Adapting to school

My girl has mixed feelings about school now. In the mornings she usually still says she doesn't like school but when I ask her how was school at the end of the day, she says "ok' cheerily. As a summary, here's some of the things that happened to her recently.

• had her place switched twice. The first time was because the boy beside her kept on borrowing her stationaries and the second because of the normal rotation. They rotate or change positions every fortnight. Her new partner is a talkative boy. She is so worried that she can't hear what teacher is saying during lessons because he keeps on talking to her.
• had her first gym (pendidikan jasmani) class. She found it amusing that they wore different coloured t-shirts for different teams. Hers is blue. She was scolded for being slow when changing back into her school uniform because she was slow to turn back her uniform which had become overturned when she removed it. The girls changed in the classroom and the boys had to go to the bathroom to change. The teacher made them do jumping jacks and run round the field then asked them to feel their heartbeat. They also have a "pendidikan jasmani" class in theory. They had learned in theory or in the classroom that when they exercise, their heart rate will go up so when they do practical exercises, it supports the theory part. I don't remember us having any "pendidikan jasmani" theory class before in my days.
• enjoys her music classes where the teacher teaches them to sing Chinese songs.
• enjoyed using her new glue stick when doing her homework. She thought it was cool because we had been using other types of glue which were harder to handle, more messy and didn't have as nice a result when sticking. To a kid, even little things like that are important and make them happy
• she is very diligent in doing her school work and packing her bag for school. One day I saw a hole or tear mark in one of her exercise books. "Why is there a hole here?" I asked. She said the hole was caused by her tears (lol) because she had been scolded by teacher for starting the next day's work on a fresh page instead of continuing from the previous day's page.
• was happy when they distributed out the abacus to them. They have not started lessons on it yet.

At the moment, lessons are still very simple. Basic counting from 1 to 10 for Math. Learning greetings ("Good Morning, Good Evening etc") for English, learning body parts (eyes, ears, etc) for Science, practise daily hand writing for Chinese (she will be doing her first "ting seah" or Chinese spelling this week. There is no ejaan or English spelling yet) and tatabahasa (ba, bi, bu etc) for Malay.

Probably the most difficult homework she has got so far was several pages from a kid's magazine or periodical. The chinese words there are tougher than what she has been learning in class. The magazines or periodicals are in addition to their normal activity books and exercise books. I saw one of them cost RM2.50 a month, another RM0.50 a month. They are included in the list of books we are required to pay for. Hmm..... Extra cost and extra weight for the school bag. Ok, maybe just extra cost lah. The magazines are very thin and printed from newsprint paper type.