Three Reasons You’ll Fall In Love With Printables

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The party is tomorrow noon. You’ve been busy all week making arrangements. Birthday cake. Check. Catered lunch. Check. Party favours. Check. Decorations…. Oh dear! You’ve forgotten about them! But it’s already late at night. How are you going to get the decorations in time?

Here come printables to the rescue. But wait, what exactly are printables?

A printable is a ready-to-print PDF file that can be downloaded and printed instantly – at home or with a professional printer. Created in high-resolution, it is formatted to print on an A4 size sheet of paper.

PRINTABLES ARE INSTANT
Because printables are digital files, all you need to do is to download and immediately print them out for your use. There’s no need to wait for your shipment to arrive, or for the store to open. Problem solved!

How about a colourful wall bunting to make your party pop?
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Melting Ice Cream Wall Bunting, available at Little Day Out Shop for $2.50

Or some photo booth props to create fun memories?
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Jay & Elle Photo Booth Props, available at Little Day Out Shop for $4.99

You can even get a full set of themed party essentials, from invitation cards to buntings, cake toppers, and plate and cup decorations.

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Blobbers Party Pack, available at Little Day Out Shop for $7.99.

PRINTABLES ARE COST-EFFECTIVE
The kids at the party may need some activities to keep them happily occupied. With printables, you can buy just one activity sheet, and print out as many copies as you need. There’s no shipping charge involved, and they’re generally priced lower as sellers don’t incur printing or warehousing costs.

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Birds of the Rainforest Stick Puppet Craft, available at Little Day Out Shop for $2.99.

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Iconic Singapore Colouring Book, available at Little Day Out Shop for $3.99.

PRINTABLES ARE RE-USABLE
Children like to do the same things over and over again. With the PDF file in your possession, you can easily print out another copy, whenever they feel like colouring, crafting, or solving puzzles again!

Three cheers for printables! Hip, hip, hurray!

A New Activity You Can Count On

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Ever wondered how you can teach your child about money? Little Day Out Shop’s contributor, Jacqueline Zhang, has the answer for you. Her brand new activity pack – How Much Is It? – uses a systematic yet fun approach to help kids understand and articulate the cost of items in both English and Mandarin.

How Much Is It? is divided into three levels for progressive learning. The first level focuses on teaching about cents, the second – dollars, while the third combines dollars and cents. Within each level, you’ll find interesting activities and role-playing games to help your child learn.

In the activity, Sweets and Biscuits Shop, for instance, you and your child act as a cashier and customer respectively. The little customer shops for sweets and biscuits, asks the cashier how much they cost, and uses 10-cent coins to pay for the purchase.

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In another game – Spin, Tell, Pay – you and your child take turns to spin a colourful wheel, state the cost printed on the wedge that you land on, and present the amount in dollars, cents, or a combination of both.

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There are many other good activities that stimulate learning in this pack: Show Me the Money, Match the Tag, Design-A-Wristlet Shop, Recess Time. (Don’t these names sound interesting?) The best thing is, you’ll have a fun time bonding with your child while working on the activities together.

Enjoy!

How Much Is It? contains 25 pages of learning fun and is available for $6.90 on Little Day Out Shop.

Buy Now

 

 

Theatre For All – Special Giveaway

Theatre for All Giveaway

Question: What does it take to support the arts?

Answer: Just a ticket.

Theatre For All

Theatre For AllI Theatre’s Theatre For All Fund was set up in 2008 to bring the arts to underprivileged children. The fund provides the opportunity for these children to experience the arts by covering the cost for their tickets.

Past beneficiaries have included groups like AWWA Educational Services, Beyond Social Serivces, Rainbow Centre and Tanjong Pagar Family Service Centre.

To support the Theatre For All Fund, Little Day Out has committed to donate part of the proceeds of the sales of the Theatre for All Activity Book (Volume 1) in 2016 to the Theatre For All Fund.

What is the Theatre For All Activity Book?

Theatre Special Giveaway - My Little Day Out Theatre for All Activity Book

Since 2013, Little Day Out worked with I Theatre to bring theatre stories to life through activity sheets based on I Theatre’s family-friendly theatre productions. These activity sheets have been themed after shows such as Aesop Fables, Hey Little Mousedeer, Puss in Boots and The Little Red Hen.

The Theatre For All Activity Book is a downloadable activity book containing 65 of these activity sheets including mazes, spot-the-difference puzzles, colouring sheets, paper crafts and many more.

