2011 Chinese New Year

The four days of Chinese New Year has passed quickly this year, although the fortunate thing about this year is that we get an exceptional long weekend. Caden and Ethan had more motivation to bai nian this year as they knew the concept of money, ie, the money can be used to pay for their favorite toys. It was a fairly tiring weekend for us as we spent a lot of time travelling on the road and the weather has become hotter these days (we missed all the rainy cool nights).

On day 5 of CNY, we visited the River Hongbao at Marina, PaPa is usually keen to bring the kids down to river hongbao and this is our 3rd consecutive year going together. There were not many activities for the children so it was a quick touch and go viewing on our part.

The Year of Rabbit

With the God of Wealth (so hopefully we get lots of windfall this year!)

Ethan's chinese zodiac sign

Caden's chinese zodiac sign

The most impressive display on the event

Discipline

I have started Caden on daily homework since last year and has further enhanced by instilling responsibility on his part. I gave Caden a little diary which will outline what he is suppose to complete each day and we will check his work once we are back in the night.

He has been disciplined enough to regurgitate his tasks whenever I rang him near 3plus in the afternoon to find out if he knows what he needs to do (which shows that he did check his little diary). So far my ah lou told me that he has completed his work most of the times.

We noticed that Caden thrives on our attention when he does his homework. So lately I have modified his homework regime to have his father to sit through some exercises with him on some nights and it works quite well. These days, as we kept away his favorite toys, he will give his father a call in the late afternoon to ask to get them when he finished his assignments.

This is what he did last night on his english assignment with his Dad (the drawings are done by him as he learnt the prepositions):


While we are now fairly comfortable with Caden's progression, we will be starting to place our focus on Ethan once he turns 4 end of this year..

Caden is on 2 wheels

Finally Caden is able to cast away his back wheels and cycle on 2 wheels before he turns 6 this year. Both Caden and Ethan get to cycle fairly often these days in the afternoons when grandma brings them down for a treat after homework is done. They are so into cycling that they have also asked us to bring them down for a ride on weekends when we are at home..