In the past year, I changed schools for Claire, because I no longer had faith in her old school as a healthy and safe learning environment. Part of the reason was that she was being physically bullied and her class teacher simply couldn't care less despite me personally marching up to her and letting her know about the bullying taking place.
Naturally I also scolded Claire and told her she had to learn to stand up for herself when she is bullied.
In this new school, she has had a couple of unpleasant encounters, which she related to me this week. As a mother, I couldn't help but feel heartpain that my little girl was treated unpleasantly, but yet I know that I cannot protect her forever, and, well, she had better start to deal with this herself.
Encounter 1
Claire related how her teacher had given her class back their artwork for the year. However, she had only three pieces of art as opposed to her classmates' six pieces of art, because she had only transferred to the school in July. She then revealed that she felt very unhappy. After a little probing I realised that a large part of her unhappiness was because a classmate, G, had laughed at her because she had less art pieces than the rest of the class. (Erm, like, seriously?? That is worth laughing over???)
Me: Did you say anything to G?
Claire: No.
Me: But do you think it was correct of G to laugh at you?
Claire: No.
Me: It wasn't nice, right?
Claire: Yes.
Me: So next time if she does it to you again you tell her that that was not nice of her, ok?
Claire: Ok. Mummy, I don't feel sad anymore. Because it was not nice of G.
Encounter 2
Today Claire told me that A and D had laughed at her and said she was I's boyfriend (for some reason, they found it very funny to say boyfriend instead of girlfriend - yes, they did it on purpose).
Me: Then what did you do?
Claire: I told them that that was not funny.
Me: And it wasn't nice of them also right?
Claire: Yes.
Me: So there's no need to be sad right? Because you didn't do anything wrong.
Claire: Yes. (after a hug) Ok mummy, I know already. I'm not sad.
Although they are still young, I feel that they should learn to be sensitive to others' feelings. If no one stops them, by the time they enter proper school, that's where your school bullying starts. I can trace my own insecurities to way back in primary school, when a boy laughed at me and called me ugly. To this day, I remember it and it both stings and stinks, still. As a result of that one comment made, I had an inferiority complex and placed an overimportance on looks all throughout my life, even now, when deep down I know it is not the be all and end all.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
English woes
Claire can read pretty well, but after 15 months of English enrichment, I'm resigned to the fact that Claire reads by sight and will prob remain that way. I don't mind that much, but it means a lot more work for me coz she cannot employ both phonics and sight reading methods, so she will need a lot more exposure to materials and closer supervision.
To give her and her teacher some credit, she does try, but I know her first instinct is to read by sight, and she just stumbles badly whenever she sees new words. I hope she will improve as time goes by, otherwise I worry that she will suffer with spelling because she has to memorize everything. =(
And her grammar is nothing short of appalling, because she is so used to speaking in singlish. Ah, long process to change that.
To give her and her teacher some credit, she does try, but I know her first instinct is to read by sight, and she just stumbles badly whenever she sees new words. I hope she will improve as time goes by, otherwise I worry that she will suffer with spelling because she has to memorize everything. =(
And her grammar is nothing short of appalling, because she is so used to speaking in singlish. Ah, long process to change that.
Teaching Chinese
So it's back to the drawing board with Claire's Chinese progress again, after the husband vetoed the idea of Chinese enrichment.
I have to admit that the idea of Chinese enrichment was a bit extra on my part, as I don't consider Claire's Chinese to be that bad. At the very least, I am very sure she is not a potato, though the increasing amount of English she uses worries me a little. However, she does get daily exposure to the language, so it is not that bad. Also, for some very weird and unfathomable reason she has a slight Cantonese accent - considering that she has NO exposure to Cantonese, that is indeed very strange.
But recently, with the change in school environment and probably natural development, Claire's spoken Chinese has taken a bit of a beating. From an almost totally Chinese class, she has switched to a school with an international population who mainly use English as a common communication tool, and she is at the age where she is communicating more with her friends, so I guess it is inevitable. She forgets simple terms and resorts to mixing English in to make herself understood. Oh well.
I haven't been the most hardworking at her Chinese either, though I have two different sets of Chinese readers, plus miscellaneous Chinese storybooks. I suppose I could have been a little more disciplined and more regular at Chinese, sob sob.
