Arts-N-Crafts: A Handmade Storybook (with sight words)

Arts and crafts time is always a fun time for me and my little miss. I guess, what makes it fun and more interesting is because I'm a newbie crafter myself so we're both learning on our activities as we go along. When I plan an activity however, I am not targeting to develop any particular skill. I'm mostly into the fun factor of it...and later on would just realize that we in fact touched based with a certain skill (was that fine motor, wow nice. or hand-eye coordination maybe? great job, mom!).

Now that my kid is a preschooler, I told myself to plan activities that would relate to her class's current lesson well mainly for practical reasons (it will save us some review time during the school week) and also to eternally ingrain in her the idea that LEARNING is A LOT of FUN. So I try to sneak in bits of school stuff into crafts time so it becomes sort of a review as well without her realizing it. 

This last quarter, the kid is already expected to read sight words and a few 3-letter words (CVCs - consonant, vowel, consonant is what that means. I've been seeing that acronym on several review materials but only learned what it actually meant just recently. See, I'm learning a bit or two in this preschool adventure as well). I had a light-bulb moment the other day while we were reviewing for her oral exam on CVCs. While I was listing down the words, I thought it might help her remember if I drew a picture next to the word (I am a lousy illustrator but thankfully, my kid never complained about my drawings). And true enough, within an hour she mastered all 10 words. So I thought, it might be a great idea to introduce the other sight words to her in the form of a story book. 

The proud author of BABY BEAR GOES TO A PICNIC

I initially intended to do the story book by myself and maybe just enlist the kid's help in the cutting and pasting process but this project turned out to be 80% all hers, and 20% (even less as I'm thinking about it now) mine. I merely did the cutting of the paper and binding (and maybe half of the storyline because she eventually changed it to her own version), everything else was her doing. 

The materials we used here, we all had on hand. In fact, they were mostly scraps from previous projects that we did. 

- Cardboard (for the cover) cut in half

- Bond paper/typewriting paper, cut in half

- Googly eyes (2 pairs)

- permanent markers

- newpaper/magazine cut outs

- string

tools - scissors, glue, puncher

I'll let each of the story book page speak from this point on. 

One Down, A Few More To Go

Last Friday, Maia and I went back to get the results of her first assessment exam in Statefields School in Bacoor. And yes! she passed it. She was so proud of herself. She repeatedly told me she's so ready for school. Well, you will have to wait a little bit more little girl. But it will come soon!

One down, __ more to go! Lolz

Here's a few photos I took of Maia on our last visit. I had more time in my hands so I was able to take photos.

Waiting patiently at the lobby while I pay for our reservation fee

If you are planning to enroll your child in Statefields, here are a few tips for you:

- Inquire early. My mommy friend Erlaine and I inquired as early as November because Statesfields preschool has very limited slots (for nursery they only accept up to 45 students per school year. That's 15 students per section and they only have 3)

- Complete and submit your requirements as soon as you can. I completed and submitted our requirements all in one day so I had the freedom to choose the dates for Maia's assessment exam.

- Choose a time and day where your child would be in her most comfortable state. Maia is up early and is uber-energetic in the mornings so I took the first morning schedule they had. We set it a week after the holidays so that she's slowly gotten back to her normal, daily routine.

- Reserve as soon as you get the results. The slots are filled up early so it's best to reserve even if you aren't fully decided yet to enroll. Reservation fee is only for P500 and is deductible on the tuition fee on enrollment day. It's non-refundable though. We aren't fully decided yet. We would want to check at least 2 to 3 more schools before we make the decision but we would feel really awful if we lose our spot so we decided to reserve as soon as we got the positive results.

Feeling estudyante na!

I gotta see what's new first mom. Wait lang.

Pagod na ako eh. Upo muna tayo.

We're off to check a few more schools in the coming months. It's a good thing the other schools that we are eyeing are not as tight as Statefields so we're more relaxed now. Oh by the way, another tip probably is for you to stock up on lots of 1x1 ID pictures and birth and baptismal certificate copies (you will need at least a copy of the original and several photocopies). I need to work on mine since I didn't make a lot of copies the first time. 

Wea/inning From The Bottle Battle

You've probably read in a couple (if not a lot) of my posts here about my failure with breastfeeding. It's probably one failure that I had the hardest time letting go. I nagged myself for a long time. And I guess it was only when Maia started eating healthy portions of her solids and getting less and less sicker that I finally forgave myself.

