Handmade Cards From Alycia

Alycia made this card, which is a Christmas Wish List card. For whom the card goes to, I dont' know la. She just loves making cards and bookmarks lately.  The love for art is in her blood and she inherited it from daddy who is a very artistic person who can draw very well too.

The picture of the girl in a car was from a plastic stamp set (in black ink) which grandma bought for her from Hong Kong. It comes with a set of colorful cards and ink. She colored the stamped picture and added dots as snow with a while color pencil, drew the X'mas tree, wrote the words Christmas Car and her Christmas List.  She has improved loads in her coloring ever since she attended art class.  I think it's a very beautiful card from a soon-to-be 9 year old girl, don't you agree? :)

Music To My Ears

What's music to my ears is when my daughters perform well in their exams.  Today was by far one of the best days for me when Alycia told me that her position is 4th in class. I really did not expect this as I think her marks for several test papers have gone down.  But I must say that the test papers were very hard for most of the subjects and I guess most of the students did not get 90% and above, so Alycia stood a good chance in climbing up the numbers in the class position.  Her position in the entire standard improved by the leaps and bounds too.  I am really happy for her.  I think I worked harder than she did.  I think she could have done much better if she had been more careful. Yup, this girl is an extremely careless girl and so is Sherilyn.   Despite the hubs and I being yellow bananas and cannot help her in her subjects where Chinese language is used, Alycia can still perform satisfactorily is already an achievement.  I am not expecting a position of top 5 from the top in class as I know her capabilities and limitation in her Chinese language. Yet she proved me wrong.

Alycia and Sherilyn are as cool as cucumbers.  Had I not been such a tiger mum to them, I know they would be like a lalang (wild grass) and would not even bother to do any revision.  The moment I turn my back on them, I am rest assured that they would be up to something, other than poring into their school books. 

It looks like Alycia now stands a chance to go to the top class next year.  She was streamed to the 2nd best class this year.  With this position, I think she would be moved to the cream class and I am hoping that this will NOT happen. I know I will be 100% more stressed up if she's in the cream class and I do not want this kind of stress to plague my life and that of Alycia's.  2nd best class is good enough for me and tough enough for her. Now, I am curious to know what position Sherilyn is placed in her class.  I am not placing too high a hope on this fella.

Alycia's Officially A School Prefect!

Alycia passed her 3-month probationary period and was accepted on the school prefectorial board last week. She was given just 2 days' notice to buy the prefect uniform, which is a blue top and dark blue skirt with black socks and black shoes!  Eeeeek, looks really weird for a 9-YO girl to be donning on this uniform, especially the socks and shoes but oh well, she did not mind a wee bit.  In fact, she was really happy that she passed the probation and was in a cheery mood for a few days since the announcement.  Daddy had to rush home to bring her to Professor @ Mid Valley Megamall to get the uniforms on the same day that the teacher announced that she passed the probation and gave us like 0 notice period to buy the uniform.  Thank goodness the MIL was around and she had to spend several days removing Alycia's name badge and school badge from the existing school uniform to be sewn onto the prefect uniform.

So here she is... my precious baby in her oversized school prefect uniform on the first day of being an official school prefect. 

And do check out the princess wannabe in pink jacket - she is always seen in a different change of cardigan and jacket and prefers to hold her fanciful lunch bag (dangle on wrist some more, GAWD!) instead of stashing it into the school bag. What a vast difference in characters these 2 sisters have.

Alycia's Book Collection

If there's anything that can please my 8.5YO girl, it has to be books, not school books or workbooks though, but storybooks. The Geronimo Stilton fever is almost coming to a sizzling end now. Instead, Diary of A Whimpy Kid and Ronald Dahl books are slowly making their way into her book shelves.

Her latest interest is Science Spy, a kids' magazine on interesting Science topics which can be purchased from Cold Storage and other major book stores.

Alycia's Art Work #3 From Art Class

This is Alycia's art work done on her 3rd art class.  I think she has improved by leaps and bounds even after the very first art class. I am very satisfied with what she's learning from the Art teacher, money well spent!

