I'm a full-time mummy

I have been cutting down on doing product reviews ever since our 3rd kiddo came along in end of Sept 2013. I do still accept review pitches but only when time permits and if it is something that I can see it being useful and beneficial to our family. Also, as busy as I am with 3 kiddos, home cooking, taking care of hubby's administration site of the business and swamped up with managing my FB page and blog, I just can't say no to reviewing good books! Reading is my passion and coupled with books that are of parenting, children, family or religion or educational genre, all the more I gotta say yes!

Title: New Old-Fashioned Parenting: A Guide to Help You Find the Balance Between Traditional and Modern Parenting
Author: Liat Hughes Joshi
Publisher: Vie (February 12, 2015)
ISBN: 978-1849536721
Paperback: 255 pages

Description from the product page:

"There's been a revolution in the family; it's now all about the kids. We've moved on from children being 'seen and not heard', but we're now plagued with the worry of ending up with 'that child' - the one who's running amok and is ill-prepared for life. This book combines contemporary and traditional childrearing methods, bringing fresh thinking to some of the essential parenting issues of our time:

In this manifesto of new old-fashioned parenting there's no pandering, no spoiling, and definitely no dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets at dinner time."
Firstly, I love the title. I came from a simple family, no spanking, no harsh discipline and I love it. I've always tried my best to emulate my parent's parenting style and I trully believed that theirs is the old-fashioned parenting that works (Look at me! Success story hahaha!) and hopefully will be able to make use of the good ones and apply them onto our parenting style in this modern world.

Some of the tips highlighted in this book that I agree with and love:

- Rewarding your kiddos. I believed it is a good motivational tool but should not be overused that it loses its power. Not all chores to be done around the house by kiddos need to be rewarded, I let them know they should contribute and help out as a teamwork.

- Letting off steam. Yes, I shout especially when things get too overwhelming for me to handle. Yes, of course I regret that the moment it happened. We are all human. But like the book said, don't do it too often and watch out as kiddos will easily observed and replicate what and how you behave and react around them. I always make sure I apologised to our kiddos for screaming, explaining to them that mummy is sorry for shouting and scolding etc that mummy need some time off to cool down and calm down as well.

- Training up little helpers. I've read somewhere before that young children do not process negative instructions well. So I make my instruction as simple and straightforward as possible. But unlike the book, I try not to use the word 'please' so often. My personal reason for this is because I don't want to be seen asking for help too often by saying please too many times. As the parent who are most often at home with them all the time, I would want to exert my authority and for our kiddos to remember what mummy said means business.

In addition, I also remember reading somewhere that young children cannot multitasks that well, so we as parent have to keep our instructions short and sweet. Don't go telling your young child 'Go clean up your toys then pack your books into the shelf and tidy up the room'. This sample already represents 3 tasks for them to do, of course for us adults we will understand but for kiddos, we need to give them instruction one by one.

Another page worth to take note of:

About the book structure, I like the 'Common barriers to the NOFP way' section where it highlights the usual doubts and worries on any parents' minds and gives you a better perspective on how to tackle these doubts and concerns.

We practised some of the tips listed in chapter 8 - "Less is More" such as toy rotation, though I wanted to share some other tips we practised which were not listed in the chapter such as:
- Our motto when deciding whether to purchase anything - Do we want it or do we need it?

- Buying preloved items (I've bought some awesome educational stuff and toys for our kiddos this way)

- Keep gifts by relatives and friends given during Christmas or birthdays and space them out for following year/occasions

I skipped chapter 11 which touches on children of preteen age (our kiddos are all below 7 still), chapter 12 as I personally feel with the crime rates in our country now, it is really hard to let go and let our kiddos venture out on their own and chapter 13 on divorce and not being a family unit.

In summary, I would totally recommend this book for any parents wanting to work on their parenting approaches, to take the best from both traditional old-fashioned approach and the modern new style of parenting nowadays.

The book is available at all major bookstores. For international fans, you can find it at Amazon .

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a copy of the book in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I have been cutting down on doing product reviews ever since our 3rd kiddo came along in end of Sept 2013. I do still accept review pitches but only when time permits and if it is something that I can see it being useful and beneficial to our family. Also, as busy as I am with 3 kiddos, home cooking, taking care of hubby's administration site of the business and swamped up with managing my FB page and blog, I just can't say no to reviewing good books! Reading is my passion and coupled with books that are of parenting, children, family or religion or educational genre, all the more I gotta say yes!

Title: JJ's Science Adventure: Magnets
Author: Aurelia Tan & Jonathon Koh    Illustrated by Nicholas Liem
Publisher: Harvest Edutainment Pte Ltd (2013)
ISBN: 9810776322
Paperback: 84 pages

Description from the product page:

"JJ's Science Adventure is a series of educational comic books designed to help readers master key learning objectives stated in the Singapore Ministry of Education's Primary School Science syllabus. After receiving their birthday presents from their grandfather, Joyce and Jonathon find themselves in possession of two bags which transform into a talking robot (Robo) and a teleportation portal. With a set of keys from Robo, the kids open the portal into sub-dimensional world created by the 'World Maker', an incredible invention by their grandfather to help them learn science.

