Goodbye Playgroup

Tomorrow is Noah's last day in Playgroup (the school is closed on the 29th and 30th). I don't know how much of an impact this will have on his daily life and therefore have not really discussed it with him. The kids should be the same and the teachers may remain the same. It is crazy to think that he will not even be in the youngest class anymore. Goodbye baby Noah. Goodbye Playgroup. Hello big boy Noah and Nursery 1.

He POOOOOPED!

Noah pooped in the toilet! Just before Noah's shower, Seth flippantly told Noah to go do a caca in the potty. Noah asked for the big toilet and to our surprise (he had not even said he needed to poop), he pooped! Now he says he is no longer scared to poop in the potty. YAY!

Holiday Cheer

It's the holidays!  Valerie found an old potato lying around, and presto-change-o, we have some neat new stamps to play with.     

Later, Elias (Noah's school friend) and his parents came over for a Christmas/Hannukah afternoon celebration.  First off for an afternoon of fun: cookie making.  Last time we made cookies, we tried the typical old-fashioned sugar cookie; the European contingent declared this much too sweet.  This time, we used a French "sable" recipe... much better.

Then, we decorated the cookies:

                                               

And here are the boys proudly showing off their handiwork.... and patiently, patiently waiting to eat the cookies as soon as we turn our backs:

"Good job, Elias.  High-five!"

After the cookies, we moved on to chocolate... The game of "dreidel" seemed appealing at first...

However, after a few turns, and a few attempts to spin the dreidel, they started asking about when they could eat the chocolate.  As soon as they learned that they couldn't eat the chocolate until the game was over, they rapidly decided that the game should be over as soon as possible.

There was then a brief interlude making macaroni necklaces...

And then the two boys returned to the most popular toy of the day: the toy cars.

The toy cars are so exciting, and there are only 14 or 15 of them, so sharing was a bit difficult.  However, any and all disputes were happily resolved with a hug:

After a little dinner, it was time for Elias and his parents to go home.

Happy holidays!

School Life

With the school year coming to an end, Noah received his first yearbook:

Here's his class photo:

There's Nojus, Noah, Kathryn, Riko, Elias (Noah's good friend), Gavin, Rachel (with Sam behind her), Kfir, Lian, and Jing Shuen.  The teachers are Jia Hui, Isabelle, Liza, Siew Ling, and Rebecca. Little Amy was absent that day as was Esmee, Noah's best friend according to him.

As all good yearbooks do, it summarizes Noah's main activities during the year.  Here is Noah playing with letters, tracing them with his fingers and learning the sounds:

And here is Noah playing with numbers and working on his math skills, matching the "number rods" to the numbers, and organizing the "red rods" from largest to smallest:

They also learned about plants and animals, dressing up as a leopard and watering the bushes. According to his progress report, he knows his living animals well, but needs some work recognizing his extinct animals!

His favorite activity, perhaps, is painting, drawing, and making collages:

Another of Noah's favorite activities is playing outside in the water...

... and in the gravel pit with his friends.

                                   

Then, there are all the celebrations, like "Children's Day" and Deepavali.  And of course all the many birthday parties that absolutely must be celebrated with cake and cookies.

Overall, I think Noah has had a pretty good year in "school."

Noah Graduates from Playgroup!

Noah's nursery school runs on a calendar year basis, so as of January first, he will officially move from "Playgroup A" to "Nursery 1."  Big steps for a little boy!  Next thing you know, he'll be off to college....

We met with his teachers last week for an end-of-the-year wrap-up, where of course he received the expected glowing reviews.  

How could you not give rave reviews to a boy with a smile like that:

                                        

They carefully evaluated all the new, important skills he learned this year.

One week, every night at dinner, he was obsessed with folding napkins.  Well now we know: that week, he mastered skill 5.1!  And that week he was obsessed with the zipper on his jeans... skill 8.1!  I wonder what is on next year's skill list?

They also evaluated his social and emotional development:

He has the makings of a born leader!  Hurry, I hear there is a presidential election coming up in the US next year!  Is it too late for him to enter?

He has gained some impressive leadership experience this year: his teachers report that he has taken charge of two important "Playgroup A" committees: the "New Student Welcome Committee" (NSWC) and the "Playgroup Potty Committee" (P-PC)  In his role on the NSWC, he mentors and advises new entrants to the playgroup, banishing their tears with his big smile.  The P-PC, too, has an important job in the Playgroup organization.  Noah leads by example, demonstrating his talents peeing on the potty, encouraging others to experiment with this innovative new technology, the toilet.

Overall, it's been a good year!

Potty Update

In our last potty-related post (because-i-want-to-do-pipi-in-big-toilet ), Noah refused to pee at school because he wanted to do pipi in the big toilet. This lasted for a few days. He then agreed to pee during school hours but only at the big toilet just outside of school, then in the school bathroom but only with his favorite teachers! Otherwise, he is and has been for quite a while now completely potty-trained when it comes to daytime peeing (including nap time).

We are still fighting the poop war though. He asks for his diaper every time he needs to poop. We try to get him to attempt to do the deed in his potty. At first he would refuse to even try, then he would sit on it but not really try and now he sometimes makes a sincere effort to try but so far to no avail - even though we bribed him with five immediate stars and thus a little present and even a piece of chocolate. So poop goes in the diaper for now. I would rather he poop regularly and in the diaper than not at all which is what happens when we don't give him the diaper during the critical period. If anybody has some advice on poop matters, please comment. To be continued...