Lunch at American Chilli's @ BSC

We celebrated Alycia's 'victory' at American Chilli's yesterday. To me getting a placement of 5/39 in Primary 2 is considered a victory. Maybe some of you will define a position of 1st, 2nd and 3rd a victory. But for me, being top 5 in class is already a big achievement for my kids as I don't have the time to do much revision with them. Being yellow bananas who are unable to assist Alycia in her Mandarin subjects, hubs and I are proud that Alycia has always been scoring 88% and above in her Chinese subjects ever since she went to Primary 1 last year.

Part of the sustenance on our table...

A platter of deep fried stuff, not my choice but hubs. Lately, I have been trying very hard to stay away from deep fried food.

Whole wheat cheese pizza...

Roast chicken salad. Didn't quite like the Chinese parsley and certain pungent-taste herbs / plants inside the salad.

Alycia was all smiles as her teachers were all full of praises for her...

And I find the beef a tad dry....


Baby digging on the chocolate brownie with ice cream...

Daddy's small reward for Alycia - 8 pieces of Leonida's supreme chocolates which cost.... check out for yourself! Of course I chose a piece of sugar-free dark chocolate, which iLike, yums!

Of Alycia And Her Progress In School

Lately, Alycia hasn't been getting enough sleep. When my mil is around, she will ensure that the 2 older girls hit the sack by 9-9:30pm. She helps me to 'force' them to bed by the stipulated curfew hour. Now that she's away in Hong Kong for a few months, the girls are like rats when the big cat is away LOL! I force them to go to bed by the curfew hour too but when I am busy with Baby, they tend to take advantage of the situation and stay up late, sometimes only going to bed at 10-10:30pm. Consequently, Alycia feels sleepy during the day. She can even fall asleep while having her lunch, in her school uniform!



On another note, yesterday we went to Alycia's school to collect her report card. I did not expect to see the kind of results in her report card. It was beyond my expectation. She did very well! Her position was among the top 10 in her class of 32 students and she scored As in all her subjects except for Pendidikan Seni and BM Lisan which she scored B. She got 99% for her BM paper. The 1% deduction was from a careless mistake - she left out the letter 'h' in the word 'tujuh'. I did not expect outstanding results from her as I must admit I did not do much revision with her. The most I did was 1-2 hours of quick revision with her on the eve of her exam. The teachers had favourable comments on her. I am so very proud of my precious baby!

Alycia's First Dictation

Alycia had her first dictation 2 weeks ago and her second dictation last week. There were around 40 words in each of the dictation. She fared quite well in both the dictations and had several careless mistakes. She has to learn not to be so excited and jump the gun and learn to think before she writes or do anything. That's how her careless mistakes always happen.




Do you think this dictation is too difficult for 5 and 6 year olds?

Alycia My Best Assistant

I rely on Alycia a lot to help me babysit Baby... coz when Baby has her jie jie inside the playpen with her, she will kuai kuai play with her toys or just let jie jie hug her, kiss her and do silly things with her. This gives me a peace of mind whilst I have my shower or dinner.

Lately, Alycia has volunteered to clear up and wipe the dining table before dinner. It's been almost a week now and she's still loving it. See how earnest Alycia is here and she's quite thorough too, wiping every part of the dining table and rinsing the table cloth several times... though the cloth was a tad too wet and there was water dripping from the floor of the kitchen to the dining area. Yesterday, Sherilyn followed suit and helped to wipe the table but after wiping the table with a wet cloth, this fler used her pants to wipe the table dry by sitting on the dining table and moving her butt on the table muahahahah!

Alycia's Sudden Love For Math

Alycia astonished me yesterday when my daughter who didn't seem to have interest in Math previously asked me to practise doing equations with her. Ever since she mastered the skill of doing mental addition about 2 months back, she's been very proud of her achievement. But yesterday, I don't know what piqued her sudden interest in Math as she kept asking me to set equations for her. First I set some additions for her, then some subtractions. She's still quite confused with her subtraction though. Sometimes she would also get confused with the plus and minus sign.

I put the bigger number in my head, then show 3 fingers... so ten plus three is..... ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen!



Busy doing her additions.



Today she asked me for more equations! Woohoo.... whenever I hear Alycia asking me to do Math with her, I tell you, that's like music to my ears! And she's getting better and better each day.