In this adventure, the twins journey into the World of Magnets where they discover the physical properties of magnets and solve challenging puzzle traps laid by their grandfather. Will they survive the constant sabotage by a Minion sent by Mr Sinister and win the prize, a piece of puzzle key which unlocks yet another secret?"
When I first received the email pitch to review this book, I was quite hesitant as I've never let our kiddos try out comic books like this before. I also thought that the words are a bit tough on our 6.5 year old boy but since we've previously touched on the topic of magnetism before in the family, I thought of just giving this a go and worse comes to worse if our kiddos are not ready, I can just keep the book and try again some time later when I feel they are ready.

The book arrived shortly after and I gave a quick check through the book. The illustrations is gorgeous, love it! The fonts are easy on the eyes as well.

I waited for the right time to show this book to our kiddos. I let our oldest flipped through the book and checked out the book before I suggested reading the book to them in the afternoon during their playtime.

I started out slowly by introducing the characters in the book and once in a while, I would subtly ask our oldest kiddo to read some shorter sentences in the pages. We also paused every now and then throughout the book especially in the pages where it explains on how magnets work. I can see our boy getting interested and curious at the same time. In fact, we paused quite a long time in the pages where it explained how to magnetise objects and how an object loses its magnet force.

I can totally see our 6.5 year old boy loving the illustrations in this book. We were laughing at the antics of the main characters and the jokes in the storyline as well.

Size of the book is just nice, not too short and not too long story for the kiddos to digest through. Once, a few weeks after we have gone through the book, I heard our boy mentioned to me saying 'Did you remember the book on the magnet when it says one part is north and one part is south?' as he shows me his Lego creations that looked like a magnet stick.

That was when I told myself 'He remembers what we read in the book. Not bad, not bad!' And that was just after reading one time. Definitely will go through the book again and again with kiddos for sure!

I would totally recommend this book for any parents wanting to educate their kiddos on the topic of magnetism while yet having fun at the same time.

The book is available at Harvest Edustore or Amazon. You can also find it a retail stores in Singapore such as Elm Tree at Funan, Star Vista, Downtown East and Paragon, MPH at Parkway, Raffles City and Robinson, Junior Page at ARC

There is another volume entitled 'Heat and Light' as well in case you are interested!

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a copy of the book in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I came across this article which I must definitely share with you guys as I'm very interested to know your thoughts on this. For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here:

"Fathers should make a special effort to tuck their children in at night, according to research which shows that bedtime stories are better for youngsters when they are read by men.

A study at Harvard University in the US into the effect on infants’ language after a year of hearing stories read by their parents found that girls seemed to benefit particularly from being read to by a male. Elisabeth Duursma, who carried out the research, said: ‘The impact is huge, particularly if dads start reading to kids under the age of two.

'Reading is seen as a female activity and kids seem to be more tuned in when their dad reads to them – it’s special.’ Men and women also approach the task differently, she found. Mothers tended to ask ‘teacher-like’, factual questions, such as ‘How many apples do you see?’ Fathers favoured more abstract questions, which sparked imaginative discussions. ‘That is great for children’s language development because they have to use their brains more. It’s more cognitively challenging.’

Parenting expert Justin Coulson added: ‘When we read to our children we expand their vocabulary. We help them to feel safe and this can have a profound impact on their capacity for learning. 'Research has consistently shown that parents reading to children improves the quality of relationships, academic outcomes and resilience.’"

Firstly, I think we should safely agree that reading to our kiddos is important and beneficial to them. Now, back to this article, from my personal experience of reading news articles instead of bedtime stories to our kiddos (I know, weird but it works and our kiddos love it!), I do combined both approaches as mentioned in the article. Meaning, I asked ‘teacher-like’, factual questions and also abstract questions as well, depending on the articles we read.

For example, just earlier before bedtime tonight, I was reading some articles on the supermoon (blood moon or whatever names they have for it), I was reading slowly and at the same time explaining why this happened, what is eclipse, and then reminding our oldest kiddo on some earlier conversations we had about eclipses to jog his memory a bit and why in an article it shows tons of birds flew past the bright moon.

I guess as parents, be it a mother or a father, we do what we think is appropriate for our kiddos using the best approaches that can get them to listen attentively and yet keep their interests level high. I mean, it might not make sense asking your young toddler how many objects in the book if they have yet learn to count etc.

So I think age appropriate and as parents, you should know your child the best, should not be influenced by articles that says dads are better or moms are better LOL. But then, I do feel that a mother's soothing voice might be a better choice for bedtime story, but that's just my personal thoughts haha..

What do you think?

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.