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Family life as we know it Happy days Holidays! The Kao Kids

Bangkok Living, Part 1 – Tennis in Bangkok

December 3, 2015

When we wanted Ben to pick up a sport, he was most undecided. For a while, he liked everything. Golf? Yes! Badminton? Yes! Tennis? Yes! Soccer? Yes! Basketball? Yes! Swimming? Yes! Anything? Yes!

So earlier in the year, Ben picked up swimming and went for swim class weekly. Unfortunately, he was always sneezing in the frigid waters of the cold, cold pool and falling ill quite a bit after his swim class every week so we decided to stop the classes when we moved to the west.

Which brought us back to square one again after that. He still couldn’t tell us what he really wanted to learn when we asked. Don’t ask me why I am big about my boys picking up a sport; I just think it will do their athletic genes injustice if they were to learn a musical instrument instead of a sport first.

But this time round, his father made the decision for him, told him little of his plans and flew the entire family away on a one-way ticket to Thailand – which explains why we are here now in Bangkok. He’s started Ben on tennis training here with a Thai coach and we are gonna be holed up here for the next 3 weeks.

And were we glad that after the first session, the coach (Koo Dai, as Ben calls him; literally Coach Turtle) assessed Ben and concluded that he had potential in the sport and amazing concentration for a 6-year-old. So instead of packing up and coming home (which we would, should he tell us to give it up, that’s why the one-way ticket), we’ve booked 3 weeks worth of intensive training every morning with him so that Ben gets the right footing in terms of the correct techniques in the game.

He’s a new slate, we didn’t know who’s good in Singapore and he needs to be taught the right habits for the sport -practically sums up why we are here with Dai because he came highly recommended by my good friend who lives here.

Tennis training begins here daily at 06:00

Ben in action

For the rest of us, we are going to be living and eating the way of the locals and immersing ourselves in Thai culture (and Thai TV). We are staying in the outskirts and having our fill of authentic Thai street food and the horrible Bangkok jams.

And just in case you think it’s a nice three-week vacation, nope, sorry.

Brought all our curriculum work, school work, business work to do

Sawadeekha.

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Everyday fun! Invites & Tryouts Reviews The Kao Kids

LEGO play at home – it’s all about patience, focus, creativity, and fun!

November 20, 2015

This article first appeared here: http://lego.featured.yahoo.com/post/125410540036/how-to-bring-out-your-childs-personal-sense-of

***

What trains a child to be focused, develops his patience and encourages his creativity?

No surprises here but I’ve always found my answer in LEGO. Give my kids a box of LEGO bricks and I am likely to see them play for hours on end. From the Quadro and Duplo they were used to playing as toddlers, my children have now progressed to the basic-brick level where they have the opportunity to play without structure and to build and take apart as necessary, in more ways that they could have imagined.

I love what LEGO does for my children. They come up with the most awesome themed LEGO sets. The themed LEGO sets that the stores sell come with specific instructions which encourage children to build with what the LEGO Learning Institute describes as ‘systematic creativity’, which is defined as a “particular form of creativity that combines logic and reasoning with playfulness and imagination”. In every themed set, step-by-step illustrations help the builder visualise, make sense of shape, size, angle, positioning and develop cognitive awareness of the different elements of building. After the themed set is built, it invites the child to imagine and play – although the play lends itself to the theme suggested by the set that’s built.

In building the themed set, a child would have had the opportunity to focus, sit attentively, and patiently flesh out an image, brick by brick.

Now, what happens the day after, or after some time, is what gets really interesting.

For a while, a child can live with a model he’s built; but trust me, the novelty of the pictured toy will soon wear off and it becomes all-too-tempting to break it up and build something else. How much more awesome is it when you get to make a supersonic giant of a plane combined with a helicopter that’s overrun by wizards and random minifigs ranging from a pirate rocker to a two-faced cop atop an alligator? After all, these are the dreams that LEGO play’s made of.

Recently the Kao kids have been given yet another wonderful to sit attentively and direct their focus on building something. After the last ‘March Holiday Special Project’ which they did together that cemented their sibling love, they were all ready to conquer yet another themed set. This time round, it was still my eldest who could last through the entire building process, constructing both the big and small; the younger two helped out by putting the minifigures together and affixing the stickers to the respective items that called for them.

It took Ben two hours to put this together without any adult help. He’s gotten so much better in understanding the construction logic, and is able to create this LEGO City Training Jet Transporter effortlessly.

But watch what happened barely an hour later, when all three of them started playing with the created set together. Apparently, some ‘explosion’ was planted by a baddie and then there was half a plane left and the original creation very much destroyed (I hear the baddie is Nat). Something’s got to be done and things needed to be rebuilt. Ben was a little bummed, but what about LEGO that he knows and knows well, is that he can always make something awesome again. Exposing him to LEGO play at a young age has given him that confidence and resilience – he knows there’s always something bigger and better he can build, and nothing stays constant forever.

