Instead of having a book giveaway post for today (as promised last week), I’ve decided to postpone the giveaways till post-CNY so that I can have more time to go through the books for the review 🙂

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As promised in my previous posts in the Journeying through Primary One series, here’s the one about breakfast and food for recess ideas!

Long before school started in January, my girl had already told me that she wanted me to pack food for her recess because And not just any food – she stated she only wanted simple food like bread and biscuits. I know – I’m super blessed! No need to rise at 5+ or play with my wok first thing in the morning.

Actually it is a wise choice she made because she knows she takes a much longer time to eat food like noodles/ rice compared to bread and biscuits. Hence until she can speed up her eating, I probably will stick to packing bread.

Here’s some of the food I’ve prepared for her breakfast and recess – I didn’t take many shots or style the food because taking photos at 6 isn’t on the list of my favourite things to do. Most of the time, I’m preparing the food with eyes half-closed. The list here is not exhaustive.

Food options were brainstormed by her in December, and even though she doesn’t exactly like eggs, she agreed to have eggs in different forms – soft boiled eggs, hard boiled eggs, omelette and sunny side up because I convinced her that eggs are extremely good for her 🙂

Generally, if I prepare hot food for her, I’d prefer to let her consume it for breakfast rather than let her carry it to school and eat it when it’s turned cold or lukewarm.

But she doesn’t like red bean soup much.

Though she didn’t like French toast much in the past, she now loves it. 🙂

Sometimes I also make mini hotcakes using the Morinaga hotcake mix:

and when I’m feeling really up to it, I use the same Morinaga mix to make little chocolate cakes which is like once in a really blue moon.

The pancakes and chocolate cakes could be brought for recess too, but I personally prefer that she eats them while they are hot as the mini chocolate cakes are actually crunchy on the outside and fluffy in the middle when they are eaten fresh.

Recently we came across these cute buns and hunted them down in NTUC over the weekend – we grabbed the last two packs! There’s a pig version as well with red bean paste which we didn’t manage to get this time round. These buns are simply too adorable to resist! 🙂 And they taste good too!

Other breakfast options I’ve given/ am planning to include are sardine / tuna sandwiches (she loves the sardine ones), wholemeal bread with cheese, char siew buns from Crystal Jade, blueberry muffins, mini frittatas and maybe mini burgers when she starts eating faster. It’s not that easy to make breakfast these days considering that we’re trying our best to cut down on processed foods so ham, sausages and bacon are out of the picture and the overnight oats which have been much raved about by others won’t make it to our breakfast table because I’m the only one in the family who likes oats.

Anyway, here are some of the snack boxes I’ve packed for her recess:

That’s her favourite biscuit and she uses her pocket money to buy it at the supermarket 🙂 I sometimes pack in a special treat like her favourite jelly to spice things up and to deter her from buying nonsense to eat in school 😛

After she discovered that it was cheaper to pack a drink for her for recess compared to buying from the canteen, I’ve been packing UHT milk or other other drinks for her ever since.

 

I usually will only pack whole fruits like grapes, blueberries and strawberries – I try not to give cherries because I’m afraid she’d stain her uniform. I’m ok with packing banana and slices of orange too when she isn’t coughing.

Since my food options are limited due to her food preferences, I thought I’d introduce you to some of my friends who are cool wokking mamas! They prepare bentos for recess for their kids. I personally won’t pack cooked food because I dislike cold food (unless it’s meant to be cold like soba noodles) and I think there’s always a chance of it going bad after so many hours in the container. But in case you’re fine with packing cooked food, here are some links to other moms:

• Mrs Kam from The Kam Family has been sharing her healthy lunch box ideas since Week 1 of school. Her boy has opted for a largely vegetarian menu and she uses premium ingredients. Check out her lunch box posts on her blog.

• Serene from xavvy-licious has an impressive number of bento tools and picks for her lunch boxes for her boy! Check out her January bento boxes post.

• Adora from The Gingerbread Mum has been posting tempting pictures of her lunch boxes on her Facebook page. Click the link to check out more of her food pics.

• Alicia from Beanie ‘N’ Us has been conscientiously preparing lunch and snack boxes for her girl since school started. Check out her Facebook page for more ideas!

(All photos in this post from other mom bloggers were taken with their permission)

Stay tuned to my next post about our routine for this year!

This post is part of our ongoing series:

Other posts in this series:

• Her Transition to P1
• The first email to her teacher
• Our routine
• First achievement unlocked
• A new accomplishment and end of Term 3 review

 

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I promised I’d update her Primary 1 journey and even though at the time that I wrote my previous post of her transition to P1, I’d already written the email to her teacher, I thought I’d keep this as a separate post.

Two weeks into school and I already wrote my first email to the teacher. This certainly wasn’t something that I had expected.

 

And it wasn’t to ask about what to bring for school tomorrow or how she’s coping in class or to complain that I wasn’t allowed to accompany her into school in the first days.

Let’s just say I’m a generally easygoing person and having been a teacher, I normally let most things I don’t agree with slide because I know that some things the kid will adjust or figure out on her own. (I hear some of you screaming in horror, but yes, I’m just that kind of parent.)

But the one thing that really gets to me is when my girl comes home complaining about this one boy almost every day. And it’s the same boy that she said had taken her money on the first day of school (I shall comment more on this when I write about teaching about financial responsibilities).

And my chance to raise my concerns came when my girl came home in week 2 complaining that the boy had pushed her and she fell during PE lesson (and this wasn’t the first time I’d heard about pushing incidents). Fortunately, the PE teacher was aware of what happened so while the incident was fresh in everyone’s minds, I penned my first email to the form teacher.

I’d say I’m hardly the accusatory parent and since there wasn’t any blood shed and it was a mere bruise she suffered, the email was extremely cordial and I raised my concerns matter-of-factly as narrated to me and I also acknowledged that perhaps not every single thing she said is the truth per se as kids at her age may add in details unknowingly.

Surprisingly, I received a reply late that very night and was told that she’s already looking into many other issues with this boy – which shows that her teacher is alert and/or the boy is really attention-seeking.

I had asked for her position to be changed – away from this boy, as requested by my girl for the time being, but apparently, two weeks after my email, they are still in the same group.

I’d only say that I shall trust the teacher’s judgement that she thinks that my girl is able to conduct herself appropriately with respect to this boy’s attention-seeking acts.

From what I observed in these two weeks, my girl has indeed proven herself to be mature enough. She’d tell me that he said some nasty things to her and she’d feel sad but she’d either ignore him and surprisingly, she even told me, she forgave him for doing it on a few occasions. She said she’d give him a chance again, just as her teacher gives him another chance, time and again.

If anything, I think this incident has given me greater insight into how much kids look up to their role models and how sometimes by letting her solve her problems on her own, she’d learn to face the difficulties as opposed to me removing the problem in her life.

That said, I’m still glad I raised the issue with the teacher because I think it is still important to have it documented in emails – just in case the issue and tension escalate. Also, if I didn’t highlight the issue, I wouldn’t know that the teacher is already aware of the situation, and that she thinks there’s a better solution to the problem, other than for my girl to be displaced from it.

It’s almost one month of school already – let’s hope everything improves. 😀

I shall share more in my next few posts relating to routines, food, and teaching her financial responsibilities once I get these sorted out with her and after we do our reflection of the month together.

[Update: She’s chummy with the boy now and I guess everyone just needed time to settle in and get used to life in primary school!]

This post is part of the P1 journey series –

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