Bestfriends with her bottle

I aimed to wean my daughter off the bottle at 15 months. I thought by that time she's finally used to eating solid food and I'm probably comfortable with feeding her table food as well. And I thought 15 is a good number (not that I'm superstitious). Three months after the 1st birthday should give me enough time to train her to stop feeding from the bottle. 

I took my timeline seriously. I got the entire household involved. They supported me back. But the first 2 years wasn't very good to us health-wise. We had a lot of hospital confinements - one battle with sepsis, two pneumonia attacks, one dehydration scare, and one fracture incident. Instead of feeling comfortable with motherhood, those hospital trips just made me angry at myself even more. I felt like I wasn't doing a good job with this mothering thing. And yet, I was sure I did everything by the book. What else should I be doing??? Ahhh, the woes of a first-time mom.

To cut the story short those difficulties set me back for a good one year off my timeline. I felt that taking away the milk would just make her even more weaker (ohhh yes, I fell for all those marketing tactics. They worked for me alright) and deprive her of the essential nutrients her body needed then.

But exactly one year ago, I got so tired of chasing the little girl during meal time and struggling with picky eating. So during a visit to the pedia, I mentioned how I wanted her to wean off the bottle already (tried and failed many times over). Doc agreed it was really time to let go of the bottle. I was actually way overdue she said. When I told her I pity the little girl when she cries, she told me back: "Mas lalo kang maawa sa anak mo pag sira na ang ngipin nya at di na makakain ng mabuti" (translation: Pity your child more when all her teeth decays and couldn't eat well anymore because of the rotten teeth). So I asked for her help and she got down with Maia and told her that drinking from the bottle won't do her teeth any good. And that if her teeth rots, she won't be as pretty as Jillian Ward (she was a kid actress that was so popular with kids then) anymore. I don't know if it was because she sees the doc as an authority figure or what but when I reinforced the doc's words after we left the clinic, she nodded her head to say she understood.

When she napped that afternoon, I immediately got to work and hid the bottles from sight. I hid all of them including the pacifiers and the extra silicone nipples and even the bottle brushes. I made sure there wasn't anything in the house that would remind her she once fed using the bottle. 

At 26 months, Maia wasn't consuming a lot of formula milk anyways. She could barely finish a 6-oz bottle in one sitting. 16-20 ounces tops was the best she can do in a day so that afternoon wasn't really tough for us. She didn't look for the bottle and gladly took a glass of fresh milk and drank all of it when I offered it during her afternoon snack.

How can you not give in to this look, Mom?

Nighttime was a different story. She cried (and  boy she cried REALLY hard) for 2 straight nights. We were all sleep-deprived because she'd be up every hour and yell for the bottle. But I kept replaying what the pedia told me earlier. That it will only take her 3 nights the most to forget about the bottle. So each time she asked for her dede (bottle) I closed my eyes and prayed for a lot of strength so I can withstand the crying. Guess what happened on the third night? Maia woke up middle of the night and asked for a GLASS of milk. Yes, she said: Mommy mik please. Sa glass ha? I wanted to jump with joy! But I couldn't or else I'd   end up dealign with a fully awake toddler in the middle of the night so I had to settle for a big, wide smirk instead. All our efforts paid off!!! 

So that was how we finally bid our feeding bottles good-bye. Guess what? After she said goodbye to the formula and the bottle, she started enjoying her solids. She finished her meal servings without so much struggle and would ask for second (even third) helpings most days. 

To summarize, what made this goal achievable for me were 3 things:

(1) consistency. When you say it's a no, MEAN it. I had to close my eyes and suck in the pleading coupled with relentless crying but in the end, really, it's not just you who will reap the benefits.

(2) persistence. If it didn't work today. Try again tomorrow. But don't give up. There's always light at the end of the tunnel (hehe). AND;

(3) support. In our case, the pep talk from the pedia and support from my husband and yaya helped me tremendously. I couldn't have done it on my own. 

It was a battle that I finally won. And I was so proud of myself. And of my little girl who was so understanding and cooperative and so wise beyond her years. 

Oh how I love her dearly!

How To Encourage Kids To Eat Fruits and Vegetables

My daughter did not inherit my passion for food and eating. Eating was almost like a chore for her. Something that she just had to do right to impress the adults. But it never seemed to have appealed to her.

I trained her early to love eating. Especially eating food that is of the healthy nature. Although I did fail miserably on breastfeeding, I made sure I compensated that when it was time for her to eat solids. I painstakingly prepared her meals from scratch and if my schedule as a working momma doesn't permit me to do it myself, I made sure I supervise the yaya when she does it. Maia never tasted artificial toddler food like Cerelac or Gerber. And I'm really proud to say that my daughter never had an attraction towards anything salty or sweet. Yes, junk food was not something that she craved for. 