And thus began the creativity play, spanning over days – unhindered, unrestrained, unimposed. Everyone started building their own versions of their imagination, played together and had lots of fun while at it (they didn’t forget the jet transporter but it was no longer ALL about it). Ben led his siblings by showing them what he could build, and Nat and Becks quickly caught on, following some basic logic of adding wings and wheels, and fitting one another into their imagined LEGOverse.

I’m always in awe of how much mileage a themed set has. I’d thought my children would be playing around the theme of the airport and have flight-related conversations. But there were little ponies, triceratops (that was made by Nat, a figure with a long green rectangle head), wizards and men on stilts, someone needing badly to perform a balancing act on his head, a bald witch with two heads, plus rogue Vikings that are planning to escape on a boat, and a Mexican cop all ready to help people check-in their flight.

It was altogether refreshing, amusing and amazing.

My children never fail to surprise me.

LEGO never fails to surprise all of us.

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Happy days Invites & Tryouts Milestones and growing up The Kao Kids

The Friso Play Experience, Kao Kids Style

September 21, 2015

I shared a while ago we’ve cut our living space and moved. Which also meant that prior to the move, we threw/ donated / recycled / left downstairs (for garang guni aunties and uncles of our previous neighbourhood to scour, hurhurhur) truckloads of stuff.

Boy, did we have A LOT of stuff. Toys and books and playsets and bath things that everyone has outgrown. Clothes that we would never wear. DVDs that we would never watch. STUFF that we would never use.

So the kids were feeling a little trodden by the month-long throwing out.

And it was nice to have the good folks from Friso come a-knockin’ our way last week, telling us they will be placing this right smack in the middle of our place. Which, of course, made the kids extremely thrilled. You mean, we can have new things to play with? was the first thing that crossed their mind.

More details on how you can redeem this, or experience this, at the end of the post

Yes, apparently so. Thanks to Friso Singapore, who’s all very keen to get children to experience PLAY, Nat, our littlest, together with the older two kids, had a chance to play – and play a lot indeed – with the Friso Experiences Play Set, consisting of a Friso tent, a Friso slide with basketball and hoop (in blue or pink), a Friso storage box with 2 cushions and a green carpet à la astro turf (a rather big piece, I must say).

So this was how Nat played:

When the play set first arrived, Nat was stoked to see something he was familiar with outdoors but not indoors. So off to the slide he went. We laid out the artificial grass, put the slide with basketball hoop on top of it, and the small spongy green ball given was quickly exchanged for a real junior basketball (because, really, you’re talking about Nat here) and here, you see the pro at play:

Ready, set, play!

There really isn’t any rules to slide and dunk, right?

The next day, I saw my older two join in the fun. Ben and Becks have been told that the slide is not suitable for older children and might not take their weight. But clearly, it became nevermind, Mom, we can get really creative, because it doesn’t mean we have to physically slide down a slide to have fun:

Making some obstacle course-ball-sliding down-but-won’t-make-too-much-of-a-din-and-mama-will-be-happy kind of thing ‘play’

How creative are my kids? Oh, so very. They are always ‘inventing’ things like that. The slide with the chairs and stools in the house, plus pillows and wooden sticks from the tent have seen more than 5 combinations already to make some “super machines” since the play set came. I’m just waiting for them to turn the slide upside down and discover a whole new world.

A few days later, I heard a great deal of swooshing and whooshing in the living room, and when I headed out, I was tickled by what Nat was doing, completely with commentary F1 broadcast teams would be proud:

It’s time for…. HOT WHEELS!

Cars down the slide, here we come!

The pictures I took were posed versions with cars, obviously. When I spied him with my little eye without my camera, this boy was racing four cars at once.

That weekend, we also brought the tent to Grandma’s place to try “camping” out. Ok, I have to say that the tent is a tad small for 3 children, so…

First, the kids tried to fit in the tent...

First, the kids tried to fit into the tent…

Next, they got comfortable

Ok, how about let’s do dinner here? Oops, no space!

So much for camping. They had fun, nonetheless, trying to make the tent work. I suspect if you throw them more rods and cloth, they might end up constructing a super tent big enough to fit the extended family, Grandma and Grandpa included.

So this was how the Kao kids did it with the Friso Play Set – play their own creative way!

***

Friso wishes to encourage parents to experience more together by engaging in creative play with their little ones. From 1 September 2015 to 31 October 2015, parents who spend $350 on any Friso participating products at participating retailers will receive the Friso Experiences Play Set (worth $300). It will consist of a tent, a slide with a basketball hoop, 2 cushions, a storage box and a green carpet so that parents can bring the outdoors into their homes and experience more together with their child.

