The children are having a blast, preparing for their year-end concert which happens next week. They went for another Learning Journey this week which was basically a swap of last week – so BB went to the National Museum and GG went to the Discovery Centre.

The school also had a Parenting Talk this week on how parents can help children transition from the primary school system to the secondary one. The talk was very informative, especially since more than three quarters of the people in the room were first time parents of children who will move to Secondary 1 next year. The speaker, a medical doctor with three adult children had enough anecdotes about her own children which made it quite informative and useful.

After the talk, the school had invited a dozen secondary schools, both in the neighbourhood and beyond to have small booths in the school hall. When we reached the hall, we also found the primary 6 students there. I managed to catch hold of GG and we walked around a bit checking out some schools. We need to identify some schools and then go for open houses so that we can narrow it down to the six we need to select for the Secondary 1 Admission Exercise.

That was pretty much what the children did. Next week is the penultimate school year, with the last day of school on 20th November. Then we have to gird our loins for the results. I am just praying that they do decently and we don’t end up crying when the results are declared!

BB & GG are having a ball in school these days. Because the other classes are having their exams, so they have to be quiet and so are allowed to watch videos in class or stay in the aesthetics hub which is away from the classrooms to prepare for their year-end concerts.

They also went for learning journeys – BB to the Discovery Centre and GG to the National Museum. They will swap the places next week and there’s a day-long workshop in different things like graphic design and flight simulations in another school. This is a school which BB is interested in and I hope he has a good look to decide if he wants to go there after results are declared.

There are around 3 weeks to the results and my stress levels have just started rising….

PSLE Marking Week plus Holiday Week!

This week was a holiday for Primary schools which send teachers for PSLE marking (not all schools send teachers, only those who have students giving the exams and new schools with atleast students in Primary 4). Taking advantage of this break, we decided to make a short holiday to Penang (Penang posts coming up soon).

This was mostly to get our attention off the marking (more me than the kids I think!). Well, the marking is all done and their fates sealed…..Now we play the waiting game to see what scores they get.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the schools to choose when we fill up the secondary forms and have decided that we will go with schools where the cut off points fall in the median of their eventual scores. I am going to finalise 10 schools each, with a variety of scores so that when the scores are released, we can choose from these schools and if the COP is lower than their score, then they will definitely get the first choice. It’s better to be in the top classes in a lesser known school than be scrapping the barrel and trying to keep up in a more well-known school. This way, they can be at the top of the class, with access to leadership roles in the school, instead of always trying to keep up with their peers.

Friday was a Learning Journey Day where the whole Primary 6 cohort in their school visited the Science Centre. Initially BB & GG were very reluctant to go there again, as they’ve been there multiple times. But this time, they saw a couple of documentaries which they said were fantastic!

We ended the week with a baby shower for one of S’ colleague and friend. I realise these days there’s a trend of having baby showers after the baby is born – the baby shower we went to is around a month plus old….