Sunday Splash !

One of our usual Sunday activities, the splashing moment!

Samuel's Gift to Joyful Kids Montessori School

Recently, we celebrated Samuel's birthday at home and in school. Mummy has been blogging about this over the past week.

Today when i sent Samuel to school, teacher Yani gave me this photo of Samuel. During Samuel's birthday, besides mummy bringing a cake to school, an artwork of Samuel's 1,2,3,4 years old, he is expected to contribute to the school's library by giving away a book to the school. Samuel brought his favourite book, Peter and Jane.

If i recall correctly, mummy told me that when Samuel gave the book to the teachers, it was a heartbreaking moment for him to part from his favourite book. Something that others might think is a simple small gift actually meant so much to Samuel. Yes, Samuel loves books. He loves to read.

The following day, his teacher took a photo of him with the book he has given to the school's library and this is the photo that was given to me.

Reading

Jesse likes to pretend to read. She will open the book, point at the words and start reading. She can't read but she will pretend that she is reading and she likes to start with "one day...."

Since young, Jesse has not been very interested with words, unlike Samuel. At her age, Samuel would be able to read Peter & Jane books. She only likes to pretend :)

Library Book

Today is Samuel's turn to borrow a book from the school library. Guess what book he borrowed?
Recently we had a birthday party for him and he also attended 2 parties for the past week, so he took a book with the title "The Birthday Party".

Sticker Boy

Samuel has been attending music classes for about 1.5 years, it was more of music appreciation than the normal instrument classes. They do singing, writing, drawing and playing with toys.

Samuel started the 2nd year of the program early this year. The main difference of 2nd year program is they are taught how to play the piano. Just a very basic where the notes are at the piano.

Although there's not great changes in the 2nd year program, Samuel seems to have changed alot during the class. According to his teacher, he is not as shy as last year. He started to volunteer in answering questions. For each correct answer, he will get a sticker on his shirt.

A couple of weeks ago, I was amazed that he got himself full of stickers on his shirt. He has the most stickers, 9 of them while the rest of the students only 2-3 stickers.

The Big Day

We celebrated Samuel's birthday with a birthday party inviting his friends, 2 days before his actual birthday.

On the night before his birthday party, we packed all the party packs (party boxes) and Samuel was very excited to help.

We finished packing all the party boxes with the help of Samuel (all 24 boxes) before we put the final touch (consealing stickers).

The food. Yum yum. We catered the food and it came at 11.30am. When the caterers set up the food at our home, i went to pick up Samuel's birthday cake from the Empire Hotel with Samuel.

The traffic was pretty congested when the children were driving all around the living room :)

Samuel, Jesse and the Birthday Cake
The children sang Happy Birthday to Samuel while Jesse admires the cake & candles

Samuel blowing all 5 candles
Samuel posing with his presents from his friends
Samuel waited patiently till evening before he opened all his presents.

After a long and tiring day for both daddy and mummy, it was a very happy day for Samuel with lots of friends, presents, hugs and plenty of love :)

He Is 5

Samuel greeted me with a smile this morning. He is very happy today.

I took a day off today as it is Samuel's birthday. I sent him to school this morning and had my breakfast before I went and collect his birthday cake.

I ordered a Croquembouche for him to celebrate his birthday with his classmates in school. He is allowed not to wear school uniform as it is his birthday. We have to do his timeline for display at the notice board for the children and parents to view. It was supposed to be the teacher's task to decorate the timeline but somehow they changed it and get the parents to do it instead!
We were asked to "donate" a book to the school library on his birthday and he was sad to have his book given to the school :)

Addicted

I realised I have not blog for sometime. I must confess that I was addicted to some games in facebook. I spent many hours playing with it everyday! Until to the point Samuel was also addicted in looking at me playing :p

I'm not sure if I can stop playing :p but I will definitely try to control my addiction :)

Noah's Ark Theme

We have been busy lately preparing for Samuel's birthday party. We have a list of names provided by Samuel. Basically he named almost every children in his class, but we can't afford to have all of his 28 classmates come with their parents & siblings + some church friends to celebrate his birthday. So, I got him to select his closest friends only.

A week before his birthday, we went shopping for his party pack. We got a box instead. Samuel has been very helpful in getting ready the party box. Yes, the party box is full of junk food :p

This year, Samuel couldn't decide what he wanted for the theme for his birthday so we chose Noah's Ark as Samuel's birthday theme. His invitation cards, party box stickers as well as his birthday cake has the same Noah's Ark picture.

Masquerading

A few days ago when we went shopping, we saw these masks. It looks quite nice and we thought it would be good to let Samuel and Jesse play pretend in these masks.

Not to our surprise, Samuel put on the monkey mask running around the room pretending to be a monkey with "uh uh ah ah" sound. Jesse followed Samuel with oink oink sound.