As for the children, many of them are likely back in the hectic swirl of homework and enrichment classes, hopefully with some fun and games thrown in. The latter will probably come in the form of computer games, fancy toys and gadgets, and such like.

Things were very different when some of us were growing up. When I was a child, fun at recess and after school came in the form of Zero Point (also called ‘Yeh-Yeh’), Five Stones and Chapteh. These games were simple and largely homemade, and they cost very little. But they kept entire generations of kids like me happy and sweaty. Check out Page 26 of The Little Singapore Book which shows lots of games we used to play in school in the 1970s and ’80s.

To celebrate the start of a new school year — hurray the kids are out of the house! — and these childhood games of yesteryear, we have prepared a fun colouring sheet. For some of you, it’s also a chance to share fond memories of your school days with the little ones.

The Little Singapore Book is available for sale at major bookstores in Singapore, including Books Ahoy, Books Kinokuniya, The Fullerton Shop at The Fullerton Hotel Singapore, Garden Shops at Botanic Gardens, Huggs-Epigram Coffee Bookshop, Museum Shops at the National Museum and Asian Civilisation Museum, and Woods in the Books.

It is also available online at Books Kinokuniya, Closetful of Books, Epigram Bookshop, Natventure Books, Owl Readers Club and Woods in the Books.

The post Back to School appeared first on Pepperdog Press.

[Update: This exhibition has ended.]

Building History: Monuments in Bricks and Blocks is a brand new exhibition of eight of Singapore’s historical monuments, all built using LEGO.  Your kids like LEGO too? Bingo. They’d love it.

The eight landmarks turned into models include the National Museum, the lovely red and white Central Fire Station, old Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, the Thian Hock Keng Temple, St Andrew’s Cathedral and Sultan Mosque. These big, adult-sized models were built with impressive detail, using over 110,000 toy bricks (ie. LEGO which did not sponsor this) in total.

The exhibition was organised by the National Heritage Board’s  Preservation of Sites and Monuments division, but the models were built by three designers from My Little Brick Shop Pte Ltd. We love the amount of research that went into designing and building the models, so they were as authentic and true to the original monuments as possible. According to the builders, they studied the original architectural plans of the buildings that they got hold of from the national archives (yes, really old documents), flew drones over the the buildings to capture the details from above, and visited many times to take photos to capture all the other details. That effort shows up in the 8 models which took seven months to complete– from the floor patterns of the Thian Hock Keng Temple to the coloured glass window of St Andrew’s Cathedral.

We were also thrilled to see that the bottles that decorate the base of the domes of Sultan Mosque were not left out too. As you well know, these bottles were donated by the poor in the Muslim community when the mosque was being built. It showed how inclusive the community was, where the poor was also given recognition–not just the wealthy. (You can read more about this story in The Little Singapore Book.) This was the largest model at the exhibition, weighing 40 kg and could not fit through a door. Just one of the golden domes itself is made up of 1,511 pieces of toy bricks.

Making these models had its challenges and the model makers had to improvise sometimes. For instance instead of green dragons on the roof of the Thian Hock Keng Temple model, they had to use red snakes instead as LEGO did not make toy dragons. The pillars of at its main entrance are gears with chains, instead of grand dragons coiling upwards. But you get the idea. The main hall of the temple was recreated by memory work because the security lady in the hall was adamant that no photography was allowed.

Getting this close to the landmarks lets you really see and appreciate the details of these buildings which may not be apparent even when you visit the actual site. This exhibition is a good way to start a conversation with youngsters kids about their history. What were they about? Who built them? And why? The answers to these will surely be a vivid tale of the communities that used them and all the amazing stories that lurk in their past.

The exhibition runs from now until 30 June. Guess the number of bricks used to build the Sultan Mosque and the three closest guesses will win LEGO models. The next 10 closest guesses will win a children’s storybook on national monuments. Just upload a photo of the Sultan Mosque model with your answer on your personal Facebook or Instagram accounts with the hashtags #BuildingHistorySG and #librarysg.

