Honey4Boyz

"A home entertainment during the Sept/Oct forest-fire haze." The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the DESERT shall rejoice, and blossom as the ROSE (Isaiah 35:1). (esor tresed) A grass family - very useful as tea, soup, curries. Its oil can repel mossies and attract honeybees.  (ssargnomel) Find the name of the 'lookalike' Christmas Star that led the Magi to baby Jesus. (mehelhteb fo rats)  From time immemorial, many civilisations looked for silkworms. Where do you think they'll find them? (sevael yrreblum) "I belong to the Witch Hazel family'. "Lookout!" I have many little fuschia hanging baskets over me. Botanists call me loropetalum chinense var. rubrum. A dog sheds its hair. But this shedding falls right into our garden. In ancient time, they even used it as clothing. What's Cookie favourite pastime when it's bored? Look deeper, but make sure you...

While I was writing this post, my hubby stopped by and wanted to talk. I answered him briefly, so I could get on with my writing. Ticking my to-do list is more important than being with someone. Indeed 'being' is much harder than 'doing'. Even at home, there's a never ending list of things to do with no sense of completion. I walk around sometimes like there's something I forget to do.  Whether in schools or homeschooling, the rat race is there. We're encouraged to pack our life full of activities and maximise our learning experience. At work, we have to look productive and take on more responsibilities. We live as if there's nothing wrong with this system. We call it 'progression'. If there's nothing wrong, why are we so perplexed by the flood of bad news, why are so many people unhappy? Why are so many on medication to control stress, depression?  Slowing down is radical in this day. Learning to let go doing all things is just as r...

There're 2 parts to the science activities - the water experiments facilitated by Jin and Mind Challenge games with daddy. I'd let the pictures speak for themselves..... H2O EXPERIMENTS MIND CHALLENGE     "LUNG DAM"

What better way to spend the last day of school than taking a day away doing something different! For us, we organised our own Science party. We have loads of fun and play with our friends and 16 students from a Myanmar learning centre. Even before the party, we prepped the kids for the D-day. The Myanmar students prepared for their performances and posters on their homeland. My boys planned the experiments and science activities with their daddy. It surely felt good that mummy could delegate all the 'work' and start to fret as the Day got closer..... ICE BREAKER BEFORE 'Ice-Breaker Games' they were sitting together in their own groups.... most of them were very shy cos they're really not used to mixing around in this manner. "Rock Paper Scissors Ice-Breaker" Even a simple, simple game like this could go beyond language and culture and bring all these kids from different backgrounds together. I've prepared spaghetti bolognese and s...

There're so many creative things you can do with children, and the list is never exhaustive. We did a lot of projects together this school holidays, mostly with resources from our backyard. There's not much grass left on our garden, more like a weed jungle! We even started a project to identify the names of the weeds. The weeds also have their roles in the eco-system, so perhaps we should accept them as part of our garden plants?  A few weeks before Christmas, the pine cones from our neighbour's tree started to fall in dozens every day. It has a very unique durian-like structure and we still didn't know the specie name yet! We've so much fun collecting them, in hundreds and hundreds.... ...until we must think of something to do with them.... We put a hook on each of these cones and the boys made their imaginary creatures with them. ...like owls... caterpillars, porcupine, bees, UFOs, monsters, etc etc ... we hung some of the cone...