Despite this, Maia still didn't each as much as I'd wished her to. Although she didn't demand for a particular taste from food, she was very picky when it came to texture so it was very difficult for us to make her eat the green, leafy ones. And we all know that those were the ones considered to be most nutritious. Maia would gag each time a malunggay leaf would get stuck in her throat. She would refuse to eat each time a thin pechay leaf would touch her tounge. She would complain non-stop when a cabbage leaf would get stuck in teeth. Eventually, she was able to distinguish the food that made her gag that the mere sight of them would lock her jaw up and force us to give up trying to make her eat them.

Fruits were also another thing that she didn't develop a loving, passionate relationship with. I tried introducing her to every local fruit available but her liking for these things were somehow also seasonal. There was a time she really liked melons but now she refused to eat them. Then she moved on to grapes. Then to bananas. Then that was it. She would take a bite of an apple, a spoonful of fresh mango, a segment of an orange, a tiny bit of a watermelon or a small slice of a pineapple but she never got to the point of wanting them which was what I was aiming for. 

All these were always a major concern that I'd bring up to the pedia during our well-baby check ups. One solution that we came up with was to wean her off formula milk. That trick somehow worked. Her solid intake definitely improved after we weaned off formula milk but still, I'd like to see her eat more of the greens and fruits.

I could say that Maia's picky eating has been one of the biggest issues we've encountered raising a toddler. But thankfully there has been drastic improvement in the last 6 months. So what were the tricks that led us to somehow succeed in making her eat more? 

1. Weaning off formula and the bottle. As our Pedia would say, as soon as your kid turns one, formula should not be her main source of nourishment anymore. She should really be eating more solids rather than stay dependent on formula. I will make a wrote separate post of this experience but we were able to successfully wean Maia off formula and the feeding bottle at 26 months.

2. Blender and Popsies. We would puree ripened fruits and freeze them into popsicles. They became an instant hit to our toddler. We also became creative. We came up with frozen Atis, Papaya and Pineapple popsicles. I'll try making guyabano popsicles next.

Homemade Avocado Ice Cream

3. Mix them up. Chopping the fruits and mixing them unto her favorite yoghurt or rolled oats. 

4. Sneak in the veggies. We usually mince the veggies and greens and saute them with a little bit of diced chicken or ground meat. Egg omelets and fritatas are also a fun way to sneak in your veggies.

Eggs + Spinach

5. Serve fruits during pretend plays. Just this morning, I successfully got her to eat 10 pcs of grapes and a big banana by encouraging her to feed these fruits to her stuffed toys with whom she was throwing a birthday party for. Each time she'd attempt to feed the toys, she take a bite herself. In no time, she got to finish the fruits that I served to her. 

She really likes feeding this monkey!

6. Bring color to your menu. In our case, we always try to put a variety of colors into our sauteed veggie dish so we can provide some distraction to our picky customer. For example there would be: red (bell peppers), orange (carrots), green (brocolli, cabbage or sayote) and yellow (sweet corn). She always has great fun identifying all the colors she sees on her plate.

7. Be consistent with the taste. We don't play with the taste when it came to Maia's food. We always try to replicate the taste of every dish that we know she's inclined to eat more of. We don't include vegetables that would alter the taste so we can always get her excited when we tell her what's on the menu for the day.

8. Go for natural. When we were introducing Maia to solids, we never seasoned her food. She used to favor the taste of carrots and brocolli then so to improve the taste I'd just saute white onions before adding in the minced veggies to make it sweeter and give make it more flavorful.

9. Keep a schedule. We discovered that Maia is hungriest at around 8, 11/12, 4 so we serve her breakfast, lunch and dinner around that time. Even on weekends or when we're out, we try to stick to that so we won't mess up her appetite. We usually just give her crackers or one or two pieces of cookies and a bottle of yakult or yoghurt drink for snacks.

So far, these are the tricks that got us through. This is a continuing struggle for us but I'm just really happy that she's gaining weight and I could see that she's been eating more. Some days when our convincing powers won't work, I try to supplement her meals with one malunggay capsule a day. I break the cap and mix the contents into a bottle a yakult. Fortunately for me she's never rejected my concoction and would sometimes even remind me when I forget to add the malunggay to her yakult. :)

And when all else fails, I just always remind her that fruits and veggies will keep the big C away.