The exhibition will then travel to other libraries: Marine Parade Library (1-30 July), Jurong regional Library (1-30 August), Tampines Regional Library (1-29 Sep), Ang Mo Kio Library (1-30 Oct), Sengkang Public Library (1-29 Nov) and  Choa Chu Kang Library (1-30 Dec).

The post Discovering History One Lego Block At A Time appeared first on Pepperdog Press.

“Singapore’s first national day parade took place at the Padang on the morning of 9 August 1966. It rained that day but no one left their seats or position on the parade ground. Like today, the national anthem was sung, there was a 21-gun salute, performances and a huge march past. The finale was huge lion and dragon dance featuring 60 lions and dragons in total — the biggest ever in Singapore. At night, fireworks were set off at Fort Canning and lots of people went to enjoy it. The fireworks could be seen from the Istana, too, where Singapore’s first President Yusof bin Ishak was holding a party for 1,000 guests. Out at sea, there was an illuminated ‘sea dragon’ that was towed by boats across the waterfront off Princess Elizabeth Walk, near where the Esplanade is now. It measured 152m long, 12m high and was lit by 12,500 light bulbs! What a grand sight!”

If you want to find out more, see this video link below and watch the original participants reminisce about that amazing day!

The post The First National Day appeared first on Pepperdog Press.

Children’s Season opens tomorrow and we can’t be more excited. Starting 27 May until end of July, kids can literally walk into the pages of The Little Singapore Book at the National Museum.

Two installations for the Children’s Season brings The Little Singapore Book alive in full, walk-in 3D! Diane’s amazing illustrations now stand child-height, complete with fun activity stations, and additional landmarks not featured in the book.
The exhibits highlight three old forms of transport in Singapore — the trolley bus, trishaw and bumboat (or tongkang).

The first installation, on the first floor foyer of the museum, is the Bumboat Trail. Created in collaboration with first and second year visual arts students from the School of the Arts Singapore (SOTA), it’s a fun-filled space that brings to life the landmarks along the Singapore River on which bumboats used to ply. Our favourite is the re-creation of the Cavenagh Bridge, complete with silver cables and the old sign prohibiting cows and horses to cross. The Old Parliament House is done in miniature too, and doubles up as a puppet theatre, while the Fullerton Building’s former role as the General Post Office is remembered by the mail sorting game.

Kids can even pen a postcard to themselves, stick on a read stamp (all provided by the museum) and mail it off at the vintage red British mailbox in the middle of the installation. The museum will get it into our real postage system and kids will receive their postcard at home a few days later. How cool is that?

Upstairs the Trolley Bus & Trishaw Trial is a larger installation, created in collaboration with students from NTU. In this small, colourful space, kids can sample Singapore’s old cultural and entertainment landmarks, including Haw Par Villa, Chinatown and the Happy World.

There are lots of photo ops here — look out for the very detailed wall of Peranakan houses — and fun stations like colouring Peranakan ’tiles’ and creating your own heritage town. Remember to read the exhibition panels — like in our book, it offers nuggets of little known information about Singapore years and years ago.

Please bring your kids to enjoy the National Museum. Grandparents too would probably enjoy this blast from the past, and have lots to share with the family.

Beyond our two fun spaces, there’s also a tongkang bouncy castle on the front lawn, a sleeping giant in the basement, and a giant suspended netted lounger at the main rotunda where you can climb into and enjoy the view of the coloured glass dome.

The post The Little Singapore Book Comes Alive at Children’s Season 2017 appeared first on Pepperdog Press.

It was Singapore’s first ever National Reading Day last Saturday (30 July) and we were thrilled to be part of the Marine Parade Library’s (MPPL) activities that afternoon. It was held at the library’s beautiful activities room on the children’s floor. We had a great time with our audience of almost 30 enthusiastic children who couldn’t stop asking about our country’s past, from who Raffles was to World War II and some even asked about the atomic bomb that finally ended the war. It’s always delightful to see children so interested in our past, and to know that their parents have obviously told them tales about it.

