Kids played in there from 10am to 3pm when they were simply too hyper (too tired) and cranky, so I brought them out to the fountain where we waited for dh to end classes at 4pm. Phew, i was soooo exhausted. It was the first time I ever had to survive being out with kids for such a long time, alone. In Singapore, usually I'd be with mom, sis, dh or maid. Or another friend and her kids. Or, if I was alone with them, I could drive home anytime. Don't need to spend whole day out. We left home at 8am somemore. Our house is rather far from downtown SLC.

Upside of the day was the Kindermusik lesson at 11am. They offer Kindermusik within the center for 2 groups of kids, newborn to 1.5yo and 1.5yo to 3. So ds2 got to attend, but there wasn't a class for dw=s1. The good thing was, I registered ds2 for the class, and I couldn't let ds1 let ard outside the room amok, so i asked if ds1 can sit behind the room and do his reading or something quietly. The tr said there was no problem with her if he joined in... so that worked out fine! ds1 enjoyed the session more than ds2 actually. haha.

This is another cheap thing here. I have learnt not to buy anything that is ex here, at least to avoid it as much as possible. Eg electronics. A simple thermal air pot cost US$50 whereas it can be bought at S$19 in Singapore. But things that are cheaper, I can just whack... ok, at least, i feel happier to spend this money.

I had brought ds1 with Mag and her son Clarence to Kindermusik at Tanglin Mall when they were 2? for a trial class and it cost us S$25. A whole semester of lessons there with materials included cost S$465. 16 lessons in all. Here, members of Discovery need to pay only US$150 for all the lessons and materials. Exactly the same curriculum and materials. And the tr:student ratio is higher here. There is only 1 other kid besides ds2, and 2 trs were present. So minus the expensive instrument, activity books, story books and bag (materials), each lesson only cost me US$5? Of course I signed up lah.

So now every Mon we will go. Oh, and ds1 gets to sit in and participate for free. Great arrangement!

Ok, then for the things I do at home... Must share more, since I get a lot of tips and ideas from other mom's blogs too. :-) Thanks to them, and the Internet too. And chengwai, for your URLs. ok, I wish i can paste the URLs here too, but i kind of printed out the materials then did not bookmark them. What i did though, was to Google the stuff I want to do. So I will indicate the keywords I used if you want to do this too.

My sons love to doodle and paint, like all kids this age. So far, I have done nothing structured with them, just taking out the paints and paper and do free play. Thought it was time to have some structure, so I researched some sites.

I started with Renoir and Monet. They're impressionistic artists, very good for kids. haha. So I googled these names and added "lesson plan" as additional keywords. So I printed out some famous works and showed ds1. We discussed the paintings, feelings and so on. Then I highlighted some special features (learnt from the site, I'd never done well in art so this is all new to me) abt the artist's technique.

Then this site had printable template for the kids to paint on. And we did one Monet and one Renoir work. After that, ds1 could do his own Impressionism. :-) It turned out very ugly actually, and he painted so thick you can't see the girl's features anymore, I had to draw them in. :-) But nvm, just an introduction to some artists and he learnt that to make drawings more realistic, he has to add shadows. That's what he pointed out when he saw the woman with the parasol having a long shadow. So I said that makes the painting look more real.

I will do Bubble art next, looks quite fun. But I need to get some more cheap paint. The paint that was given to them ran out already.