Alycia's Ting Xie

Yesterday was Alycia's first Ting Xie (spelling in Mandarin) exercise in pre-school. She told me that out of the 5 words, her teacher asked her to write out 3 and according to her, she got all 3 correct. Well if she did, I'm really proud of her coz I had only spent 2 days to drill her for her Ting Xie. Tomorrow, she's having another spelling exercise and the words are 'angry', 'upset', 'happy' and 'shy'. With constant coaching from me, Alycia is progressing pretty well in her spelling, Ting Xie and Ejaan (she's the weakest in Ejaan, must drill her in suku kata). Now, she even knows how to do mental Math (addition) up to 2-digit numbers.

Alycia And Her Abacus

When Alycia was first taught abacus in pre-school last year, she was totally lost. So was I because I was never taught abacus during my time. In Alycia's case, she had a hard time catching up as she had missed her classes almost the whole of last year when she kept falling ill every month. Thankfully she managed to catch up this year and now, she has no problem using the abacus to do her Math.

Alycia did this abacus calculation homework almost all by herself, with me guiding her when she was stuck.

Alycia Can Read

Alycia reading the words that granny is flashing to her. Read the rest of the story here.

Alycia Can Read!

Yes she can and I am so proud of my baby. Click here to read on...

Alycia Can Read Her Peter And Jane Books!

I just have to put this on record before it slips my mind again. Since yesterday, Alycia has been reading.... reading on her own that is and she's reading the Ladybird Peter and Jane series. She managed to read the entire 1A book yesterday and today.

Today, I took out the Peter and Jane 1B book and she could also read most pages in the book. This time, my mum and I were convinced that she read it through recognition of words and not through memorization. I am just so happy and proud of her achievement.


Can you believe that this book is over 30 years old? It once belonged to Raymond, my elder brother, than me and then my younger brother Roy. Now, my gals are reading it. Awesome!

Never mind about the yellow stains, the book is still in pretty good shape!

Alycia Can Shower On Her Own!

Ever since Alycia turned 3 years old, she has been quite independant and obedient, unlike Sherilyn who is the polar opposite of her sister. Seeing that Alycia can take instructions fairly well, I taught her to shower herself today. I told her her to scrub her hair, armpits, feet, in between of all her toes and other parts of her body and she did quite well. She can also brush her teeth on her own, wash her face and wipe herself dry all on her own. Very soon, she will be able to shower herself, with me supervising her outside the bathroom. It will definitely be slower if she showers herself and I won't be able to allow her to shower on her own if we are in a hurry to go out.

Colorful Personality

These are Alycia's 'art work'. I find that Alycia loves to color her pictures with many colors. Any object that she colors will be multi-colored - a person's face, clothes, an animal, a fruit, etc. She never sticks to just one color or a few colors but she uses a multitude of colors. Does that mean she has a very colorful and vibrant personality and likes to see things colorful?

Sherilyn is quite the opposite of Alycia. There was a period of time when she only likes to use pencil (black), pen or black color pencil to color her drawings. After some time, I think Alycia cheh cheh's colorful style sort of rubbed off on her and now, she too is beginning to color her objects with multi colors.

Alycia Can Button Up

Alycia has finally learnt to button up and unbutton her clothes. She has been trying hard for days and finally, managed to wear her pre-school uniform herself 2 weeks ago.


Look how intent she is here trying her best to put the button through the tiny button hole, with furrowed eyebrows and scrunched up lips.

And how happy she is with her achievement.

Alycia Can Write Her Name

Finally Alycia can spell and write her own name but she seems to write the letter 'c' and 'a' the other way round. She also writes the number 8 in a very funny way, i.e. first she draws a circle, then she draws a bigger circle right below the smaller circle. No matter how many times I have held her hand to guide her to write it the correct way, she would still revert back to her own way of writing it. However, yesterday she finally managed to write the number 8 correctly, in the correct order of stroke. Alycia has been practising her writing skills everyday, on her own without being told. I was overjoyed when she ran to me yesterday and said "mummy, I can write 8 already!" So practice indeed makes perfect!


Look at the letter 'c' and 'a' - they are written 'terbalik' and I have to hold her hand to write them in the correct way.

Alycia Can Finally Write

Yes she can and I am so proud of her. During my mum's 10-day stay with me, she has been coaching Alycia with her writing for 1-2 hours everyday and now, she can finally write all the numbers from 0 to 10. She can also write her own name, though at times the letter 'c' will be written the other way round. Anyway, it's already a big achievement for her since she had missed attending pre-school for more than half a year last year.



Notice the remarks in red from her class teacher?