A Malaysian friend, Chet, reminded me that she has been waiting for me to resume writing my blogs, while at the same time admitting that she is going through a writer’s block herself. Needing someone to nudge me every now and then to write, I offered to be her writing buddy so she could be mine.
She posted a message for me on Facebook (one of those diversions, together with emails, that actually keep us from doing serious writing) asking me two questions that got me stumped.
She asked me what my writing goals are, and what are my schedules for writing. Even though I have read a few books by Julia Cameron that emphasize the need for writers to write their journals in the morning, I had not thought of my own writing goals or writing schedules. Well then, last night was as good a time as any to write my goals and schedules.
Hmmm… Writing goals? That’s easy. I’m not very ambitious or confident about my writing, and all I really want is to write family stories. So there! That’s my writing goal! And writing schedules – oh no, when do I find the time?
Well, why not now? I will write one family story, right now. Sacha and I were talking earlier about wedding photographers and I remembered a story about her not wanting any photographer other than her papa to take her picture – that’s the story I will write about. But wait – this is such an old story – maybe I had blogged about it before?
I checked my site if they contained this story. Scrolling down to check the table of contents and browsing through my old blogs provided a good excuse to be procrastinating instead of writing. The site listed three measly stories in 2009, six in 2008 and 41 in 2007. Wow, did I really write 41 stories in 2007?
What happened in 2007? I was spending weekends, and sometimes 3 days out of every week in our house in Alabang. That’s it- I like writing when I am in Alabang. I should spend more time in Alabang! But a little voice inside me reminded me that I should write no matter where I was. It was a lesson I learned from Julia Cameron that needed to be applied.
And dutifully I obeyed that little voice and went back to finishing my story about Sacha, and posting it on my blogsite. Done. Fini. I felt good about myself as I posted my first blog for 2010.
Now I can bug Chet, my writing buddy, to help her get over her hump.
Showing posts with label Sacha. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sacha. Show all posts
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Happiness Mapping
Here's something Sacha did that you might want to try doing so you can identify what makes you happy. And when you know what makes you happy, then you'd know how to get to that feeling.
http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/04/23/mapping-what-makes-me-happy/
http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/04/23/mapping-what-makes-me-happy/
Monday, August 06, 2007
Teddy Ruxpin
Yesterday, a visit to Metro Manila’s newest mall, Trinoma, led to our discovery of the first Philippine store of Toys R Us. Although John and I are empty nesters, with three grown up daughters but without any grandchildren yet, we went inside the store to try and relive those days when our children were children.
Toys R Us has always been a big thing in our family. Every foreign trip would not be complete without a visit to a Toys R Us store. In 1986, when we traveled to the United States for the first time, we went to one in Los Angeles. It was exciting to be in such a huge store, with an overwhelming array of choices, but our budget was tight. We had picked out three different toys for our three daughters when we chanced upon a new toy – Teddy Ruxpin. He could talk! And move his mouth and eyes as he talked! Being the first animated toy, he was expensive. We simply could not afford him on top of the individual gifts we had already chosen for our girls. Sadly, we put him back on the shelf.
We went around the store looking at other toys but we could not get our minds off Teddy Ruxpin. We had really fallen in love with him. We thought, if we returned all the toys we’d carefully picked out for each of the girls – 10-year-old Ching Ching, 6-1/2 year old Anne Kay (now nicknamed Kathy) and 3-year-old Sacha, maybe we could afford to get Teddy Ruxpin. And maybe, the girls would not mind not having their own personal “pasalubong” if they had Teddy Ruxpin instead.
Teddy Ruxpin was such a hit with the girls that they did not mind sharing him among themselves. We agreed on the particular days when Teddy would be assigned to Ching Ching, Kathy or Sacha, but at unassigned times, they would have to co-own Teddy.
The sharing scheme worked well! In a way, it was a good thing that we could not afford three Teddy Ruxpins – one was all we needed to teach and learn about joint ownership, waiting for one’s turn, and sharing. Teddy Ruxpin may not have been intended to teach about sharing, but that’s what he taught us.
What memories going to a favorite toy store can bring!
Toys R Us has always been a big thing in our family. Every foreign trip would not be complete without a visit to a Toys R Us store. In 1986, when we traveled to the United States for the first time, we went to one in Los Angeles. It was exciting to be in such a huge store, with an overwhelming array of choices, but our budget was tight. We had picked out three different toys for our three daughters when we chanced upon a new toy – Teddy Ruxpin. He could talk! And move his mouth and eyes as he talked! Being the first animated toy, he was expensive. We simply could not afford him on top of the individual gifts we had already chosen for our girls. Sadly, we put him back on the shelf.
