My daugther's favorite - Ma-ma-sak (1)

My wife is against Barbie doll. She told me even before our daughter was born that she would go against the idea that my daughter owns a barbie doll. I fully agreed with her. I think that "Barbie doll encourages materialism and gave little value add".

Since the elder child is a boy, we hardly had any girlish type of games. Until I came across this "cooking play set"... I don't know what's the exact English term, but in Penang, most people called this game "Ma-ma-sak", which origins from a Malay word "masak" which means cooking.


I came across these few sets in the wet market. I bought 2 sets, each cost me less than SGD5. I am quite impressed with the quality of the "made in China" goods. It has so many varieties of fruits and vegetables. I can use this to teach my daughter about the names in both English and Chinese.


After having a cup of mixed juice (carrot + fruits), my daughter pretended that she was preparing dishes and she enjoys cutting up her fruits and vegetables.

Please take a look on these enlarged view of the fruits. The fruits come in 2 parts, stick together through a mechanism that is commonly found in shoes laces, where one latches one part on the other.


Using a plastic knife, the fruits can be "cut" into 2 parts to separate the latches.

After cutting, there's cooking time.


My daughter would serve me "tea" or "fruits". What I need to do is say, "ahmmm". And she will be happy smiling.

Learn Spelling without "Spelling Test" -- Hooked on Spelling

Most school children hate spelling. Let's put ourselves in a child's shoes. First of all, having a "Spelling" means they have to allocate time to learn the spelling. Secondly, if they do not do well, parents will get disappointed. What's worse? Their parents may punish them.

When my son was attending kindergarten in Malaysia 2 years ago, I had no choice. I cannot change the syllabus of the school. Everyone is taking test and learning spelling. Can he do without those? I had completely no idea on the alternative method to learn Spelling.

Some Singapore kindergartens do not have any "Spelling" sessions. Sometimes I was worried. I wondered whether he could cope with school as the level of English education in Singapore is very high. I bought some spelling games. The game was good, but too simple for my 6-year-old as it has only 3-4 letters word.









Being successful in using the "Hooked on Phonics" material, I decided to try the "Hooked on Spelling". I bought it from Amazon directly. The material came with 2CDs plus a book. Due to misunderstanding as I did not read the instructions carefully, I did not use any of the books but only the CDs.







The lessons start with "sounding out words". Then, it is followed by activity to group the words according to the sounding of pronunciation. After this comes the so called "unscramble" game which is a game requiring the user to re-arrange letters into a word with correct spelling. The next level is slightly more difficult. It's spelling game but with multiple choices. The activity is to pick the right letter to form a word. Finally, the user has to spell the whole word all by himself.

The material is "Superb". If he does it wrongly, the software lets him spell again. No scolding, no pressure! Again, the software comes with a progress sheet in which the child will put a sticker to show his progress.

My son told us some rules and what he learned, which was quite new to both my wife and me, like long "I" and short "I". My son's capability in spelling improved significantly. His teacher told us that she told the class "If any of you have problems in spelling out any words, you can either ask me or Yi Kai". Last week, I asked him to spell "library", this is a new word to my 6-year-old. He said, "libary", very close! I praised him for his good attempt and encouraged him to learn more. Now, he is interested to spell things right.

On a side note, there are some bugs in the software, but my son can get around it. I am not sure how he did it because he learns the lessons from the CDs all by himself. I did not follow closely, but I can see the combination effect, by Hooked on Spelling, as well as Hooked on Phonics!