After the storytelling, little kids need to expend some youthful energy. So we thought it was very apt to try out some heritage games that most Singaporeans would have played decades ago at school….and for the children to have a feel of the games illustrated in the schoolyard scene in The Little Singapore Book. They tried their hand at five stones, and zero point (with some modifications to the original game). We are so grateful to the librarians at MPPL who were such gems in leading the way for this part of our programme! Thanks for giving us the opportunity to be part of the library’s activities, to parents for bringing their kids over to join us, and our little happy audience too. Hope you all enjoyed it.

Here are some pictures from our storytelling session..

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We went along for the ride, and here are 10 fascinating things we learnt about Bedok along the way.

#1. Bedok is one of the oldest inhabited parts of Singapore, and dates back over 400 years. One of the earliest records of Bedok was map dated 1604 by cartographer (map maker) Manuel Goginho de Eredia. It indicated ‘Sunebodo’, which is the Sungei Bedok we know of today.

#2. Bedok used to be a very hilly place. In fact, Tanah Merah means ‘red cliffs’ in Malay. These cliffs and hills had been levelled in the 1960s and the earth was used to reclaim the land that is now Marine Parade and East Coast Park. But you can still see the remnants of the hills in parts of Bedok – like along Chai Chee Road, Kew Gardens, Opera Estate and Bedok Rise opposite Tanah Merah. To get to Changi beach decades ago, you had to meander through narrow lanes that hugged the mountainside, rose up then down, past kampongs, farms and rubber and coconut plantations before you arrived at your picnic spot.

#3. The sea used to come all the way to Marine Parade Road. You can still see some of the old seawalls that belonged to the great mansions that used to front the sea. On the Bedok Heritage Trail, a marker stands at the end of Nallur Road, pointing to a wall complete with iron gate. The house that stood there belonged to Tan Lark Sye, a tycoon who built one of his great mansions by the sea. Opposite is the Good Shepherd Kindergarten which too, used to stand by the sea, until the land was reclaimed. Pupils there could watch the waves from the playground. (I know because I was a student there long ago!)

#4. People who lived in the East were mainly fishermen, but there were also plantation workers, farmers. The rich would have their holiday homes here as well. The fishermen would sail out in their kolek, traditional boats, while their family members would hunt for clams, cockles and mussels by the shore. People could wait by the beach early in the morning and when the fishermen returned to shore, the early housewives would buy the fresh fish from them.

#5. Mangrove swamps and kampongs used to dot the coast. Kampong Siglap was one of the earliest and largest fishing villages in the area. According to Malay legend, Siglap was founded by a Tok Lasam, a Minangkabau prince from Sumatra in the early 19th century. His grave is still here today at the end of Jalan Sempadan where he is buried with his wife and ‘panglima’ or Commander in Chief.

#6. Along Siglap Hill is a Muslim cemetery called Kubur Kassim which you’ll spot easily by its bright yellow gateway. Dr Hafeezduin Sirajuddin Moonshi, the first Muslim to set up a medical clinic in Singapore, is buried here. What’s really interesting here is that a few plots of land in the cemetery is dedicated to Orang Bunian, (“hidden people”), benevolent supernatural beings from Malay folklore.

#7. During WWII, Japanese soldiers massacred tens of thousands of Singaporeans particularly as a result of Sook Ching. The Japanese rounded up all Singaporean men between 18 and 50 years old for ‘inspection’. Those that didn’t pass were rounded up by the lorry loads, driven away and never seen again. A great number of them were massacred in the Siglap, Bedok and Tanah Merah. In February 1942, 100 Malay, Eurasian & Chinese soldiers captured by the Japanese were also killed on Bedok Hill and buried. After the war, over 50 mass graves were found in this area, including the largest one which contained the bodies of over 2000 people. It is estimated that the Sook Ching purge resulted in 25,000 – 50,000 deaths in Singapore.

