There and Back Again

When to Playeum @ Gillman Barracks and we had a whale of a time. I don't think I need to elaborate too much, but just let the pictures do the talking. And the fact that we stayed there for 4 hours.  Building his car The art and craft area The track for younger kids. You can modify the track.

The school term is ending and my son has received all his test results. You might have noticed that I said test and not examinations. Primary One students sit for tests that are spread out over the entire semester, and I guess this is the school's way of not stressing these young kids.  Overall, I cannot complain too much about his results. They are quite alright. I have to emphasise (especially to my dear wife) that having a great Primary One result does not mean anything. No teacher will ask for his Primary One results and no employer will ask for his Primary One progress card. My wife is in contact with some mothers who are ridiculously "kiasu". They will discretely ask around for test results. One of them was even checking if her son scored well for a health and physical fitness MCQ test in comparison with other students! Seriously. Anyway, back to my son's results. I am happy with his results, but I think he lacks basic examination skills. He is very car

It's been a long time since I posted anything: it has really been very busy for me. But, I did take out some time to try to help my son with his composition. He has a test this week, and we have been writing. Anyway, I think it is crazy that Catholic High thinks that writing a full composition with details is something that Primary One students can do. But I try my best to guide him; here are some of the essays he has written. There are still some grammar and spelling mistakes, but I think it is pretty impressive that he can write such long essays. I swear I could not do it until I was at least Primary Two. Still pretty crazy expectations! This is a story about food poisoning. This is a story about a disruption in class. I think he should know this topic quite well. The very first one he wrote. Did you see improvements? He has issues with dialogue and keeps on forgetting to end his sentences with full stops. Not to mention past tense. But I will get him ready.

Recently, my son had his first experience with an "official" tool of punishment - detention. Of course he had been scolded verbally by teachers, for minor offences like talking in class and so on. Many of us were similarly punished before, so I did not blog about it. It was nothing worthy of writing about. However, detention was something very different. Of course, detention in primary school is slightly different from the secondary school. In secondary school, the students stay back in school and cannot even participate in CCAs. This mode of punishment is of course not suitable for primary school children as they are unable to go home on their own. In Catholic High, detention means going to a classroom and reading a book till the last ten minutes or so. Then they are allowed to eat food in the classroom. In other words, the parents need to ensure they have some food to eat. This of course means home-cooked food. Now back to what happened. Actually I think it w

Our tags Today we went climbing. What did you say? Yes, our son who has a history of planning issues is going to climb rock walls. I expected a disaster, but you know what, if we never try, we will never know. It was also a Zee Juniors reunion. For some reason, the mothers of his kindergarten class got along very well. I think it has something to do with the fact that all of us banded together to fight against the tyranny of Zee's ridiculous spelling lists. Needless to say, he was not very keen in the first place. I think he knows his limitations, but the moment he saw his former classmates, he was keen to go. When I saw him climb, I was reminded of his rope ladder climbing during his days of Occupational Therapy, and also when he climbs bouncy castles. He had always struggled. I think it is a combination of his weak upper body strength, his weight and his coordination. Compared to the girls in his class, he was not fast. But I think he did very well in the sense th

Today, we have a guest blogger. My son himself!               Funniest jokes in the world 1.What did the sushi said to the bee? Ans:Wasabi  2.What do you call a snake which eat a pie? Ans:python 3.One day tomato and lettuce were having a race lettuce was leading but tomato was trying to ketchup! 4.What do you call a pear which walks into the air? Ans:pear walker Note: He typed this himself. Any grammar or spelling errors are his and his alone.

Our first catch. The second part of our holiday vacation was the part that I most looked forward to. This holiday involved only me and my son - a perfect way to bond. It was organised by the Catholic High School Dads for Life and involved a fishing trip on a kelong. I have to confess that I have not fished before. I remembered fishing in my youth, but I cannot remember much of it. So I guess I am a newbie in fishing. Nevertheless, I was very keen on going. My son was also very keen to fish, despite having zero knowledge about fishing. Sometimes I wonder what goes into his head - he seems keen to do things he has no idea about. It was a long way to the kelong. We had to cross over to the Malaysian border, drive up 3 hours (at least) and then take a slow bumboat to the kelong. The only bonus... the driver played Jurassic World for us. It was a bonus for me, but for my son, it was obviously too much gore and violence. He kept complaining that he was sick of the movie (translation

