Renzo the Fruit Ninja

Realised that we haven't been posting videos of Renzo for quite a while. So while Mummy Chan was out having a nice dinner with her sis, Daddy Chan decided to video Renzo doing what Daddy Chan loves most... playing games...=P

What better game than to have Renzo slicing and dicing fruits strewn across an iPad2 screen in random directions in Fruits Ninja!

Do it like a pro, cut fruits up like Renzo... lol
*check out his little victory dance at the end when the score is tabulated...lol*

"王老师scold, 王老师say naughty boy, 王老师say talk to mummy"

These were the exact words (in this post's title) Renzo told me on one of the evenings while we were having casual talk about his day in school. You can imagine how shocked and in a way, disappointed I felt while hearing this from him.

So I asked him, why? There was no answer given.

I roughly figured out that it must be due to his "not up to expectation" behavior in school. So after commenting on his communication book, I rang the school and talked to his form teacher "王老师" for a good 15 minutes over the phone. And there are basically 2 concerns raised by his 王老师.

1. Renzo is not eating well in school, basically he rejects all kinds of vegetables, and he prefers rice over noodles. Actually since last June, he started to be very picky on food and refuse to eat vegetables most of the time. We tried all sorts of methods but the only solution I have so far, is to make dumplings and mix the vegetables with meat together so he could eat without making a fuss.

2. Renzo is not concentrating in class. 王老师 said he's always in his own world while having either Chinese or English lessons. We have no idea why, and in fact last year his form teacher, Teacher Helen even commented that he is the most focused kid in class. I am not sure if it is because he doesn't understand the Chinese lessons well, and has mastered everything taught in English lessons, that's why he chose not to pay attention. But then come to think of it, recently he's been spending quite a lot of time in front of TV, yes he's obsessed with Dora, maybe that affects his attention span?

Anyway being a very (well not very actually) kiasu and kancheong mummy, I reached home after work with a Popular bag, full of new books on good behavior stories, just to realize that my dearest husband brought back a Popular bag too, haha with lots of paints and brushes, Renzo boy was sitting at the corridor with daddy, working together on coloring balloons drawn by Win on a huge workbook. Well daddy did a brilliant job keeping Renzo away from TV for the whole night!!

I texted my mother-in-law after talking to 王老师, and asked her help to discipline Renzo during dinner, guess what? She's straight away on it and even brought Renzo to eat with them at the dining table. Look at the small stool on the chair, what an invention!!

I read 王老师's comments on the communication book, and it seems that she's very concerned about me asking why she "scolded" Renzo for being naughty. I can tell that somehow teachers might feel "scared" and "stressed" when parents question them, even though we are just asking casually in a very positive tone. We better work together at home to correct Renzo's bad habits and not to trouble the teachers too often next time, haha...

Renzo say~~ "AMIGO!!"

3 weeks ago, I made a trip to Kiddy Palace, in order to find "Henry Number 3" train for Renzo as my mother-in-law promised to get it for his collection. But too bad, it seems that "Henry" is never popular enough to be even manufactured, and I ended up reaching home with an episode of "Dora the explorer" for little Renzo, without much knowledge about Dora's episodes, I grabbed their 10 years anniversary edition that lasts for more than one and half hours long, which obviously, is a brilliant choice!!

Renzo has been spending quite a good portion of his playtime at home watching TV, well we all know how bad it is but then, since he only has interest in his Leapfrog educational DVD, and occasionally that one piece of Thomas and Friends disc, we are not limiting his TV time as we could see that he's benefiting a lot in terms of building up his knowledge on alphabets, phonics, numbers and musics. Thus we become very careful and selective when it comes to introducing programs to him on TV. Basically we do not allow him to watch anything airing on TV except for a 10-20 minutes animal planet program once in a while, no cartoons, no news, no entertainment and no movie series of course.

We've learned about Dora series during our last holiday trip to China. There's a Chinese version of Dora speaking mainly Mandarin but teaching one or two words in Spanish along the way. Renzo did not show much interest at that time (maybe because it's not in a language that he's familiar with), but I was completely impressed as this little girl is always trying to find something to help somebody in every episode, and there's active participation required from the viewers to help her with her adventures.

Renzo absolutely enjoyed his new disc and requested to watch it almost everyday. (Finally we could give Tad, Professor Quigley and Mr Websley of the LeapFrog series a break!!), and he's almost forgotten that one and only one piece of Thomas and Friends disc which is an absolute great news to us, since we never found it to be educational or interactive.

On week 1: Renzo was excited to meet his new Amigos: Dora, Boots the Monkey, Swiper the Fox, Dora's Backpack, the Map, Isa the Iguana, Tico the squirrel, Benny the Bull and Fiesta the Trio! And he started to dance around the house when the music starts "Come on, vámonos. Everybody let’s go!!". He also learned his first few Spanish words: Azul (blue), Amarillo (yellow), Rojo (red)..... and yes.. that is pronounced as ro-ho, not ro-joe.

On week 2: He dreamt of Dora on 2 consecutive nights. How did we know? Well he dream talked "Dora and the monkey!!", "The little pig is on the tree top!!" and "Swiper no swiping!!". We could immediately relate as those are the scenes screened in Dora's show. And it's so enjoyable to see him interacting with Dora and other characters, majority of the time, he could give the right answers to the questions asked promptly.

On week 3: He's now trying to explain the story to his grandpa, by pointing out things like which path to follow in order to get to the destination, where are the missing animals hiding, and shouting "Swiper no swiping" at the right time to stop the Fox from stealing things. I am sure he could recite some scripts from this show by now.

There's this one scene that Dora helped the lost Baby Blue Bird find her mummy at the Little Blue Tree, and when the Baby Blue Bird shouted "Mama!!", Renzo said, "Ooo, it's so cute!!" That moment our hearts were melting!!

And there's one night before he put on his red pajamas, he insisted to wrap it around his neck and told us, "Because, the super map is like that!!". Win joked that it is Renzo's first cosplay, but this little boy's creativity is definitely beyond our imagination.

Now the next thing I am wondering is, should I get the Chinese version of Dora the Explorer disc for Renzo? Maybe his Mandarin could improve tremendously with the help of his Amigos??!!!