Michelle Khang Dot Com

I paid Ethan’s new teacher (new school) a visit last week on Parent’s & Teachers day and was surprised to learn that all but 2 of the 20+ students in the 4 yr olds class can read the Peter & Jane 4A and further they can also write the alphabet from memory.

Ethan had only joined this school in early October, so his teacher has only had a full month and a half working with him so he is one of the 2 who cannot write the alphabet from memory and could only read Peter & Jane 2A - currently onto 3A.

Obviously this kindergarten has higher expectations and goals for their students because most other kindergartens don’t even teach the 4 yr olds how to read at 4yrs. Personally I not too worried that Ethan is a little behind compared to his peers in this school because I am sure he’ll catch up in no time especially since he is practising his writing and reading at home with me everyday.

When I first enrolled Ethan back in October I also enquired about enrolling Aaron (who just turned 2 in Oct) for classes starting in January. The administrator told me that many parents were happy sending their kids to The Core (name of Ethan’s new school) rather than leaving them with a maid or babysitter as they learn more and at a faster rate this way.

She also said that we (parents) should not limit the childs’ ability to learn. Since they are not forcing the kids to learn but are just helping them learn through play and they really enjoy themselves… I decided that my tiny tot (whom I still refer to as BABY) will be starting school in January.

As parents… do you think a 2 and a half year old is too young to be going to school?

It was another hour and half of work for the kids and me this morning. I bought a new box of paints last night so the boys were bugging me right after breakfast to do some painting. We had not done painting for a long time now because we ran out of paints, so they remember that it was loads of fun…

I started them off with a drawing of a car each on an A4 paper and they had to paint it.  It turned out pretty…er ugly…because the paint brushes were all out of shape. I need to buy them new ones… (mental note..buy buy brushes…)

Here it is, I guess you can figure which one is Ethans.

After painting cars, we did paint leaves and “chop” on the paper. Ethan really liked this, he kept trying new colours and ended with a paper full of different coloured leaves. Aaron is just plain bossy…he wanted to do everything himself, he was like “I wan doo, I wan doo… , Aawon doo”

Here’s Master Bossy doing his cheeky smile and Ethan doing his leaves.

Ethan and I went on to make a mask while Aaron got bored and left to watch Barney!

I brought out some old paper plates from Ethan’s first birthday party and Ethan drew eyes, a nose and a mouth on it, then coloured it a bit. I then cut out the eyes and mouth with a pen knife and Ethan took a picture of me in action.

Then I cut some hair from newspaper and we even added a beard, LOL… poor mummy is already running out of ideas on day 2. Anyone with craft ideas or suggestions of activities to do with a 4 year old, please post them here… PLEASE!!!!

Here is Ethan wearing his mask after he attached all the hair himself.

That was the morning session - 9am till 1030am. They had a mentos each then watched Elmo Wild Wild West, which is hilarious by the way not to mention super entertaining.

After Aaron finally decided to nap at 11.30am, Ethan and I played word games using the flash cards. I have to find many new ways to teach him his words as 4yr olds have super short attention span. So we started of with flashing the cards, me to him then he became the teacher and flashed them back for me!

Then I laid out 3 words a time on the floor and read out a word each time for him to point out. We also reversed roles for this “game” too, where he laid out the words and he read out one and I had to pick it out!!Very cheeky way of getting him to read them… kekeke!

I even resorted to letting him throw the words like a frisbee towards the sofa and I must say he is really beginning to read most of the first 12 words.

Here is our last game (Aaron woke up) where we had to pick out the word and place it in the basket. I took this picture with Aaron on my lap so you can see his little legs in the picture. The camera was facing us and the picture was a little blur because of this.

This is real different from all my online google work … kekeke…boy am I glad that tomorrow is a public holiday! Yes, I do follow the Selangor gazetted holidays!!!

Over the weekend Chris and I asked Ethan to read his Peter & Jane 2b and were a bit disappointed to learn that he could only read about 40% of the words in the book. We do realise that he is only 4 yrs old but he has been going to ’school’/nursery for the last ..almost 2 years. He spends 3 hours a day in school and what he has achieved this year is less than satisfactory. So I’ve decided to stop sending him to school for the rest of the year and to try home schooling him.

In December last year after Ethan had been attending school for 1 year, I tested his ABC’s and found that he hardly knew them. Yah…sure it is play school but they are supposed to teach them simple things like ABCs & 123s. Last year I did not expect him to learn to write yet. So I complaint to the pricipal last year that having spent a year at her school he still did not know his Alphabet, so she said “don’t worry, this year he will learn all that and more”, “furthermore you don’t want to force too much onto him because he may just tune out after that”, she reassured me that the pace picks up this year. I decided to teach him the alphabet myself using flash cards during the school holidays and he picked up  75% of it before school started in January.

So history has repeated itself with this year’s good money spent that resulted in below average results because Ethan actually believes that school is where kids gather to play…

Chris and I agreed that I can teach him more in a month than what they have taught him in a whole year, this is why we have decided that he should not return to school till January for the start of proper Year 5 kindergarten.

This morning was day 1 of home schooling which will carry on for the next 3 months till he goes to a new school next year.

Here is what we did today. I have no experience with this but I thought that I could make it a little fun for both of the boys so that they can enjoy learning.

Class 1 - I drew a house (remember that I am lousy at drawing!) and asked them to use some old colour stickers to colour the house. Here is Ethan’s house , all completed on his own.

Aaron took part in this assignment as well but had the maids help! Here is his house.

After this I drew the letter A for the on paper and gave them a pair of scissors each for Class 2. Only Ethan managed to complete this task but on the second attempt. This task is supposed to help with his motor skills. Here’s his work.

Aaron was just so excited to get his hands on a pair of scissors (under supervision) for the first time.

The maid ran off in search for the colour pencils that have disappeared recently so Aaron started to wander around so he ‘left school’. Ethan then went on to colour a fisherman for Class 3.

All that work and only an hour had gone by!!! I wonder how they can hold their attention for 3 hours…kekeke, that’s probably why the kids end up playing so much. They probably only teach them things 30 mins a day!

I dug out some old flash cards that I had paid a hand and a leg for when Ethan attended Shichida classes and we went on to learn 12 words by using the flash to memorize as pictures technique.

I must have gone through the 12 words like 10X with him because after the 5th time, Ethan was asking me.. “again?”

LOL…

In total today we spend 1 hr and 30 mins on work and then I rewarded both of them with a gummi bear each, so that we ended on a good note. The wonders of the gummi bear!

I’ll need to drive out to get more supplies for this home schooling thing so that we can do more art and craft , then I’m going to need to read up about what 4 year olds are supposed to be learning.

Not bad I guess for day 1 of school considering that we were totally unprepared!

Oh yes, after lunch Ethan practised his writing and he is getting much faster these days compared to the first day he started writing at home.

You can see Aaron in the background trying to ‘get involved!’