walnut brownie

Need a break from stress of dealine.

Hence, featuring this...

I have been making this walnut brownie for 3 times in less than 2 weeks.

1st was testing.

Overwhelmed with the rich chocolate and the successful attempt.

2nd was for the girl's 6th birthday party last Saturday.

Double the ingredients.

A little dry. 

3rd was yesterday dawn. 

For little Bomber's nanny and family's great help in the party.

Appreciation from the bottom of my heart.

I do wish that the spirit of (baking) enthusiasm will spill over to... now in office.

Back to digging history of work and do my self-appraisal!

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200g dark cooking chocolate
125g butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup self raising flour
1/3 cup milk
3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 180C.
Chop the chocolate into pieces of about 2-3 centimeters.
Chop the butter and add it to the chocolate.

On low heat on the stove, melt the mixture without bubbling.
Remove the mixture from the heat and carefully fold in the brown sugar.
Add eggs, stirring carefully.
Slowly sift in the flour and fold it into the mixture.
Add milk, mixing it in completely.
Add chopped walnuts.

Pour the mixture into a greased medium-sized baking tray lined with baking paper.
Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes.

Remove from the oven and cool in the tin for five minutes,
then turn onto a wire rack until cool and slice into squares.
Dust with icing sugar.

I Went for Phonics Class

I understand that, there is more than one way to help young children to read, probably Phonics is one of them. Before I was a mum, I personally see how well phonics helped my young cousins to decode the sounds for each letter, learn and assimilate word. They were able to read out loud on Peter and Jane series at preschool stage. I know nuts about phonics. I struggled in learning English by memorizing hard on each and every new vocabulary. [That explains the standard of language here;)]

On the other hand, the childcare center of Jiejie doesn't offer a structured phonics lesson to kids. I realised that their curriculum is science based and provide a literacy programme to build children's vocabulary in English Language. In a way, Jiejie is kind of taking her own sweet time to learn listening, speaking, reading, spelling and writing, prior to her Primary 1 next year.

So she joined into "I Can Read" programme in the beginning of the year. I have to guide her in doing those weekly homework. It is usually just 2 or 3 pages of identifying and colouring exercise and I just need to do a little help to prompt her on the sound of letter. Often, I fail to differentiate the sound of "A" and "E". I started to pay very serious attention to hear Jolly phonic in youtube, repeatedly, till I wonder, am I too old for phonics?... It was somewhat embarrassing. 

Coincidentally, SL, Jiejie's classmate's mum, shared with me about Phonics by Jann, a course for parents. At the same time, I thought it would be good to learn about fun learning session at home effectively. Not only will it benefit Jiejie, but also to Little Bomber in future.

When I first called Jann, she listened to my background and my daughter's learning pace pretty carefully. She sounded like a doctor and diagnosed "my case" immediately over the phone. I then followed-up with an email on the detail of the course. She managed to slot me in the earlier class she could find for me, knowing that my girl is pretty much behind in term of able to read and write. Anyway, to cut the story short, I signed up and became Jann's student.[reasonable price and distance]

Jann is a SAHM and was a pre-school teacher previously. I reckoned that's why she is able to outline her course in a structured manner, creatively and comprehensively cover the phonics from A to Z. She provides craft material for every letter, and each letter consist of 2 sets of lesson plans. Frankly, I can't imagine how she produced all the material by duplicating, cutting, sorting and packing. On top of that, she emailed us the videos on songs as part of the lesson plan every week, prior to our class with her. There are at least 6 of us for every class I attended. She must be a very well organised person!

In the lesson plan, by combining flashcard, craftwork, story-telling, singing song and a magic bag with objects that starts with the letter, it makes the home-learning truly fun and meaningful. In addition to that, she also shared tips on effective strategies in prompting using phonics, spelling, stages of reading, writing ideas and how to encourage creativity and meaningful ways that lead to children self-learning. To her, age 3 is the appropriate time to start phonics and slowly guide the child at home. Once the child is familiar with the sounds for all letters, mummy should apply phonics sound to prompt child for spelling. If the child is unable to spell out the word after prompting, we are to write down what the child spell so that they can see what they are combining the letters and form the word. What she believes is that, if the child is being taught effectively and knows how to spell many words by 4 or 5 (depending on the child's progress), together with regular reading, it can lead to early writing. Once a child can spell, read and write by 6 years old, the likelihood is that tuition is not needed during P1 and P2. The child will be able to self-learn, perhaps with some help from parents.

Sounds pretty attractive to me! Jann's lesson plan is a great resource to re-start our home-learning. Jiejie likes it! She often ask if there is any craftwork for her to do. However, I can't afford to spend longer than 15 mins with her on one full lesson plan as I tend to run into kitchen, or Little Bomber, or some other chores at home. Fortunately, she is mature enough to do the craftwork independently while I'm 5 or 10 mins away from her.

You can see more on the fun home-learning through Winny's sharing:).

Letter N - Craftwork on colouring macoroni and make necklace.

Seeing that she is enjoying her learning journey, so I have to be consistent with her on the lesson plan provided by Jann. As I always have pockets of time, I alter Jann's lesson plan by doing more on craftwork (skipping the part on letter tracing, flashcard and magic bag) and cultivate the prompting habit on her to assimilate words.  Sometimes she would frown and request me to stop prompting her; other times she guided me through instead. I admit that I need to brush up my skill on phonics prompting. 

At night, we continue our routine on reading too (10-15 mins). Jann advised us to read books with interesting storyline. Interesting storybooks with repeated words or sentences are very helpful for memory reading. The stages of reading from 'Read-To' to 'Read-With' progress will be able to guide the child to learn the pronunciation and visually absorb the words and capture the word as we read to or with them. Eventually, the child will be interested to read on his/her own. 

Scholastic book: This is the Way We Take a Bath.

These days, we try to distract her from iPad to do other activities at home. I reckon several exposures in learning (through childcare, enrichment and home-learning) has build her word bank as well as confidence. She's now attempting to self-read as well as write her own story. Recently, she re-read book 4A and into 5A of Peter and Jane Series. It is heartening to see her progress well.

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The course will be featured in Straits Times soon and I got the chance to be interviewed about the course. But when the journalist asked me (over the phone) why did I take up the course at the very first place. I didn't answer her fully.

If you ask me... I would say, I'm greedy and try to learn as much as I can to inspire my child in learning, similar to my new attempts in sewing and cooking/baking. Life seems more interesting with all sort of learning. I try not to sub-contract the responsibility to all kind of so-called professional tuition and other services in future, which leads to her possibility to rely on others to learn and to explore her curiosity. Also, through the phonics materials given by Jann, I dirty my hands in the mud to deal with her attitude and temper on doing the writing, cutting, pasting and drawing. Sometime, a session of the home-learning does harsh her mellow. Or mine. 

I'll deal with that part slowly. 

If possible, I want to send the message to her that, if I can do it, so can she, in anything that we want to. Of course, you may say that, go do something harder and inspire her!