Back to School

The kids are back at school today. The boy is back after almost a month off school! He is anxious. "Mummy, so long already..." he said. I accompanied him to class although parents are not allowed in. I asked for permission. So that he won't feel so lost. When we got there, the children were busy sweeping the floor. One boy said to him in mandarin "Put up your bag! Put up your bag!" My poor boy could not understand him. Sigh. It is my fault, sending him to Chinese school but not preparing him enough in conversational Chinese.

His class has a few mat salley and Malays and Indians. About 10% of his class are non-Chinese. The thing is, these non-Chinese parents planned a long time ago to send their kids to Chinese school. So they compensated for it and prepared the kids by sending them for 2-3 years to a Chinese kindergarden. As a result these kids are fully prepared.

Whereas me, who did not believe in a lot of homework at a young age, allowed my son to be in a relaxed kindy and now as a result he is lost. I thought that he should be able to catch up once he is in an all Chinese environment. Unfortunately, he only attended 1 month of school and missed the entire 2nd month so now he is even more lost. Poor boy. Oh well, I shall just have to coach him harder myself with my just learned Chinese from teaching his sister before him. I shall rope his sister in to help once her tests are over because now her Mandarin is much better than mine.

I find that for Std 1 and Std 2, I am able to teach myself ahead of the kids and coach them myself even without knowing Mandarin myself but Std 3 is quite beyond me unless I "study" harder myself.

As for the girl, she missed about 6 days of school this month. Today she is back at school but she is having diarheaa. She went to toilet just before going out of the house and rushed to toilet again as soon as she reached the school. Poor girl. Perhaps we have to bring her to the doc again this evening. Sigh.