The participating Friso products included in this promotion are Frisomum, Friso Gold Cereal and Friso Gold 2, 3, 4. It excludes all infant formula for 0-6 months.

There will also be a special Friso Experience Play Zones at FairPrice outlets and Sheng Siong outlets. Parents are invited to take pictures with their little ones at the play zones. Friso ambassadors will be on-site to snap photos, print it out and present it in a Friso Photo frame to the participants during the weekends.

The outlets for the Play Zones are:

FP Xtra Jem Mall — 1 to 30 Sept
FP Xtra AMK Hub — 1 to 30 Sept
FP Xtra Sport Hub — 1 to 30 Sept
FP Xtra Nex Mall — 7 to 30 Sept
FP Xtra Jurong — 1 to 30 Sept
FP East Point — 14 to 30 Sep
Guardian Plus Takshimaya — 17 to 30 Sep
Guardian Compass Point (B1) — 17 to 30 Sept
Guardian Causeway Point (B3-4) —28 Sep to 4 Oct
Sheng Siong Woodlands 6A — 1 to 31 Oct
Sheng Siong Bedok 209 — 1 to 31 Oct

Find more details here: apps.facebook.com/frisoexperience or follow Friso on their FB Page for more info.

***

“Play is a drive, a need, a brain-building must-do.” – Jeff A Johnson & Denita Dinger (Let them play: an early learning (un)curriculum)

Disclosure: We received the play set from Friso to play. The kids played. I watched. We bonded. All opinions here are our own.

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Ben Kao Happy days Invites & Tryouts Milestones and growing up The real supermom

Sundown with love, running at sundown with my loves

July 10, 2015

I wanted to give up long before race day. There were more than enough reasons to anyway.

I needed to focus on work and cancel out any distraction. There were processes to settle, curriculum to prepare and ideas to incubate. I didn’t have time to train (except for the five calories-burning sessions at Active Hive – another post on that soon). My husband, who was taking part in the Sundown Marathon with me, was not well for a long while with a phlegmy cough that didn’t go away. Ben had been having the sniffles too with his sensitive nose acting up a lot these days.

But a commitment is a commitment is a commitment. I said I’d do the 5km Fun Run for Sanctuary House, which I’ve been attempting to canvass donations for.

When Race Day arrived – and we were supposed to report at 7pm – I was already totally exhausted from being at work 6 hours earlier in the day. Fatherkao had a headache and popped two panadols that evening. The only one raring to go was Ben. And I had two other whining, unhappy, digruntled children who wouldn’t give me a break with their incessant grumblings about why they had to stay home with the helper. Not even TV helped.

But still we went, because a commitment is a commitment is a commitment, and boy, were we glad we did. That cool, lovely evening on 4 July totally made it to one of the high points of my year.

It was beautiful to be running at sundown.

The sunset view from Fatherkao’s phone camera

Add to that, the thoughtful organisers timed the Fun Run flag off to coincide with the fireworks from the NDP Rehearsal. We stopped after 1 km, stood by the Singapore River facing the Fullerton, and took in the breathtaking sights of the fireworks display before our eyes. Absolutely spectacular.

How close did we come ti soak in this spectacular sight?

How close did we come to soak in this spectacular sight?

This close. What a treat for the run!

And then being able make it to the half way mark with my firstborn – holding hands, encouraging him to press on, and sometimes looking at him from the back (yes, he got ahead of his very exhausted Mama) and thanking God that I have been blessed with lovely, healthy children.

Had this picture of the boys’ back edited as a sketch because it’s more poignant that way. I want to give thanks for the fact that in front of me ran two healthy boys!

And also extremely grateful that my husband, who hates running very much, was doing this with us with nary a grumble, encouraging Ben and me along the way, and teaching my firstborn some of life’s precious lessons. Overheard many times was the father telling the son to press on, not give up and reach for our goal. There were so many precious bonding moments no amount of money can buy.

When we held hands and made it through the finish line, it was touching to see the look of pride my son had on his face. That beaming, proud face after experiencing his first 5km-run. That look that says he’s grown up a little more after that evening.

Just the 3 of us

Ben’s well-deserved medal!

We had a lovely night after the run, being hosted by the organisers for dinner at the VIP tent, and talking a nice long walk to the MRT station talking about the events of the day and what the run was like for us. It was really, really nice to be walking hand in hand – just the three of us – like we were the best of friends and it was a beautiful and special moment for our firstborn too. I want to be doing this some time soon with Becks and then with Nat. I think that would be equally incredible.

Thank you, OSIM and Hivelocity, for the invitation to join the Sundown Marathon as a Sundown with Love Ambassador. We received more love that day than we could give.

Donations for Sanctuary House via the Sundown with Love platform closes 31 July 2015. If you could show a little love, click this link.

