Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Eating Healthy

Reese was fully on breast milk for 6 months. I introduced organic cereal and foods after that. I have always ensured that Reese's food is healthy and nutritious. After his 1st birthday, he started to consume some table food. Reese was a fussy eater and only took western food until the age of 2+ was he willing to eat Chinese food! 

Then I started to slack.... between age 4 and 5, Reese took a lot of fast food and outside food like McDonalds and noodles from hawker stalls. I felt bad and started to reduce outside food. Reese has learned to take more vegetables. I am happy. Thank God he loves fruits. From young he would take a lot of fruits daily. Since last year, I started making juices for the whole family and try to get them to take nuts, seeds and even green juice. Hopefully we will continue to do so! Reese has been healthy and has not fallen sick for the past year.... we do not take supplements and prefer getting them from our food. :)

Here are some of the regular juices and food Reese takes:

1 Dragon fruit, 1big banana, 6 strawberries, 2-3 tablespoons of yogurt, 1 cup of milk, 1 teaspoon of chia seed per glass. Blend everything together and yields 3 glasses of smoothie. 

 2 Pomegranate, 3 oranges, 1 grapefruit, 2 tangerines, 3 carrots. Juice them.

This is a great combination and it taste quite good. Beetroot, strawberries, oranges and carrots. :)

 
Breakfast - Dragon fruit, grapes, walnuts, flax seed and strawberry yogurt

This is also a great combination, grapes, strawberries, banana and blueberry yogurt. Do add chia seeds and some nuts.

Reese do not snack on biscuits or junk food, I always pack fruits for snacks. Grapes and banana are great when you are outside.

Stews are great because it has lots of vegetables! :) This is lamb stew with brown rice. Very easy to make. You need lamb cubes, vegetables of your choice, beef/chicken stock, onions and garlic, bacon, thyme and bay leaves and salt and pepper to taste. Coat lamb cubes in with flour and lightly brown them, fry bacon until crisp, fry onions and garlic. Put meat, onion and garlic into stock and cook for an hour then add vegetables and herbs and cook for another 40 minutes or until vegetables are soft.

Brown rice porridge. Chicken stock, carrots, potatoes, onions, leeks and mince pork/chicken (sometimes I will use roasted pork. It taste even better!). So simple and healthy. Reese doesn't like to take soup and this is one way to get him to take some!

Healthy muffins, I used unbleached flour, less brown sugar and butter. My recipe for banana muffins: 3 ripe bananas, 1 egg, two 1inch cube butter (melted), 1 teaspoon vanilla essence, 1.5 cups flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1 cup milk, a little less than half cup brown sugar. Mix mashed bananas, egg, butter, vanilla essence and milk together. Mix all dried ingredients together and gradually mixed it with the wet ingredients. Then put the mixture into the baking tray and bake it for 15 to 20 minutes at 190 degrees. You can add some nuts and chia/flax seeds.... 


**It is important to have a juicer and blender that are easy to clean. It motivates you to juice or make smoothies daily! For smoothies, it takes less than 10 minutes for me to prepare and 5 minutes to wash. Juices, 10 mins to prepare and less than 10 minutes to wash. Chia seeds has no taste when added to juices or yogurt. It is a superfood bursting with nutrients. It is crunchy like kiwi fruit seeds. Do try!

I love making 1 pot meals because I can add lots of vegetables and save a lot of time and washing up too! :)


Friday, March 29, 2013

Something Artsy....

Drawings by Reese are almost exclusively posted on his FaceBook page. So for those who do not follow him on FaceBook....here are 2 drawings Reese did in January....


An imaginary mosque in Malaysia

A few days later, he drew another mosque

In December, Reese was featured in MAS's Inflight magazine Going Places. So proud of my baby!

Monday, March 25, 2013

Started Building for his Lego Project

So now that we have all the sponsored bricks nicely washed, dried, sorted out and mixing with our own Lego collection, Reese can finally start creating and building his stuff!


Lego playground

Reese is so blessed and many thanks to our organiser who suggested sponsorship from Lego. We send some photos of some amazing creation by Reese and they agreed to sponsor Reese with 'some' bricks for an upcoming project. It's a child's dream of having so many bricks to build whatever he wants! 

So my dear son started working on his first structure and after spending hours on it, he said to me.... "Mummy, it is not very nice. It is not very nice for people to see. I want to tear it down. I want to rebuild something more interesting." 



Then the hard work came.... we the adults have to take the bricks apart and sort them out again.... It is a lot of work! My fingers hurt from all the removing and it is time consuming. 


Yesterday evening, with our encouragement... he started working on another structure. We helped him with the construction like making sure each brick is properly jointed, getting parts for him... he was the boss instructing us what to do and boy... was he bossy and a perfectionist! What you see here is only 50% complete according to little boss!




Thursday, March 21, 2013

Another Step Closer....

We are another step closer to fulfil Reese 's dream! Today we got a big box of building bricks sponsored by Lego. The box weights a few Kgs.... It is a lot of Lego bricks! It took us more than an hour, 4 adults and 1 child to roughly sort them out based on colours. I have never had this much Lego in my whole life! :)

These Lego bricks will be used for a project Reese is working. Stay tuned...




Very generous of Lego Malaysia to sponsor Reese

Mummy, I am rich with Lego bricks!

Reese's grandparents from Penang are here with us and everyone chip in to help sort the bricks... everyone was excited.

One happy boy.... he gets to keep the bricks too!




This morning started washing the bricks and more sorting... going to take a few hours to do this!

