100, 99. 95

I said if I were the Teacher, I would have given 100 marks.
Kiki said if SHE were the Teacher, she would have given 99 marks.

LOL LOR!

 It's like ARE YOU KIDDING ME? COME ON!

 This one from enrichment class. quite hard ar.... but okay lah. Just go at our own pace.

Chinese 汉语拼音音调符号 Grammar

Her pencil broke four times.... pardon the handwriting.

Half marks taken for writing 'f ' the mirrored way. Such a unrelated error, cannot give chance meh?

 This one (above) is from enrichment class. 

See word #3 ju qi -- isn't ju supposedly is in second tone?  举起 ju (2) qi (3)- raise

I thought there was an error in print, so I asked a fellow Mama. 

She says that when two words with 3rd tone come together, the first word will be switched to 2nd tone. (That's like Ping Ying 音调 grammar?)  So I asked, if that's the case, shouldn't we write the tone in 2nd tone since we pronounce it that way and precisely the 音调符号's main purpose is to help us pronounce. She says no, we will still have to write the original 3rd tone because the word itself is in 3rd tone. In this case even though we read it in 2nd tone, we still will have to write in 3rd hence the print is correct. 

Wa...... win liao lor.   

I will surely confuse Kiki with Ping Ying Grammar if that's the case. 

音调 is to help us pronounce correctly. we write both in 3rd tones and then read them otherwise, surely at this point in time Kiki will be confused because I'm telling her the rules changes. Had the kids had more foundation, then they will be able to distinguish an exception. So now not only have they not caught foothold of the foundation, they have to know there are exceptions. Well, let's hope exceptions remain scarce and we'll gain momentum with learning the basics.

January 5th, Tuesday

School's Silent Reading 7am-7.25am: 

English storybook Monday to Wednesday

Chinese storybook Thursday & Friday 

This week's word recognition. 

She says the word Mu (Mother 母亲）is a depiction of a Mother's breasts. 

She asked why chair (椅）has wood and I explained about various materials that could be fabricated into chairs; wood, metal, PVC, leather. She asked what leather is. After explaining, she said that if she were an animal, she wouldn't want her skin to be used for anything.

The Good Dinosaur

 Everything was well about the show except I didn't quite like it that they keep driving the message about having to "make your mark in this world". It's like every child (especially the sons), are always trying to seek a form of approval from his Father, to be acknowledged as someone useful, or to achieve a feat or series of feats in order to earn acceptance of his family.  If the Father (or both Parents) has a "moving target", then it will never be enough to fulfill their expectations. That, to me, is the crack of any relationship. 

 I asked Colin to pose as Spot, with a growling face, the best he could do is this---

 LOL

 She read it as 我的感觉  instead of 我的感受 (means she's just guessing the word)

So I explained that although they are both simplified as "Feelings",  感觉 is kinesthetic feelings eg: warm, hot, cold, cool. While 感受 is emotive feelings eg: anger, jealousy, sad, loneliness.
I gave her a list of phrases and when I got to "feeling hungry", I wasn't sure if feeling hungry is 感觉 or 感受.... -_-"?

 

Learning Chinese Spelling

 These words and sentences are prescribed by the Chinese centre for  Sunday's spelling test

I don't know what kind of .... morbid brain I have, every time I come across generic 爸爸，妈妈 terms in exercises, I always....... feel that they should do away with these... no lah. I don't really mean that. I only feel that for those kids without a parent...... for instance this K1 or K2 kid with a single parent or no parents, having to learn to write a sentence like this "妈妈教我写字。" how would it hurt that little heart and soul. Makes me wanna cry. But that's just me lah, not every kid feel they are missing something. Maybe some don't feel a thing. 

this is copied from school's whyte board.

Book issued by school, one book per week to bring home, and then returned to class to be recited in class. Not all books have HanyuPinying. This one happens to have a summary page. So far we've maintained the "three stars" reading status except for one book which was not brought home because it was some busy week and the regular class was skipped, hence that book was read without preparation (tested on-the-spot), that one got "two stars". Both Kiki and I are so hung up on that "two stars" status. We both felt that that single book marred our otherwise "Michelin" result chart. I think it's not healthy for me to be too hung up on this, I've got to relax because it will get harder from here and I'd better prepare myself for......... I dunno, tougher standards I guess. 

