(2001) calling all 2001 babies


hi babywuv: yes, i'm lucky to have my mum. thanks for the contact! does your daughter learn piano as well? it is a big headache for me to get my son to practise. he already has problem finishing his school homework as they really overload the kids there. i have 4 kids so i am really stretched copying with work & all of them.
 
hi Olwen! 4 kids!!! wow!!! so lucky! :)

no piano lessons. she started on electone at around 4 yrs old but stopped after the teacher at the cc stopped the class. So, we kinda let her try other things. For now, she is already in the school gym team and occassionally join school performances so that is enough for now. I don't believing in stressing ourselves and the kids out. After all, happy memories as a family is important so all that stress ( parents or kids) will only lead to burn out.. at least that's is my view.
 
Hi babywuv: hmmm, lucky… yes I shd say tt I’m lucky to have had these 3 younger ones after many yrs being unable to conceive. U have 2? So the older one is the 8 yr old girl & younger one is boy? V ideal
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I wonder where everybody else has gone, quite regret not joining this thread earlier, lots of useful feedback from mums such as spanialpups. Discussion used to be quite intense last yr up to early this yr but I guess maybe now the mummies r busy getting ready their 2nd ones for P1? My pals in nov 2008 thread r v active. I guess most of them r young 1st time mums so they like to chat
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may i ask which school your daughter is in?

forgot to wave hi to bernice. my big son is in maris stella. it is sort of a good school but i don't think i recommend parents to send their kids there as the teachers really pressurise the children.
 
This thread is alive again!

SA1 is over and the school holidays starts next wk!! Did your P2 do well in the recent SA1?
 
Yeh...thread alive again... Phew SA1 finally over. My son though passed his Chinese but is weak in it. He loses marks in comprehension and compo (he disliked both). But he did well in English and Math. So now looking for Chinese creative writing/comprehension courses for him. Any kind soul know of any tuition centres in CCK that teaches that?
 
My son got back his exam papers. I do not understand why written expression aka English compo can be in Eng Paper 1 and not the Chinese compo. The school squeezes in Chinese compo in Paper 2. Maybe some students has no problem with it but my son got restless when he reaches the comprehension section and even more restless when he has to attemp compo as the last section.
 
Hi,

Congratz to those mummies that ur kids did and scored well in SA1. For me, sigh... although he passed all the papers but i'm not quite satisfied with his scores. Sigh.. He likes to give away marks due to his carelessness..
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hihi, congrats to all mummies who pulled through this and their kids who did reasonably well. I am very curious to get feedback from mummies out there with P2 kids as to what you consider as good grades that reasonable and over stretching the kid. Some of my friends think my expectations are low and certainly, my daughter's teacher believes I should stretch her more. Views?
 
hi babywuv
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my expectations r v low. as long as he meets band 1 for english & maths & band 2 for chinese, i am quite happy. however, mine did not even meet tt. SA was good for english & maths but pulled down so much by CA. then chinese was of course so bad. tt is y i am looking for a chinese tutor. how did your daughter do actually?

hi to all other mummies! nice to see ppl back in this thread. i shd have joined long ago.
 
Hi babywuv & Olwen,

Hi Olwen: is not too late to join in, welcome here ;)

My expectation are low too. As long as he can achieve all the subjects in Band-2, I'm very contented. Mine, can't meet the 2 subjects which is English and Chinese. That's why I'm quite disappointed...

Hi Babywuv, what is your expectation?
 
Hi Fion, Babywuv & welcome to this forum, Olwen!

Fion :
So far I have not found or met any kids that don't make careless mistakes. Mine also likes to give away marks generously. This is something we can't help but just got to keep reminding them (which makes us very naggy). Same for checking through work after completion, my ds break record, he check through his work in 6 seconds!!

Babywuv & Olwen
I was told that students should do well in P1 and P2 like scoring above 85 marks. Foundation is very important, if they don't get it right now, they are going to have problem when they are in upper levels.
 
Yeah, I was told too. For P2, I'm fine so long as my child can score 80 and above. There's a slight drop in her SA1 English and Chinese results as compared to last yr. She needs improvements in both compre and compo.
 
hi fion, spanielpups, JE: thanks for the welcome
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i agree w spanielpups, my cousin was v unimpressed when i told her my son got 87 for english & 91 for maths end last yr. she said at tt age, shd get 90+ for english & 100 for maths *gulp!* maybe she thinks my son's school's standard is v low so shd achieve higher, haha. but i was happy becos he had really worked so hard in the 2nd half yr & my poor mum w him too.

also wonder whether the same shd apply for chinese? my son has fallen from band 2 to 60+ in chinese only. my gosh.

i think boys r all alike in being careless? how abt babywuv & JE who have girls?
 
