Why She doesn't Like School

"Mummy, I don't like this school until Standard 6"

Thats what my girl told me. When I asked her why last week, she said it was because she didn't like the teachers (because they were all so fierce) and because she has no friends (because she doesn't know how to converse in Mandarin like they do). Most of her friends can speak Mandarin.

This week when I asked her why, she said...

"Because school is so long."

Haha. In fact, during school orientation, they had informed us that this is a big transition for the kids from kindy to primary school. School hours are very much longer, school premise is very much bigger etc. So they asked us to prepare the kid by bringing them to the school to show them around, talking to them about the longer hours and informing them where exactly to wait for us when picking them home. They also informed us to let the child know that you will sometimes be late so they won't get upset if you are. They also encouraged us to talk to the kids about school. I must add that for some kids, there is also the language transition or barrier to overcome. (Parents who have children going to primary school next year or in the coming years can take note of this).

Extra school activities for my girl's school started this week. I am glad I didn't sign the girl up for any. If she thinks school is long now, it would be even worse if she has to stay back till after 3pm.
We have however arranged for her kindy teacher to come in to speak to her in Mandarin a few times a week to help her during this transition. We don't have anyone to speak to her in Mandarin at home so we are getting outside help for just one or two months. So far its been good. She likes to practise speaking with her kindy teacher and she is comfortable to ask the kindy teacher about phrases in school which she heard and does not understand.

The kindy teacher gave her an assignment to ask her friend for her name and taught her how to ask in Mandarin. She came home with the name yesterday. Her next assignment is to make more friends. Her kindy teacher also teaches her how to ask the school teacher when she wants to go toilet and other simple terms etc.

We are a bit late in teaching her conversational chinese but hopefully with her kindy teacher's guide she can become more confident speaking and start to understand the school teachers' instructions. Quite often she comes home and tells me, "teacher say must do this and this and ..... but I don't know already." She doesn't quite know what she is supposed to do. Even the Malay and English teachers give instructions in Chinese! So it is important that she can understand it otherwise she will continue to feel lost in school.

I think that if you are sending your child to Chinese school, you should prepare them by making sure they understand conversational Chinese and not only written Chinese. My girl is fine in reading and writing but she can't understand spoken Chinese. This is something we had overlooked due to our own indecision on whether to send her to Chinese school right till the very last minute.

So far, all my girl did in school is sing songs, do coloring and origami (no books or timetable yet at this point) whereas her little brother in kindy has started on homework. Very strange. She showed me some worksheets they did in class and it was really simple. Sort of like a revision to guage the kids level of knowledge. It had simple ABCs, plus drawing curves and lines. However, occassionally they had to copy some things the teacher wrote on the board. That involved a good knowledge of chinese writing, otherwise you cannot write as the words are quite difficult so I guess they expect you to have a good grasp of the Chinese language but not other things?

Speaking of boards, my girl was really excited about the overhead projector that the teacher used to teach them in class. "My teacher stood on the table, then she pulled down this long paper and then she taught us from the computer!" she said excitedly and then added "The computer told us a story in Chinese but then I don't understand it." lol.