It’s been half a year that my dear princess goes to Primary 1. Her score card in my eyes has been almost perfect so far. And how happy am I to give her a near perfect score. Taking into consideration that her Primary school is a well-sought after SAP (Special Assistance Plan) school (which means they place high emphasis on Chinese and it is mandatory for all students to take higher Chinese), she manages well with her school work and enjoys school so far.
She relates happenings in school to me and I am too glad that her teachers seem to be very passionate teachers especially her Chinese teacher 黄老师. They tell interesting stories and crack jokes in the fun of learning to capture the children’s interest. And her school makes sure parents are involved and know what their children are learning by making us sign on their assignment and textbooks frequently. Academic-wise, I have totally no worries on her school’s model of teaching and guidance.
It’s a relief and “gift” for me that she does her homework after dinner on her own without any nagging from me and Kel. She shows independence in passing me her school letters and making sure I sign on her worksheets and books without fail. As a working mother, I could not spend time with her in the morning before school. Hence, I mark out pages on her assessment books for her to complete in the morning so that I can mark and go through with her at night. She did the assignment I gave her with no adults reminding her. It saves me from what I would have otherwise experience stress and worries on her academic learning.
In XX’s first MA (Modular Assessment) test for English, she got full marks. For Mathematics and Chinese, she got 23 and 24 out of 25 marks respectively. I couldn’t ask for more. Now in the second semester, her 2nd MA test, she got full marks for English again but careless mistakes and lack of focus on the questions cost her marks and she got 17 out of 25 for Mathematics. Well, so to say, she has lots of room for improvement in her focusing skills and practising patience to read questions carefully before jumping to write answers.
XX’s first parent-teacher meeting has the same response from both teachers (Form teacher and Chinese teacher). She day-dreams in class. This observation has long been commented by her Yamaha teacher. I feel attitude is extremely important for learning and doing anything well. I know it will take lots of effort by herself and time to correct this day-dreaming problem, but I will help her and by her character, I am pretty sure she will improve sooner or later. As for her attitude, if you were to read my earlier blog on “Learning Piano – from dread to love“, you will know that she has come a long way in improving her attitude. Sometimes, if she seems to be relying on me to feed clues to questions in assessment books, I feel I have a guilty part to play. I may be too obliging to give clues too quickly and just last night, I realize that XX seems to be lazy in reading music scores. She has a good memory and for new song pieces, I spoon-fed her on correcting her fingering and wrong notes by reading the score to her while she focuses on memorizing what I say and what she remembers on the positioning of fingers on the keyboard. That was a wake-up call for me to not be too involved and let her have a free hand and time to figure things out on her own! It all points to the fact that this mummy is too impatient. My girl must have picked up this bad trait from me.
XX had just experienced a long one month June school holidays. I signed her up for a 3 day academic camp which she says it’s boring. Kel sent her to her cousin’s house to play for a day every week. I took leave on and off to keep her company and brought her to my gynae check-up in June as well. Places we’ve been to during the June weekends includes the National Museum of Singapore for the Children’s Seasons, Yakult factory, taking part in the Safra Sprintkids Competition, Marina Barrage for kite flying with their cousins, Wild Wild Wet and Madagascar 3 movie screening. Since we are not going overseas for the holidays, I thought this holiday for her must be boring. But she seems to prefer boredom than to go school even though she enjoys school and she did not have much to do except to read books to finish her many book reviews homework.
Now that the holidays are over, she is back to school. She asked to be signed up for Wu Shu （武术）and she has to wake up early every Saturday for this class. It was tough on her to wake up early since she sleeps late at night and her school is in the afternoon. Even then, I praised her for being such a good girl to fight sleep and wakes up without much violent protest.
Xuanxuan, mummy is so proud of you. Keep it up my dear princess!