This year marks the 3rd year since Wen Jia was born. She has been doing wonderfully in terms of physical and intelligence growth.
Physically she is a healthy, tall girl with improved physical strength - a natural process of growth. Like most of the grown up kids, she doesn't like to eat vege. We often mixed meat or fish with finely cut vege so that she could get a better combination of nutrients as much as possible.
She likes most types of food especially oranges, and grapes. Her taste on fruits has changed a lot. Her old time favourites such as banana, papaya, and apple have now become part of the list of food that she will avoid. Well, I forgot to mention that she likes pineapple - the one cooked together with pork rib, or even in pineapple fried rice.
In terms of learning and games, she has started to pick up interest in puzzle. We started with some simple puzzles (the 12 pieces one) and slowly moved to 18 pieces and 24 pieces. She still need some guidance when come to the more complex one but overall it was a good start. My friend in Singapore was right, always start with some character that she likes the most and she will slowly build interest in whichever games associate to those characters. In Wen Jia's case, she likes the Mickey & Minnie, and also the Disney Princess puzzles the most.
On flash card learning, it has been reduced significantly. I have started to show more on the computer than the hand-made ones. Also, she has started to explore more online learning such as the ones in sesame street, Nick Jr, etc. The important part is, I selected the games for her to suit her age and development.
She started rhythmic gymnastics (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythmic_gymnastics) class early this year. Possibly due to her yong age, the results have not been significant. Anyway, as our objective wasn't for her to be a gymnast or the sort, it is fine for her to play and have fun in the class once a week.
She joined a mandarin word card lesson under a "Teacher Yap's" program. It has been very good that she managed to pick up 20 over charcters over a period of 1 month but she has lost interest in the class soon after her 3rd month. Our observation (having personally sit in the centre to wait for Wen Jia to finish her class) was that the teaching quality has deteriorated so much so until her actual time spent in the lesson was merely 20 minutes out of 1.5 hours in the centre. We stopped the lesson for a while and would decide in next year if she should continue.
I started Hooked on Phonics program with her since early this year after been introduced to this material by a friend in Singapore. She has just completed Pre-K Level 1. A bit slow but I think it was partly my fault for not been able to spend more time more frequently with her on the lesson. Overall it was a fun program to follow, and I took it as an oppotunity to foster bonding with my girl.
Wen Jia will be in Pre-Kindy when the school opens next year. Seriously we will have to observe more on her progress and most importantly to understand more about what is going on in the kindergarten. It is really not about how good she can cope with her homework but it is very much on how well she enjoys a new learning milestone.