Anyway I don't think it's too late, for now I will try to work out a regular schedule to rotate English and Chinese. Unfortunately even with the amount of English exposure she has her English is still appalling, but that is for another post. =( But the bottom line is that I don't think I can stop supervising her English.
Must say that I'm a little ashamed of myself for letting her Chinese fall to shreds. =(
Good thing is, she likes the latest set of Chinese storybooks I bought her, so she's willing to listen to the stories.
I have to admit that the idea of Chinese enrichment was a bit extra on my part, as I don't consider Claire's Chinese to be that bad. At the very least, I am very sure she is not a potato, though the increasing amount of English she uses worries me a little. However, she does get daily exposure to the language, so it is not that bad. Also, for some very weird and unfathomable reason she has a slight Cantonese accent - considering that she has NO exposure to Cantonese, that is indeed very strange.
But recently, with the change in school environment and probably natural development, Claire's spoken Chinese has taken a bit of a beating. From an almost totally Chinese class, she has switched to a school with an international population who mainly use English as a common communication tool, and she is at the age where she is communicating more with her friends, so I guess it is inevitable. She forgets simple terms and resorts to mixing English in to make herself understood. Oh well.
I haven't been the most hardworking at her Chinese either, though I have two different sets of Chinese readers, plus miscellaneous Chinese storybooks. I suppose I could have been a little more disciplined and more regular at Chinese, sob sob.
Anyway I don't think it's too late, for now I will try to work out a regular schedule to rotate English and Chinese. Unfortunately even with the amount of English exposure she has her English is still appalling, but that is for another post. =( But the bottom line is that I don't think I can stop supervising her English.
Must say that I'm a little ashamed of myself for letting her Chinese fall to shreds. =(
Good thing is, she likes the latest set of Chinese storybooks I bought her, so she's willing to listen to the stories.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Hand/fingerpainting
Claire loves art and crafts - I'm thankful that I don't have to actively stimulate her interest in this area because I am one of the least artistically-inclined people I know. But when I blogwalk I try to note down interesting art/craft ideas I come across. One of the more interesting and simpler ones I saw recently was from http://www.oureverydaythings.com.
Claire dragged out her poster paints today and asked to paint, so we did a hand-tree with flowers and apples. She even added another two stalks of flowers on the ground for good measure without any prompting from me.
Claire dragged out her poster paints today and asked to paint, so we did a hand-tree with flowers and apples. She even added another two stalks of flowers on the ground for good measure without any prompting from me.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
A note for Estelle
Remember how we little girls used to exchange little notes and letters with our bestest friends and all? Well, times haven't changed much.
Estelle is a friend from my Jan mummies thread that we still keep in touch with, and Claire loves her to bits, lol. So the other day she got a piece of paper and asked me how to spell Estelle's name, because she wanted to draw something for Estelle. This is the fruit of her 'labour':
And I suppose before long she will be writing real notes and exchanging them with all her dearest friends. At times like this, I can't help thinking that girls are really sugar 'n' spice and everything nice.
Estelle is a friend from my Jan mummies thread that we still keep in touch with, and Claire loves her to bits, lol. So the other day she got a piece of paper and asked me how to spell Estelle's name, because she wanted to draw something for Estelle. This is the fruit of her 'labour':
And I suppose before long she will be writing real notes and exchanging them with all her dearest friends. At times like this, I can't help thinking that girls are really sugar 'n' spice and everything nice.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Settling into a routine....
Now that I have got most of my o/s work done, I spend most of my days at home with Claire and we're finally settling down into a routine of sorts. I'm not the world's greatest organizer, so this is kind of an achievement for me.
Every morning, the Husband ferries us to my mum's at about 7, and my mum then helps me get Claire ready for school. We would then leave the house for school at about 8.15 - 8.20, since school is a 10-minute walk away. The next 3 hours are my daily me-time: I have my breakfast after I drop her off, then do some surfing / catch up on reading before preparing Claire's home-schooling resources. Currently, besides her kumon workbooks and her ICL homework, we make use of materials from the following sites:
1. http://www.homeschoolshare.com/Lapbooks_at_HSS.php
2. http://www.enchantedlearning.com
plus ideas I garner from early childhood learning resources borrowed from our good 'ole NLB. And can I just say, homeschooling a child is HARD! Kudos to the mums who do it full-time - I don't know how they manage.
