The Goodacre's: February 2009

Madi Goes to School!

Well, Madi is now 2 ½ and is an amazing little girl! We have loved every minute of watching her grow and learn. She has play dates with some of her friends at least once a week and plays at the playground. We have all been so fortunate this past year and a half, we have not had to put Madi in daycare like we would have had to do at home. If we were home she would have been in full day daycare five days per week since she was 1! We are also very fortunate to have the opportunity to put her in a very flexible and free pre-school.
CIS, the school that Steve and I work for have a per-school called Learning Ladder. As staff members, we get tuition for free for our kids, plus we can have the flexibility of sending her whenever we see appropriate because we have Josefina to pick her whenever we need her to. So, because we are leaving Singapore in 6 months we figured we all needed a bit of ‘training’ for life in Canada. We need Madi to know that she will need to get up in the morning and get ready to go, we need her to know that she will be with other kids for the day and we need her to know that there will be no more Josefina. So this perfect, we started her at 3 mornings a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from 9-11:45am. This way she gets a morning full of activity and gets to come home for lunch and her nap. We are hoping by the end of our time here that she will be able to do mornings five days per week.
Of course the biggest bonus of all of this is MADI LOVES SCHOOL!!!
She is loving the big slide and goes down on her tummy now. She is learning to cut and she loves to paint and draw and glue, she had made some adorable things so far!She wears a uniform and has a little school bag that my mom made her, so she is adorable!Here are a few pictures for you to see.

Look at all the toys!

Walking to the bus

Going down our elevator, so cute!

Painting with water

Riding a bike with Daddy

Monkey see Monkey do! She climbed up after watching another kid do it!

Down the slide!

Part of one of the classrooms

Her very own cubby!!

Going in after outdoor play, she is not shy!

Fun with water!

Very resourceful

Our little scholar hard at work!

Snack time!

Chinese steamed bun with lotus paste in the centre...I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, she gobbled it up!

December in Singapore

We were busy in December with all sorts of fun things. We did a publicity stunt for Tiger Beer, which included 100 of us, 80 people were freezing in a drinking position ofr five minutes while the other 20 of us were walking around saying stupid things like, ‘wow, what is going on?’ We did this on orchard road and in Clarke Quay, two of the busiest areas. So there are a few pictures of that.
The social committee organized a Cookies with Santa Sunday afternoon. It was quite cute. Santa came and gave the kids presents and there were crafts and gingerbread houses.
Madi wasn’t too sure about Santa, but enjoyed the day.
There are a few pictures of a few nights out in Singapore as well as building a Gingerbread house at home with Just Steve, Charla and Julie. We had lots of fun decorating and then destroying the house. Madi was in Candy heaven!