At only $4.99, this 82-page downloadable book is great value-for-money and available exclusively on the Little Day Out Shop.

Little Star – Special Giveaway

In conjunction with I Theatre’s latest production, Little Star, we have five pairs of tickets (at a value of $64.00 per pair) to the show to give away.

With each purchase of the Theatre For All Activity Book from the Little Day Out Shop between 4 and 14 August 2016, the buyer of the downloadable book will receive one chance to win a pair of tickets to Little Star on 27 August 2016, 2.30 pm at the Alliance Francaise Theatre.

The five winners will be announced after 14 August 2016.

The Theatre For All Activity Book is now available from the Little Day Out Shop.


Congratulations to the winners!
1. Ng Yifang
2. Angie Chen
3. Bek Hong Kiang
4. Carolyn Chiam
5. Muni Zul
They have each won a pair of tickets to Little Star!


Read more about our behind the scenes story about what it takes for I Theatre to bring its new upcoming production, Little Star, to the stage.

Meet the Little Day Out Shop Author: Jacqueline Zhang

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Ever felt like you had a great idea to share with others?

One mom did, and acted on her ideas.

Mom-of-one, Jacqueline Zhang created activity sheets that she could do with her son and nieces. Taking it further, she submitted her ideas to us at Little Day Out. We loved them and they can now be found on our new Little Day Out Shop.

Jacqueline’s activity ideas cover everyday topics like food and the neighbourhoods we live in. They introduce kids to the world around them and are creative and fun to do.

We spoke with Jacqueline to find out more about where her fount of creativity bubbles up from and what led her to share her activity sheets on the Little Day Out Shop.

Little Day Out: You have developed a series of practical activity packs with hanyu pinyin guides. What inspired you to create these bilingual activity packs?

Jacqueline Zhang: My nieces, Renee (aged 6+) and Sophie (aged 4+), and my son, Reef (aged 2+), are my inspiration!

I play with them and teach them, and these interactions give me ideas on activities I can do with them. I added the bilingual element as I feel that children (including my son and nieces) need more exposure to the Chinese language.

Jacqueline's son Reef with his cousins Renee and Sophie.
Jacqueline’s son Reef with his cousins Renee and Sophie.

LDO: What do you hope to achieve through these activity packs? What is the main takeaway for the child?

JZ: I believe a lot of parents (including myself) would like to outsource the learning of Chinese to the experts because we are not too confident of the language. I hope that these simple activities will encourage parents to impart to their children some life skills in both languages, have fun with their child and teach values as well.

The child will definitely benefit from the time spent with the parent. More importantly, the child will learn that his/her parent is interested and personally involved in his/her learning, and is not afraid to learn and master the Chinese language together with the child.

Editor’s Note: Check out Jacqueline’s range of bilingual printables.

LDO: We’re sure you’ve experimented with using your activity packs with your son or with someone’s child. Tell us which is their favourite activity pack and why it was so?

I am using the exploring my neighbourhood activity pack with my son. He loves exploring and learning about the neighbourhood! I will be trying the Xiao Wan Mian (noodles) and Ji Fan (chicken rice) activity packs with my nieces soon. Those two activity packs are designed with preschoolers in mind.

Jacqueline's Exploring My Neighbourhood Activity Sheet encourages kids to learn about places around the neighbourhood and what they can do there.
Jacqueline’s Exploring My Neighbourhood Activity Sheet encourages kids to learn about places around the neighbourhood and what they can do there.

LDO: Do you have a personal favourite? Why?

My personal favourite is still in the making. It will be called Conversations with Grandma. (You can use it with Grandpa too.) I like it because I enjoyed talking to my grandmother. I really miss those days because my grandmother has dementia now and is very old. I hope that with that activity pack, many children can create beautiful memories of conversations with their grandparents and learn from them.

LDO: What other new Singapore-inspired digital product can we expect to see from you?

We (Jacqueline and her collaborator, Angeline) just launched an activity pack called “Knowing Singapore” as a build up towards National Day. It will be designed for toddlers.

We also intend to launch a learning package called “How much is it”, to teach children about understanding the cost of items in English and Chinese and paying money when buying something. It will be suitable for both preschoolers and toddlers.

LDO: Why did you decide to publish with Little Day Out Shop? Did you consider other avenues?