At 11.20, it's off to fetch Claire home. We've been squabbling on the way back because she'd want to do various activities, including going to the library (which is right next to her school), buying sweets from 7-11 (which I let her do once and now heartily regret), and stopping at the playground (see previous post). The first day I fetched her from school, we went to the library and my mum kept nagging at me about how I need to continue her routine of going straight home after school. At that time I thought my mum was making a mountain out of a molehill again, but after one, two weeks of squabbling, I've seen the light. :P At least now after I've stood firm over the sweets issue, today Claire went meekly past the 7-11 with only a slight lingering glance at it, and there were also no calls for the library.
When we reach home, Claire eats a small bowl of fruits before taking her lunch. I've really got to admire my mum about this - I think Claire eats a really, really healthy lunch, and I feel quite guilty for not having the discipline to continue this on weekends as well. Lunch is either porridge with fish and veggies, or pasta soup (on the one day a week when she has porridge for morning snack in school). Claire actually asks for porridge sometimes during the weekends as well, but if I do make her lunch, it is usually pasta soup, which is easier to prepare.
After lunch, Claire watches TV for a while, and starts her homeschooling at 2 plus to 3. She does 2 pages of Kumon, 1 exercise from the Brain Quest workbook, and then we will work on a couple of activities for her lapbook. Unfortunately I am still struggling with the lapbook thing - choosing the theme and activity is really challenging! - and I haven't settled into a schedule with it yet, so lapbooking is a little haphazard for us at the moment. We also sometimes do some reading when our lapbook is story-based. I try to keep our homeschooling activities to about 1, 1.5 hours a day, but depending on her mood and physical state, we sometimes do less. I find it pointless to force her through if she is really tired.
Claire then eats half a steamed apple (my mum swears by this as a remedy for strong lungs / prevention of asthma - it's got its roots in Chinese medicine) before eating dinner, while I wait to go home for dinner with the Husband.
In the evenings at home, we try to do some reading if I can remember - oops! I've got to be more diligent about this. We've recently picked up her Peter and Jane again, and I was pleasantly surprised when she got through 1a and 1b within 2 days. We previously laboured very long over about 1/4 of 1a before I gave it up as a lost cause, about a year ago. When it comes to readers, there are many opinions out there about which are the best. For Claire, I find that she is still picking up reading better via sight/key word reading, though, through her ICL classes, she is becoming more sensitive to phonics. Eventually she will come to depend on phonics, I hope, as I think most hard English words are phonetic, and phonics really helps in spelling, but at the moment, she is doing very well with her Peter and Jane and seems to be very interested. One of the great mysteries I have not yet managed to figure out - why do children like Peter and Jane so much? It is like one of the most boring series ever! But oh well, it works. And lest I forget, I am also a product of Peter and Jane reading. heheheh
I also have the Clifford phonics packs, so I dug them out last night for her to read again, but she was more interested in me reading them to her, than reading them herself. For some reason she is just more motivated by P and J.
Occasionally we manage to read some Sage Formula too - I find this series really good for Chinese. It works on a similar concept as P and J (read - boring as h*ll!) but again, hey, it works very well. And I know she is not just memorizing the text on her books as she used to do for English books, but she is recognizing words, which is what she should be doing. I will try to combine this with 四五快读 methodology - when I finally get my lazy self to read the series!
I make it a point to read a bedtime story to her every night, but all this while I've been reading just English books, so I'm going to try to make Tuesdays and Thursdays at least, Chinese story day. I can read individual Chinese words pretty well, but it takes me longer to digest and comprehend the sentences, compared to English, so I usually take the easy way out. :P But if I want to encourage Claire to read Chinese books, then I should show her that I do read them too, right?
Another goal is to adjust her sleeping hours to something more respectable for a 4-year-old. I know that she goes to bed at very disgraceful hours, and now that I have the time I should just dig in my horns and get her used to going to bed early, starting with - by 10pm first. :P Yup, that's how bad it is, and the worst part is, she doesn't nap in the afternoons. She has been going to bed on time the last couple of nights, so let's hope she keeps this up.
Every morning, the Husband ferries us to my mum's at about 7, and my mum then helps me get Claire ready for school. We would then leave the house for school at about 8.15 - 8.20, since school is a 10-minute walk away. The next 3 hours are my daily me-time: I have my breakfast after I drop her off, then do some surfing / catch up on reading before preparing Claire's home-schooling resources. Currently, besides her kumon workbooks and her ICL homework, we make use of materials from the following sites:
1. http://www.homeschoolshare.com/Lapbooks_at_HSS.php
2. http://www.enchantedlearning.com
plus ideas I garner from early childhood learning resources borrowed from our good 'ole NLB. And can I just say, homeschooling a child is HARD! Kudos to the mums who do it full-time - I don't know how they manage.