Disclosure: We were invited to be social influencers for the OSIM Sundown Marathon. No monetary compensation was received. All opinions here are our own.

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Going Out! Milestones and growing up The Kao Kids

Of bouncy dreams and masak masak (ft. ZoomPark & National Museum of Singapore)

June 19, 2015

Holidays are stuff that dreams are made of. No fixed routines. No schedules. No rush.

At least for now.

I’ve made it the goal of this year’s March, June and September holidays that the kids play and play only. Apart from the older kids’ Chinese home tuition, I promised myself that they would not get any sit-down-with-mama-and-let’s-do-some-work sessions because this is pretty much the very last year Ben is gonna be a preschooler. Which makes it pretty much a very, very precious year for all my pre-schooling children to be having fun with one another with no other demands on their time and no other expectations on their lives. We all know how life starts to get hectic and time becomes a little more screwed up and messed up when a child makes his foray into the formal education scene, and whilst we are all bracing ourselves for the new journey to come – first for Ben next year – we are so not looking forward it.

These are golden years, my babies. Play and go wild as much as you want.

~~~

So during the March holidays (yes, I’m backtracking here a bit!), we had the time of our lives at this place:

Bouncing up and down, left and right

Slam-dunkin’

Shooting a basket

Aiming for the sky

Rock climbing

Racing to aim and throw

It was the wildest we ever got to do as a family. Not even Legoland was this wild.

Think non-stop bouncing, with Mom and Dad, and getting a seriously serious workout.

This is ZoomPark Asia (200 Pandan Gardens, #01-14, Singapore 609336 | Tel: 6334-4615). The healthy, bouncy folks there tell me that 10 minutes of being on a trampoline is equivalent to 30 minutes of jogging.

You bet I was jumping hard at this mega trampoline park. If we didn’t live so far, I would have made it a weekly affair to get a workout here.

Takes a lot of hand, feet and eye coordination, this one

Gives a whole new meaning to peng-san!

Resting on foam blocks after free falling from the rock climbing

We were bouncing alongside Sengkang Babies!

~~~

This June, we signed up as members of the zoo and River Safari again – because my children love the outdoors and animals! – and I had them direct their own homelearning about koalas after our visit to the koalas at the zoo.

Have you met Chan, Idalia, Paddle and Pellita yet? We don’t know who’s who though!

Someone’s awake!

We kept really quiet in there, because the koalas were sleeping!

Koala plush mania!

Kids decide what they want to do, and Mama prints them all from free printables online

Colouring begins!

Finding out what eucalyptus smells like

Making a koala enclosure and painting the leaves they picked

Wa la! Koala mask ready, koala mazes done and koala enclosure ready for visit!

Wa la! Koala mask put on, koala mazes done and koala enclosure ready for visit!

~~~

We also paid a visit earlier in June to the National Museum of Singapore where Children Season is back, and checked out the inspiring and interactive exhibits at Masak Masak 2015.

Masak Masak 2015 features familiar playgrounds and interactive installations by Singaporean and international artists at the National Museum of Singapore

Becks and Nat doing a cute couple pose. The kids were super excited.

Spectrum of Paper by Mademoiselle Maurice (France): Step into a rainbow wonderland at the Rotunda and immerse yourselves in a kaleidoscope of colourful, suspended origami boats and planes!

Spectrum of Paper by Mademoiselle Maurice (France): Step into a rainbow wonderland at the Rotunda and immerse yourself in a kaleidoscope of colourful, suspended origami boats and planes!

Navigating the maze that is Wanderlust, made completely from crepe paper

Navigating the maze that is Wanderlust by Crystal Wagner (USA), made completely from crepe paper

Stamping fun with the iconic masak masak stamps

Making patterns and lots of noise

Playing the eraser flag game, just that this one ain’t erasers but giant cushion flags!

Making our own shadow puppet

Ben’s little squirrel wants to join the fun

Becks’ little rabbit ready for shadow play with the backdrop of Jeremy Hiah’s (Singapore) Queen of the Forest

And off she goes behind the screen to tell her own story!

Simple Pleasures in Life by Jeanette Aw (yep, the local artiste – didn’t know she was so talented), which is apt indeed, because the simple pleasures in life are made of these: adding colours to our lives

The kids had their doodling dream and major graffiti fantasy come true at this installation

Opposite the colouring board is a huge black board which bids you come scratch it with all your might. A colourful background unveils. Ben is loving this – and also the fact the sound drives me nuts.

But none was as fun and wild as doing this:

Weeee!

Sliding fun at the bouncy version of the Dragon Playground

And then again on the Elephant version

Again and again!

And then climbing through the Watermelon one…

Before taking a rest on the wooden carousel swings with Momolato popsicles with real fruit inside

These brought back so many childhood memories for me, and I am glad the next generation is getting acquainted with them albeit in a different way.

If you love to museum-hop or love being in the museums, Children Season is really the best thing that happens every June.

