How to use Zearn to learn maths?

I chanced upon this useful maths website, Zearn when my girl was doing her online learning. 

During the circuit breaker. I decided to let my boy to try out Zearn for his Maths out of desperation because I did not know what other activities we can do the whole day. Imagine I have to plan activities for them to do the whole day everyday..

Fortunately, It turned out to be a really useful learning website for them to learn Maths and both of them are “killing” it.

For students:

Zearn is very simple and straight forward to use. I like the fact that it uses a real person to explain the concepts and also infuse with games and badges to motivate students. It included clear progress chart for both students and teachers or parents to monitor students’ progress.

For parents or teachers:

Zearn allows you to create a class roaster of students and assign the grade level to different students.

Zearn helps you to monitor learning progress of your children or students.

It also provide clear descriptions of the different “missions” and guides for offline activities to reinforce the maths concepts.

To conclude this review: It is a useful online website to learn Maths. It provides clear instructions and simple games to motivate students. Another great news is that it is free! I’m not too sure how long it will be free but it allows free registrations due to convid. Thus, please sign up for your kids while it is still available unless you wish to pay for it :)

Batch Freezing and Storing of Baby Food

Baby Claire is eating so happily. Looking at her size, you know that she really loves her food.

Do you know when Baby Claire was approaching 6 months old, I was really anxious on what to feed her? Lots of questions was in my mind like how can I even cook nutritious home-cooked food for her when I am at work? How can I offer her a variety of food to test whether she has allergic reactions to these food?  How can I store and cook organic food for her since organic fruits and vegetables perish faster than non-organic food?

Then I came across online of the concept of batch freezing food. Before I go into the details, I guess now my readers must be wondering whether about the nutritional value of food after freezing. I visited a couple of sites and almost all recommended freezing food when it is at its freshest rather than cooking the fruits and vegetables after leaving in the fridge for days.  An example of such site is here.

What Benefits?

• Save time, Save money, Serve Baby Claire with VARIETY of nutritious food. Last week, Baby Claire succeed tested her allergy against butter, cheese and also button mushrooms.

Store for how long?

• As recommended by Wholesomebabyfood.com, it is recommended that frozen food is to be consumed within 3 months. For us, we will try to consume within a month. Partly, because our small fridge only can store that much of food :P. We will cook and batch freeze baby food every 3 weeks, during the weekends when Justin Papa is around. I can't imagine doing this alone, so much chopping, steaming, cooking and storing. However, the benefits outweighs the tiredness especially when we see Baby Claire loves eating them. :)

Once you have cooked your homemade baby food, it is important that you freeze it immediately. Below contains the different storage methods which we are currently using.

Conventional Ice-cube Tray storage

The easiest and cheapest way to do this is by using ice cube trays with a lid. I bought them from Daiso at only $2 each. There are 2 different sizes. The smaller one holds around 1 oz or 30ml while the other holds around 40 ml. Fill each individual cube with baby puree and freeze. You can then put the lid on once the food has cooled down. The next day, we will remove them from the tray and put them in freezer bags (I double sealed with another zip lock bag) and labelled them.

 

Special Food container

This food container comes in handy when you freeze chunky or chopped fruits and vegetables. There are reusable BPA plastic baby food containers/pots which are easily available in most baby shops. I bought "Baby Cubes" from Mothercare.  They come with trays and allow me to stack these trays up which save space for my fridge. 

To store bigger amount of food E.g. for a meal, we use the Avent VIA Cup. This is really convenient for my FIL who just need to reheat the food using the bottle/food warmer.

Here’s a list of essential equipment for cooking and freezing large batches of baby food, some of which you probably already own:

• Philips Avent 2-1 Steamer and Blender. This site, "My Wok Life" gave details on how to use this useful equipment. It is good for making puree and it preserves most of the nutrients as the water used to steam the food are blended together.

• Electrical Steamer with multiple trays (Normal steaming pot serves well too). We use this steamer when we want to steam chopped food. It was a gift for our housewarming from my university friends. Now it really comes in handy. :)

How long do you steam the food?

Below contain a snapshot of the Avent Philip Blender guide on the steaming period. Hope this may be useful to you too :)

Here contains some examples of her meals.

Macaroni with mushroom, pumpkin, salmon, coriander in chicken stock.	Potato with zuchinii with chesse and lightly cooked with butter.
This is her oat cereal with mango.