Podcast on Homeschooling

If you missed the episode on Homeschooling on BFM89.9, here is the podcast:

http://www.businesscircle.com.my/tag/hear-now/


After listening to the episode, I was a little disappointed because the correspondence for the show has linked learning at learning centres as a form of homeschooling. It is not. Homeschooling is learning at home with parents taking charge of their children's education.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Tomorrow on BFM 89.9 Radio


Hello everyone....

You will get a glimpse of Reese's life and other homeschoolers/unschoolers tomorrow at 7.30pm on BFM 89.9 radio when Hear&Now in Malaysia brings you Economic Transformation Programme Episode 5 on the topic of Homeschooling in Malaysia. So remember to tune in!


The crew spent 2 half days with us following us around and observed what we did for our homeschooling. We had fun doing the recording. :)

Update

Here is the podcast:
http://www.businesscircle.com.my/homeschooling/

** Not exactly happy that they link kids going to learning centres as homeschooling. It is far from it! Homeschooling kids are not introverted either..... *sigh*

Friday, March 15, 2013

Ipoh and Gua Tempurung

Last Sunday we went to Ipoh, Perak for a short weekend getaway. We stayed a night and the following day we went caving...sort of. :) There is nothing much to do in Ipoh except visiting the many cave temples and eat. We went to the most famous one. Kek Lok Tong. 

Mummy.... I love the caves!


 Very scenic and peaceful here

Aren't this pair of chickens beautiful? People must be thinking that we were mad...snapping pictures of chickens...hahaha... city folks...can't help it.

 They have a huge lily pond and we rarely get to see them in the city. Beautiful rock formation throughout the cave.

After that we went to have yummy food around Ipoh and then checked into our hotel in town. Spent the rest of the day watching discovery channel! It was extremely hot and humid. At night we went for the famous chicken and bean sprout noodles. Walked around the neighbouring area and back to the hotel and watched another documentary. Yeah....boring.... but our main purpose of going to Ipoh was for food and Gua Tempurung. The next day, we had tim sum and then drove to Gua Tempurung. We reached the place around 9.15am and it was deserted. There are four levels of caving. The first 2 levels are dry tours and the last two levels are wet and challenging tours. We wanted to go up to Level 2 but was told that you have to have a minimum of 5 adults for the tour to happen! So we were told to wait till about 10am. At the end, there weren't enough people and one of the guide was kind enough to take us along (he had to collect rubbish and do some cleaning of the cave) and guided us to about level 1 and the rest of level 2 we were free to walk on our own. We were all alone at level two! :) The cave is huge and definitely worth a visit. It takes an hour and a half to go all the way up which they called Top of the World. Beautiful stalagmite and stalactites formation can be seen. Breathtaking! In total we climbed over 600 steps to get to the top. 

Outside of Gua Tempurung

Not sure what this is

Caterpillar?

The river flowing below the cave


 Some information for those planning to go!








Thursday, March 14, 2013

What if Reese is not homeschooled?

A lot will go wrong. My son will not survive in a rote learning environment. He will eventually hate learning. He will not have time to play to his heart's content and indulge in his passion for drawing. There will be constant shouting and arguing between us to get his homework done. I will probably get constant calls from his teachers at school for discipline issues (Reese can't sit still and doesn't take instructions well). Reese will eventually succumb to the pressure and constant scolding. He will become another person. This is not imagined. It is very real. I know my son. 

Every child is different and honestly schools do not have the capacity to cater to every child's learning needs, especially special needs children(Gifted children of varying degrees are considered special needs children)... It is so sad to see many children went through the system and became different after having to endure a flip-flop system, pressure, bullying and etc for years. Most parents do not have a choice but to send their children to public schools. I am grateful that I am able to homeschool Reese. I am grateful that I know enough to guide him in his studies. I pray Reese will turn out alright and be a God fearing person, able to contribute to society, have a meaningful and happy life.

Having homeschooled Reese for a few years now, I must say homeschooling is not for everyone. One has to be 101% committed in seeing it through. Below are some random thoughts of what being committed means...

You have to learn to be resourceful from knowing where to get hard to find educational supplies to hunting down the right person/organisation to organise field trips!

You have to be sociable. Network with other homeschooling parents so that your child will have friends and playdates.

Constantly be up to date with the latest in education, be an internet expert.... know how to source for good educational YouTube videos, reliable online learning resources, how to do in depth search, find the best Apps, learn to use torrents (saves lots of money) and the list goes on......

Be positive at all times... oh well, most of the time! :)

Be a jack of all trades! ( I am a driver, maid, cook, teacher, mother, carpenter, designer, tour guide, nurse, nutritionist and etc.....

Be thick skin and at times kiasu for various reasons. Hehehehe.....

Be curious and adventurous - have been living a sedentary lifestyle for a long time and now because of Reese, we are beginning to venture out of the city more... just recently we went to Kuala Selangor to watch fireflies and last week we went to Gua Tempurung (caving)... we are looking forward to the next adventure...

Be a risk taker! No guarantees that Reese would turn out ok homeschooling but we are taking the risk

Be humble and learn together with your child

Be super patient and try not to lose your sanity. :)

Trust in your child to lead in his/her learning

Have lots of fun as a family. If your spouse is not actively involved in homeschooling your child, make sure you involved him in activities as and when possible.

Learn to get the best deals from books to enrichment activities to save money..... homeschooling can be quite expensive depending on your expectation and your child's needs.

Be good at reading maps and using GPS.... at least for me it is a must. We frequently go to unknown places for field trips.

Learning from other families is encouraged but DO NOT COMPARE. Every family is different, every child's learning style is different....

mmmm.... for now... that is all..... too early to to think! :)