I have been following your weekly eNewsletter for more than a year now. When you launched the Little Day Out Shop and invited readers to submit ideas, I decided to give it a try as I really love coming out with ideas. It was all rather spontaneous, and I never thought of coming up with children products until the invitation came. I was pleasantly surprised and very excited that you were willing to publish my first idea, Xiao Wan Mian.

LDO: Tell us more about yourself. Are you a stay-at-home mum now?

I started off as a secondary school teacher. After that, I did curriculum work with MOE, and went on to work with the youths in my church. Teaching and working with youths has always been my passion. However, the nature of such work requires a lot of time and dedication. I decided to switch to part time admin work to spend more time with my son since he was born. Now I work for 2.5 days, and I look after my son on the other days of the week.

LDO: How do you usually get new ideas?

I like to think about ideas when I am on the bus or MRT train. Sometimes, the ideas come suddenly in the middle of the day as well! Sometimes, the ideas are a bit raw, and I will write them down and think about them once a while to refine the ideas until I am happy with them. I also enjoy talking to friends about my new ideas, and sometimes they give me good pointers to think about.

LDO: What’s a typical weekend like for you and your family?

On Saturdays, my family likes to head out to explore a new place or try a new activity in the morning. On Sundays, we spend the morning and afternoon in church and with church friends. In the evenings (Saturdays and Sundays), we spend time with my in-laws and my nieces.

LDO: Name three of your favourite spots in Singapore and three activities you enjoy as a family.

My family loves the Bird Park, the Keppel Centre for Art Education at the National Gallery and Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum. We also love going to all the different playgrounds in our neighbourhood, cycling at the East Coast Park and spending time with family and friends.

Jacqueline on a day out with her family.
Jacqueline on a day out with her family.

Jacqueline’s Activity Packs

Jacqueline has developed the following activity packs:

Knowing Singapore:Knowing SingaporeTeach your child how to recognise the Singapore Flag, know where ether stay and learn a simple greeting in different languages. Available for $1.50 on the Little Day Out Shop.

Exploring My Neighbourhood:11-EMN-galleryAcquaint your child with your neighbourhood. Help him or her learn what key facilities and services in the community are called. Your child can also learn what they can do there and how to get there. Available for $2.50 on the Little Day Out Shop.

Ji Fan (Chicken Rice):Ji FanTeaches your child how to order food through play. Play-pretend as chef and customer to build up their confidence interacting in Mandarin. Available for $2.50 on the Little Day Out Shop.

Xiao Wan Mian (Noodles):Xiao Wan Mian Help your child gain confidence to order his or her own meal in Mandarin through play. The game also promotes parent-child bonding, hones listening and oral skills. Available for $2.50 on the Little Day Out Shop.

 

 


Be Inspired!

Pop by littledayoutshop.com and check out Jacqueline’s printables now! Join Jacqueline as a Little Day Out Shop contributor too. We look forward to receiving your contributions!

Little Day Out Shop Opens

LDO Shop Opens

Little Day Out has ventured everywhere in search of the best experiences for kids and families. Today marks the start of our biggest adventure yet – the opening of our very own online shop.

Little Day Out Shop (littledayoutshop.com) is not just a store that sells kids’ stuff online.

It is a marketplace for original ideas that inspire bonding, engage the little ones, and help create lasting memories with them.

Everyone is invited to publish their ideas with Little Day Out Shop and these can be anything ranging from activity sheets to party printablesguides, craft templates, and even games – to earn considerable royalty rates of up to 70% of the net profit.

The idea for the shop came about as the Little Day Out Team was coming up with its own activity sheets for places of interest in Singapore.

By creating a marketplace, where creative members of the community can publish their original ideas, everyone can benefit from shared resources.

So, whether you have creative ideas to share with other families or are looking for inspiration to keep the little ones happily occupied this June holiday and beyond, visit littledayoutshop.com.

Besides outing guides, activity sheets, party printables, there is the ever-popular Little Day Out June Holiday Guide, which can be downloaded for free.

To mark the launch of Little Day Out Shop, we are having an exclusive Little Day Out at Playeum, Children’s Centre for Creativity. Get these tickets at 20% off the usual rates and enjoy the day with fellow Little Day Outers on 20 June!

Through the setting up of Little Day Out Shop, we hope to provide another avenue for families to draw closer together. Pop by littledayoutshop.com anytime and we would love to receive your contributions soon!