~~~

Hope your holidays have been as swell as ours so far!

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Everyday fun! Milestones and growing up The Kao Kids

Boredom-inspired creativity

May 21, 2015

When you were a child, what did you do when you were bored?

And what have you become today?

My husband explored and got into trouble. I lay in bed and dreamed up imaginative worlds.

We are big believers of boredom – and we want our kids to get bored, feel bored and experience the frustration associated with it. Have you read this article that correlates boredom with creative thought? We want our children to be forced into solitude and edged into a mode of discovery.

When we first started, it was hard. It was hard for me too, by the way, to NOT structure and plan something for them to do.

So Ben comes and says, “I’m so bored, can I watch TV?”

Becks says, “It’s so boring I don’t know what to do.”

Nat says, “So boring. I want you come be with me.”

And I would say, “Go and find something.”

And after many rounds of being acquainted with boredom, my children have…

Found the guts to leave the confines of our house to peek at what the neighbours are doing. At one point, they even go around to greet them. Now, Ben is offering our neighbour, Aunty R, to throw her trash for 20 cents a day.

Nightly duty: 20 cents for throwing trash!

They also invented Running Man games…

Mission: Skate through obstacles in the house with these cloth baskets

Built…

So much fun with LEGO

And built…

How many minifigs can you see?

And built some more…

More LEGO fun

And drew…

Nat loves to draw

And made many somethings out of nothing – all because they were bored.

The kids did up a rainforest to welcome me home…

By placing animals everywhere and imagining the green table as a huge tree – an excuse for a clever, structured mess

What’s happening in the background: caught on camera is the littlest trying to make binoculars from two Yakult bottles!

And check out this sword – make entirely from toilet rolls!

They learned how to handle boredom and find something to do and exercise that little muscle I call the little creativity joint.

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Everyday fun! Family life as we know it Going Out! Happy days Invites & Tryouts Milestones and growing up

Experiencing dinosaurs

April 30, 2015

One of the greatest joys of parenting is to be totally immersed and involved in your children’s obsessions.

Boys usually start with cars or balls. Then they move on to trains, dinosaurs, soldiers, LEGO and superheroes of all kinds.

Girls typically are obsessed with the colour pink, in addition to being a little mad about a cat with no mouth, princesses and dolls.

My boys have been into dinosaurs for the longest time. They can rattle those three to four-syllable names faster than I can call theirs, and it’s fascinating how they can immerse themselves so completely in the prehistoric world – from wanting to colour dinosaurs all day long and learning their names, to constructing massive dinosaur parks with thier LEGO bricks and dino figurines and pleading to go to Jurassic Park every single weekend.

Jurassic Park, by the way, exists in the minds of these boys.

In Universal Studios Singapore, that is (which is also called The Lost World).

Photo credit: rwsentosa.com

This is a place where you can go dino-soaring on pterodactyls, put your head into a T-Rex’s mouth, and pat Diane, the park’s latest infant triceratops – which incidentally is the current obsession of Nat, my youngest. This boy loves, loves, loves triceratops.

Nat goes a dino-soaring with a green triceratops

And then real dino-soaring with the pterodacyls

And then real dino-soaring with the pterodactyls

And we meet Diane, the infant triceratops. She moves and responds to you when you pat her – which freaks my little girl out and fascinates her brothers

This velociraptor dude looks so real and it moves!

T-Rex chomp!

Help!

The Lost World is a place we head to whenever my boys need their dino-fix.

We got the Universal Studios Singapore’s 6-month season pass in December last year and have been visiting the theme park on a regular basis. It’s a happy place, with happy music blaring everywhere; happy people always smiling, waving, laughing, greeting; happy mascots roaming around; and happy, happy rides.

Being there makes me happy. Being there makes my children happy.

We get fun times taking rides, goofing times posing for pictures, and laugh-out-loud times spotting characters. And best of all, we spend A LOT of time, as my boys would have it, at Jurassic Park, where their dinosaur dreams come alive. Their imagination takes off and soars to a new height with every repeated visit to this place.

There’s a triceratops on top!

How about some predator a’roaring?

Toy store fun: Becks grab a stuffed toy but the boys... are all for jaws and teeth

Toy store fun: Becks grabs a stuffed toy but the boys… are all for jaws and teeth

You don’t know how grateful I am for Universal Studios. It has allowed me to participate in the dino-madness with my children, something which I know I wouldn’t be able to do for long because they will all grow up soon enough.

Next stop: the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Mueseum. We’ll be found there real soon!

Jurassic Park Huddle

***

Do you have a treasured moment of indulging with your children in their obsession?

Cherish the special moments you have with your children. Share your very own fun-filled #FrisoMoment at apps.facebook.com/FrisoExperiences and stand to win a host of amazing prizes, courtesy of Friso Singapore.

