sharon,
Compared to air con, dryer uses a lot less electricity. My hubby pays the bill and he said that during the cooler months when we don't need air con, the bill is about $100 lower. We use the dryer at least once everyday, up to 3 times on weekends.
Yes I think it is possible to guess the meaning of words if a child has read enough. However, it is not 100%. There will be definitely some words which she guess wrongly. I don't make my kids check the dictionary because I think that may kill the joy of reading. I ask them to read out loud to me and I explain words which I think they don't understand. Now both kids are reading long novels independently, I just leave it to them to learn on their own. If there are words which they don't understand and want to know, they can ask me or check the dictionary themselves.
As for creative writing, my girl seems to know how to write long stories by herself, I do not need to help her. My boy does not really like to write, he especially dislikes writing picture compositions in school, because he does not like to be told what to write. However, he can write long stories of his own involving all sorts of animals, actions, etc which are far more interesting than school work. One interesting thing that my boy enjoys doing, is "creative story telling". Whenever he is inspired, he tells a new story to my girl. He says a few sentences, and if my girl feels like it, she continues telling his story using her own imagination. I find it quite amazing to hear them create stories effortlessly, and they are speaking in complete sentences with a good vocabulary. The best thing is, they are doing it for fun !
I read in a book about creative writing, that parents should encourage children to "tell" their own creative stories, before making them write. The fact is that it is the generating of creative ideas that is more important, writing is only a way of putting these ideas down. I feel that most parents focus too much on writing, spelling, etc. However, kids don't like to write mostly because they don't have any ideas about what to write.
Actually, Chinese creative writing is a much bigger problem for parents and kids. This is because many Singaporean kids do not (or cannot) read enough Chinese books, and they do not speak fluently in Chinese. If a child has not read or speak enough, writing is going to be a big struggle.