It is always exciting to watch Baby Claire enjoying her meal and wanting for more. :)

Cheers,

Deariebear Mommie

My kids are sleep trained - Using Gina Ford's method.

Over these few years, I have questions from friends and mothers on the following questions:

How are my kids able to to sleep early?
How are my kids able to sleep by themselves?
How come they are energized and happy?

My well rested happy kids.

I shared with them the importance of a proper routine and effectiveness of sleep training.

Every kid is different.  I have friends who has children whom are able to sleep soundly on their own since when they are babies without any form of training. My kids were the opposite of what you called sleeping angels.

My first baby was not able to sleep unless she had a pacifier in her mouth and needed to be carried till she fell asleep. The challenge was how to “lock” the pacifier in her mouth so that she wouldn’t cry in the middle of the night looking for her pacifier. We even tied a pacifier to her bib but she was not able to find it anywhere.  Imagine waking up in the middle of the night several times to put on the pacifier. This continued for 6 months and we literally had enough. Oh yes, you can say we should be more patient and wait till baby learn how to sleep on their own. But day after day, this sleeping issue literally drained off my energy. I was like a zombie going to work and coming back home and prayed that she would be able to sleep on her own soon.

Finally, I decided to find solutions. I came across Gina Ford’s sleeping training books and read up to understand how it works. Before conducting any form of sleep training, we need to create and follow a routine for our baby. This is extremely crucial because babies might have some form of crying during sleep training and with proper routine, we can be sure that our baby is not crying because of hunger. Please read up here on how to create a suitable routine and the steps for sleep training.

You can also buy the book from Amazon. Click here: The Complete Sleep Guide For Contented Babies & Toddlers

What about our second baby? Oh mine! He was worse when it comes to sleeping. I’m not too sure whether is it because he is a boy. He is not using any means to sleep soundly. We tried pacifier, bouncer, and even the traditional “yao lan” - swinging basket or cloth. It just doesn’t work. With the “yao lan”, he slept like 30 mins the most. I was really worried that the lack of sleep might impact his development. So I decided to sleep train him at 4 months ago but I was worried whether it is safe to sleep train at such a young age. So we seek advice from SG sleep nanny, Zoe Chu. She advised that it is ok and she gave the same advice about routine and also be consistent on where he sleep. I decided that the cot is the one, no more bouncer, no more "yao lan".

Sleeping on his own since 4 months old. Sleeping pose like mama. :P

To our great surprise, after a routine was set, my boy took only 3 days to sleep on his own with crying mostly on the first day. Yes, on his own. :) His sister took around 5 days. I was so proud of myself. So is it possible to sleep train a baby at 4 months old. The answer is definitely yes! However, do bear in mind that you have to be determined to follow through the sleep training and don’t jump into holding up the baby just because she is crying.

Follow the plan, and be a little hard-hearted and you will see the benefits. If not, the training will take even longer. My girl took 5 days because we could not bear hear her cries (especially my hubby) and we held her up straight away. Thus our first day failed. On the second day, I asked my hubby to have a cup of coffee, in fact OUT of the house when I was sleep training her. No one was at home except the baby and I. The second day she cried even longer because she knew we would picked her up. Some of you might be wondering “WAH! Just let her cry forever? Don’t go in at all? Wah!”. No, this sleep training method allows parents to go into the room after a certain time and gave a quick verbal assurance. Believe me it is definitely tough for the first two days but you will see the improvements and the light to the tunnel. Here are the 8 biggest sleep mistakes new parents make and how to avoid.

My kids are now 4 and 6 and they are still following a routine and are still sleeping at 7.30 p.m and latest at 8 p.m. Some may wondering whether are they able to sleep anywhere or only at their cots?

Kids slept in the car. They can sleep anywhere now.

My little boy had a long nap in the plane. Smart use of my shawl to cover the seat.

Well, though the sleep training emphasizes on consistency on the time and sleeping location, but when children are able to sleep on their own, things get flexible. We moved houses twice (3 different locations) and now in Mumbai. Our kids have no problem adapting to new sleeping environment. Thus, learning how to sleep on their own is so so important. It is a important life skill for our little ones. With enough sleep, they are energized and happy, and able to absorb and discover new learning every day. Even the teachers commented that they are pretty flexible in adapting to new school environments.

Going to sleep now in my bedroom with my Elly Elephant.

Cheers,
Deariebear mommie