School year 2013

So the school year for 2013 has come to a close. Joseph completes his second year in a Chinese primary school.

 

How did he do?

 

He has gone from a totally blur 'English' boy to one who is proud to be chinese and in a chinese school. Academically, there is plenty of room for improvement. He's intelligent, but handicapped by the language. Still, his command of the Chinese language has improved tremendously and considering the fact that he does not go for tuition, I'd say he did pretty well. His exam marks averages in the 80s except for English which is a near perfect score.

 

This year, he came home with 2 trophies. One for a consolation prize in a coloring competition (in thought he hated colouring!) and the other for second place in English sentence construction competition.

 

Socially, he's got a Chinese chess 'gang' with whom he plays the game after school. Hence he likes it that his father fetches him from school a little late and his father is glad to do so because traffic flow is less congested.

Joseph is a more outdoor kind of boy preferring to cycle, swim and hike.

 

He doesn't like languages and he doesn't like being on stage. So we didn't force him to join the Children's Church Christmas production this year.

For Joy, this is the end of her first year in kindy and it has certainly been a very good one for her. She is an excellent student. Perhaps too excellent to the point of being a perfectionist. Her handwriting is very neat. She will erase and rewrite if a certain stroke is too short or too long. Even by a mere millimetre!!

 

She tells me that she has not done a single correction for spelling, ejaan and 听写 all year because she got every one of it correct. About 3 weeks ago, she came home with a present and said it was for getting all correct in every paper in the year-end assessment adding that she wad the only student in her class to do so.

 

Today was party and awards day and she was awarded Student of The Year!

I'm certainly impressed. But while I praise her for a good job done, I remind her that all she achieves is by the grace of God and she must remain humble.

 

I must add that she is also quite a busy body. She knows the name of every classmate, how many siblings they have, which vehicle they come in, and who their parents are. She can also eavesdrop on the next class so she knows what goes on in the 4-year old class, while paying full attention to her own teacher. In her words, "one ear listen to this teacher, one ear listen to that teacher la!"

On the down side, she's quite a Puteri Lilin and a fussy and very slow eater. She still eats mainly oats but is taller than even kids 2 years older than her.

I realize that both my school-going children are so different.
Joseph's handwriting is like 'cakar ayam' while Joy's is like it's printed.
Joseph's books are full of dog ears by February while Joy's is still like brand new after a whole year.
Joseph completes his homework very quickly but Joy takes a long time.

I remind myself to not compare but praise and encourage every effort and achievement.
Thank you God for beautiful, intelligent children!