Here are the mechanics:

How to participate

Submit a photo of you and your child sharing a special experience. You may submit 1 experience each week. Each photo submitted will earn you two instant rewards – A Friso Experience journal and a Friso voucher worth $5, $10 or $20. Friso Singapore will also select and print one photo in 4R size with a Friso frame and send it to you.

You will be eligible for weekly and grand prizes if you agree to display your image in the gallery to inspire other parents.

Prizes:

Instant prizes: Friso Experiences Journal + Friso Voucher will be awarded to every entry.
Weekly Prize: The best photos will be selected to win the weekly prize. If you didn’t win in the first week, you will still be eligible for the weekly prizes in the remaining weeks of the month.

~~Week 1 to 2 (7 Mar – 23 Mar) 8 x FujiFilm Instax Mini 8~~

~~Week 3: 5 x Rebel Kidz Retro Racer Balance Bike~~

~~Week 4: 5 x Annual Zoo membership [2 adults + 2 Child]~~

~~Week 5: 5 x GOPRO Hero Camera~~

~~Week 6: 3 x Port of Lost Wonders party package~~

Week 7: 5 x Fujifilm Instax Share Printer

Grand Prize: A year’s supply of Friso milk.

One winner in April will be selected from the top 25 most voted entries for the month. You may vote once per day for each entry. Remember to include the hashtag #FrisoMoment on your IG and FB posts!

***

Disclosure: This post was brought to you by Friso Singapore. Friso Singapore has invited Motherkao to share her #FrisoMoment to inspire parents to experience MORE with their children.

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Food, glorious food! Going Out! Holidays! Invites & Tryouts The Kao Kids

Fly away spontaneity

April 29, 2015

The Transit Lounge at T2 where sunflowers abound and one is a little closer to the planes and skies

During the long weekend that was the Good Friday weekend that was in April, we did the crazy spontaneous.

We booked a budget flight and got onto to the plane, away to KL for a 1D1N.

Yes, we left the country for a one-day-one-night spontaneous family getaway.

And it was such a fun one with everyone in tow, helper included.

We departed for KL on a 4.30pm flight on Saturday, arrived in KL at 5.30pm, took the KLIA Express to KL Sentral. From there we walked to Le Meridien where we got two rooms with an awesome city view, and then headed to Jalan Alor for dinner.

The luxurious beds at Le Meridien all to themselves. They say 'yay' and I say 'yay' too! No co-sleeping on this trip!

The luxurious beds at Le Meridien all to themselves. They said ‘yay’ and I said ‘yay’ too! No co-sleeping on this trip!

Walking down the food street at Jalan Alor

Our dinner consisting of chicken wings, satay, oyster omelette, carrot cake, char kway teow, beer (for the adults) and juice (for the young ‘uns) – awesomely yummy!

Back at the hotel room late at night, my husband sprang me a birthday surprise, and the kids and I were on an all-time high. They soaked in the warm water in the tub. The adults soaked in the city’s night view from the hotel window. By the time we crashed, it was close to midnight.

Happy birthday (again), this time from the hotel staff at Le Meridien, planned by Fatherkao

The next morning, we checked out and took a taxi to Seremban to meet with family, had lunch, and was back at the KL airport by 3pm, and back in Singapore – 3 hours later.

This was Restoran Xin Kai where we had great bak kut teh!

This was Restoran Xin Kai Xin in Seremban where we had great bak kut teh!

All with one big duffel bag and a huge dose of a sense of adventure.

Were we tired? Not at all. We were adrenaline-charged by this sudden burst of spontaneity.

For the kids, it was all about new sights and sounds, and non-stop eating.

For the husband and I, it was all about holding hands, which we haven’t done for the longest time.

For the family, it was all about experiencing a foreign land together and filling one memory page at a time, moving around from place to place and taking a flight together, watching the clouds and sunsets and pretending we were cruising through a billowing sea of cotton candy.

Any time spent with family is good time, and I am glad for this spontaneous family getaway

We would do this again in a heartbeat, this crazy spontaneous!

***

Cherish the special moments you have with your children. Share your very own spontaneous #FrisoMoment at apps.facebook.com/FrisoExperiences and stand to win a host of amazing prizes, courtesy of Friso Singapore.

Here are the mechanics:

How to participate

You will be eligible for weekly and grand prizes if you agree to display your image in the gallery to inspire other parents.

Prizes:

Instant prizes: Friso Experiences Journal + Friso Voucher will be awarded to every entry.
Weekly Prize: The best photos will be selected to win the weekly prize. If you didn’t win in the first week, you will still be eligible for the weekly prizes in the remaining weeks of the month.

