How to make your own pop-up puppet

Materials

1. Paper Cup
2. Straw
3. Stickers
4. Cut-out of your favourite character
5. Scotchtape

Instructions

1. Make a hole in the bottom of the paper cup.
2. Decorate the cup with stickers (or paint, or markers).
3. Tape the character cut-out to the top of the straw.
4. Feed the straw through the hole in the cup.
5. Ta-dah! Your puppet's done!

Step 1.


Step 4.

Step 5.















Looks like fun right? You'd think DN would be popping his puppet non-stop right? Wrong. He was more interested in drinking from the cup with a loud "aaaahhh!" and peeling the stickers off. If you look closely, you will see some half-stars. -_-

Museum Toddlers

When I think "museum", I think -> dioramas, dinosaurs, dust, fossilised guards shouting "QUIET!" and of course, boring. (I have about an gram's worth of culture in my brain. The rest is my shopping-discount-calculator.) So I was really pleasantly surprised to find out from Grace about this Museum Toddlers programme at the National Museum. Kids in the museum? Can meh!?

Can!

First in Singapore, the National Museum of Singapore's Museum Toddlers programme provides a play-based learning experience for children aged 18months to 4 years. Using key artefacts from the Museum's collection, the programme focusses on the process of exploring and interacting... and using the powers of imagination.

Go to [www.nationalmuseum.sg] -> [what's on] -> [all events] -> [museum toddlers] to read more.

There was singing, a puppet show, an art-and-craft session and finally, a short visit to the film gallery where we saw old hand puppets, old costumes worn by chinese opera actors, old videos of puppet shows and an old puppet stage. Very very cool.

What I really like is how NHB is trying to reach out to the really young with all these programmes. This Museum Toddlers programme has been running bi-monthly from April and will last until December. There are 4 different types of workshops altogether - puppetry, photography, fashion and a culinary one. Guess which one we're going for next? ;)

I also like how the workshop was in a way, holistic and thematic. The kids watched a puppet show, then they made their own pop-up puppet (I'll post the instructions in the next post) and then this was linked to Singapore's own history and past - how opera and puppet shows were a popular form of entertainment for the immigrants in the early 1900's. I just wish there was some focus on wayang kulit too.

The guys from Toy Box were very very good - funny, enthusiastic and really into the kids. For a long time, DN just stuck to me. Once he warmed up, he moved right in front. :)


There he is, clapping his hands after the puppet show.


Before they made their own pop-up puppet, one of the Toy Box guys showed them a real pop-up puppet and how it worked.


After they'd finished their puppet, the kids were shown these old stick puppets - how they worked and how elaborate their costumes were. This was a nice lead-in to the visit to the film gallery.


DN and Caryn on their second date. The concept of "out of your league" still hasn't sunk in for DN.



This has nothing to do with the puppetry workshop, but these lights are so cool!

Games to play at home - HELP!

Have you ever had a day where you stare at your toddler and think to yourself:

• Did I bring home the wrong baby from the hospital? (that kind of energy is definitely not from my side of the family)
  
• Will he/she take a longer nap if I put just a few drops of vodka in his/her juice?
  
• If I close my eyes and think of a happy place, will that block out the screaming?
• Three drops?
  

Last Saturday I asked myself all that plus this one :

• What can I do with this child on a hot and boring Saturday afternoon?

I was stumped! So if you have a great idea for a home-made game for toddlers, please email me at mylittlelittleturnip@gmail.com. If you've got pictures, even better. I'll compile a little list of games and post them on this blog for all to share. ;)

Ace!

You know you're watching too much Wimbledon when your 22 month old suddenly starts swinging AND GRUNTING while you're watching Wimbledon.

Here he is, doing a "monica seles".



After taking pity on DN "playing tennis" with a hand-held broom, we toyed with the idea of getting him a cheap set of rackets to play with. But of course, being the lazy bums that we are, DN continued playing tennis with ladles, cups and fly-swatters (UGH, imagine the fly parts flying around) until...

