Fish Pot Dinner

After accumulating lots of fish bone from my wet market buys, I made a concentrated fish soup base and cooked the snapper fillets in a broth thicken by some cornflour [I try to avoid cream]. Top it up with ready made puff pastry, and it became our easy after-swim-dinner. 

Look Who Just Moved In!

What are the chances of our immediate neighbors becoming our good friends? Pretty high. But what are the chances of our good friends becoming our immediate neighbors? Pretty rare I suppose. 

We think it is a great blessing for our good friends to move right next to us...and our kids are especially excited about it. Almost every morning, they are hollering at the top of their voice for Jojo to come and play with them. And it's great, to go for our evening runs together, head down to the pool, hit the gym, as well as head to our favorite eateries. 

And best of all to be able to watch out for one another and pray for one another. 

Samuel and his Reading

This little boy is jumping around most of our lessons and he runs his own schedule and often gets a good scolding from mommy...but boy, can this little boy read. I can only conclude that he has a natural infinity towards languages. Just yesterday, he was peering over someone's shoulders as the person was reading the papers and he read, " Special School for D.... kids planned". Everything was pristinely pronounced. Except for the "D" word - Dyslexia. If he could read that, I think I would just about flip backwards twice over. That's our Sammy - a special boy in his own right.

He would easily put my secondary students to shame [to any ex students who are reading this] because he almost always pronounces his consonants 'd' and 't' and 'k'. And it is quite fascinating to hear each word so well pronounced by a three year old without any nagging. 

Just today at the pool, he saw the word and said 'GYM" and he went on to read the rest of the directory.

I think for Sammy, its perhaps time for us to proceed to spelling and more advanced reading. This boy has got mommy's genes:)) Haha...right, Daddy?

What We have Been Up to...

Well...it has been a while and life has rolled on with much things. We have had many stay over visitors, my kids have been playing and playing and playing. Hahaha....but they have been learning and learning too.

With our learning from Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading, I also bought a Reading Eggs Subscription for Sarah and Samuel [www.readingeggs.com.au]. I had an added motivation because the annual subscription was going at a 75% discount. It's repetitive but I think at this stage, repetition is a good form of discipline for my very active kiddos. And I especially like the printouts accompanying each letter. Because I hope for Sarah at least to practice writing her letters consistently. She likes it very much. Samuel...well, he is interesting [next entry]. 

Since Sarah practiced writing her numbers, it has freed her to do her counting exercises. And I am glad to see her making advances in this area. The pages in her colorful activity maths book were done all by herself. Momma just sat there and reminded her to check her work.