Blending letters - Renzo's progress in 2 days

Two days ago, I had a post on my plan to teach Renzo how to blend letters with his basic knowledge on phonics for single alphabet. I introduced the set of cards I made as "New Toy" to Renzo and after playing with them for a short 1 minute on the first night, he returned them to me and told me "Don't want New Toy!!". Argh.... calm down Mummy Chan, like I said, we really need a lot of patience dealing with kids at this age, especially when comes to teaching them as we need to make learning fun for them, which is never easy though.

My sister helped us get a set of phonics books for Renzo at Popular, and she suggested me to try those books since that could help me save a lot of time making DIY cards. So last night, I took out the set of books and opened book number 2, because book number 1 is about basic phonics which Renzo has mastered by now. To my surprise, book number 2 has the exact same concept as the DIY cards I made for Renzo, except for the pictures attached to each words which I do not have for my cards. Well I should not be surprised anyway, my sister is always good at picking the right books for kids. Anyway so last night (Sept 21), I decided to try the book with the cards since the colorful pictures on the book look promising enough to keep Renzo attracted and focused, at least for more than 1 minute I bet.

Look at this video of Renzo blending his words "Fat", "Mat", "Hat", "Cat", "Bat", "Rat" one by one. I didn't manage to capture a nice clip (probably because I was too excited with Renzo's progress), but basically I just put the cards I made on the book to match up with the same words introduced in the book, and covered the pictures at the same time because the purpose is to teach him how to read words, not to memorize the words by looking at pictures.


After this, Renzo happily, and proudly, recited a new nursery rhyme he learned in school to us:


"妹妹背着洋娃娃,
走到花园来看花.
娃娃哭了找妈妈,
树上小鸟笑哈哈" Although he's not been very clear with his pronunciation and missed out "小鸟" in his last sentence (which he did recited clearly before this round but we didn't have the chance to record down), it didn't take us too long to figure out what was he saying.

Now both of us are super enticed and can't wait to see Renzo's progress in next 2 months.

Time to go one level up from single letter phonics

Daddy Chan pointed out to me recently, that our blog posts seem to get longer and longer nowadays. Well I do notice the same, it might not be too easy for our readers' eyes, but then there are just too many great and funny stuff about little Renzo, which we must pen down. I am blogging quite a bit about Renzo's education, whereas Win tends to focus more on fun facts. Hmm, am I that academic driven??!!!

Anyway last night (Sept 19), our little boy impressed his parents on 3 different occasions.
Shock #1
When I returned home from a tiring long day at work, I suddenly heard Renzo singing this new song with his Daddy, while he was finishing up his dinner in his high chair:
"Are you sleeping, are you sleeping?
Brother John, Brother John?
Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing
Ding dong bell, ding dong bell."
Well to side track a bit, Renzo baby is able to sing the complete lyrics (or at least 80%) of all these songs:
"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"
"ABC"
"Do Re Mi"
"Baa Baa Black Sheep"
"Ten Little Indians"
"London Bridge is Falling Down"
"Old Man Donald had a Farm"
"Happy Birthday to You"
"12354, once I caught a fish alive" (fortunate, or unfortunately, in Burmese, LOL)
"小红帽"
"我是一个大苹果"
"一起去郊游"
"泥娃娃"
"小白船"
"送别"
Daddy Chan told me that he started singing this song all on his own on their way home from childcare, when Daddy casually questioned baby about what did his teacher Florence teach him in school.
He then followed by singing another new song "Incy Wincy Spider" and I have to praise the childcare teachers for introducing wonderful nursery rhymes to kids at such a young age, some of those songs are indeed not easy to catch.