At 11.20, it's off to fetch Claire home. We've been squabbling on the way back because she'd want to do various activities, including going to the library (which is right next to her school), buying sweets from 7-11 (which I let her do once and now heartily regret), and stopping at the playground (see previous post). The first day I fetched her from school, we went to the library and my mum kept nagging at me about how I need to continue her routine of going straight home after school. At that time I thought my mum was making a mountain out of a molehill again, but after one, two weeks of squabbling, I've seen the light. :P At least now after I've stood firm over the sweets issue, today Claire went meekly past the 7-11 with only a slight lingering glance at it, and there were also no calls for the library.
When we reach home, Claire eats a small bowl of fruits before taking her lunch. I've really got to admire my mum about this - I think Claire eats a really, really healthy lunch, and I feel quite guilty for not having the discipline to continue this on weekends as well. Lunch is either porridge with fish and veggies, or pasta soup (on the one day a week when she has porridge for morning snack in school). Claire actually asks for porridge sometimes during the weekends as well, but if I do make her lunch, it is usually pasta soup, which is easier to prepare.
After lunch, Claire watches TV for a while, and starts her homeschooling at 2 plus to 3. She does 2 pages of Kumon, 1 exercise from the Brain Quest workbook, and then we will work on a couple of activities for her lapbook. Unfortunately I am still struggling with the lapbook thing - choosing the theme and activity is really challenging! - and I haven't settled into a schedule with it yet, so lapbooking is a little haphazard for us at the moment. We also sometimes do some reading when our lapbook is story-based. I try to keep our homeschooling activities to about 1, 1.5 hours a day, but depending on her mood and physical state, we sometimes do less. I find it pointless to force her through if she is really tired.
Claire then eats half a steamed apple (my mum swears by this as a remedy for strong lungs / prevention of asthma - it's got its roots in Chinese medicine) before eating dinner, while I wait to go home for dinner with the Husband.
In the evenings at home, we try to do some reading if I can remember - oops! I've got to be more diligent about this. We've recently picked up her Peter and Jane again, and I was pleasantly surprised when she got through 1a and 1b within 2 days. We previously laboured very long over about 1/4 of 1a before I gave it up as a lost cause, about a year ago. When it comes to readers, there are many opinions out there about which are the best. For Claire, I find that she is still picking up reading better via sight/key word reading, though, through her ICL classes, she is becoming more sensitive to phonics. Eventually she will come to depend on phonics, I hope, as I think most hard English words are phonetic, and phonics really helps in spelling, but at the moment, she is doing very well with her Peter and Jane and seems to be very interested. One of the great mysteries I have not yet managed to figure out - why do children like Peter and Jane so much? It is like one of the most boring series ever! But oh well, it works. And lest I forget, I am also a product of Peter and Jane reading. heheheh
I also have the Clifford phonics packs, so I dug them out last night for her to read again, but she was more interested in me reading them to her, than reading them herself. For some reason she is just more motivated by P and J.
Occasionally we manage to read some Sage Formula too - I find this series really good for Chinese. It works on a similar concept as P and J (read - boring as h*ll!) but again, hey, it works very well. And I know she is not just memorizing the text on her books as she used to do for English books, but she is recognizing words, which is what she should be doing. I will try to combine this with 四五快读 methodology - when I finally get my lazy self to read the series!
I make it a point to read a bedtime story to her every night, but all this while I've been reading just English books, so I'm going to try to make Tuesdays and Thursdays at least, Chinese story day. I can read individual Chinese words pretty well, but it takes me longer to digest and comprehend the sentences, compared to English, so I usually take the easy way out. :P But if I want to encourage Claire to read Chinese books, then I should show her that I do read them too, right?
Another goal is to adjust her sleeping hours to something more respectable for a 4-year-old. I know that she goes to bed at very disgraceful hours, and now that I have the time I should just dig in my horns and get her used to going to bed early, starting with - by 10pm first. :P Yup, that's how bad it is, and the worst part is, she doesn't nap in the afternoons. She has been going to bed on time the last couple of nights, so let's hope she keeps this up.
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