Tell the Time with Busy Spider

A nice Eric Carle book that talks about a spider who focused on building her web from morning to night despite distractions from friends like the pig, cow, dog and cat who invited her to play with them. A decent book to teach about focus and persistence, though I think the book was designed to teach the concept of time. David is usually the one who picks this book and read to Thaleia.
On Saturday morning, we actually spotted a spider in the room and it looks exactly like the one on the book!







Eight legs in full view!

Spelling T-H-A-L-E-I-A

Thought Little T should recognize all the alphabets that form her name! Inspired by ideas from the creative mummy at her blog Counting Coconuts, I decided to do a “I Spy” bottle for that purpose. Collected some nice plastic bottles from the hotel ..nice size, has a blueish tint to it and a nice pink cap! Bought the beads from Gift-A-Name, filled the bottle with red beans and…we got a nice little ' I Spy" bottle cum shaker!


Gonna put this in the car for short ride entertainment..

Ring around a Row-sy

This Educo "Ring around the Row-sy" Bead Maze is one of the toy which outlast the rests. Made of solid wood and sturdy wires, Thaleia has been playing with it since she was 8 months old. It's nice to see how she works her little fingers and adjust the position of the maze to suit her vision of focus.

She can handle the "n" curves for now. The "S" curves are a little tricky and need more practise. Apparently this maze teaches the concept of inside and outside and well, the concept of "around". Was very very tempted to buy a bigger version at one stage but resisted in view of space & storage constraints.

The Hour Before School

Finally she is smiling in the mornings before school....

Starting Childcare..

Thaleia started childcare on 1 June, a wednesday. That week was considerably the most difficult periods of transition we've faced so far.

I remembered a year ago in April when we experienced a first change of routine where we started to place her with Anna in the mornings (where previously she was placed with her granny in the morning). As a 13th month old baby then, she could already sense the shakeup in her routine and would cry very loudly when we hand her over to Anna.

This time round, at 26th month old, not only does she cry, she articulates her anxiety clearer, which makes it very tough for mummy to play the baddie. She will put her hands to her chest and say "scared go"the moment when we dress her up in the uniform, cling-ed tightly to us when the car reaches the school and then burst into tears when we hand her over her teacher.

But well...it is a transition Thaleia and us will have to face some point in time. In future, there will be more schooling moments where Granny, Mummy and Daddy and Auntie Anna will not be around her but she'll have the pleasure of learning from her teachers and playing with her friends. For now, I'm just praying this transition period will not last too long and hopefully she can start looking forward to school.