Baby Einsteins: Not So Smart After All - No TV please
2007-08-07 15:57:00
Baby Einsteins: Not So Smart
After All - TIME
The research found that with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos. These products had the strongest detrimental effect on babies 8 to 16 months old, the age at which language skills are starting to form. "The more videos they watched,
Ah, the past two weeks
2007-08-27 12:09:00
The past two weeks had been busy at work. It had been busy and fun at home. Interests and energy to blog waxed and waned, then washed off among my busy schedule. Therefore, I have a two-week gaping hole in my blog. It happens all the time anyway. It is always hard to self-disapline.
Anyway, in the past two weeks, we have:
1) Watched Contemporary Indian Dance and Tap Dance at the Cultural center
From Investigators' Newsletter
2007-08-28 10:04:00
The following is from the newsletter of Emma's class (August 2007). I am totally heartened.
...
The Investigators are a very fun and happy group of children. They are always so busy doing different activities in the classroom. They love painting with different textures and creating their own unique object with the supplies. In housekeeping, the children have enjoyed pretending to be doctors and
A little song improvised by Emma
2007-09-18 16:34:00
Emma made up a little
song like this
Wrap her up
Wrap her up
Wrap her up
In her little blanket
Tuck her in
Tuck her in
Tuck her in
In her little blanket
Pick her up
pick her up
pick her up
In her little blanket
Wash her butt
wash her butt
wash her butt
in her little bath tub
Then it goes on and on, and she became naughtier and naughtier, later, the versies became very silly and nonsensical.
Oh, the many concerts we have been to. And dancing shows!
2007-09-14 14:07:00
I am a parent frugal by nature (inherited the genes); by upbringing (born and raised with a scarcity in everything, food, books, no toys to speak of) and by reality (two little kids, a meager income, and burning desire for the kids to become something). So Chicago is wonderful place to be. Well, other big us cities must be more or less the same. But ignorant me, Chicago is the only place I know
Read more: concerts
Annya at the new children's library
2007-09-12 11:46:00
Last friday I had a day off. So I got a chance to spend a full day with Annya alone. Perfect. Poor little baby, she really deserved it. And I longed to spend some quality time with her. (Oh, with what speed she has grown! Yesterday, i took to the doc. She is now 14.5 lbs, 2' 1'', and her head is another 2 cm bigger. She can roll over from front to back, she can almost sit...)
Now that Evanston
The cow family
2007-09-05 14:22:00
Below is Emma's rambling on a cow family (Funny to see her mind runs through a jumble of topics).
The cow family
They pretend to brush their teeth. The cows ran over to take a bath. They were running into red and reading a book. They live on the cow.
They went to bed and had a bad dream. Cows dont have a bad dream and they do not even talk. And they went to draw on the cat. And they went to
Out in Washington
2007-10-11 09:12:00
So excited. Still, I took sometime to post some of the videos I shot last Saturday.
Read more: Washington
I thought I was speaking Chinese
2007-10-10 10:58:00
Read more: Chinese
, thought
Emma's stories
2007-10-09 14:57:00
Emma is not my type. I am a quiet, socially-quite-awkward one, though all my family has a vivid memory of what a talktive little child I was. Emma is different, she talks and talks, laughs and laughs everyday and all day long, from morning to evening. Sometimes she is caught by her thoughts (sometimes disjointed, sometimes flowing), and she quickly wanders through one topic to another and does
Little sister, big sister
2007-10-08 13:56:00
Read more: sister
Busy weekends
2007-10-05 11:46:00
Have not blogged for nearly two weeks. Reasons? Too busy, too busy. When I am busy, my blogs are the first casualties. I wish I had the same discipline with my blogs as with my work. Somehow, when deadlines at work are hanging, I would simply forego anything and stay up at night however long to get my work done. Somehow, there is a 'must', 'absolute' feeling in my head. Not with my blogs, nor
Read more: weekends
A Gym lesson
2007-10-17 14:04:00
Read more: lesson
INVESTIGATORS' NEWSLETTER - oct. 2007
2007-10-15 10:53:00
...
The Investigators are a happy group and we have been having a lot of fun these days. We finished our unit on water, which was a big success, and continue to experiment with water in our water table. Using different cups, funnels, sieves, soap, turkey basters, toys, etc. in the water allows for exploration of the properties of water. Language growth is huge in this area; the children make
My parents came to the town
2007-10-24 09:58:00
An article in The New Yorker reads: "Like many people, I started blogging out of an urgent need to procrastinate. Yet a nagging sense of possibility also drew me in. " I do not have a clue what this guy means, even after I read the whole article to search for a clue. Nonetheless,
I started to reflect on my motive of doing my blog. Out of parental pride? Probably. Just wanted to show off Emma's
What do the teachers say about Emma?