Shock #2
Since we communicate mainly in English at home, Renzo's most frequent exposure to Chinese language is through this set of interesting "right brain training" educational material called "智慧宝". He's been watching this together with his Leapfrog DVD almost everyday, and learned at least 20 Chinese words from it. He could recognize those words by looking at the associated pictures. Two weeks ago when we were having our holiday in China, my mother pointed at the word "门"on the train door and asked Renzo what's that, he answered "门" loud and clear, which caught us by surprise because we always thought he knows those words by looking at pictures. So this time round, I decided to test him on his Chinese by covering all the pictures, although we did not revise with him for the past 2 weeks due to traveling, he could read 11 out of 15 words absolutely correct. On a side note, we were watching a Chinese educational channel during our trip and they were introducing the wonderful right brain training method, a 7-9 year old boy could recite a given list of 30 random words in perfect sequence, and even reverse sequence. And you could pick say number 7 and he will tell you what's the 7th word, or vice versa. We were totally blown away and wanted to get the same training material (costs RMB589 per set) for Renzo, then to realize that the set he's been using since he was 1 year old, which was bought by my father, is the exact same set they were promoting on TV. LOL, lucky us!!!

Shock #3
My sister Kelly just passed me an old Alphabet book for Renzo, nothing spectacular about the book but it caught Renzo's attention immediately when I presented it in front of this little boy, at that moment he was sitting on his potty and passing motion indeed. I guess the most interesting part of this book, is that it has interactive sliding panels for each alphabet, so that kids could slide those panels to show/hide the Alphabet, the Letter starts with that Alphabet, and the Picture describe that letter one by one. Knowing that Renzo could recognize Chinese words without looking at associated pictures, and the fact that he is way stronger in his Alphabets and their Phonics sounds, I decided to experiment something new. I showed Renzo the word DOG, and break it down to phonics sounds D-O-G and after a few rounds of reading with Renzo, when I hid the picture of a dog and showed him only the word DOG, he could read it by saying D-O-G in phonics one by one, and shouted DOG!

These great experience with little Renzo inspired me to search further on how to teach phonics as I believe he is ready for the next level of phonics learning - blending words with vowels. So I went to my favorite Tamarind's blog to dig out this article:
http://tamarindphonics.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-teach-phonics.html

I remember when I first read this, Renzo baby was only 7 months old, so I chucked it away quietly with the thought that we will not be using it any time sooner, since it works for kids who masters all the 26 alphabets and their phonics sounds only. Time really flies and now I believe the 25 months old Renzo baby is fully (if not at least almost) ready for this.

I printed out the "A" words, cut them out and pasted them on cards, and used scotch tape to wrap them around in order to minimize wear and tear. They are the "new toys" for Renzo and we plan to go through with him every night before bed time.

Will we be successful in teaching Renzo how to read? Well the most successful case I've seen before, is a 27 months old boy who could read a bunch of words by breaking them down with phonics sounds, and even know the meaning of them all. (His mother is the one who advised me to get Leapfrog DVD for Renzo). Let's see how is Renzo's progress after 2 months of practice and learning then. I guess there is no hard and fast rule to teach a toddler at this age, all I need to do is to be extremely PATIENT, repeat, repeat, and REPEAT..

"Maid-less" life has made Renzo a stronger boy

On Saturday, August 20th, we sent AyeAye to Changi Airport Terminal 2, she took a Silkair flight at 7:55am to Myanmar with her slightly over-weighted luggage. We then headed to Terminal 3 to board our SQ flight to Shanghai at 8:05am. That ends Ayeaye's 1 year and 10 months employment with us.

I had imagined in the past that upon Ayeaye's departure, we would have thrown in a delicious meal, a beautiful farewell cake, thoughtful gifts and warmest hugs and kisses at the airport. All these didn't happen somehow, but she did ring me from the plane right before taking off, and I let Renzo talk to her for a little while. Our little boy followed my instructions and said 3 things over the phone:
"Hello Auntie Ayeaye"
"I love you Auntie Ayeaye"
"Bye bye Auntie Ayeaye"

It's a long story about why she chose to go back to her hometown, in a nutshell, she decided not to work as domestic helper anymore and we decided not to hire anyone till our new condo is ready and we move out from my in-laws' place as they are not used to a life with maid.

So officially, we are "maid-less" now!