#8. During the reclamation of land for Marine Parade, a 16km long conveyor belt brought the earth from the Bedok Hills to the coast! One thousand families had to be resettled in a new housing estate in Upper Changi Road, while the farms and plantations at Bedok had to be cleared.

#9. Did you know that Albert Einstein visited Frankel Estate during the 1920s? This estate was named after a Jewish family who migrated from Lithuania to Borneo then to Singapore in 1878. They built their fortune from a furniture store and a bakery. The family matriarch Rosa Frankel could speak only Yiddish. Everytime she went to the market, she would bring a feather and an eggshell to inform the stallholders what she wanted to buy – eggs or chicken. Can you figure out how she made herself understood?

#10. Along Upper East Coast Road used to be a whole row of seafood restaurants, including the famous Long Beach, Red House and Palm Beach restaurants. It used to be very popular among Singaporeans who would in the open air by the sea and enjoy their dinner. The only one standing now is Hua Yu Wee restaurant which occupies a grand 1920s house. For a retro experience, go there for dinner, and look out for the old hopscotch grid etched into the painted cement floor at the back of the restaurant. It is surely something which entertained generations of restless children over the decades.

The post 10 Things We Learnt On The Bedok Heritage Trail appeared first on Pepperdog Press.

These agar agar eggs that mimic real eggs were a party favourite among children in the 1970s. To prepare the eggshells, punch a small hole at the narrow end of the egg and shake out the white and yolk. Soak the empty shells and wash them very well before using.

Ingredients
12-15 empty eggshells
500 ml coconut cream
500 ml coconut water
200 g sugar
12 g powdered agar agar
4 – 5 canned peach slices, cut into thirds

Method
1. Mix coconut cream and coconut water in a pot, then sprinkle in the agar agar powder slowly. Let the powder absorb the liquid before you add in more. Stir it to mix well.
2. Bring the coconut mixture to a boil and add in the sugar. Stir until it all dissolves.  Remove from heat and pour it into a jug.
3. Stand your empty eggshells in an egg tray. Pour the coconut mixture into an eggshell until it is 3/4 full. Repeat until all the shells are filled.
4. Leave them to cool for a few minutes. Using a toothpick, gently stuff in a piece of peach in each eggshell.
5. When they are cooled to room temperature, pop them into the fridge to chill.

The agar agar eggs are ready when they are set and chilled. Crack them open as you would a real egg and enjoy!

The post Recipe for Kids: Agar Agar Eggs appeared first on Pepperdog Press.

Update: This event has ended.

Did you know that lots of hawkers lined the grounds of the National Museum decades ago and people would go there and eat? We didn’t! So it was a surprise to see this picture of the National Museum taken in the 1960s!

You’ll get a taste of this when the Singapore HeritageFest swings by again over three weekends from 29 April to 15 May. There’ll be 130 programmes and activities across the island which people can take part in to discover the richness of our history and heritage.

To start with, on the opening weekend, the organisers will transform the museum grounds back to the old days that you see in the photograph. Fifteen 2nd and 3rd generation hawkers will set up stalls here to sell their local specialties like popiah and prata, while people can enjoy performances, outdoor film screenings, storytelling of ghost stories (Yikes!) and a special exhibition on 80 years of radio in Singapore. You can also get on board the Storytelling Van and hear tales about the iconic sites of Singapore, or get busy with some crafty and cooking workshops.

On the same weekend, Bukit Pasoh will also be closed off for a street party and outdoor performances while historic clan houses in the area open their doors for the first time. Wander in and have a guided tour and see what these mysterious clubs do. You’ll also catch more performances like lion dances and Chinese opera.

