With our resolution to be more active and get more fit this year, my dear hubby and I have been walking...a lot...almost every day.  We have been enjoying the park near our home.  It has great walking/jogging and cycling tracks, playgrounds, beaches, a great ocean view, and lots of barbecue pits.

We've been really enjoying the walking tracks along the beach.  It's so nice to walk in the cool of the evening, watching the sun set, listening to the waves roll in, and enjoying the breeze off the ocean.  Here are a couple shots we've taken from various places not far from our home.  This is the sea near Changi Village.

Didn't my hubby take some gorgeous shots?  Unfortunately, when we've been at the park nearest our home lately, we haven't brought the camera with us.  I'll have to try to get some shots of it so you can enjoy it too!

Oh, by the way, our walking has been having its desired effect: Since our January health screening, dear hubby has lost around 25 pounds, and I've lost 15! 

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Happy new year!  Boy, I didn't realize how long a break I had taken from blogging.  Some of it was forced, when due to the changes on the homeschoolblogger admin-side, I couldn't seem to log on for a short time.  The rest was due to the holiday season.

I hope your holidays were a blessed time of remembering the reason for the season, and enjoying extended time with family and friends.

Here in Singapore, our school year runs from January to December, with our long school holiday beginning mid-November and lasting about 6 weeks until the new year.  We don't really enjoy school holiday times at our house.  With an island the size of Chicago jam-packed with over 5 million people, when the kids get off school, parents tend to take off work, and every single place you could possibly think of going is crowded and noisy beyond bearing.  Add to that the fact that Asians have a very different understanding of personal space and social graces, and I usually find myself feeling rather battered and bruised from all the jostling, bumping, loud voices and music, etc. after an outing.

With my dear hubby having Mondays off, we have always enjoyed the comparative "quiet" of going to public places while most people are at work or school.  (Mind you, with a population of 5 million, it's almost never quiet anywhere!)  So we find the long November-December holiday period stressful.

With all that in mind, we decided to have a mini-vacation right when everyone else was going back to work and school.  So, for the last three days, we took off to a beach resort on the island of Sentosa, just off the south-central coast of Singapore.  We enjoyed playing in the sand on the beach, collecting tiny, tiny seashells, and swimming in the resort's pool.  it was just what the dr. ordered.  I found myself finally relaxing.  I could almost feel my muscles releasing their tension.  I could almost hear my stress unwinding. 

Here we are enjoying the sun and sand...

This is the beautiful pool at the resort.

And the weather cooperated beautifully.  We have had such an excessive rainy season that we changed our original plan to go to Malacca in Malaysia due to flooding, and stayed much closer to home.  But the weather was perfect!  It was overcast enough to be cooler than usual, but warm enough to still enjoy the beach and swimming.  There was not a drop of rain until we were safely bedded down in our hotel room on the last night, and then a massive thunder storm swooped in and wore itself out long before morning, where we awoke to a world with its face freshly washed, shining under a bright, hot tropical sun.

Aren't you thankful that God seems to know how to give us just what we need right when we need it?

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Yesterday was Singapore's 41st birthday, and we were privileged to attend the National Day Parade at the Singapore National Stadium.  We always make it a point to watch this amazing spectacle on TV, but this was the first time we got to be there to see it live!  That's Roboboy in the forefront, next to me, and Dancing Queen is on the other side of me.

From the goodie bags filled with bottled water, snacks and gifts to the pre-parade show hosted by local celebrities and featuring local musical talent, it was a great show!

There were aerial acrobats who performed their stunts 40 feet above the crowd, dangling from massive helium balloons, an award-winning high school marching band, and a wonderful display of our military and police forces, marching proudly in formation in their respective uniforms.

It was so exciting to see both the president and prime minister in person, as they arrived in their motorcades and took seats of honor to view the parade.

There were deafening, dramatic flyovers by military jets and apache helicopters, a combined choir made up of secondary school kids from schools all over the island, and after the sun set, a dramatic light show performed by hundreds of local school children and participants from local organizations choreographed to make amazingly complex formations and colored light displays.

And it all culminated in the best fireworks display I've ever seen in Singapore.  The stadium literally shook with the roars of the 55,000-strong crowd of patriotic Singaporeans, all enthusiastically wearing their national colors of red and white.

