To N2, To N2

I have been trying my best to persuade Yan to join the N2 class at julia Gabriel. I believe she's ready for more independent learning. In the N2 class, she will attend lessons on her own! She protested in the beginning. However, last weekend, while waiting for her turn to attend class, I showed her all the marvellous things that she could do if she had gone for independent class. She will do art and craft, writing and singing, all by herself! That convinced her and she readily said yes the next time I approached the subject. It helped too that the receptionist at Julia Gabriel promised her a sticker if she made it through the independent class next weekend. Fingers crossed!

Anatomy of an Ant

Do you know that an ant's body is made up of 3 parts - the head, thorax and abdomen? We just found out. And from Yan Yan no less!

Pre School Education II

Further to my post on preschool education, even the sports curriculum of the centre has been spruced up. Now, the K1 and K2 kids will get exposure to different kinds of outdoor activities to boost their interest. Activities include table tennis, rollerblading etc. Rui has just started her table tennis class. She's relishing it! She has even converted our Ikea kids' table into a mock table tennis table and has started playing with her papa.

Chinese New Year Bazaar at Chinatown

 
We decided to visit the Chinatown CNY bazaar early this year. Previously, we have gone there nearer CNY and regretted having to squeeze our way through the immense crowd. It was a hot, sweaty and ill-tempered affair. This year, we decided to avoid the crowd.

Us and the Tans met up at around 730pm for dinner before we walked around and checked out the stalls. Aunt E heard from the stallholders that the rent will double in the week to come and prices of merchandise will go up. Good thing we were there early!

Aunt E bought some CNY clothes for Tessa and Jacob. We all bought some new year deco and some fun knick knacks for the kids to play with. It being the Tiger year next year (the mommies' year!) we were all enthusiastic to hang up some tiger deco around the house.

It was not too crowded and there was even a slight breeze in the air. Overall, an enjoyable night-out.

Preschool education

Rui and Yan preschool just revamped their curriculum to emphasise on more value-teaching and more family bonding through home activities. The curriculum has become more rigorous too. Just to show what I mean -

Yan is only in N2 and the chinese teacher has started teaching them to recognise chinese characters such as 花，虫，大，小，树，草。These characters have got to do with the theme for this term which is Nature. The teacher encouraged me to expose Yan to these characters at home through 字卡 and learning through play. I am obliging for the moment. Not sure if my enthusiasm will last long though.

Rui's chinese spelling list has gotten longer - 6 words now instead of 5. And some are 3-character words. Her English spelling has progressed to short sentences now. And I just got an email from the teacher to do some home activity with her over the weekend.

With all this training, let's hope they get a smooth transition to P1.

After almost 1 week of fever...

Rui is finally back to school today. I am crossing my fingers that she won't fall sick again soon.