The second weekend (6-8 May) brings the festival to the heartlands. Among the many heritage and food trails being conducted that weekend is the new Bedok Heritage Trail via a guided bus tour, and an open house at the majestic Command House. If you’ve never been there, this is a gem of a chance. Then there’s A-Go-Go Night at Kampong Gelam, with a mini concert at the Malay Heritage Centre that pays tribute to the legacy of 1960s Singapore bands like The Siglap Five and The Quests. Drag your grandfather along and make sure he puts on his old dancing shoes. It would surely take him back to his younger days.

The third weekend (13-15 May) brings the Heritagefest to Pulau Ubin, with adventure walks, music performances by local musicians, and film screenings under the stars on this nature-filled island.

There are simply loads more programmes across the island, such as a week of activities by the Hokkien Huay Kuan Thian Hock Keng, with movies under the stars, stiltwalking and dragon dances, (26 Apr – 1 May) and the first ever Eurasian Heritage Bus Tour. There’s a heap of other cultural and historical tours that you can join in — guided walks to explore the heritage of Jurong, Dakota Crescent, Joo Chiat; Indian, Chinese and Malay heritage tours, even a tour of Tanglin Halt at 4am in the morning (see how the neighbourhood wakes up everyday!), and open houses at a host of buildings that you probably have never stepped foot in, from temples to mosques and even historic schools.

There’s just too much to list, so it’s best you get onto their website www.heritagefest.sg for more details. Some activities are ticketed or require registration which starts on 22 April at 2pm. Get your name down early as the popular events sell out in a snap.

The post Singapore HeritageFest 2016 appeared first on Pepperdog Press.

This retro cocktail centrepiece was very popular at parties in the 70s and 80s—and not just for the children! It’s super easy to put together. Try making it at home today!

Ingredients
10 cubes of cheese
10 mini cocktail sausages (cooked)
10 chunks of pineapple, canned
10 cocktail sticks

Method
1) Skewer one of each ingredient on a cocktail stick.
2) Repeat until all the ingredients are used up. Serve immediately.
3) If you like, make a cocktail hedgehog by sticking the other end of the cocktail stick into a halved grapefruit. Then use halved olives and a cherry to make its eyes and nose.

The post Recipe for Kids: Cheese, Sausage & Pineapple Sticks appeared first on Pepperdog Press.

We love pineapples—in pineapple tarts, in rojak, in pineapple upside down cake and especially, Thai pineapple fried rice, which some say is really a Singaporean creation! But the best way to enjoy them is on their own, when they are fully ripened and freshly sliced. Then they are sweet and tangy and very refreshing.

Most of the pineapples you see in the markets today come from the Philippines. Some are from Malaysia. But once upon a time, Singapore too grew lots and lots of pineapples. (Spot the cart of pineapples on page 15 of The Little Singapore Book.)

In the early 1900s, pineapple was often grown together with rubber on the same plantation. At that time, rubber was a very profitable crop. That meant that you can sell it for lots of money. But rubber trees grow very very slowly, and take at least five years to mature. The pineapple bush, on the other hand, grows quickly and you can harvest the fruit in just 18 months.

Rubber plantation owners in Singapore and Malaya would grow pineapples and sell them while waiting for their rubber trees to grow. Some of them, such as “Pineapple King” Lim Nee Soon, became very rich this way. (Did you know that Nee Soon Village, Nee Soon Road and Yishun were all named after him?)

During that time, there was even  the Singapore pineapple—what they called canned pineapples from the island. Canning helps to preserve the fresh fruit, and canned food was becoming very very popular then. So Singapore began canning its pineapples and those from the Malay Peninsular to ship and sell them to faraway countries like the UK. Until 1921, most of the canned pineapples from Malaya were produced in Singapore. In fact, pineapple canning became one of Singapore’s earliest manufacturing industries and provided many jobs for the people on the island.

By the late 1920s, however, prices for pineapple were falling and plantation owners in Singapore gradually turned to other crops. After the Second World War, very very few pineapple plantations were left on the island. Most had moved to Johor and the rest of the Peninsula.

The post The Singapore Pineapple appeared first on Pepperdog Press.