Celeste & Cyrus Ng

Celeste can officially read Peter & Jane series book 1a & 1b!!! Been reading to her for the longest time ever... Always testing her... She usually manages to "read" 1a by memorizing... But recently, she read Mrs Wishy Washy out of the blue to me and So i thought of testing her #1b. Turns out that she can really read #1b not through memorization! Going to start on #2a soon...
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Recently, Daddy and I started to teach Celeste some simple addition. Daddy made use of the chips he had and Celeste loves them. She builds towers with them and reinforces her counting using them as well. Initially, when we taught her to add and to write them down, Celeste would write the numbers and add dots below. I thought she was being playful. Why was she decorating her numbers?! Then she told me that "Daisy also do this". When I tried to probe further, she couldn't tell me why Daisy put dots below. So I tried to correct her and told her to just write the numbers and use the chips to help her get the answer.

Interestingly, just yesterday, we were at the topic of addition again. This time, she wrote a lot of questions for me. She likes to be the teacher. And I found out why she was drawing the dots! They were not decoration like I initially thought! She draws the exact number of dots, corresponding to the number she writes! So the dots were acutually for her to add! Interesting!! On hindsight, luckily I didn't scold her for being mischievous. Hehe.

Anyway, I have been letting Celeste do some assessment books. Alright.. I'm kiasu. I just thought it's good for her to do some seat work. Train her for the future schooling days. Anyway, she is good with Math and English (phonics). She can do most, if not all, of the Math Nursery assessment books with ease. I just need to read to her and explain to her certain terms like (Match the picture.. what it means by match) and she can do it all by herself!

The other day, I found out that when I ask her what letter does Cat begin with, she knows it as well! Or any other random words that I ask her. She is also able to TRY to decipher a word phonetically, like CAT = C is "ker", A is "air" and T is "ter". She now can read the -at family words by using phonics. Took her SO long to read this family of words.

Chinese wise, still struggling with the few words I taught her. Don't know what she learned in school. She doesn't seem to recognise many words but speech wise, she attempts to speak to Grandpa in full Mandarin. Very worth commending. Nowadays, we also try to speak proper Mandarin to her. I really hope she doesn't end up not liking Chinese because there is so little exposure to her at home.

There's actually a lot of things to blog about funny Celeste. But by the time I have time to switch on the PC, I forget what I want to blog about.

Some random stuff that I didn't forget:

• One fine day, we were at Sun Plaza for lunch. Our playful Celeste, or maybe should not call her playful, should call her complacent Celeste, decided that she did not need to hold our hands while taking the escalator. It happened that that day, she was wearing her pretty pair of heels (she's very into "tap tap"shoes nowadays). Daddy was initially holding her hand but stupidly acceded to her request of not holding hands while taking the escalator. And dunno what happened, in a blink of an eye, When it was time to get on the escalator, one of her feet was on the escalator, the other foot was still on the landing. I quickly grabbed her hand. Then, things happened so quickly, the next second, she did a SPILT on the escalator with the escalator still moving. Daddy had already gone down the escalator. Mummy was behind her, still holding on to her hand and the escalator continued to go down down down down. Saw that her leg was scratched by the escalator. Really don't know what to do! In the end, let go of her hand and she travelled down in a split for a few seconds before Daddy managed to rescue her. Of course, Daddy got a huge scolding from Mummy and Celeste wasn't spared as well. After that incident, Celeste does not dare to take escalator anymore. Hah... as in.. she has a bit of phobia, if only one of us is holding her hand, she don't dare to make the first step on the escalator. Need both of us to hold her hands and she will jump on the escalator again.
  
  
• During the June hols, we didn't do much. But the trip to Sentosa - Underwater World was most memorable. It was Celeste's 2nd time to Underwater World. The first, she was still a baby in the stroller.. didn't understand much. This time, she loved the dolphin show and the tunnel in Underwater World. All the photos we took were so beautiful coz she was really very happy to see and experience something new! :)
  
  
• The things that Celeste talks about is really funny. Cannot remember any of them now but she shows that she can be quite matured when talking. Probably learned a lot from us.
  
  
• Celeste's behaviour is becoming more and more like Mummy. Kinda spoilt at times. Same kind of "smelly face" when her mood is bad. When she is unhappy, everything is "NO"! Haha.. just like Mummy. I cannot help but laugh when I see her act up like me sometimes. Really funny. :D
  
  
• Celeste loves to sing. Nowadays, she's composing her own songs. Using a familiar tune, she constructs the words herself. Very interesting. Heard her "I love Cookie"song, Ï love Lollipop song and just minutes ago, she was singing "Don't touch Dettol" song to Grandma while bathing. lol. She's so cute!

Celeste suddenly wanted to take photos with the lion again (she took quite a few the very first time we saw it) and was happily posing for me.

Anyway, we had a nice time in the library, I read to her in the comfort of the aircon in the library. Maybe we should spend more time there :p Reading at home can be rather distracting sometimes.

Celeste has no problem reading all these words! These are words she asked me to write down for her. :)

Mummy hasn't been reading a lot to Celeste. Very guilty. I try to read to her when I remember and have the energy. No daily reading but thankfully, Celeste still enjoys sitting down with me and listening to me everytime I tell her to bring a book for me to read out loud to her.