Happy Birthday Suza

Ever since a few months before his second birthday, Noah has been really into birthdays, his own upcoming birthday at first but also friends and family birthdays. He keeps a mental list of whose birthday is next. For weeks now, he has been talking about how his Aunt Suza's birthday is coming up and how he was going to make her a collage (he loves making collages and saying the word collage).

A message from Noah to his Aunt (in English and what he tells us is Chinese).

 Happy birthday Suza!

Noah's First Facebook Update

This morning I caught Noah playing with my iPhone. After rescuing my phone, I promptly forgot about the incident. A few hours later, I checked facebook and saw that "I" had posted a new status about three hours earlier. "Muezh" read my status. Really??? Noah took my phone, got to the facebook page, pressed status, wrote his update and then pressed share. Was he very lucky or are the iPhone and Facebook app so intuitive that even a 2 year old can update my status? Did he ever see me update my status? I don't do so often but I guess it is possible. We will just have to see if he can reproduce this feat!

Lots of Letters

Noah's relationship to letters started when he was very young. Seth could not think of songs to sing to soothe a newborn Noah so he would sing him the alphabet and then the alphabet backwards. During his first year, Noah heard the ABC and ZYX in English and French without much of a reaction. 

As our old twitter followers might remember, when we moved to Singapore around Noah's first birthday, we got Noah some cute alphabet stickers.

I paired each letter with a sign and a sound A for "abeille" bzzzzzz, B for "bebe" (baby) ouin ouin, C for "chat" (cat), miaou miaou and so on. Noah quickly developed his favorites: B, D (for Dada), K ("kangaroo"), L ("lion"), V ("violon" or violin), W ("walabi"), X ("xylophone"), and Y ("yayi").  A side note on Yayi, which is a sound Noah invented for the "Y" - it also happened to be the name I called myself when I was little; "Yayi" became a nickname for me for a while. Such a strange coincidence. Back to the letters - Noah started pointing at the ones he liked best so I would make the sign and especially the noises he liked to hear. 

When Noah was 13.5 months, he recognized his first letter out of the blue. He took out a random letter from his foam cube and signed "fleur, fleur" (flower) and sure enough - it was an F (we repeated the experiment later on by taking out an F and asking him what it was).  

By 16.5 months, he knew all the capital letters and would excitedly identify letters everywhere. We would be walking in the street and he would sign "flower, flower", "kangaroo, kangaroo" or "violin, violin." I would look around trying to find what he was referring to.  Was there a picture of a flower, kangaroo or violin anywhere? Nope - there was usually some street sign with those letters - though at the zoo that sometimes got a bit confusing!

Once he clearly knew all the letters inside out, he began to lose interest.  I tried to play games with him which involved recognizing DA vs PA vs LA, but that was too much. I tried to teach him the "baby letters," but he was not interested. For the next six months, he took a break from letters.

While on hiatus, other things occupied his interest such as speaking and singing.  Since starting pre-school at 20 months, he has been singing all sorts of songs, including his ABCs (and just yesterday, his first unprompted ZYXs).

After almost 6 months of hiatus, he recently started being interested in letters again. He had forgotten some of the capital letters and had to relearn them; and he quickly picked up the "baby letters."  But he was excited about it again; every time we pass the sign to our building, he flaps his wings, jumps up and down, and points at the letters.  We have to drag him away.  And without much repetition or seemingly effort, he was back to knowing all the letters. 

A while ago, I had purchased a French book for learning to read. I started by explaining what a syllable is, and then showed him examples in the book.  We then looked at pictures of various objects, each of which had the whole word written under it.  Each picture also highlighted one syllable, which he had to match with the corresponding syllable on the opposite page.  For example, there is a picture of a "tapis" (a rug) with PI highlighted.  The book begins with the letter P (i.e., PA, PE, PI, PO, PU), then moves on to T, and so on.  He pretty quickly figured out how to do the textual matching!  Finally, he was able to match the picture directly to the syllable without the intervening highlighted text.

In this fashion, last week, he read his first words: PAPA, PIPI and PIPO. Since then he often brings the book to me and asks to read ("je veux lire"). 

Earlier today, I made a memory game for him where each square is a different French word. I started with seven simple words: papa, pipi, mama, dada, papy (grandpa), momo (name of a character in one of his books), and dodo (sleep). 

We put all the cards face up. Noah chose a card, identified it and then found its pair. Although I was pretty confident he could find the pairs, I was not sure he would be able to identify/read the various cards. At first he was very tentative but he was very excited and concentrated and after a few rounds he was picking up a card and reading it and finding its pair. Here he is excitedly selecting a card. 

                               

When Dad got home, the first thing he wanted to do was to show him the matching game.  He keeps asking for more and keeps bringing the reading book to me. It is so great to see him be this interested in his letters again, and in learning to read. 

NOAH Gilbert

Today I taught Noah his last name. I am not sure why I had not done so earlier. It somehow did not seem necessary. Now when asked in French for his name he responds Noah Gilbert (Gi - as in gigi) and when asked in English he says Noah Gilbert (Gi as in guil).  It is so adorable hearing him say his full name. He also has started spelling out his first name: "N - O - A - H, Noah, me".

New Teeth

This evening, I was brushing Noah's teeth when I noticed a little speck of white behind his upper molar... sure enough, he has a new molar coming out. I then felt around for other new molars and... his other top back molar is also coming out. He has been a bit whiny after his nap these past few days but beyond that, I had not noticed any changes in his behavior. Only two more teeth to go!