Tag Archives: Children

When Friends are Invited

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D & P – you know I don’t think I am going to call them D & P anymore. Looks like their priorities are changing and now P wants to be a race car designer (whatever that entails) and D is torn between being a doctor, a vet and multitudes of other things. So I’ll go very Chinese and call them what else but ‘Boy-Boy’ and ‘Girl-Girl’ or BB and GG for short!

BB & GG are having their school term break this week and have been pestering me to ask a very close friend of theirs L home to play. The only problem is that all three children have so much going on in their lives (read enrichment classes and activities) that scheduling a time when everyone is free is soo difficult. In the end we decided that L will come home with BB & GG after their music class today. So this afternoon is going to be utter chaos at home and hopefully V my helper will be able to cope! The two girls will probably ignore BB today and I will get loads of phone calls today…I just know it…

Since we hardly had any vegetables at home, I decided to make a perrinial kids fav at my place – Chole with Puris! I know it’s going to go down well with them…

Primary 2 – Term 1 – Week 2

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Ok, I had written this yesterday and tried uploading it through my phone, but it didn’t go through! Now the WordPress app is giving me grief – guess I’ll have to delete it and reinstall it….

Week 2 was nothing to write about. The children are just settling down and getting to the business of studying. They had their first spelling test last week and both D&P got 9/10. Sigh! I expected perfect scores from both as they knew all the spellings!!

D has a bad cough today which was diagnosed as bronchitis by the doctor. She’s on a two day medical leave and a week off from PE. She just didnt want to stay at home today and had to be persuaded to stay back as the school would send her back home if she did go to school (that was my argument). We’ve decided to check again tonight to see if she can go back tomorrow. Since D was not going to school today, P also decided he was not going too! He argument was that there wont be anyone to sit with him in the bus coming back home!!

 

School

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Today was a parents curriculum talk in D&P’s school. As their principal is fond of saying “this is a neighbourhood school, but not a neighbourhood school” To those who have no clue what I am talking about – neighbourhood schools refer to schools which are not nationally recognised schools – schools where the average child goes to. To that extent this is true – D&P’s school is none of those – they go to a regular school in the western part of Singapore, where most of the children come from within a 1 km radius. Most of the children are normal middle-class children. But a big difference is that this school is also part of the Future Schools of Singapore.

Future Schools@Singapore is a project by the Ministry of Education and the Infocomm Development Authority to build a more IT-savvy nation.  This will be done by having a small group of schools to lead the way in providing possible models for the seamless and pervasive integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) that include interactive and digital media (IDM) into the curriculum for engaged learning in schools.

D&P’s school – Beacon Primary is the first new primary school for the project. This is a new school – D&P’s cohort is the third cohort and the school just welcomed their fourth cohort last week. Once I heard about the school and the fact that it was literally on our doorstep, I was determined to get D&P in – I was a Parent Volunteer at the school for 2 years (that’s for another post). So far, I am liking what I see. This year, the school plans to take the MOE standard curriculum a bit further and enhance learning. Well we’ll see how that comes about.

I’ll leave you with a small anecdote. The P4s in the school have started using their own personal laptops. I did see some students with it last week and this was confirmed by D last week. She came to me and we had this conversation:

D: Mom, do you know that when I get to P4, I’ll have my very own computer

Me: Wow! That’s fantastic! You’ll be able to do so much with it.

D: Yes….I can use my own computer to play any games whenever I want….

Me: <Zapped>

We do not allow D&P unsupervised time on the laptop, which is also password secured so that they can’t use it without permission also not go to websites they are not allowed to .

 

Primary 2 – Term 1 – Week 1

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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…

First Day of School

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Today is the start of a new school year here in Singapore. Children born in 2004 also start their formal schooling from today. When I went to drop D&P at school today, I saw the new Primary 1 cohort coming in to school. P as well as D were excited as well as a wee bit apprehensive about moving up to P2 this year. The incoming P1 students and their parents reminded me of what S and me did last year when our two started school. P1 was a mixed year for P&D. They didn’t do as well as expected, but in a way I am glad that they got their bad start now so that they can improve on it this year. I strongly believe that a slow climb up with the child peaking at 12 (when they write their Primary School Leaving Exam or PSLE in acronym addicted Singapore) rather than peaking too early and then starting their decent down.

Now that school has started, life becomes a lot more hectic for both the children as well as me. Their schedule for the week looks like this now (All these are after school activities. They return from school at around 1:45 pm on all days except Tuesdays when they will be back around 3:30 pm):

Monday – Kumon

Tuesday – Ballet (Exam classes for D)

Wednesday – Chinese Tutions (this will move to Fridays from February)

Thursday – Kumon

Friday – Free this month so will go to the library

Saturday – Hindi in the morning and Carnatic music in the evening

Sunday – Ballet for D

It’s a jam packed schedule but in a way I am glad they can do all this – after all this is the age where you get exposed to the most activities in life…..