We went around the store looking at other toys but we could not get our minds off Teddy Ruxpin. We had really fallen in love with him. We thought, if we returned all the toys we’d carefully picked out for each of the girls – 10-year-old Ching Ching, 6-1/2 year old Anne Kay (now nicknamed Kathy) and 3-year-old Sacha, maybe we could afford to get Teddy Ruxpin. And maybe, the girls would not mind not having their own personal “pasalubong” if they had Teddy Ruxpin instead.
Teddy Ruxpin was such a hit with the girls that they did not mind sharing him among themselves. We agreed on the particular days when Teddy would be assigned to Ching Ching, Kathy or Sacha, but at unassigned times, they would have to co-own Teddy.
The sharing scheme worked well! In a way, it was a good thing that we could not afford three Teddy Ruxpins – one was all we needed to teach and learn about joint ownership, waiting for one’s turn, and sharing. Teddy Ruxpin may not have been intended to teach about sharing, but that’s what he taught us.
What memories going to a favorite toy store can bring!
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Sacha and U.S. Consul
When my youngest daughter was 7 years old, I needed to take her to the U.S. Embassy to apply for a visa.
I brought with me all the documents that I was expected to show, if and when asked, to prove that we have ties to our country that would make us come back – land titles, business papers, bank statements etc. I had two briefcases of such documents.
When her name was called, we approached the counter. The interviewing consul very formally asked – “Your daughter’s name is Sandra Jean Chua?” I said yes. “Do you have her birth certificate?” So I looked in one briefcase and then another, frantically shuffling through the papers, but could not find it.
While I was in panic-mode, my daughter tiptoed and asked with a sweet smile on her face - “Why do you need my birth certificate? I’m proof that I was born.” The consul smiled at her, and asked, “Where do you want to go?” “Disney” was my daughter’s quick reply. “Well, then, have a nice trip” and stamped her visa application – “Approved.”
posted by Harvey at 8:23 PM Friday, September 29, 2006
I brought with me all the documents that I was expected to show, if and when asked, to prove that we have ties to our country that would make us come back – land titles, business papers, bank statements etc. I had two briefcases of such documents.
When her name was called, we approached the counter. The interviewing consul very formally asked – “Your daughter’s name is Sandra Jean Chua?” I said yes. “Do you have her birth certificate?” So I looked in one briefcase and then another, frantically shuffling through the papers, but could not find it.
While I was in panic-mode, my daughter tiptoed and asked with a sweet smile on her face - “Why do you need my birth certificate? I’m proof that I was born.” The consul smiled at her, and asked, “Where do you want to go?” “Disney” was my daughter’s quick reply. “Well, then, have a nice trip” and stamped her visa application – “Approved.”
posted by Harvey at 8:23 PM Friday, September 29, 2006
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Learning to Spell and Do Math
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Learning to spell and do math
Learning to Spell
When you are having fun, learning becomes easy. When Kathy was in first grade and learning to spell, she had a hard time. It was a frustrating experience for her. To help her out, we taught her a fun trick – which was to imagine each letter as a person. An “O” would be a rotund person, letter “I” would be a thin person, letter “T” has his feet together but arms outstretched at shoulder-height, letter “A” is standing with legs apart, letter “X” has his feet far apart and his arms outstretched above his head, etc.
As she spelled each word, she imagined the letters marching out one by one joining the others in the right sequence. We started her with short words, but pretty soon, she was spelling long words. Sometimes, she would laugh, imagining how awkwardly certain letters would walk to their position in the word.
Just recently, my husband was trying to write something but couldn’t get right the spelling of a certain word. He kept asking Kathy to repeat the spelling. Getting tired of doing so, Kathy, who is now 26, said, “papa, just imagine people as letters and they are marching one by one. Now, what do you see in your head? Who comes after E?”
Learning Math
Whether doing additions or subtractions, mental arithmetic is not much fun for a 5 year old. When Ching was in prep, she had math homework to do, but she was not in the mood to do them. I asked her to bring out her math worksheets, and we struggled with the first one. She was not paying any attention at all to what we were doing, and counting on our fingers did not do the trick, since our fingers, hers and mine together, only reached up to 20. (I wish I had heard of “Finger Math” then). I was really challenged to make math fun for her to do. I looked around the house for things that she could count, but there were hardly any that reached 21 to 99, until I happened to glance at a jar full of coins (to save money, I throw all my coins into the jar at the end of each day). I gave her some coins in different denomination, and we pretended to be buying and giving change to each other. Sometimes, when she did not have the exact change, she learned to combine different coins to reach the required amount. It was fun, and it took us only a few minutes to finish several pages of homework.
To add variety to things for us to count, I bought multi-colored popsicle sticks and beads, and we often laid them out on the entire floor of the children's room so we could see how much space a thousand sticks occupied when grouped in 5’s, 10’s, or 100’s. I think it helped in understanding math that we were touching them as we were counting. Math was real and physical, not just abstract and mental.
