Thursday, January 24, 2013

Yixuan is in Primary 1

As Yixuan is a year-end child, it seems like it takes ages before it is turn for her birthday to come. As such, we always felt that her "speed" of turning older is slower than the rest. (Of course, Yixuan will be glad that she turns older than others later when she is much older)

Well, our baby is finally in Primary 1.

A few weeks have passed and we can say she fitted into the school environment and the routine very well. She is also able to manage her activities and time maturely. Routine stuff like packing her bag at night and doing her homework assigned... she actually does it without being told.

Oh.. so our baby is no longer a baby. (thumbs up for Xuan)

One of the best thing is she will come home to teach us like how her teacher teaches her. She will also rely things that her teacher mentioned. Such as "My teacher said this way of writing is good, you first say why you like the story, then say what the story teaches you, then say one funny part you like. This way of writing very good".  Eh... not bad... we also get to learn how to write a Big Book Journal now. Thanks to our Yixuan teacher.

好好加油哦, 怿萱, 你行的.

Our funny GE experience

Our son brought home his English GE worksheet. On it was the title "Beg, Borrow or Steal".

Eye catching title but it left us totally clueless what it is all about. Upon reading the introductory paragraph, we realised that the worksheet aims to find out what are some of the words in our English vocabulary that actually came from another language origin. An example will be "deck" as in the ship deck. We didn't even know it was not an English word actually. It came from a Dutch word.

Sounds interesting... but still clueless how to complete the worksheet. Then Jiaheng showed us another piece of paper that contains the "borrowed or stolen" words.

OMG....as we scanned through the list, our responses were "Ah, you mean this is not an English word?" (e.g. piano)

OR the other extreme "Eh, what word is this? How to pronounce? What is the meaning har?" (e.g. schlemozzel)

Hope you are getting an idea how "panicky" we were.... of course, if we could not complete the worksheet, we are sure his teacher will shed some light for him. But parents are parents, sure panic one.

As my wife ran through the list again, she declared "Ah.. this one Italian, this one also Italian, ok this one Indian". Can you imagine the look of admiration on my face as she announced the answers? Wow, my wife is a born linguist.

Just then, she shoved the paper into my arms. She pointed to the word "Spaghetti" then announced "this one Italian". Next she runs her finger a few rows down to "Ravioli" and said "this one also Italian". Followed by the word "Chapatti" and concluded "this one Indian".

What! All food names?? Like that, I also can be a linguist!!!

Don't ask me how the worksheet was completed... but we eventually did. It was indeed a great learning experience for all of us. And not forgetting the good laugh we had over the "food trail discovery".


 
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