With the end of this week, BB & GG have actually completed their Primary school journey! This is a bitter-sweet moment, as my children are now officially teens.

This last week of school went in a flurry of activity, especially for their school awards day which typically was the last day of the school year on Friday. GG was getting an award for excellence in music and BB was also performing with his class. The Primary 6 classes had a performance face-off a couple of weeks back and the best class would be chosen for the awards day. BB’s class actually won that, but since his form teacher has been on leave this week, they were prepared for disappointment since they need their teacher to ‘take them’ to the awards ceremony. Luckily another class form teacher volunteered to take BB’s class and so they made it to the awards.

I was also volunteered by GG to help with make-up for the choir group and so we all made our way to school at the ungodly hour of 6:45 am! S dropped us off and came back later for the ceremony. It was fun actually doing the make-up for the children and brought back memories of the Singapore Youth Festival that we’ve helped out at before.

The awards ceremony was nice and poignant and seeing the children getting the awards made me wish BB & GG also won for academic reasons. S, I think, has much more higher expectations from his children than me, wanting them to excel academically. While I too want them to excel academically, I also want them to enjoy the process and to do things that they are passionate about. I try to steer them to things they enjoy more than what they ‘should’ be doing. That’s different parenting styles I guess and the bottom line should be what is best for the children at the core of it.

While at school, at the end of the awards programme, I saw that I had a notification from Channel News Asia that MOE had finally disclosed what most P6 parents had known for at least a week now – the results will be declared next Wednesday 25th November from 11 am onwards. Ever since I read that notification and know for sure, my stress level has been in stratospheric levels! I am more stressed than the children and I am really hoping and praying that on the 25th we are not disappointed. I want them to do well enough that they get into schools of their choice.

GG has been pretty sad this week as she will most likely be separated from her best friends. One evening, BB tattled on her saying she was writing things about depression and all and so I decided to speak to her. She did say she was sad as she will now move to a new school and will miss her friends, but I countered that she’ll make new friends and who knows how many of her old friends will be in her new school! Also friendship does not die when you are not in the same school, you can still talk to each other, message each other and occasionally meet up for meals! Hopefully she was assuaged by these words and not be too sad….

I had written earlier about the ICAS tests that the kids gave in school. We finally got the results, though I wish these had come earlier. GG scored a credit for English and got a certificate for Maths and Science. BB was surprising! He scored a Distinction for Science and his score card said he was among the top 7% of all Primary 6 students in Singapore who took this test. In some parts of the test, his scores were off the charts for his level! He scored a credit for Maths (top 25%) and English too, but it was his Science knowledge that totally floored me. Also some of the books he has been reading recently is amazing – they are way advanced for someone his age….

With the children getting their results next week this Sunday series of weekly updates is now coming to an end – I’ll probably do one last post next week to let everyone know how BB & GG did. I’ll restart this series again in January with a new name to reflect their status as Secondary students as we work our way through teen angst, raging hormones and the minefield that is Secondary school. In the meantime, the six odd weeks till then, will be filled with regular programming, though I do have something in mind!

The penultimate school week for the year and we are reaching the end of BB & GG’s primary school journey.  The past week, both children were busy preparing for their school year-end performance as well as a charity drive that the graduating class does in their school. Every primary six class had to come up with a theme and within a budget the provided them with, had to put up a stall and sell products and services to their peers and juniors with the proceeds going to a charity of the class’ choice.

Both BB & GG belong to the school choir and they were supposed to stay back almost every day this week to practice for their school awards evening next week. Unfortunately, since BB’s voice has been breaking the last few weeks (more about that tomorrow), he told his choir teacher and she sent him back home as singing at this point will damage his voice!

Both BB & GG received awards at their year end awards evening which was along with their year-end performance. GG received an award for being best in music and will win another award for being the best in music across all classes next week and BB received his for being the top in Science, second in Maths and overall third in the class. I really wish he sees the potential he has. If I discount his pathetic Hindi marks, I am sure he has so much more better scores!

The rumors for the PSLE results are going around furiously and as the tentative dates released by MOE at the beginning of the year comes closer, I am getting more and more nervous. I know there’s nothing I can do at this point, except pray, but I am really scared about the results….