He was getting oatmeal ready for us.
2009-11-21
He is so sweet
He was getting oatmeal ready for us.
2009-10-29
Cartoon drawing


I checked out a cartoon drawing teaching book from library a while ago. I drew shapes for Faith and she tried to follow the steps from book and discovered her ability of drawing cartoon. I think she did a very good job for the fist time drawing cartoon animals. I liked the monkey the most. This is how she tried and tried and finally she did it (I drew an ear for her to follow and she did rest of them). It is so cute to me.
After many weeks, Solomon finally caught up with his sister. He has been trying to draw dogs for couple weeks. This past Sunday morning before church, he came to me and surprised us with this picture. He really amazed me. haha! He did not want to show his face during picture taking. I thought that he was being humble.
Right after his introduction, he drew a birthday cake for his birthday dog. And he is enjoy his cake now. :9
2009-10-22
A fun hiking experience for kids

This mountain has built a comfortable trail for people hiking.

I like the loud noise from cicadas, clean and fresh air in the mountain, and friendly people we met there. Kids and I also enjoy in accompany with Kao family.
look at her. She was scratching her leg. she looks funny. She is a two months "Pet" and is already huge. But she is just like a dog to her owner. Her owner descibed that when someone calls her name "A-Mei" she will respond with noise and look at the person who calls her. She likes to run too. Of course, she does not run so fast with her short legs, but looks funny to her owner family.
Bro. Kao is a elementary school's teacher. That is how he disciplines children and even when they are playing.
2009-10-10
Puppet show
Yesterday was 10/10, Taiwan's National Day. This month is also Tainan city arts festival. As uaual, there are many indoor shows, exhibitions and free outdoor shows to enjoy with friends and families.
In the morning, we went to church watching General Conference talk. Afternoon I took kids to cultural center outdoor stage area watching puppet show. I remember vividly, when I was little, my brothers and I liked to bring out some chairs and to sit with our neighbor friends and enjoy outdoor puppet show together in front of Buddhist temple. When the show was over, usually many coins and candies would be tossed as pulling rain out from the stage. And then, there was chaos in front of the stage. Haha. fun memory. Every child included me not only enjoy the show but also had fun during catching and finding coins and candies.
These people came from every walk of life. Some of them are a dentist, a teacher, a school principal, and a sculptor... . They have passion and love for Taiwanese traditional puppet show. For this simple purpose they started a puppet club and through the club they also share the joy and introduce the beauty of taiwanese puppet show to the new generation.
Yesterday they gave each little audience a puppet and show them how to decorat with their own puppets. After the puppet show was over, these men gave a brief introduction of how to manage a puppet, ex. how to move it like walking, to wave for goodbye or hi, how to move puppet's bady for introducing itself...
Also, every child who was brave enough was welcome to come to the little stage and show what they just learned from the introduction and to make their own little puppet show.
Haha, Faith was so excited and wanted me to take her to the stage and play with the puppet in front of people. She was not shy at all. Solomon got a little bit stage fright.
The quality of my camera isn't good enough to show a clear image. At least, you can see what was going on there.
Oops, it was out of battery at that special moment. So I recorded it for couple times.
2009-10-05
A cultural night
The play is about a group of farm animals want to catch a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. The whole play they are looking for this run-away turkey. After all the chasing, they still can not catch it. At final, they eat big yellow duck instead.
9/28 was Confucius birthday. Confucius was a great teacher from the ancient China and had great influence upon Chinese moral thinking. Every year around his birthday, a series of culture activities were held at Confucius Temple. This year we stayed up a little bit late watching this children story play. It was a great educational play for children. We ran into our neighbor friend who has a almost 4 year-old girl like to play with Faith and Solomon. They got so excited when they saw each other. So we stood next to them and got lucky to find some chairs for children to stand a little bit taller to see the show.
This story is about a baby bear asks mommy bear, "Is Spring coming yet?". Mommy bear answers, "When the flower blossoms, and butterflies, bees, and birds are flying all over the fields. It means Spring is here."
Please note that how these little audiences respond to the show.
2009-10-03
Moon Festival
2009-09-22
Little Red Riding Hood
Couple weeks ago I read the first time to my kids this famous fairy tale. They learned a lesson which is do not tell a stranger where they head to or any tetails about themself, but the gospel and introduce their mother to the person. People here like to ask them many questions and even touch their faces. It is because they look so different from others. As well, they are too cute. So I thought it is important to teach them to be aware of strangers. But it is also important to be friendly and kind to others when I am arround them.
Today, we were going to read the fifth time of this story. Faith suggested to role play instead of reading. So we did it with simple costumes we had.
Faith acted as: Little Red Riding Hood,
the grandmother (before she is swallowed), and the hunter
Solomon acted as: the mother of Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf , and the grandmonther (at the end)
I was the narrator and the photographer, and I am a faithful audience of their play.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Little Red Riding Hood, after the red hooded cape she wears.
One day, her mother ask her to deliver food to her sick grandma. Also, she was remainded not to linger in the woods, but go directly to her grandma's home.
As the girl walks in the woods, a wolf sees her and wants to eat her but is afraid to do so in public. He approaches the girl, she naively tells him where she is going.
He suggests the girl pick some flowers, which she does.
In the meantime, he goes to the grandmother's house and gains entry by pretending to be the girl.
He swaollows the grandmother whole, and waits for the girl, disguised as the grandmother.
When the girl arrives, she notices he looks very strange to be her grandma.
In most retelling, this eventually culminates with Little Red Riding Hood saying, " My, what big teeth you have!"
The girl tries to flee for her life. Unfortunately, the wolf swallows her whole, too.
A hunter, however comes to the rescue,
cuts the wolf open. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother emerge unharmed.
He fills the wolf's body with heavy stones, (haha, Faith forgot to put a ball underneath Solomon's cloth before she sewed on his tummy.)
2009-09-16
A difficult project for children

Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman, and printmaker. He is not the only artist in the family. His father was post-impressionism painter and his brother was also a sculptor.

He observed people busy walking on streets and attempted to creat renditions of his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen. He once said that he was sculpting not the human figure, but "the shadow that is cast".
A period of time his sculptures were just like the picture above. They were about 20cm tall. Later, he made a big change on his works. He remained the style but the sizes were a lot taller.


2009-09-14
Pointed & Printed painting

Georges Pierre Seurat was a Frech painter. He was pointillsiom painter. His most famous painting was " A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte"(The picture below).

His painting filled with tons of tiny and detached strokes of pure color. This time we were trying to creat a picture with lots of dots.

With this project, we used cotton as paint brush.

She was imitating the fish from the book.

A red fish
We picked couple different shapes of leaves from my mom's little garden. We painted with colors on leaves. And then, printed on paper.
Solomon also had fun with coloring on leaves. He liked hands printing the most.
2009-09-05
Experience different painting style

This is Jackson Pollock. He was born in Wyoming and grew up in Arizona and California. When he was young he found his interests in art. He went to New York for advanced training and became famous for painting in the abstract expressionist style. His nickname was " Jack the Dripper". His style was very new for the time. Later of his life, he simply numbered his painting without giving them the specific names. He thought that the viewers should be the one decide what the picture is according to their feelings. His paintings are still popular in museums all over the world.

She finished the first painting quickly. She contiuned to paint another style of painting. The next painting was painted by an ancient Chinese artist. He used Chinese Calligraphy as paint brush. So I gave Faith my father's chinese calligraohy to paint this cat and tree. Faith really exprienced the differences between modern western painting and ancient chinese painting.
2009-09-03
Book Club
Musical instrument
After watching "Tarzan" so many times, we took out the things at home that we can use as musical intrument. Here is their little concert. They loved it so much. The other side of living room was full of shredded paper.
Haha, let's try some more. They had so much fun.
2009-09-02
The Princess and the Pea

These couple days we have been reading "The Princess and the pea" over and over. Faith likes it so much just because it is a story of a princess. So today, I thought it would be more fun to have them act out the story. I was a narrator and a photographer. Faith was the prince in the first half of the play. Later, she acted as the princess. Solomon was the king and later acted as the prince. You will tell their role by the customs they wear. To my surprise, they were so good at acting. Without my direction they did every action and arranged background. They even suggested to one another the role they wanted to act. Haha, it was so fun to see them do all of this.
A prince who lives in a beatiful castle with king and queen. He wants to marry a princess, but is having difficulty finding a sutable partner. He is sad and wonders where he can meet a real princess who he likes.
Therefore, he decides to leave the castle and to look for "her".
He answers the door. To his surprise, a young woman drenched with rain seeks shelter in the prince's castle.
2009-08-30
A school of fish
I took children to feed fish today. A school of fish just came all together and fought for couple pieces of cereal. They almost jumped on the cement. It was kind of scary.
They were following us for more food. Haha, It was interseting for us.
Phone call from Daddy
Faith said that she almost forgot how to speak English to Daddy. Her Chinese is getting better, but English is getting worse.
From now on, we are going to receive David's phone call every Monday at 4:oo am. (Taiwan time). It is also the best day of a week for us.













