequent schedule.
• Encourage children to pick their own books to read together by placing them at eye level and making them easily accessible.
• Cuddle up together and encourage "pre-readers" to repeat words and phrases as you read to them.
• Read favorite books over and over again. Children love to do this, and it is important because it helps them remember words, phrases, and even the sequence of a story so that they can begin to "read" it on their own.
• Be an expressive reader-- it takes practice! When you read every day, your skill as a storyteller will improve.
• Keep reading aloud as your kids grow. Until junior high school, most children are better at listening than they are at reading.

She asked...

I thought it was going to be a tough night tonight because of the time change. Things turned out better than I expected. Now kids are all in bed and I'm relaxed.



During the bedtime story Sophia asked quite a lot,
She asked me to read the book "The rain came down" by David Shannon, she thought David Shannon is very smart because lots of her favorite books were done by him, "Duck on bike", "Pirates don't change diapers", "Too many toys", "Alice the fairy", and "The rain came down". I know that lots of people think David Shannon's illustration scary, but Sophia truly loves his artwork, so do I.
She asked me to buy her playmobil toys when she saw the catalog in her book piles, I recommended her to ask Santa when Christmas comes.
She asked me to bring her to the library to borrow some Charlie and Lola story books tomorrow. She asks me to buy her toys and food but never asks me to buy books, because she thinks library has better books. That is where we should go when we need books.
She asked me to make a calendar for her to check when she brushes her teeth everyday, and asked me turn it in to her teacher on Tuesday. No problem, I'd love to do that to help her brushing.
She asked me to bring her goggles when we go swimming next week. I always forgot, I will remember next time.

With all the above requests, discussion, we read four books together tonight. It took us more than an hour in bed. That's quite normal length of Sophia's bedtime story. I can't imagine when Olivia is older how long I can make both girls to bed.

Fun activities on budget (2) - Build a Bear

Everyone loves Build a Bear, no matter how old you are. To be honest I'd love to build a bear for myself, but never did.
Sophia and Olivia each built a bear on their birthdays. For less than $10 we had a whole day of fun and a new friend to love and have tea parties with.
The house box is Sophia's favorite thing to color. Then she used it as a house for her dolls. So don't throw away those boxes as garbage.

Kids Fun activities on budget (1) Face Painting

I have always wanted to start this series, kids "fun activities on budget". It's not all my original ideas, it's something I was inspired by books, magazines or TV commercials, and tried myself and felt like to share with other active moms.

Ibought this book back in January for less than $20, not for my kids but for myself to paint. This craft book is best value ever. Easy to follow, great result, I even painted faces at Sophia's preschool Valentine's day party. It's also a great thing to do for playdate. We used more than 5 times, all the paint still looks like new and will last for a long time.

The trick is to paint hands for little kids, easier than painting on face. Baby wipes are great to clean if you makes any thing wrong.

I have to write another post

There are so many things happening recently, I just need to spend more time writing down, otherwise I will never remember all the details when my girls are bigger.

Cruiser



Olivia now can cruise around the house and look for treasures in her sister's piles of toys, she's very good at peek boo game. She started to express her feelings with sign language. And she started to attach to me very much, I guess she figured out that I'm her mom.

Interview

We had a wonderful playdate came over last Thursday after school. Sophia and the playdate girl had a great time. She was still very exited after the girl left. She was in her sleeping beauty dress up outfit, holding a pen like holding a microphone and asked me, "mom, any questions?". I was a little confused, "what?" thinking "I'm the mom, you ought to ask me questions". She continueed "Mom, can you ask me questions?". I was getting clear that she wanted to do an interview. Here goes the questions:

Me: How old are you?
Sophia: 4.

Me: What's your name?
Sophia: Sophia.

Me: What's your favorite color?
Sophia: Red.

Me: What's your favorite food?
Sophia: Grapes.

Me: Who's your best friend?
Sophia: Sadie. (we just had playdate with her)

Me: What's your favorite game?
Sophia: ..(She said something but I can't remember)

(I ran out of questions, so I just asked her things about Olivia)

Me: What's your little sister's name?
Sophia: Olivia.

Me: What's Olivia's favorite color?
Sophia: Green. (Noway, she doesn't even know colors yet.)

Me: What's Olivia's favorite food?
Sophia: Rice. (I don't think so, Olivia likes fish)

Me: Who's Olivia's best friend?
Sophia: Me!! (She said it out loud)

Finally she asked me unwrap a lollipop (I think that's her favorite thing to eat)

Me: You can do it yourself.
Sophia: Mom, I can't open it on Thursday.

Favorites at this time

Sophia's favorites could be different every minute, but there are it's always interesting to write them down.
Favorite color: hard to say now, she likes many colors, maybe rainbow is her favorite
Favorite sports: running, swimming (just started to like being in water)
Favorite food: flounder fish fillet soup, she can eat more than a pound a time (ETA, pork tongue, she just ate a ton of it the other night)
Favorite song: the one she made up
Favorite game: she will say Elmo game, but I try to limit her computer time, she likes to play diu shoujuan with the whole family, we played Monopoly tonight
Favorite book: Richard Scarry's big word book, David Shannon's books
Favorite outfit: dress+ tigthts+ boots
Favorite toy: she loves dolls and have tea parties with them
Favorite thing to do on a rainy day: arts and crafts

(eta, she's into American girl now, especially dressed the same as her American girl doll, Pair and Chris)