Hi all, I just have my session with son's school Chinese teacher an hour ago, she is not that pleased with my son score of 74 marks for Chinese. She said, he should be getting 90+ in P2. She said it's still not too late to help him improve his Chinese now otherwise, come P3, P4, P5...he will be very miserable.
 
Hi spanielpups
Wow.. That's really fast! 6 seconds finished checking all his work!!! Same here, my son always say "Mummy I do check" but i didn't really time him when he check thru his work.. but i know his checking just "run thru" not really look at the questions and answer..

Sometimes I think when comes to discipline, boys really difficult to handle as compare to girls...

Olwen & spanielpups
Wow.. both of ur kids have such a high socre leh.. so envy... nowadays students and schools are so competitive, sometimes i really pity on our children.
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Hi Olwen, Fion,spanielpups, my expectations are simply as long as my girl did her best and scored around 87 for both languages and 82 for maths, I am very contented with these grades. I did notice she is very careless though , like what spanielpups do, getting her to check her work.

The teacher told me the math paper was very diff for their level and most of the kids scored around 60+ to 70+. But she still believes my girl can achieve 95 with more coaching ( of course without stressing my girl). Fortunately, my girl is rather competitive and has set her goals to achieve over 90 pts for each subject. But that also means I need to spend more time with her and I am FTWM with a heavy workload:-(

Fion, I do believe that different school's standard is different. So, can't really compare. :)
 
Hi Babywuv,

Yap i agreed with you as different schools have different standard. Last Wednesday, I had my "Teacher-Parent Meeting session", I told his form-teacher that my son able to score well when he did his cousin's past year exam papers but when comes to his school exam papers, he can't have the same score as what he did. His teacher told me that situtation is different becos my son's school is a "future school" and standard is much higher than the normal school. Sometimes I find that is very stressful for my son, if can turn back the clock, perhaps i should consider not to enrol him to a "future sch" Sigh..
 
fion: i think what spanielpups means is his checking is so fast, it means he didn't really check
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at least he does check. i know mine doesn't. n i agree w babywuv, different schools have diffrent standards. maybe your son's school is really competitive compared to my son's.

i think before the babies were born, my expectations of my first born were even lower becos if he cldn't make it, heck we cld just move to oz cos his godparents r there already. but now, with so many kids, tt's not an option anymore. so my mother & i have to push him. sigh.
 
Hi Olwen,

I really hv to salute to you.. how you manage with 4 children?? I've 2 boys and I really can't find time for myself. At home, they like to play with each other and can really "tear the house down" Really "Xin Ku Ni Le" but lucky you do have our mom to help out.
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Ya, really can feel the pressure when education standard is different from others..
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4 kids Olwen? Wow, I only have one and already have so much stress with him and his studies. Really 'pei fu, pei fu' you. Anyway for me no choice lah.."factory" not productive enough so got to close. Haha.

Fion, Olwen is right, my son's 6 seconds meaning flipping through all pages w/o checking..it's 'for show' only.

I happened to meet one of the parent in school today and her dd scored 95 for English. Teacher is not satisfied, asked the parent to push dd for much higher mark. REALLY CRAZY if you asked me.
 
I guess this school holiday is time for my ds to practice his "NICE" handwriting which also cost him precious marks during the exam. Anyone has better ideas of helping kids improve handwriting? I have tried the abc practice book, also make him copy from passage, still no improvment. It's really frightenting to know what will happen when he uses pen in P4!

My ds has problem writing s,f. He can't seems to draw the curve, the 's' looks like 'l' and the 'f' looks like 't'. Can you imagine when he write the $ sign, it looks like 11. I now suspect is his grip of pencil, was told to give him coins to grip on the palm while holding a pencil to write or do some fine motor skills exercises that might help.
 
Hi spanielpups,

Same here, my son check his work just to stop me from nagging, not really put in effort to check.
There are 2 possibilities why the teacher is not satisfy with their result, either the sch is a Top sch if not the teacher has high expectation for each student. English subject is not easy to score, can scored 95 is consider very high marks!! If my son can scored that well, hahahah!! I'm sure will give him a big kiss and hug him, ;)

RE:penmanship
My son do have problem in his penmanship. His small letter "a" looks like "q" and small letter "n" looks like "h". If numbers worse, no.6 looks like no.4 and no.9 looks like "q". Argh!!! Sometimes look at his work so angry because of all this silly mistakes gives away marks!!! So what I do is, I bought 3 lines exercise books for him to practice numbers and words this school holidays. Hope this will help.
 
