MUSEUMS

It is the first week of the mid-year school holiday in Singapore. It is that time of the year when children rejoice! And parents take time off (hopefully) from work to enjoy the school holiday period with their children. In this important time of the year, I hope to share some places to visit for your family outings and also some activities to engage in during the school holidays.

This entry will focus on MUSEUMS. I love museums. Similar to a library or bookstore, I can spend a whole day in it just immersing myself in the whole experience. Good times J

Anyway… It is currently the Children’s Season at 21 participating museums and galleries in Singapore.

What is Children’s Season?

Children’s Season, jointly presented by National Heritage Board and Museum Round Table, began on 18 May 2012. The season will go on until 24 June 2012. There are a wide range of activities to engage in at various museums. I feel terribly excited just looking at the amount of activities! (Moment of wishing I’m young again) You also get to enjoy free admission at the different museums during their open house weekends. Additionally, there are also many free programmes to participate in. The programme caters mainly to the preschool to 12 year old age group. Nevertheless, teenagers can always take part in the museums permanent galleries and exhibitions.

More information can be found at this website.

What are you waiting for?

Click on it, go out and have fun!

Speak Good English Movement Carnival 2011 - Public Speaking CSI

No. It's not the tv series. CSI is an acronym for public speaking.

During the carnival, there was a speaker talking about public speaking. He shared his take on CSI with relation to public speaking. Here's what I got from him. Just sharing it online :)

CSI of Speaker

C - Conversational and audience appropriate 
S - Simple, what do you want people to take away 
I - Interactive, finding out what they want, give people what they need 

And of course, practice! Practice helps a speaker to be more prepared. Simultaneously, practice improves speaking skills.

CSI of Audience 

C - Cooperate with the speaker 
S - Smile. A pleasant looking expression goes a long way :)
I - Interest. Display interest in what you are listening. This would help the speaker know that
you are interested in the topic.

That is all from this short post. I hope the tips come in handy to all :)

Fun with Art!

I was at a workshop on incorporating art and craft into storytelling over the weekend. This will be a picture post on the workshop.

Art with children is about having a good number of mateirals.

Nik naks, ding dangs, ging gangs (things of little value) are great to keep.

A jar of colourful stuff.

Bottle caps.

Tissue rolls.  

Glue, scissors, paper and all those stuff.

Collect unwanted cardboard.

Pretty colours.

Colours in paints and food colouring.

Paint in squeeze bottles and straws. (I see chopsticks too)

The sister of batik printing. Playing with colours. Use food colouring and kitchen tissue (or tougher/thicker tissue). Fold the tissue paper in any way you like; dip them in the plate of food colouring. See the colours soak into the paper; continue the process and you get instant batik. Children will enjoy the process.

As a student, I picked up an unwanted box in school one day and turned it into my art box. The box is about 5 or 6 years old now. Open it up and it might look like I have a whole lot of junk in it. But I see those junk as useful. One takeaway from this workshop is to have a good supply of everyday items that are seen as worthless. These items are best friends to children when they engage in art and craft activities and they leave less impact on the pocket too. The trainer of the workshop has an art studio of her own catering to children and her art studio is filled with some of the items in the pictures above. I think the items you see in the pictures constitutes to about 10% of her art studio.  

Remember, the less valuable items are the best resource!

(Except paints, glue, scissors and those sorts of course)  

Have fun :)

Speak Good English Carnival

Fantastic programmes found in the carnival! Click on the picture to be directed to the website for more information on the programmes.

Book List

In the midst of cleaning and clearing my room for Hari Raya, I found a piece of paper containing 17 book titles. I believe it came from a conference. However, I am not too sure which conference the piece of paper came from. I think it could be past years Child Care Seminar or Asian Festival of Children's Content. I know some of the books listed in the paper and it felt rather sad for me to throw it away without sharing the list of books in the paper. Afterall, if it came from a conference the books in the list are probably good and recommended books. Here's the list of books:

1. Fun with opposits (A changing picture book) - Dorling Kindersley
2. That's good! That's bad! - Margery Cuyler
3. A piece of string is a wonderful thing - Walker Books London
4. Imagine - Alison Lester
5. On the way home - Jill Murphy
6. The story of jumping mouse - John Steptoe
7. If I had a gorilla - Mercer Mayer
8. Illustrated book of myths - Neil Philip
9. Tuesday - David Wiesner
10. Chimps don't wear glasses - Laura Numeroff
11. Dogs don't wear glasses - Laura Numeroff
12. Goldilocks and the three bears - Heidi Petach
13. The forth little pig - Teresa Celci
14. Who's afraid of the bid bad wolf? - Tony Bradman
15. The three little wolves and the bid bad picture - Eugenie Trivizas
16. The true story of the three little pigs - Jon Sciesrka
17. Signs and symbols - Miranda Bruc-Milford

Enjoy :)

*Disclaimer: I did not do a search on the books listed. Nonetheless, I know that most books are picture books. Do inform me if you find titles that contains any inappropriate content. Thank you.