Painstakingly Learning Chinese

Oops... tell tale sign.. at 10pm still doing Chinese.

How how how?  P1 coming and we haven't learned to write in sentences.

Do a little a day, but so many "little" things to do!

I have to be so careful when I show her how to write a single Chinese word because many times my strokes are not in correct sequence.  So I've got to check the strokes before showing her. And that is painstakingly slow. Every night I nudge myself, just do it, just do it. If I slack then slack will snowball. Just take a night's off every Friday. So Monday to Thursday is work on the double shifts, fit in speech & drama, piano, abacus, violin classes, plus revisions and a few leaflets of worksheets. Friday work in the day, off in the evening. Saturday music X 2 and shopping, eating day. Sunday Chinese, swimming and playground day. Nightly- reading as much as possible. Playground as much as possible. Take a break as much as possible. Take precaution against browning out. Juggle, juggle, juggle. Impart values and let KiCo grow.

words from books issued by her school for reading in class. 

(just sight reading, no need spelling)

End of Term Review (Chinese)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Skj4AN9L8
 Colin is so darn cute. He has a fairly loud voice and still couldn't pronounce well.
Lao shu, he says Nao shu.
Xia lai, he says Xia nai. So basically all the Ls became Ns.
LOL.

 Although I think P1's standard is much higher than this, I still say - Keep up the good work!

 The area she's weak in is the "stroke count".... well, I didn't know there's such a section.

Colin, on the other hand,,,,, is still playful. Which is fine for now. 

Words

 The stack of new words got thicker. Now there are the Hanyu's AEIOUs kind of alphabets (and BPMFDTNL for Bo Po Mo Fo kind of stuff).

The consolation is that she seems to be enjoying her Chinese classes more.

 I grabbed the extra note pads that are lying around and made use of the squares.

 These are from her childcare's Chinese book

We try to move away from referring to the pictures for clues. 

So after reading the book a few times, 

we turn to read the summary page to train and recognise the words if possible.

While commuting, she reads a manageable book.(for now, it's only English books)

Brown has another name

I've never seen this word -"棕" and I've never knew brown has another name. 

I've always known brown as "褐色" and I wonder if this has anything to do with it being Chinese-Chinese or Taiwanese-Chinese. Anyway, I don't really have to read every single word lah, I just have to learn more new words that's all. But if usage of the words are contextual, then I may not know when to use what. I think  
棕猫 sounds better than 褐猫 right? the story has 花猫, 黑猫, 白毛, -- so 褐猫 wouldn't sound quite right.
Anyway, I asked Kiki what's the Chinese word for Brown; she says -- 棕褐色. So I guess 棕褐色 it'll be.

Idea

We've got three new words to learn this week and it's already Thursday... I've been so restless lately, slacking in violin practices, slacking in Chinese, basically didn't feel like doing anything...... Zzzzz,
But even as I slack, I still managed one 10-min session of picking up writing the new words. She could more or less write them but the left and right parts are too far apart. And she needs to exert some pressure on the pencil and also she needs practicing the grip too. Anyway, I chanced upon placing the worksheet under a piece of plain paper and thought she might be able to have a better perspective if there's a reference. Although there are workbooks featuring words with dotted lines for this purpose, the words on workbooks will not coincide with whatever 听写 words assigned. So I went to Popular bookshop to source for 70g paper. Voila! 

 This is normal printout

This is with a piece of paper over the printed page. (this is held against light, for illustration purpose).

This is with a piece of paper over the printed page with regular lighting, Voila! we could just write over this to learn to write proportionately. 

(Note: I didn't get tracing paper because (1) ready-cut ones are SO EXPENSIVE, (2) I am lazy to cut a roll of tracing paper into A4 sizes, (3) 70g paper works fine so there is no need to 钻牛角尖 )