Kathy, on the other hand, learned math the easy way because her school had interdisciplinary programs – meaning, they did activities such as going to the zoo, cooking or doing stage productions, and through these activities, they learned math, writing and other subjects. At the zoo, for example, they helped in preparing food for the animals – and they learned fractions – mix 1-½ cups of chopped carrots with ¾ cup of sliced beans. For theater production, they learned the height, width and depth of props to take onstage, or length and width of costumes to sew.
One of the best-loved books in our family library is Mathemagic, part of a series of books called Childcraft. One of Ching’s early questions as a child was “Is there a number smaller than zero?” I told her yes, but I was befuddled as to how to explain the concept of negative numbers until I read Mathemagic. In one chapter, the book explained negative numbers in a way that a child could understand, by instructing the child:
a. Draw a line and step on it – that’s zero.
b. Take a step forward, that’s one.
c. Take another step forward, that’s two
d. Now, return to zero.
e. Take one step back, that’s minus one.
f. Take another step back, that’s minus two.
When third and final daughter Sacha came along, it was easy. We still had the coins, beads and popsicle sticks. She was playing and counting them even before she went to school. We had Mathemagic, and that was one of the first books she herself read.
Math is easy when it is fun.
Learning to spell and do math
Learning to Spell
When you are having fun, learning becomes easy. When Kathy was in first grade and learning to spell, she had a hard time. It was a frustrating experience for her. To help her out, we taught her a fun trick – which was to imagine each letter as a person. An “O” would be a rotund person, letter “I” would be a thin person, letter “T” has his feet together but arms outstretched at shoulder-height, letter “A” is standing with legs apart, letter “X” has his feet far apart and his arms outstretched above his head, etc.
As she spelled each word, she imagined the letters marching out one by one joining the others in the right sequence. We started her with short words, but pretty soon, she was spelling long words. Sometimes, she would laugh, imagining how awkwardly certain letters would walk to their position in the word.
Just recently, my husband was trying to write something but couldn’t get right the spelling of a certain word. He kept asking Kathy to repeat the spelling. Getting tired of doing so, Kathy, who is now 26, said, “papa, just imagine people as letters and they are marching one by one. Now, what do you see in your head? Who comes after E?”
Learning Math
Whether doing additions or subtractions, mental arithmetic is not much fun for a 5 year old. When Ching was in prep, she had math homework to do, but she was not in the mood to do them. I asked her to bring out her math worksheets, and we struggled with the first one. She was not paying any attention at all to what we were doing, and counting on our fingers did not do the trick, since our fingers, hers and mine together, only reached up to 20. (I wish I had heard of “Finger Math” then). I was really challenged to make math fun for her to do. I looked around the house for things that she could count, but there were hardly any that reached 21 to 99, until I happened to glance at a jar full of coins (to save money, I throw all my coins into the jar at the end of each day). I gave her some coins in different denomination, and we pretended to be buying and giving change to each other. Sometimes, when she did not have the exact change, she learned to combine different coins to reach the required amount. It was fun, and it took us only a few minutes to finish several pages of homework.
To add variety to things for us to count, I bought multi-colored popsicle sticks and beads, and we often laid them out on the entire floor of the children's room so we could see how much space a thousand sticks occupied when grouped in 5’s, 10’s, or 100’s. I think it helped in understanding math that we were touching them as we were counting. Math was real and physical, not just abstract and mental.
Kathy, on the other hand, learned math the easy way because her school had interdisciplinary programs – meaning, they did activities such as going to the zoo, cooking or doing stage productions, and through these activities, they learned math, writing and other subjects. At the zoo, for example, they helped in preparing food for the animals – and they learned fractions – mix 1-½ cups of chopped carrots with ¾ cup of sliced beans. For theater production, they learned the height, width and depth of props to take onstage, or length and width of costumes to sew.
One of the best-loved books in our family library is Mathemagic, part of a series of books called Childcraft. One of Ching’s early questions as a child was “Is there a number smaller than zero?” I told her yes, but I was befuddled as to how to explain the concept of negative numbers until I read Mathemagic. In one chapter, the book explained negative numbers in a way that a child could understand, by instructing the child:
a. Draw a line and step on it – that’s zero.
b. Take a step forward, that’s one.
c. Take another step forward, that’s two
d. Now, return to zero.
e. Take one step back, that’s minus one.
f. Take another step back, that’s minus two.
When third and final daughter Sacha came along, it was easy. We still had the coins, beads and popsicle sticks. She was playing and counting them even before she went to school. We had Mathemagic, and that was one of the first books she herself read.
Math is easy when it is fun.
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