Preparing Kai

Just read LS's post on how much kids gotta know by primary one. I'm trying to be chill but...

So we've signed Kai up for Chinese enrichment classes. He went in on his own, no verbal protest but his body language and facial expression told me he wasn't keen. I took a peek here and there, and boy, was he grouchy!! He was sitting at a corner of the mat listening to the teacher - at least he was listening! - grouchily. When he saw me, I gave him a jia you sign with my fist and he rolled his eyes and head away!! !@#$%^&*

Then when they put away the mat and laid out word cards on the floor to match with the card in the teacher's hand, he participated! During the pee break, he turned and saw me sitting outside. I waved happily. He did the rolling thing again before joining his classmates to go to the toilet. This boy!

It was writing time after the break and he was seated throughout. When the teacher went through the day's lesson with parents while the kids were wearing shoes and queueing up inside, he said that the two characters had many strokes and many kids didn't finish writing them, urging parents to finish up the worksheet at home. But see what my baby did!

Mama so proud :)

But there's still a long way to go before he can be conversant in Mandarin. We have been watching 激战奇轮 at Mum's place the past two Sundays. He started watching this cartoon in English on TV but mid way. We started the Chinese version from the first episode. Sito and I like it very much too! Helps that the song is great. We taught Kai and just now at bedtime, he could sing almost the whole song!

I should also be very happy with this conversation comprising two Chinese terms from him:

Kai: Let's park upstairs?
mf: Ok, 我么去楼上。
Kai: What's 楼上?
mf: Upstairs. What's downstairs?
Kai: 楼下?
mf: Yes!

I must remember that my son learns from listening, not reading, so that I don't get too anxious about his reading. Or non-reading. I haven't seen him read a book yet. I mean, he'll flip books and ask questions such as, what's his name? Who is Zuri? (Who IS Zuri?!) But he's reading only up to four-lettered single words. On the other hand, I once saw Yang take Yu's Brown Bear book and read from the pictures - of course he heard the story before but I like that he can read it on his own based on the pictures. This is something I'm trying to get Kai to try coz he kept saying he couldn't read.

Kai also doesn't do maths very much. He has no problem with counting by sight but he's still asking whether 18 is larger than 80 - he seems to be asking coz they sound similar. I'm not sure what to make of it. And addition is a hit-and-miss. Playing snakes and ladders with him is a torture - nvm that he counts each dot but he hates losing!! :p

So Kai doesn't speak Mandarin much, read or do maths. He does mainly robots. Robots hor, not robotics! I have no time to teach him. Can only leave it to the school. So I figure he'll figure it out at some point. After all, that was what his mama did - except that English and Chinese switched places.

So, mf, take a deep breath and go to sleep.