The double madness of WFH + HBL started the second week of HBL coz I needed to go back to work already. Decided to keep Yu at home so there was even more madness!
Monday was very busy as I had a TCM appointment. Luckily there wasn't much offline work that day coz I found out on Tuesday afternoon that Yang did not do some offline work that morning! He also anyhow wrote an answer for art - anyhow like "hgdhiuwahfibifhauih"!!! Even though I don't expect him to be an artist and this is non-examinable, I do expect him to do his work properly. Sat him down to go through while Kai played Nintendo.
Also made a hat for English, strangely
Had him practise the words from Chinese lesson 10 and finally finished this exercise book from K1 time!
I thought it was very wasteful to throw it when it had many empty pages so I kept for them to draw and write. Didn't realise I kept this for two years already!
He could write so much back in K1
And his revision of lesson 5 - made him write and draw :)
For Kai, I mostly helped to upload stuff, like this cute picture :)
So lucky that it was Vesak Day on Wednesday, i.e. no HBL, and I had taken leave on Thursday and Friday coz originally it was early dismissal on Thursday and no school on Friday. So I was back to only HBL madness :p
Arts for Kids Hub time! First time for Yu :)
Kai's first dinosaur - full of add-ons
Kai's second dinosaur - even more add-ons!
Yang's first dinosaur - so cute!
Yang's second dinosaur with two big moles *.*
Yu's dinosaurs - mostly on his own!
It was super hot Monday and Tuesday. We went to level 5 at least once and seriously, I don't know how they could heck care and just play! Then I thought it was perfect for the pool so they wouldn't be cold. But Wednesday wasn't as hot *.* We went anyway! And for the first time in a very long time, I went in with them. Yu couldn't even remember the last time I went in with them.
Before getting wet
They were very happy!
I finally thought of something to revive our old drawing board - Pictionary! We oh-ah-beh-som (sound it out :p) to split teams. Kai and Yang were a team and took turns to draw. Yu wanted to draw all the time until he, um, found me quite lousy in guessing so we switched and he was very good at guessing! :p
Yu did the Monopoly dinosaur on his own after I helped him fill in the letters between M and Y in the word below :p
Kai drew a..... boy!
Yang drew a... candy!
Yang drew an... owl!
We were having a lot of fun but it was too slow and taxing to keep switching teams, deciding who to draw, bringing the marker everywhere and inking everything, jumping on the sofa during prep time, clicking "next word" on the word generator and switching between safari and timer! Now that took a while to type out!
So we switched to me drawing for them to guess - first to 10 points wins. But soon after we started, Kai shoved Yu roughly to the ground for blocking his view so I banned him for one round. He couldn't stop complaining and was finally kicked out of the game. Yang also had a go to draw for Yu and me to guess - Yu could really guess very well! Yup, I lost :p
All of Kai's teachers said the same of him - lively, bubbly, participative.
All of Yang's teachers said the same of him - reserved, not participative.
Well, Yang is pretty loud at home... But as I think more about it, actually I shouldn't be surprised. He was like this at Chengzhu years ago. Maybe he's not as comfortable as he was in preschool where it was more like a home environment. I'm glad to hear from both him and his teachers that he had friends in school. One of his form teachers said they would suggest topics for the kids to chat about over recess. So cute :)
Work wise, generally no worries for both, even for Yang's spelling. His English teacher said his handwriting could be improved - oh yes, so big and messy! His Chinese teacher thought he could be better at 听读写；说 is ok. The 听 part is the "best" - his teacher had to walk up to him (he sits at the back of the class) to call him before he would respond *.*
Kai is so good that his PE teacher thought he loves PE when he hates it *.* Oh wait, he couldn't hide that he isn't too passionate about art though :p His former teacher gave a lot of details for his English, which I appreciate; need to work through AFIs with Kai in the coming month.
Kai's Chinese teacher told me hilarious things. At first, it was all 很棒 coz his grades were the same as her students from the top level - there are four levels of Chinese for P2 to P4 or something, and Kai is in the second level; there is no top level kids in his class. So I said I think he could do the written stuff but he doesn't speak the language. Then she told me YES! He doesn't speak Mandarin in her class. But:
- He is very yaya papaya, and said things like, "So easy!" or "What? You mean you don't know?!"
- He even corrected her! So she said 司徒先生，那我可以继续了吗？His reply? "Caaan!"
So there's this word 量 in a lesson. The kids were to write the word and its hanyu pinyin in their notebook. Teacher gave the hanyu pinyin as liáng. Kai said it was liàng. Actually both were right. But the lesson introduced the term as a verb, hence liáng; liàng is for the noun. Thing is, I don't think his teacher explained the difference to him.
I told him that he was right! Just that the teacher probably wanted them to use the word as used in the lesson. He said he would just shut his mouth in future. My poor boy. That was when I recalled an article that I recently reread - empathise, don't sympathise.
So I said I totally understand, especially when he was right that the word could be pronounced liàng as well. And I encouraged him to continue speaking up. This was where my amazing albeit selective memory came in useful :p I told him that something similar happened to me when I was 10 years older than he was. He didn't want to listen coz he was feeling embarrassed but I again threatened persuaded him to.
When we were reviewing the results of my physics prelim science exam, I found that the teacher counted my marks wrongly, and - here, my memory was really sketchy but I had this impression - that one question was not marked. So I went up to the teacher at the front of the lecture theatre and asked for my marks. I went from 60+ to 79 or something like that. Mr Q gave me a look and a nod before I happily went back to my seat. A difference between an A and a B!
Kai was looking interested by this point and stopped covering his eyes and ears etc from being embarrassed. I took that as a good thing and didn't say any more. Hope he learnt something besides keeping his mouth shut!
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