D&P are start their second week of school today. The first three days was mostly orientation for the P1s and so the P2s were also on some sort of restricted time-table. They were asked to bring with them certain books on certain days and it was only on Friday did the time-table actually start.

And how it started – spelling lists for Term 1 have been handed out and the first spelling test is tomorrow (Tuesday 11 Jan). This year, it looks like Tuesdays will be spelling days. Also the change from P1 is that instead of 10 words to learn each week, this term they have 20 words per week plus a couple of sentences. We did the words over the weekend and P seems to have gotten the hang of them, but D still needs a few words to be learnt.

Hindi also started on Saturday and the pace seems to be slightly accelerated. Now learning Hindi is material for a new post, but this is something I have decided to focus on this academic year.

D&P also started Chinese tuition last week. I have been looking for a competent Chinese tutor for them ever since their last tutor quit. She was a Polytechnic student and apparently wanted to start working so could not teach. In fact, if she did not quit, I would have not kept her this year as I wanted someone more dedicated to teaching them the language. So we looked and looked and ….. looked some more. Just when I was almost about to give up, I realised that there was this tution/enrichment centre in my own housing estate! Talk about missing the forest for the trees!! So off I went and signed them up for Chinese tutions. It costs us S$55 per month and another S$20 per child for material costs. The class runs for 90 minutes once a week (Wednesday nights as of now, but it will move to Friday from February).

The teacher seems to be from Mainland China and can’t speak a word of English! So it’s good that D&P will be forced to speak to her in Mandarin and this will improve their speaking skills. It’s so cute that D is my official interpreter at the classes. D’s Chinese name is Meili which means pretty in Mandarin and P’s Chinese name is Di Jia. D has no clue what his name means by the way…. Also it’s just D&P at the class now, so this means personalised teaching for them – atleast till the class fills up.

Other than Chinese, P&D also go to Kumon for English. They used to do Maths also there, but I stopped it at the end of 2010 as they weren’t moving up much and seemed to be ahead of it in school as compared to Kumon.

As for non-academic classes, D goes to ballet. She has has been learning for almost the past four years (Gosh! how time flies) since N2 and will give her Grade 1 exams in March. D&P also go for Carnatic music lessons from a lovely lady who lives close to our place as well as swimming. Then to round up the week is their Mother Tongue Hindi classes which they go every Saturday.

I’ve been meaning to do a post about the Singapore education scene and the tuition industry here, so will do it later this week.

Edit: After writing and publishing this post I had an idea. From now onwards, every week I’ll do a review of the school week. The review post will be done either on Sunday or on Monday depending on my schedule. This will help me see how the school year went…