They have much to celebrate.  Forty-one years ago, Singapore was literally forced into independence when it was thrust out of Malaysia to stand on its own two feet.  This tiny island nation had virtually no land and no natural resources, and her leaders wept at what they believed was the beginning of the end of this little country.

But today, Singapore proudly stands as a major hub of southeast Asia, a leader in technology, with one of the busiest ports and one of the leading award-winning airports in the world.  This cosmopolitan metropolis has risen to the forefront in the region, and it stands as a testimony to the determination, hard work and sheer grit of its people.  It is a beautiful, clean and green city, with low crime rates where a person can feel safe to walk its streets.

Even though I am not a Singaporean, and even though I am unashamedly and fiercely proud to be an American, I am proud to be a part of this amazing country.  It is a beautiful blend of East and West, marrying the many cultural flavors of its inhabitants into its own unique flavor and style.

So, happy birthday, Singapore!

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We took this photo during a recent visit to Sentosa Island Resort.  The merlion ( the statue in the background) is one of the symbols of Singapore.  It is a mythical creature: half lion, half fish.  This particular statue is on Sentosa island, a resort island just off the southern coast of Singapore.  You may not be able to see it from the photo, but it is so big, that people climb up inside it like the statue of liberty, and you can look out the statue's mouth, and go onto an observation deck on the lion's head.  At night, it is the focus of a laser light show, with myriad rainbow-colored lights and lasers radiating from the merlion's eyes, really quite something to see.

Singapore got its name a very long time ago, when Prince Sang Nila Utama saw the white sandy beaches of Singapore island and decided to land on its beautiful shores.  While exploring, he saw a fearsome creature he couldn't identify.  One old man among his party suggested that the creature might be a lion, and the name Singapore was born.

Actually, it was originally Singapura, or singa (lion) and pura (city).

Today, Singapore lives up to its name in many ways.  It is a leader in shipping, trade, and business in Asia.  Its standard of cleanliness sets the bar for other nations.  Its beauty as the Garden City of Asia is unparallelled.  And the people's fierce sense of self-preservation and work ethic are truly admirable.

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I recently found a book called "The Story of Singapore" on my bookshelf.  I didn't even realize I had it as it was a part of a set of reference books I had been given second hand, and I thought they were all the same series of books.  Anyway, when I realized I had it, I decided to read through it with the children to help them learn the history of the nation of their birth and citizenship.

It's been wonderful!  I have learned so much.  The book is written in a series of short stories, only 1-2 pages long.  So far we've learned about the early people of Singapore, how Singapore got its name, its long history of problems with pirates, tigers, and coolie catchers who kidnapped Chinese workers and brought them here against their will to work in hard manual labor, how Sir Stamford Raffles established the first British settlement here in the 1800's, and about some of the Chinese culture that remains a strong influence here til today.

It was exciting as we read that Thomas Stamford Raffles had to go to work as a young boy to support his mother and sisters when his father died, and how he educated himself by reading and studying long into the night after he finished work.  Dancing Queen said, "Wow, Mom, he was a homeschooler too!"  Both she and Roboboy admired his determination and hard work, studying and supporting his family. 

I tell you, this book is a treasure!  I would not have had the faintest idea how to teach Singapore history, except in the barest and broadest of strokes.  I am only familiar with the general history of Singapore's official 40 years as a nation, but this book goes back to a far earlier time.  I think we all look forward to social studies time every day now.

As we continue to work our way through this book, both children are creating a Singapore notebook, in which they are retelling some of their favorite stories, illustrating them as well.  We've also included a map of Singapore, and a drawing of the Singapore flag, with a description of what the symbols on the flag mean.

To add to our history/geography lessons, I've created a game with our world map.  I write out questions on blank index cards, and the children have to try to find the location of the place described.  I ask a wide variety of questions of different difficulty levels, such as, "Where would you find the Eiffel Tower?", "What country lies on the Tropic of Cancer, between 120 degrees East and 130 degrees east longitude?", "What country was the setting for the book 'King Solomon's Mines'?", and "In which country was chocolate first discovered?"  We cover topics of history, geography, flags, animal science, literature, etc.  We always have a great time poring over the map whenever we play, and their knowledge base broadens each time.

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