... we had dinner at Pasta Waraku. Yes indeed! A Japanese restaurant helped realise my son's Wimbledon dreams, haha. Let me explain.

At the entrance, there was a big basket of toys. At first, I thought they were for entertaining children while their parents ate, but figured they were for sale because they were brand new.


We didn't give it a second thought until PF brought DN for a walk while waiting for our food. Suddenly, DN came running back with this.

All kids at the restaurant get to pick a toy for free! Isn't that great? Before we left, a waitress even offered DN a second toy. We picked another set of rackets. Now we can play doubles, heh!

The first thing DN did was put the little plastic ball in the shuttlecock and start licking it like ice-cream. Wa-hahaha! PF and I couldn't stop laughing.






It was a good evening - funny baby, free toys and good food - what more can a Singaporean ask for (besides winning 4D also)? By the time I remembered to take a picture of our dinner, this was all that was left. No, we didn't lick our plates. I had the Salmon & Salmon Roe Spaghetti and PF had the Katsu Tamagoji Spaghetti. DN had both, but of course.

Fidgets

Remember how it was raining a lot in May? Well, we were rained on one Saturday morning so Joanne and Peter suggested checking Fidgets out, an indoor kids playgym at Turf City.

DN is still young (ish), so he couldn't climb up/slide down/crawl over some of the stuff, but the monkey gene is strong in this one, so 80% of the gym was accessible to him. Did he have fun? Er, do chickens taste good? (duh)

We couldn't hold him back.


I was most impressed with this "Ball Cleaning Machine". Yeah! The balls in the ball pit go through this machine, get cleaned (we can see the process through a glass bit) and get sent back into the pit!

It's even interactive! The kids toss the balls through the bullseye and it gets vacuumed into the machine. You can even watch your ball travel through the tube and wait for it to get shot back into the pit. It was definitely a crowd-fave. I was standing there for 5 minutes feeding balls into the bullseye. (Helping them clean the balls mah!)

Animal Resort

Last Saturday, DN and Caryn visited Animal Resort and had a swell time. After a breakfast of prata (DN lurves prata) and thosai at Jalan Kayu, we swung over to Seletar Farmway 5 to meet Caryn and her parents. We got there at 10am and left at 11.30am. That tiny little farm entertained us suitably for 1.5 hours.

DN and Caryn fed the

• goats
• cranes
• fish
• guinea pigs
• rabbits
• chickens
• geese
• turkey and
• cancer bird
  

Yes, cancer bird. It's a farm, not a zoo, so the cages weren't labelled. And us being the city mice that we are, we had no idea what this animal was.

We stood outside his cage for a good 15 minutes, arguing about that long sac hanging off his chin.

Carla : It's a goiter!
PF : It's a cyst!
Noel : It's Ebenezer Scrooge!
Me (thinking) : It's going to eat our children!

We concluded that he smoked too much in his younger days and is paying for it now with that cancerous cyst. We gave him some bread and christianed him "cancer bird". As we left, Caryn said, "Bye cancer bird!" Oops.

The Animal Resort is free for all. You just need to buy feed for the animals - $2 for 3 packets. My advice is, just buy the bread, carrots and fish food. As tasty as they are, the turkey and chickens weren't exciting to feed at all and the rabbits and guinea pigs were too blind to find the food dropped into their cages.

Here's DN feeding the rabbits, but...

... doing this instead! I bet they didn't know what hit them. LOL.

There were 2 goats there. Until Noel (the observant city mouse) pointed it out, the 3 of us never knew that goats have rectangular pupils! Did YOU know?

Looks like Mr Goat needs a pedicure... big time.




When I got this packet of food, I told Carla, "Cool! Pileons! Wonder what they look like."

I think I remember Carla going something like this, "Prrrrthhhh! Wa-hahahaha!" I think she was glad I didn't say anything about "jurkeys".

This was the only decent picture we got of DN & Caryn. Thank goodness for digital cameras.