I remember mentioning how important Ayeaye is to us in one of my posts before, there is definitely a significant impact to our daily life. Win has to help out with housework again (just like the period when I was preggy), floor mopping and laundry are things he does everyday. I still need to cook during weekends, and take care of other household chores. Even my father-in-law started to iron Renzo's school uniform and my mother-in-law's responsibilities is probably the heaviest, to pick Renzo from school and cook for the family during weekdays. And the worst part is, we won't be able to spend our time freely and easily with Renzo like before... unless we could get the housework settled in the blink of an eye.

But I can see everyone starts to get a hang of our new lives in a few days. Even Renzo seems to grow up overnight. He was acting like a super glue throughout our trip in China and insisted to cling to me only, and at night, sometimes he even had nightmares and woke up crying for his auntie Ayeaye. But when we returned to Singapore and started sending him back to school on Monday, he immediately got back to his usual routine without making any fuss.

Win has been sending him to school these mornings and I've heard from him about how well behaved Renzo is, that makes us feel really proud of our little boy. Deep in his heart, I am very sure he sensed that things have changed. On a few occasions, while he was playing his toys on the floor or eating and stoning in his high chair, out of sudden, he mumbled, "Auntie Ayeaye go home, no more", "Renzo is a big boy already!".

Now he is able to eat well, play well and sleep well without the presence of Ayeaye, although I am not sure if he has fully accepted the fact that his Auntie Ayeaye will never come back again, but sending Ayeaye back and bringing Renzo for a 2 weeks holiday at the same time, is definitely a wise choice. He has definitely picked up a lot new stuff during his trip, see how a 2 years old play with his seat belt in the plane!!

Modern Technology and Modern Kids

Back in my childhood days, TV was the ultimate source of entertainment, with programs that never fail to capture a kid's attention and inspire creative imagination. Autobots fought the Decepticons in 2D in Transformers, Mask consists of heroes in warmachines disguised as everyday vehicles and not a whacky green man in a bright yellow suit.

Then came the video console. The great Atari, Nintendo and Sega days. I still can remember when I first laid hands on a controller and saw Mario jump whenever I hit a button on it, through my little mind I was thinking that this has got to be the best interactive game on Earth. Well, it was back then... some 20~30 years ago... and I still remember those times when a game cartridge failed to load up, we'd take it out and give the cartridge and console a blow, supposedly blowing away dust and dirt that might have screwed up my otherwise wonderful experience.

Modern day entertainment haven't really changed much in concept, but vastly in delivery. Renzo still likes TV programs the way I did when I was a kid, but instead of having only SBC 5 for English shows, SBC 8 for Mandarin and SBC 12 for sports (SBC is Singapore Broadcast Corporation for you young kids... or ill-informed oldies...=P ), Renzo now has a Starhub Cable Box that delivers international shows and cartoons to a LCD TV screen probably 4 times the size of those in olden days.

Renzo has games too, yes. But instead of lugging around a bulky console that plays games on 16-bits colours and MIDI file audio, he carries an iPad2 from my table to his bed effortlessly and dives into a world of 1024*768 pixel resolution at 132 ppi (pixel per inch). And no longer does he have to deal with the disappointment of a failing game cartridge as all the applications are downloaded wirelessly into the 601 gram device via a wireless network (that were only make-believe Sci-Fi technology in movies during my childhood days).

How technology has evolved and the need for kids to learn and adapt with them. Just like how my parents were amazed when I first opened the TV cabinet to flick a switch to turn on the TV, we were fascinated when Renzo knew how to get his favourite Leapfrog DVD out of its plastic prison, put it into the DVD player and successfully place the previous disc back into its correct cover. How he manage to learn all that is beyond me (though Mummy Chan did tell me that Aye Aye showed Renzo a couple of times already). Anyway, Renzo was again performing the feat when I rushed to video it down.


I can't imagine how things would be by the time Renzo's child runs into the living room seeking entertainment... hmm... I won't be surprised if it was the Entertainment running to the child from the living room... heh...