First Day in the new school year

Today the Pilot and the Princess are Kindergarteners!

Yes their school started two days later than other schools here and today they finally left Nursery life behind and went to K1 (Kindergarten 1)! Also their school has decided that a 12 noon dismissal time didn't give the teachers and the students enough time to work, so dismissal has now been pushed to 12:30 pm. This means the children come home 30 minutes later and so everything else gets pushed likewise....

More about the first day later - maybe tomorrow - as I still haven't spoken to them about it. They also have the first day of their Hindi class tomorrow. Like I earlier mentioned, I plan to teach them both Hindi and Mandarin in Kindergarten so that they can choose their Mother Tongue language when they go to Primary school....

School's Out

For the past few days there has been a debate going on in the newspapers here regarding the amount of work that kids have to do in school these days and the lack of a proper childhood for them. So I thought I should weigh in my two cents worth on this topic, seeing that it is something I have pretty strong views on!

It is true that the school system here in Singapore is akin to being in a pressure cooker - both for parents as well as children. With an aim to provide a first-class education to its children, the government, no doubt started out with noble intentions, but somewhere along the line, perhaps the distinction between a world class education and too much education got blurred! At almost four years of age, in addition to their Nursery class, the Pilot and the Princess also go to Ballet (the Princess) and Piano (both) classes. Come January, I am planning to get them started with Hindi classes (both) every Saturday morning for three hours as they will be taking Hindi as their Mother Tongue language in Primary school, plus Kumon for Maths for both and Speech and Drama classes. If there is time, I also want to enrol them in Art classes.

I know this is too much for a four year old to do, but like all Kiasu (which means the fear of losing out and is a Singlish slang. For more click here)Singapore parents, I am scared that if I don't do atleast this much, they will be much behind their peers!

In my heart I know that they will never experience the kind of childhood I had, where school studies started seriously only from grade 3 and holidays were meant to be enjoyed to the fullest either staying at home or travelling. My kids will never experience that as most schools here have some sort of holiday programme on - both in June and December (when the school semester ends) and holiday homework!

That's quite sad, especially when we as parents - who should be encouraging them to let their imagination take flight, make them rein it in so that we (and they) can conform to what society expects us to do!

Aww well, this is a never-ending thing and I guess and the kids keep growing there will be more rants by me on this topic! So have a great weekend everybody!

Schools and learning a language

Good morning! Wow, I didn't know that blogging was so addictive!!

The Princess (my daughter) and the Pilot (my son) love going to school - they are still in nursery - and this term at their school they are doing a kind of immersion programme. It's in it's infancy stage, so I am not sure if this will work better than what was used last year and which is used by pratically all the day care/pre-schools in Singapore. What is usually the case here is that every other day they will alternate between English and a second language (in my kids case, Mandarin), but this year the school has decided to do a week's worth of one language instead, calling it an immersion programme. According to me, this method has both pros and cons. I like it for the reason that spending 5 days using just one language will boost the language skills, especially since they are learning Mandarin as the second language and we are not ethnic Chinese, but in the process what I worry is that by the time they get back to the teacher, they have spent some 10 days away from her and may not remember what they learnt in the first place. I should talk to the teachers asking for course work and work at home with them reinforcing what they learn in school.