Tuesday 29 May 2012

Look, that's the moon

Children have an eye for details. At least it looks like so for Kah Yen. She can see things that I totally do not expect her to notice and point out them to me.


She learnt what is "Ma Yi" (Chinese for ants) during our walk to the park recently. She calls them "Mamal" though. Since then she is so fascinated by ants, and it just happened  these few days our house is attacked by ants. Kah Yen is always the first one to spot them, she will shout loudly "Mamal Mamal" and Daddy and Mummy will come to her rescue. Sometimes we have to ask "Where Where is Mamal?" because we can't see, but she can point to us exactly where the ant is.


We have the routine of carrying her to say goodnight to everything inside the house. I usually start from the front door, after saying goodnight to the houses and trees and plants outside, we will say goodnight to the lock, the iron gate and then the wooden door. Kah Yen will also stop at the door plate and points at every number of the door plate and asks me to read them one by one to her, including the dash in between. What a good opportunity to teach her numbers! So I will always happily read to her a few times. Too bad our unit number is not 012-3456789, imagining I can teach her 0 to 9 without flash cards then.


When we are reading picture books together, Kah Yen will point to almost anything she can see from the page - every bubble in the bathtub, every cloud in the sky, and tails of all the animals. One day we were reading the neighborhood mother goose and I asked Kah Yen what she saw in the picture, I was expecting her to point at the flowers, instead she pointed at the page number 9. After I told her that's number 9, she flipped other pages and let me read all the page numbers to her. So mother goose became a counting book for that night.

Can you see page number 9?

This is the ABC poster we bought and pasted on the wall. The first time I carried Kah Yen near it, I was expecting her to point at the pictures, or maybe the words, or if she is really observant, the letters. To my surprise, her eyes are on those colorful pins that pin each picture card on the board. Did you notice the pins? Maybe not if I did not point out right?  She pointed to them one after another and I had to read "Red Pin", "Green Pin", "Yellow Pin" and on and on. I am afraid at the end of the day the only word she learnt from this poster is "Pin".

Do you see the colorful pins?

Ok. The most classic one has to be this. Look at this Chinese words poster. Can you see the moon? Last night while drinking milk Kah Yen suddenly pointed at this poster and said "Yue liang" (Chinese for moon). I looked up and down I could not find the moon or anything close to a moon. After she finished her milk I carried her up to show me where is the moon. And guess what she pointed at? Can you see the two parentheses that contain the Chinese word "Four" in the header? She was pointing at the two parentheses! She thought these are two crescent new moons. 

Where is the moon?

The eyes of a child are truly amazing.



3 comments:

  1. How observant! Sophia loves to point out "anz" (ants) too. And little specks of dirt and our little moles or scars. I guess she really doesn't like imperfection. Looks to me like Kah Yen likes numbers.

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    1. So I am right to say that children have an eye for details! Sophia is also one of them. Pointing at moles and scars? How cute!

      I hope Kah Yen really likes numbers like what you said.

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