hihi all, I have decided not to push my daughter to aim for 95 marks cos I think it is undue stress. My girl's school is not 1 of the future school and already standard is so high, I really salute Fion. I have already told my girl if she wants she can aim for it and start doing one chapter for each subject ( total 3 chapters) of assessments everyday. So far, she has been consistently doing that but unfortunately, I haven't been marking them. :-( I think must set a roster for my hubby to handle and share the load la. I need some "me" time like getting on this forum and chit chat , considering I work close to 16 hrs each day. As for Penmanship, my girl is also slagging in that area. She scored A in P1 and now B. I have asked her to write letters to her friends and former childcare teachers to encourage better penmanship. I told her if her handwriting is ugly, they won't understand what she is writing and it would be seen as being sloppy and rude. Hope that will help a little. :)
 
spanielpups, fion: ha, my kids r all cared for by my mum & MIL. i'm only a weekend mother. but it's really tiring now, especially with my big kai's schoolwork being so pressurising.
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really take my hat to babywuv who can work 16 hrs a day. i work 11 hrs a day & am already so tired.

btw, everybody here seems to be a working mother. anybody stayed at home when the kids were v babies?

Re: penmanship. do your schools still make the kids write that purposive penmanship book in P2? my kai's handwriting is not too bad actually so i really wonder what's the purpose of making them practise it.
 
Hi Olwen, yah very tiring and I am working on cutting back the hours. I don't see any penmanship exercises for my girl so should have asked the teacher how the kids were graded.
 
Hi Babywuv & Olwen,

Hahah!! I’m still struggling, hope my son and I can pull thru all the stress we face.. :p You gal willing to do all the assessments everyday, that’s good and keep it up!! but my boy, I don’t think he will automatic do..?

Wow… peifu peiful both of you!! Everyday work 11 to 16 hrs!! can imaging how tired it is and have manage your kids & household chores when you’re home. I really have to salute to both of you, supermom!!! Hahahah!!

RE: Penmanship
My son doesn’t have any penmanship book for them to practice but they do give them a test and the grading is 5 but how they grade I think is base on their nice and neat handwriting bah…

This is my point of view, the purpose of making them to practice penmanship because some pupils might not able to get the correct strokes and my son as an example, teacher always hard to guess what he’s trying to write… so he needs alots of improvement and practice in this area
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fion: errr, i think u r more of a supermom than me. probably babywuv is too. i don't do housework except boiling water
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i have 2 maids to help my mum look after the 3 younger ones while she chases "lao da" to do homework.
 
hi Fion,Olwen, Frankly, I lived without a maid for a year when my kids were younger and I was also a FTWM. One morning, I woke up and saw a burnt out grouchy mummy in the mirror and I realised I wasn't being a good mother at all. Also, my view is that when I am 80 yrs old , there will still be household chores to do so any free time I have right now should be spent with the family or give myself a little bit of "me" time.Afterall, the kids grow up so fast and we also grow old too fast. Its an expense to get maids but a necessary one for now.

I may decide to go "maidless" when my kids are older. :p

The whole of last week has been very bz again. Now, hours are down to around 11 , yipee!!! the rest of the time is spent resting and with my kids.

ciao!
 
babywuv: i agree! my concern abt maids is not so much expenditure but trustworthiness. i've had 9 in total, can u imagine? was lucky with the 2nd & 5th ones but these last 4 have given me such a headache over the last 7 mths. thought finally settled on these 2 current ones but found out last mth tt they have boyfriends. sigh. my mother really blew her top when she found them sms'ing & not seeing my daughter happily eating tissue.

yes, work is never done. not sure whether u feel the same way but like i was telling fion, if i had a chance i would really love to stay at home & look after them myself. sigh.
 
I think practise will make perfect. My boy always makes careless mistakes in his Maths. This SA1, I took leave 2 weeks before the exam and really zoomed into areas or topics he has always been weak in. I also pushed him to do the Top School exam papers for all subjects. I really appreciate the effort he put in this term as he used to score 70-80 range for all his subjects. This term, he scored all Band 1. Maths and English above 90 and Chinese weaker 86. But I truly appreciate his effort. And I can see the motivation he is getting now to work even harder
 
Hi, glad to know that many of our children did well for SA1. For my boy, reading paid off very well. I bought some G Stilton, Zac Power books that are read only once. Anyone here wish to exchange? We can than get fresh titles to read. Recently he just finished the latest Mr Mystery book, The Mystery of the Unlucky Undertaker. Pls email me at [email protected] to exchange books.
 
