I'm a full-time mummy

In October this year, I brought our 3 years old Alyson to her 1st Sunday school for age group 3-4 years old. Children in this age group are supposed to be independent and parents can leave them in the class while they attend the main service. However for new children in this group, parents can hang around in the class (at the back, not participating with child) so that they can slowly adjust to being in the new class.

She was quite nervous and had separation anxiety at first and clung onto me not letting me go anywhere. So I sat next to her throughout the class, gently telling her how other children enjoys the class, dance and sing and do their crafts.

When it was crafts time, I sat behind her and slowly guide her to do the activity for the day. At first, she happily doodles away on a coloring paper. And then she got distracted by the many color pencils there. She started playing with the color pencils there.

So what is a mother supposed to do when her child gets distracted?

I decided to use the opportunity to teach her. Don't let any moment slipped away and waste a good teaching moment.

I saw her arranging the color pencils by the color group. So I taught her the colors. I also counted with her the number of color pencils in each group. She can count up to 10 so far so it was pretty fun for her to be counting instead of coloring at that moment. As for the coloring activity, she didn't continue on but she did continue to sort the pencils by its color group.

In this situation, she gets to continue playing while I get to include some teachable moments for her. Win - win?

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We have some of the Berenstain Bears' story apps on my iPad and have previously reviewed "The Berenstain Bears Living Lights Collection #1", so when I saw the pitch release for this collection of the Berestain Bears stories, I decided we must review this app. Without further ado, here goes my feedback...

* Title: The Berenstain Bears Living Lights Collection #2
* Price: $19.99
* Category: Books
* Released: July 30, 2014
* Version: 2.6
* Size: 151 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Oceanhouse Media, Inc.
* Rated: 4+ Made for Ages 6–8
* Requirements: Requires iOS 6.1 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Description from the product page:

"Dive into 8 exciting Berenstain Bears Living Lights interactive storybook apps that help young readers learn how God wants them to live every day! Explore pictures, learn new vocabulary, and personalize the story with your own narration. Enjoy The Berenstain Bears and the Golden Rule, The Berenstain Bears Go to Sunday School, The Berenstain Bears Hurry to Help, The Berenstain Bears and a Job Well Done, The Berenstain Bears Learn to Share, The Berenstain Bears Love Their Neighbors, The Berenstain Bears Play a Good Game, and The Berenstain Bears Say Their Prayers, all in one convenient place."

* This app is engaging and interactive and I love that we can also touch the objects in each page on the screen and the words pop out to tell you what it is!

* I like that this collection of story apps is meant to teach our children how to live their life according to God's way, to be kind even though it is not easy, the benefits of going to Sunday schools, to be helpful, to focus on the job being assigned and more.

* I think that even though you are not a Christian, you can still be able to use this book as it instills good moral values in our kiddos.

* This app is fun to read and educational as well, I also like that it is relatable to our family of 5 as well.

You can purchase the "The Berenstain Bears Living Lights Collection #2" app from the iTunes App Store.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code to redeem the application for free from iTunes Store 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 iPad Apps reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My iPad App Reviews"

Every year, a few months before December comes, hubby and I will get busy cracking our heads thinking of what gifts to give to his business clients for Christmas. We mostly DIY and made the gifts ourselves. We thought that it would be a nice gesture, with the added personal touch and feel to the gifts for each of our clients.

Let's reminisce through the gifts we made for our clients since 2008... Ready? Here we go...!

For 2008, we bought some 3 feet tall Christmas tree, bought tons and tons of sweet treats ranging from mini packets of M&Ms, Toblerones, mini packets of raisins, and not to forget mini packs of junk foods. (yes, yes, what an unhealthy choice of food!) I still remember hubby telling me someone in the elevator asked him  whether the gift is for sale and whether he could order one too while hubby delivered the gifts personally to one of his clients. I was 7 months pregnant with our first kiddo at the time, so it was quite a feat to be doing all this decoration then!

For 2009, still not too far from previous year's sweet treats, hubby thought that we should give the sweet treats in a candy jars. So we bought some glass candy jars from Ikea, bought some Famous Amos cookies, bought tons of sweet treats again and stuff everything into the glass jars and wrapped them up in a nice fluffy red ribbons.

For 2010, we stuck to the same sweet treats idea but with a bit of a twist, in the sense that I baked some cookies as part of the Christmas treats. The original idea was for me to bake enough cookies to fit into 2 biscuit tins (1 large, 1 small) but after baking a few batches which could only fit into 2 big and 2 small tins, I gave up and told hubby it was really tiring and hectic for me to be doing all those baking with a hyperactive toddler around. As much as I wanted to bake all those cookies, I really had to accept the fact that I simply can't take this challenge...

In the end, hubby asked me whether we could put the few batches of cookies I made into all the smaller size tins while we put sweet treats into the bigger tins. I mulled over the idea and thought it's a good solution in the sense that all the clients will still get to try my cookies (although they are all squeezed into the smaller tins) and we are still able to give both the big and small biscuit tins to each clients at the same time.

For 2011, just a month or so after delivering our 2nd child, we made ribbon Christmas tree with treats and snacks in a basket decorated with fake pine leaves. The ribbon tree was my idea after searching the Internet for inspiration and the basket with treats was hubby's idea. This is by far my favorite gift ideas, you can check out my tutorial on how to make these awesome Christmas ribbon tree as well.

For 2012, we made 2 types of gifts, one was a repeat from our 2008 gifts idea which we used 2 feet tall Christmas tree that comes with LED fiber optic blinking lights with treats around in a basket...

and the other idea was where we made cute little houses using bars of chocolates and yummy treats and stuff. We also put in some miniature Christmas trees for decoration and the Christmas-sy feel.

For 2013, it is really getting MORE and MORE challenging. With 2 kiddos and a newborn in tow and time constraints as well, it is really a tough task to complete, though thank God, we made it! We made papier mâché snowman using plastic containers (for body and head) and filled them up with treats and candies inside. 

In summary, it took lots and lots of planning and co-operation from the entire family members to play their part in order to produce these Christmas gifts every year. I would say, it was tiring but it was well worth it. As for this year's idea, plans already started and will be sourcing for supplies soon! Stay tuned to find out what we are going to make this year!

** 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.