~~Week 1 to 2 (7 Mar – 23 Mar) 8 x FujiFilm Instax Mini 8~~

~~Week 3: 5 x Rebel Kidz Retro Racer Balance Bike~~

~~Week 4: 5 x Annual Zoo membership [2 adults + 2 Child]~~

Week 5: 5 x GOPRO Hero Camera

Week 6: 3 x Port of Lost Wonders party package

Week 7: 5 x Fujifilm Instax Share Printer

Grand Prize: A year’s supply of Friso milk.

One winner in April will be selected from the top 25 most voted entries for the month. You may vote once per day for each entry. Remember to include the hashtag #FrisoMoment on your IG and FB posts!

***

Disclosure: This post was brought to you by Friso Singapore. Friso Singapore has invited Motherkao to share her #FrisoMoment to inspire parents to experience MORE with their children.

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Everyday fun! Invites & Tryouts Learning fun! Milestones and growing up Reviews The Kao Kids

Sibling love cemented with LEGO

April 15, 2015

This post first appeared in: http://lego.featured.yahoo.com/post/115820751901/building-sibling-relationships

[The pictures in Yahoo Asia features me with the kids; the pictures used here in my blog depict the entire BUILD process.]

It’s finally possible.

A year ago it would have been nearly impossible for my three children to sit around a table and work on something together. Today, at 6, 5 and 3, they play so well together, role-play seamlessly to the point they know one another’s thoughts, and huddle ever so often to read (the same book) and share a conversation.

So to test their ability to collaborate and cooperate, I tasked them with a project during the recent March holidays.

I called it the “March Holidays Special Project”.

LEGO CITY Swamp Police Station was their special project this holidays

The instructions were simple and the rules were few. LEGO has kindly sponsored this Swamp Police Station LEGO City Set and I told them these were my conditions if they were to take the set from my hands.

Work on it together. Build it together. Do it in parts because it seems massive. And do your part.

And just one more for good measure: Don’t ask any adult for help, if possible!

Ok, Mama! they said.

I have excited kids, all ready to start!

I was a little skeptical. They had agreed to my terms so readily. I was certain they were going to give up and ask for an adult to help them. Truth be told, I was all prepared to. It would be a good bonding time with my children, anyway. But my six-year-old confidently said, “I won’t need your help. Or Dada’s help. And I don’t need to take a break. We can finish this. We’re master builders. “

I reminded him that a ‘group’ project meant that the younger ones need to be involved in some ways, and the operational word “together” meant that he may have to assign jobs to them because they would surely look up to him (he’s the grand master builder in their eyes!) for directions.

And so the kids got to work. They began by first sorting out the many packs and instructional booklets in the box. Becks helped Ben match the numbers.

The many instructional booklets and packs

Becks matching the booklet with the pack number

Nat got a pair of scissors ready so that he could pass it to Ben to cut each packet open, as opposed to tearing the plastic recklessly and risk losing important pieces of bricks (so clever!).

Ben then assigned manageable roles for his siblings: Nat fixed the easy things, like the crocodile for the swamp. Becks helped to sort the LEGO bricks by size, while the big brother did the tougher jobs of snapping bricks in place and constructing the swamp police station with all the details.

Fix a croc

Becks arranging the bricks by size so Ben gets to see what he needs at a glance

Ben the Builder, at work!

With some help from Becks…

Patiently constructing…

…and constructing some more

When Becks and Nat did lose their stamina after a while of doing their job of sorting and helping, they assisted in other ways. They brought the master builder his Yakult and fed him fruit and cookies. They took care of him.

Say ‘aah’, korkor!

I sat around and watched the whole process in amazement. The strength of their bond was amazing. Even though they couldn’t stay as focused as korkor, they loved him in other ways to make up for not assisting. They knew that their big brother was in the midst of making something big and special – something everyone would get to play with when he was done.

And soon afternoon turned to evening and evening became night, and four hours later, TA-DAH!

This. This is my children proving to me it is Mission Possible.

Look at the details! This belongs to the baddies.

Here’s a cool sheriff!

And a really awesome looking police boat

The full construction, with funny minifigs thrown in for fun!

They didn’t take a break (well, at least Ben didn’t) and they made this, all with their little hands.

And the big brother gladly let everyone take the credit. “This is what WE built, Mama,” he said.

Happy to have completed their ‘March Holidays Special Project’ all thanks to Ben

Creative play, imaginative construction and exploratory learning. I have always believed that LEGO was capable of immersing my children in all of that. What I never imagined was that LEGO, through my “March Holiday Special Project” helped my children bond, and gave them a chance to demonstrate care and support for one another. Most importantly, this project helped them experience what leadership and teamwork is all about, and how this can be something we can embrace in our household.

Disclosure: This post was first written for Yahoo Asia. LEGO Singapore provided the toys discussed.