Special Education Week

I saw a tribute to special education week in my Facebook newsfeed earlier on. Honestly, I never knew such a week exist. Nonetheless, I am elated to know of its existence! I went to google to search for the exact dates of this special week. However, it seems that there is very little information online; except Facebook. I found the page on special education week and 'like' it but the dates are not reflected as well. Hence, I am writing a tribute to this week without knowledge on the exact dates. Do pardon me for the lack credible information.

What is special education week?

Special education week is an initiative from the United States on raising awareness to help children with special needs in their education system. The initiative is not yet a national week; nonetheless, it is being proposed towards being a national week.

Why I love the initiative?

During my teaching stint, I was fortunate enough to meet a few children with special needs. Out of the few, only one child was diagnosed. The rest were not diagnosed but clearly displayed the traits of various special need. One child left the biggest impact on me as that child faced a great amount of challenges; with teachers, with parents and with the classroom. Ever since such an experience, I became more passionate in my support for people, especially children, with special needs. Such an initiative (if practiced in Singapore too) would benefit young children who do not have access to early intervention. An initiative like this could raise public awareness on special education and even special needs. This means that parents, teachers, educators or even relatives of a child displaying traits of special need would be aware of it and hopefully proceed towards early intervention if the child is diagnosed with a special need.

Only adults can help children.  Let’s do our part.

I found some useful local resources in my tribute to special education week. These are outside of special education schools resources. They were designed from the National Library Board, Singapore team.  

Public Resources in Singapore for Special Education:

MOLLY the Mobile Library

"When it is not easy for readers to move around, Molly goes out to them. Reaching out mainly to the disadvantaged groups in our community, Molly is an innovative mobile library with 3,000 books on board and equipment for book borrowing and returning. Programmes such as storytelling are also conducted."

I have been on the MOLLY bus a few times before and I must say, it is a real library. There are a good number of books in there and the best part is, you get to borrow them too (if you like). Just remember to bring your library card or any other identification card along. It works just like any other public library and it feels super cool to be on MOLLY. It was an interesting experience.

Project Deliver Me

"This is another initiative worthy of your support. With the help of volunteers, this project delivers library materials to the doorsteps of people who are unable to visit the library because of physical disability or illness."

As stated, this is a wonderful initiative. This initiative helps people who face difficulties moving around or getting to places due to physical challenges; inclusion of everyone to have access to library materials.  

If you know anyone who needs such services, do get in contact with librarians at your nearest library or write in to ask@nlb.gov.sg

I hope the information serves you well.

English workshops for parents by British Council

I saw a poster on free workshops for parents while I was at a library. 3 free workshops, 2 exclusively for parents! 

Parents! The workshops would definitely come in handy when it comes to helping, supporting and understanding your child's school work. This is a wonderful parent programme. More information on the workshops below, taken from the Speak Good English Movement website. 

Register here.  

Workshop 1

Grammar For Parents

Date: Saturday, 3rd September 2011
Time: 2 – 4pm
Venue: Ang Mo Kio Public Library (Programme Zone)

Familiarise yourself with common grammar terms as well as pick up practical tips to help your child improve his/her written and spoken accuracy!

Workshop 2

Pronunciation For Parents

Date: Saturday, 10th September 2011
Time: 2 – 4pm
Venue: Bedok Public Library (Programme Zone)

Learn about the International Phonetic Alphabet and discover how it can be used to help your child with his/her pronunciation!

Workshop 3

A Guide To Presentations

Date: Saturday, 17th September 2011
Time: 2 – 4pm
Venue: Tampines Regional Library (Changkat Room)

Discover the tools that make a good presentation.
We will look at:

• Preparation, linking, the importance of the ‘Pause’, pace, intonation, voice projection and body language.
• Spaces are limited and are available on a first come, first served basis. 

Do sign up as soon as possible :)

DEAR@Schools Programme

A problem that I find a handful of preschools encounter is budget. With a tight budget, it becomes difficult for a preschool to provide all the items or materials that the educator/s of the school’s may wish to have. In this post, I will be relating a useful resource that will aid in raising the quality of the preschool and also help alleviate stress encountered from the tight budget.

Books are essential to a school. The more books the better. Students receive a good number of diverse reading materials and also an increased amount of interaction with books. This has a positive effect on their language and literacy development. National Library Board, Singapore, came up with a programme called, “DEAR @ Schools Programme”. D.E.A.R represents, drop everything and read. In this programme, schools are allowed to loan (borrow) between 1000 to 2000 books for a period of 9 weeks for their own reading and accessibility. Schools can loan these books from their nearest public library. More information can be found here and here.  

Any educator or teacher of the school can write in their request to, ask@nlb.gov.sg, on this programme. Do specify the school name and location, and you will be directed to the librarian in-charge nearest to your school.  

I hope this resource comes in handy for the preschools out there who are experiencing such problems. In any case, please pass on this information to those who need it.