Books for the Little One II

For the past few nights, bedtime stories have revolved primarily around these 2 books - 棕色的熊，棕色的熊，你在看什么？and 鳄鱼不刷牙. P will still pick up other books, but these 2 are a must to read to her before she sleeps.

棕色的熊，棕色的熊，你在看什么？is a translated version of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? As mentioned in this post, I was lucky to be able to win a voucher and got the starter pack which contains this book. For the first few weeks, this book was carefully kept in my wardrobe and not introduced to P, all because she was still very violent with books. Dog ears, tears, folds... we've seen them all. As a result, I was only buying board books for her at one point in time. Recently, I mustered the courage to leave the book out and she took to it straight away. The good thing about this book is that it contains both the English and Chinese words, so you could read either. I would read the Chinese version to P, while hubby reads the English version. She will get exposure to both languages in that way.

棕色的熊，棕色的熊，你在看什么？ from Flip for Joy

The story starts out asking the brown bear what he saw, and progressed to asking various colored animals (red bird, yellow duck, blue horse, purple cat etc) what they saw. It was useful to help them toddlers learn about colors and animals at the same time. The story ended off with a teacher asking a group of children what they saw, and the children repeated all the colored animals. The only gripe I have is I find the Chinese translation quite a mouthful, not as smooth as reading the English version. Apart from that, this book is great and P loves it. She's constantly anxious to flip the page and find out which animal is next, almost tearing the pages on some occasions.

The next book that P loves is my 2nd purchase from Flip for Joy. After P's first dental visit, I've been furiously searching the web for books related to dental health. I went onto Flip for Joy's website, typed in 'teeth' into the search box, and tadahhhhh, this book appeared as one of the results. It was affordable too, so I barely gave a thought before clicking on the 'Add to Cart' and 'Checkout' buttons. When the book arrived and I flipped through, I have to admit I was quite disappointed that the 'dental health' was only 2 pages. However, the rest of the book talks about other good habits and hygiene practices, like 'lions don't brush their hair, but I do', 'pigs don't wash their faces, but I do'. Within 2 days of reading this book to P, she was able to show me how to brush hair (actually she will just ruffle her hair), how to wash face (more like rubbing her face). Best of all, the story ended with 'owls don't sleep at night, but we (a group of children) do'. That's when P will quickly lie down on her pillow and pretend to go to sleep. Now whenever P picks up this book and pass it to me, she would put her index finger near her mouth and mimic the brushing teeth action. Oh, I have to add that this book also comes with both English and Chinese words (reiterate the exposure to 2 languages).

鳄鱼不刷牙 from Flip for Joy

It's really amazing how much (and fast) children can learn from books. As I end off this post, a set of dental health related books are on the way to me. You can expect Dora and Spongebob in the next series of Books for the Little One.

Flip for Joy

Do you have any trouble finding good Chinese books for your bubs? One can find a huge array of English books on websites like fishpond.com.sg or bookdepository.com. That's how I usually get books for P. If I do not want to wait for the delivery, there's even a Motherswork at my workplace building. Go in, pick out the book, pay, and I'm out of there.

With Chinese books, it's a different story. Motherswork don't carry Chinese books (at least since the last time I've stepped in), and those in bookstores don't look very interesting. In the online sphere, the options are much much more limited compared to English books.

Hence, it's probably a blessing when I came across this website called Flip for Joy. I've been very tempted to get some of the books for P. The website is quite user friendly and one could navigate the pages easily to look at the description of the book. It's an even bigger blessing when I won a $30 e-gift card in a blog contest.

I placed an order for their "Flip Flip Hooray! Ages 0-3 Starter Pack A" yesterday. Guess what? The bubble wrapped books are sitting at my office table today! Quite impressed with the prompt service and delivery.

The starter pack consists of 3 books
1. 大大小小的书
2. 棕色的熊，棕色的熊，你在看什么？(Translated version of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?)
3. 数一数，亲了几下

I've only opened 大大小小的书 so far, because that's the only one I think can withstand the onslaught of Typhoon P. She hasn't learnt to be gentle with books, and I have tons of magazines to show for that. Of the 2 paperback books she has, both are so torn and tattered that they should be in museums. It might be just P, but she made me wish that all books for Ages 0-3 comes in the board book format.

Anyway, P seems particularly taken with the 圆圆的东西, and kept attempting to open it like a book instead of 'twisting' it to open. I had to step in to prevent serious damage. She also likes the 小小的东西, and that's the one she wanted me to read to her twice! She can already identify snails and bees, and make the "bzzzzzzzzzz" sound when prompted. When we came to the picture of the ants, she patted her chest and gave me a scared look. LOL.

I shall post a review of the other 2 books after I gather enough courage to attempt non-board books with P, haha!

Books for the Little One I

I've been intending to do a series of posts on the books that P has been exposed to so far.

Part I shall be on religion, and I should probably give some background on our family

• Hubby's family is Catholic, my family is Buddhist.
• I did not convert before/after marriage (much to the amazement of my friends who thought it was a MUST to convert before we could get married).
• I've been going to church with hubby before marriage, and still do after marriage. I'm just not 'eligible' for Holy Communion.
• P became a baptised Catholic on 2 Oct 2011. It was a joint decision, and we even attended a infant baptism class together, before P got baptised.

I always have this feeling that P is slightly shortchanged on her religion because of me. I do not have the in depth knowledge of her religion, and have since sought to inculcate her with some ideas from books.

Baby's First Bible Stories

Ever since I click 'Buy' on bookdepository.com, I've been waiting excitedly for its arrival. When it finally did, the first thing I hoped to do was to have hubby scan the contents and make sure it's right. However, he wassn't keen to do that and I just have to make do.

This is a series of 12 stories from the bible. The first story is about the creation of the world, and it happens to be P's favorite story among the 12. Pictures of animals on a globe thrilled her, and she is now able to point out most of the animals when prompted. Giraffes, elephants, lions, penguins, rabbit, dog, tortoise, she knows them all. The book is brightly colored and P really likes to sit on my lap and have me flip through the pages. She doesn't have the patience to listen to me read some of the pages though. So for now, the book is only as good as it's first story, and all the colorful pages.

P's fav page

Getting Ready for Christmas

I saw this on sale some 3 weeks before Christmas last year, and decided to buy it online. Alas, the delivery took too long and the book only arrived about 3 days after Christmas. The strange thing about P is that she will only allow us to read the last 2 pages to her. We've tried reading the first few pages, but she would snatch the book, flip it to the 2nd last page and hand it back to us. Yeah, it looks like she only wants to know the ending, haha. We've also managed to teach her some animal sounds. When I point to the cow in this book and ask her what sound it makes, she will go "moooooooooooo", cute factor x 100. Do also check out the video below of hubby reading this book to P.

2nd last page