Cousins Yet another late blog post - how do people blog when they are having so much fun? Is the Lego and Police arresting him? C3PO and him The Knight Anyway, for this holiday, we went to two places - LegoLand Malaysia and Batam. It was our 4th trip to LegoLand Malaysia. Since it is our fourth trip, I got nothing much to say with regards to the theme park itself. We have been to most of the rides that we want to go. We have even visited one of their newer attractions - Star Wars, twice. However, I just want to mention two things. One, we saw this tie-up between LegoLand and Star Wars regarding their robotics programme. It seemed really interesting, but since my son is only 7, we passed. Two, we finally went into this attraction that we missed the last three times. It was a "build your car" attraction and race against your friends. It was a blast creating our lego cars and racing each other and other strangers to see whose car has the best design.

Recently, I brought my son to an appointment at KKH's Child Development Centre for a routine check-up. The professor said that he was developing quite good. But she said that I should allow him more exposure to physical activities given his issues with motor planning. If you have been reading my blog, you will realise that it was what I intended to do. I am not expecting him to excel in sports, but more exposure to any sport will do him good. He is posing in front of the rules. So on my off-day I took the opportunity to bring my son to the SEA Games. For some reason, he wanted to watch Table Tennis. Since I had no particular sport in mind (other than Swimming - sold out and Football - sold out), I agreed. After all, I was in Table Tennis in Primary school. I think nobody can remember this anymore. Though I have to say, I am definitely not good in Table Tennis - my skills more or less remained stagnant at Primary school level. The table tennis tables... far far away. I

Lucas turned 7 this Saturday (6 June 2015). Two of his cousins, Charmaine and Ashley stayed overnight and on Sunday, all of us went to visit the National Museum of Singapore. It is Children's Season and they have Masak Masak, which features interactive installations suitable for children.  Spectrum of Paper by Mademoiselle Maurice (France) The first thing that we saw when we entered the museum was this art piece mounted on the ceiling. It was very colourful and was created using origami boats, balls and planes (apparently). Unfortunately, there was no way we could get kids in this shot. Lucas took my phone and did a selfie The theme continued into this room. Three walls were artistically decorated by the artist. They left one wall free so that kids can stick their origami on it. It was, well, very random.  Lucas is reading the booklet on the exhibition, Charmaine is trying to fold a heart following instructions from the net and Ashley is colouring a pupp

The start of the June holidays means that the term is over. This has been a very eventful term, with my son starting his Primary One journey. The beginning was tough, with his body adjusting to waking up early in the morning. The mental adjustment was even more arduous. His separation anxiety surfaced again despite having attended childcare. Catholic High was relatively easy as he had been looking forward to attending a bigger school. Adjusting to Student Care took a long process. He only stopped complaining around April. Of course, if you read my posts, you will know that there have been challenges along the way. Academic results wise, he is fine. I feel there is nothing much to emphasise. Afterall, when was the last time anybody brought up Primary One results to guage your ability? But I will just show you the comments his teachers made. Just a note, the teachers' comments are usually taken from templates. They judge the students, and then find the word template that

Recently, Catholic High School sent a bunch of letters to some Primary One students inviting them to join Co-Curricular Activities (CCAs). Alas, my son was not invited. As a parent, I was in two minds on what to do. On one hand, I was disappointed that he was not 'talented' enough to be selected. Yet at the same time, I am not sure I want him to spend time on a CCA, especially when he basically needs to be chauffeured around.  When I asked him about it on our drive back, he told me that he was upset that he was left out. He had heard about CCAs and wanted to join. It did not help that some of his classmates were offered to join various CCAs like Chinese Orchestra and Basketball in front of the whole class (a teacher came to distribute the letters).  When I shared this news with my wife, she was also upset with the news. She felt that it was discriminatory and I agree with her. I know some people will say that we should not be overprotective, and it is true that life is