2007-10-30 10:51:00
I have the highest regard of Emma's personality, she is wonderfully social, contagiously happy, unbelievably articulate. She is funny, amusing and loves to be amused. She is the opposite of me and her dad. I love her and everything about her. However, I never think she is anything out of the ordinary. I do not think she is gifted or particularly brilliant.
Not so, no so, not by her teachers
.
Twinkle Star Gymnastics
2007-11-07 18:09:00
There was an ice cream in the flower - A new story by Emma
2007-11-06 09:14:00
There was an ice cream in the flower
. When the flower was gone, the pumpkin was waiting for all the pickles to come in the house. And then there was a mess in the bathtub. The pumpkin opened up his smile. How could there be such a big mess there? And then he went out in his garden to help his garden grow because his flowers say they wanted water. The flowers was talking jokes and then all the
Read more: story
Swing Low, swing high
2007-11-06 09:12:00
Emma plays with Anny
2007-11-22 07:51:00
I have been so very busy for quite some time now.
ba, ba, ba ... how Annya has grown
2007-11-29 16:30:00
Wow.
May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December. Well, almost December.
Wow, Annya is almost seven months old.
I feel enormously guilty. For so many months, I have barely written about her. Almost every single activity is about Emma, singing, dancing, playing, going around... Little Annya had no say whether to go along or not. Sometimes we drove so far and She
Emma's story - A lullaby song
2007-11-26 14:11:00
When I am too busy to blog. Emma's highly imaginative, fluid (and nonsensical) story
fills in the blank.
Go Sing
Go Sing
And the lullaby song changes into another one with a magic wand. And then it changes to lots of, lots of songs. And then the Y starts to the X. And then the lollipop turns around and sings with a dress lullaby. And then the little gingerbread man smiles with a little happy
Chicago Elementary Schools Ranked Among top 50 State Wide
2007-12-07 10:08:00
I have posted this on my techie blog: Programmatically Speaking. But since this is very important to me, I double post here.
Knowledgable friends always admonish me: "Do not send your kids to a public school, Otherwise you will ruin them. Move to the surburb. "
Well, there are so many sides of Chicago
public schools, good ones, not-so-good ones, bad ones ..., magnet, classical, gifted centers
Read more: Elementary
, Schools
, State
INVESTIGATORS' NEWSLETTER - dec, 2007
2007-12-20 09:18:00
-- Newsletter from Emma's class
Hello everyone! We wanted to let you know what has been going on in the classroom over the past month. We wrapped our music unit last week and we are so pleased to say that it went so well. The kids had a great time with it and they were really the ones who started all the investigation about music. We played different types of instruments, wrote songs, painted
Gone for China
2008-03-11 13:52:00
My parents left with Annya last night. They won't be back until July or August.
There were no tears, though Emma was saying again and again: "but, mom, I will miss them!", "When will they come back?"
Me too. I miss them already. I wish they could come back tomorrow.
Annya has grown so much. She can wave bye-bye. Last night, she was all smiles waving big bye-byes to us. Her babblings are
Read more: China
Recalling the past few weeks
2008-03-04 17:14:00
The past Sunday, we went to the water tower to buy two pair of shoes for my nephews.
Last week, I took Annya to a doctor (we changed the doctor because my insurance policy changed), she weighed 18 lbs and measured 27 inches (around 50 percentile range)
Emma did a "presentation" about herself, China, and her favorite dress. I wonder how it went.
The weekend before, we went to the Art
Emma's art
2008-02-27 09:35:00
First, of course there was nothing. We started making a fuss when Emma could barely held a pen.
Then, she dragged her pen across a page, she made a black, or red, or green smear of a page. Or she made lots and lots what we called as "spider webs", lines of circles and circles, black and messy.
Or she made hand prints or foot prints
Then she could draw a round head with two eyes and a
INVESTIGATORS' NEWSLETTER - Feburary, 2008
2008-02-13 17:34:00
(Illustrated by Emma).
Hello everyone! We hope things are going well for all of you. Life in the Investigators' classroom has been very busy and fun these days. It's amazing to watch the children grow and how they change in their play. They are constantly making us smile and laugh; they are a fun group!
Circle time has changed slightly. The books that we read are getting a little longer with a
In the past month ...
2008-02-07 20:55:00
(The past few months was totally swamped by work, endless work. With the little spare time I stole from work, I found myself obscessed with every twist and turn of the never-ending election soap opera. News reading somehow becomes an intoxicating pasttime. )
Anyway
There seemed to be perpetual snow, forever cold for the past two months. Rain or shine, cold or hot, my dad wheeled Emma to school
The very precious (and the best) birthday card
2008-02-02 09:01:00
Read more: precious
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