Our G. Stilton titles are ; 25 the search for sunken treasure, 13 the phantom of the subway, 14 the temple of the ruby of fire, 35 a merry christmas, 23 valentine's day disaster, 2 the curse of th cheese pyramid, 32 valley of the giant skeletons, & book 26; 3; 34; 31; 18; 11; 22.
 
jesslyn: wow, i agree. your son has really done well. wonder whether i shd try taking 2 weeks leave too like u when the next exam comes.
 
It's definitely worth the leave. I was stressed over my son's studies before that. No one coaches him during the weekday and he could only wait till I return home from work. No word can describe the motivation I see in him to work harder going forward. But still, I explained to him not to be complacent over his results. He can fail in the next exam if he doesn't continue the effort, just like rich people can become poor one day if they don't know how to manage their wealth properly.
 
Am getting my son to continue doing the papers to revise what he has learnt in the past 6 months. And also maybe to teach him new chapters before school reopens.
 
I agree with jesslyn how the presence of a parent fires up the kid's motivation. Unfortunately, its not a feasible option for me so I have to do the evening routine thingy and then get back to work on line around 10pm when they have gone to bed :-(
 
Hi Mummies,

May I check with you, when your child does his/her Top Schools exam papers, does your child ask for explaination when words that they never come across? I realised that in Top School exam papers some words are difficult for them. How you guys teach your child in this area when they do the papers? Million thanks for your feedback :p
 
Hi Fion,
I only explain to my boy after he has done the papers regardless of any subject. This will enable me to know what he does not understand or weak in so that I can focus and explain to him.
 
hi Fion, I always encourage my kids to check the dictionary themselves. If they don't find the word or still can't understand, then I will explain.
 
Hi Jesslyn/Babywuv,

Thanks for your feedback. I realized that my son had became a habit and too rely on me as a “live dictionary”, he always ask me those words that he hasn’t learn before. Remember at once, when he did the Top Schools exam papers he asked me what is the meaning of those words. I told him to do first, if you got it wrong I’ll correct your mistakes & explain to you. He replied, “Mummy how do I get the question correct if i do not know the meaning of the words. I’m really in a dilemma whether or not to explain to him? I ever taught him how to use the dictionary & asked him to check by himself but he always tells me that he can’t find the words in it and I ever told him “what happened if you are in the exam, nobody help you”? He keeps quiet for awhile and he still likes to ask me when he face problems. I’m really need advice, how to let him know that I’m not a “live dictionary”? Million Thanks!!
 
hi Fion, my girl asked me the same question "how do I get the question correct if i do not know the meaning of the words". I told her that's precisely why she needs to use the dictionary to search so that she will learn to study independently. If she still gets it wrong, at least this is not the exams and she has a chance for mummy to correct them. I also sweetened the deal by telling her if she knows how to check the dictionary on her own, she will enjoy reading more... Since she really loves reading, this kinda motivates her.



In the 1st place, I don't believe in sitting beside the kids when they are doing assessments. Even if I am home, I'd sit in another room and do my own thing, set a specific time for them to complete and come back to them only when the time is up. I teach them to do what they know, circle what they don't know and come back to it later. If they still don't know, then I will explain ( which is usually in the evenings or weekends). So, this way, its easier to do remote control when I am at work :p

However, its getting harder with my boy nowadays cos he has learned to whine ( from his best friend in Childcare). To break the habit, I use incentives. If he does his work on his own and as long as he tries and complete all within a stipulated time, even if he gets some errors, he will still be rewarded with a 20mins DVD or computer games. It works sometimes so I guess I have to be patient....
 
Hi babywuv, I also agree with you not sitting beside kids when they do assessment coz my ds has a habit of saying he don't know this question and that and expect me to spoonfeed him with answers.

When ds came to me once to explain meaning of certain word, I told him I didn't waste money to buy a dictionery and let it sit prettily on the shelves for decoration. He got the hint and now he does his own checking.

By the way, any of the mommies here have kids who can't sit still while doing homework. Mine simply can't sit still. He will fidget. He does one question and go to wee wee, attempt another questions and went to kitchen to look for food, etc. Is it just boy thing or all kids are like that. I am losing my patience.
 


Hi babywuv/spanielpups,

Thanks! I shouldn't sitting beside him when he does his works.

Last time my son can't sit still while he's doing his homework. Is exactly same as spanielpups situation. What I did is, before he starts his homework. I prepare a water bottle for him and place it on the table, I told him when you thirsty you can drink from the bottle, no need to go all the way to the kitchen. And I told him "you wanna to go out can, but have to finish your work first, if not I'll give you more homework to do next time. So far, he's okay. I think boys are difficult to discipline when they do their homeworks. Really need alots of tolerance & patience with them.
 
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