This is actually a very late post. Sometime in March, all of us went to a farm, harvested some plants, and ate the plants we harvested. It was all good fun, the children enjoyed the trip even though it was really, really hot. My son (with cap) looking at the herbs while my wife seems to be smelling them? Firstly, we went to look at the farm itself and were introduced to the plants and herbs. I think the kids learnt quite a bit about farms, rural areas and agriculture. That is something very new for urban kids nowadays.  Then they were made to harvest certain herbs and plants, and after having harvested enough of them, the children (and adults) proceeded to cut them, grind them and basically prepare them for cooking. My son is grinding squeezing lemons or grinding something. Finally, we sat down to wait as the owner of the farm started to cook the food. The end result was a delicious Thai style vermicelli salad, egg omelette (with some vegetable we harvested) and

I got this rather humourous title from an ex-colleague of mine - a Maths and Social Studies teacher. He posted a picture on my Face Book comment when I complained about number bonds. Interestingly, a Primary School teacher (my student) liked my rant as well. So maybe my thoughts about number bonds are widespread? At least I have proven that two other persons disliked this idea. First, what are number bonds? It is two numbers that make up bigger number.  For example, 6+4=10 or 7+10=17. Apparently, the word was first used in 1920s and it entered the Singapore curriculum in the 1970s. This is from Wikipedia - interestingly that that Singapore was specified. I know for sure that the American Common Core use number bonds as well.  It is pretty basic stuff. The complication, I believe, comes when it is used to add or subtract bigger numbers, like 13-7. One strategy, is called 'making 10'. This is when you break the bigger number into 10 & 3. Then, you use 10

The message to mum. If you notice, he also randomly wished me Happy Birthday because my birthday is in a few day's time. The front of the card. He had to add a Diamond Sword to it - thanks to Minecraft. We had a simple celebration for Mother's Day. We did not want to clash with all the other people trying to do it in restaurants. We went to church, and then we went to Parkway Parade to buy my son's swim suit. We also bought some cakes from Chalk Farm, some which I sent to my mother. They were good. Later that night, we ate at my in-law's place as usual - the only difference was that my brother-in-law went to buy some zhi char instead of the usual home-cooked food. Everyday is Mother's Day for us. :D

I thought hard about whether to include this in the blog - it is, after all, a negative reflection on my son. Do I want this memory to be recorded down for prosperity? After some thinking, I decided to include it, but I will not emphasise this entry in social media. If you are reading this, it means you are probably somebody who reads my blog quite often! Last week was my son's Math Amodes (which stands for alternate mode of assessment). To me, an alternate mode of assessment is something non-traditional, like project work, presentation, scrapbook, etc. But in Catholic High, it is still a pen and paper test - not very alternative is it?. It is like calling Madonna an alternative singer. But, anyway. My wife spent some time helping my son prepare for it. She went through the Math files and even got an assessment book so that he can have more practice. By the time he sat for the test, he was very ready for it. As usual, I was waiting for him along the corridor when I saw him cr

Ball left in the car for a few days Two Fridays ago, my son suddenly wanted to buy a ball. He is a cunning boy - he asked his mother instead of me. My wife bought the ball from the bookshop, pasted a sticker with his name on it, told him about the sticker, and then reminded him to be careful with the ball. The ball is not very expensive but we hope to inculcate ownership and care of his belongings. The case of the useless ball happened when I picked him up next Monday. Unlike most other Mondays, my wife happened to be on leave and we went to school together to pick him up. When we saw him, we could sense that something had happened. He told us that his ball was missing - some boy from the next class took the ball and it was gone. He looked quite flustered. We went to the General Office to try our luck in the lost-and-found. There was no sign of the ball and the office clerk told us to go the cages containing the school-owned balls to look for it. I was rather sceptical tha

This looks like a comprehension passage he set about a Ryan Gowith and Caleb Xia. Please don't ask me who they are. Last night, my son decided to write some stuff. He proceeded to write all these pages, which I guess was based on what he did in school. I am not sure if these are considered good or bad; I have never seen samples of Primary One writing that has not gone through the eyes of an adult. Nevertheless, these are totally unedited and without any intervention. The only reason I am sharing these is that it amusing that he writes such things. It is something he did unexpectedly, and I think will never do again.  "Today we are learning math. This answers are easy. Try them. Good luck." Looks like he needs to brush up on his continuous tense and 'this' vs 'these'. And stop being so arrogant about his math. They are easy because he is only in Primary One! According to him, there are science lessons. The school never requested u