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Everyday fun! Family life as we know it Learning fun! Milestones and growing up The Kao Kids The real supermom

How’s it looking, now that it’s April

April 14, 2015

I’ve been running round with a cape trying my best to be supermom ever since the year started and I can only say the road ahead will only get tougher for this super-tired mom. At this point of my life I am trying to do the entrepreneur-working-mom-slash-do-my-best-to-be-as-much-a-hands-on-mom but it’s one heck of an ambition and everyone around me tells me I am crazy / ambitious / crazily ambitious / ambitiously crazy / impossible.

I think so too.

My children are growing up so quickly before my eyes and if there’s only one consolation of being away so often now is the consolation that I did three kids back to back with only an 18-month gap in between each kids, and today Ben, Becks and Nat are BFFs. They entertain one another, help each other, and do everything after kindergarten hours together I now wear the back-to-back pregnancies like my badge of honour.

So if anyone reading this is looking for a reason to do their kids with a close age gap, I have just sold you one.

So how is it like to juggle the demands of running a business and being a mom? How does this mothering thing actually work now that I have a business to run?

Well, apart from not being able to do much meal planning and cooking (which my wonderful husband has kindly offered to step in to do) and having to outsource the mundane tasks like packing bags, showering and diapering (oh wait, it’s not a biggie anymore, with all the kids toilet trained, except for Becks and Nat for the night), and not hovering over and all around like the helicopter mom I always am, everything is still quite fine because we don’t take one another’s presence for granted now.

We now ask this question every day: how do we make the best of the time we have?

My kids are gradually realising that being with Mama is precious; she doesn’t have all day to nag and wait for them like she used to when she stayed home for two years. We make the best of every moment we spend, and every short burst of activity we do becomes purposeful and meaningful.

So when it’s time for Mama School, the learning is differentiated. My helper supervises the work I prepare for the kids if I can’t be around…

Here’s sharing something I did with the kids earlier, when the boys were in the dinosaur craze:

Ladies and Gents, I need you all to meet Beth Gorden, one supermom who runs 123 Homeschool 4 Me, which has 300+ free printables and teaching ideas.
She’s got awesome theme packs to use, and here, I created a differentiated set from her free Dinosaur pack for my kids aged 6, 4.5 and 3

I first made booklets with a cool cover page for each of them…

I then culled what I felt was appropriate for each of my kid at his / her developmental level, sourced for more printables from the Internet and put them all together

For Ben, I made him learning bigger words

For Ben, I made him learn bigger words by creating my own set of worksheets for spelling

It’s at least half an hour of engaged learning for the Kao kids

And then they also come to Mama’s actual “school” for their lessons. They interact with other children, and have lots of fun learning with Mama as their teacher…

This is a Logic & Literacy class I run

And another one for pre-primary children

My husband also takes them out to the amazing farms that are around us on some week days. We are living close to Seletar Farmway where the Animal Resort, Seaview Aquarium and Mycofarm (mushrooms!) are, and so they pop in and out like regular troopers on mini field trips…

Learning about fungi at Mycofarm (9 Seletar West Farmway 5, 798057), where you can buy mushrooms cheaper here

Just observing and exploring is meaningful time spent!

Sometimes, I schedule a quick bake break (especially when the bananas are turning black faster than we can say ‘bananas’), and they get involved…

The tasks are pretty much assigned for a banana cake. Ben mashes the bananas, Becks sieves flour and Nat whisks eggs!

And then every night, we choose between catching past episodes of Running Man (which I believe greatly fuels their creativity) or reading bedtime stories. If they choose the latter, each of them gets to choose a book for me to read aloud. I bought all 50 books in this list so these titles (plus our Bible stories) are our bedtime staples.

And then it’s intense oiling and foot massage (if I still have the energy left) and time for bed.

I dish out like a million hugs and kisses at bedtime too. It’s to make up for not being around.

And when they go to bed, I start working again.

And the cycle goes on like this.

So.

I think it’s extremely doable – if you have an itchy backside like me and want to do things out there. You just need to make sure you have children who can keep each other company and be best friends and best enemies with, and then schedule in short bursts of fun and learning. Oh yes, that plus a really trusty right-hand aide (like a good helper whom you can outsource everything that is time-consuming to from ironing to steaming mantou for breakfast) and being able to reserve your last ounce of energy for a heartwarming tuck-in at bedtime every night.

You’ll be tired, I’m so sure you would; but nothing beats a healthy dose of ‘We-miss-Mama-we-will-treasure-her’ and ‘I-miss-my-kids-I-am-going-to-choose-my-battles’ every day.

Nobody’s gonna be taking nobody for granted these days, that’s for sure.

Wefie: My babies and their Mama in a huddle

***

P/S: If you’re all ready to start something and get entrepreneurial, you have a friend here. Hook up with me and we can give each other friendly, mommy support! 🙂

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