Schooling in K seems better than P

This is what my son remarked today. Why he thinks it's better here?

1. There are more activities to do as a student, academics or after-school. This year, he got to do Taekwondo, chess, play violin in an orchestra, and join varied once a month activities relating to science and others. All of these he can do right at the school except for the orchestra which also provides a bus service for them.
2. School day starts later and ends earlier. They should be at school at 8:30 (for 4th graders, that is). 
3. He gets to visit his classmates/friends house more easily since everyone at school leaves just around the school area. He can simply walk home with them and play every now and then. 
4. Walking between home and school is pretty much the norm since it's pretty safe to do so with well-made sidewalks and pedestrians. 

On the other hand, here is how it was in his previous school back in my hometown.

1. There were also a lot activities but they have very limited time to do those. There is basically only one day allotted as club day, and the other groups hardly gets a chance to meet after school on non-club day mainly because they finish school pretty late at 4 in the afternoon. More often than not, they would start late or simply cancelled coz the teacher-in-charge is tied up somewhere else: a meeting, out for a school competition, and other whatnots. It's also hard to have a substitute.

Another problem would be finding an available space. Some schoolrooms are located on the main corridors so it's pretty noisy with everyone, and other pupils running around outside. They have pretty much limited play space for the students.

He managed to join scouting, school paper, and one or two other clubs.  He also joined the violin group since they do it at school but had to give up his private taekwondo lessons because the gym is located in a different part of the town.

I will try not go more on that line but the school is pretty competitive nonetheless in spite of its limited resources. There's not enough teachers, space, and other resources for the number students.

2. Students should be at school at 7:30 or 8 o'clock at the most. School hours usually finish at around 4 or 5 for older levels. Most subjects are the same everyday, with 60 minutes for each period for the older students. These includes Science, Math, English, Filipino, and Social Studies. Other subjects like Music, Arts, PE, Char Ed would have shorter period. There are also no official in-between periods break except for the 10-minutes break mid-morning and mid-afternoon. And the big slice of time is for the one and half hour lunch break.

3. Since parents can choose what school to send their kids to, students will be coming from all over the town. Older ones via public ride, while most gets to be picked up by their parents, nannies, or arranged rides. The school has just recently started a school bus that goes to the farther part of town. I can only imagine how hard taking that one everyday, early morning and in the afternoon.

4. In relation to the logistics in no. 3 above, walking can be an option for those who live nearby but with one drawback, the sidewalks are not everywhere. Mostly non-existent in the sub-roads, not to mention any pedestrian. It's not really a pedestrian friendly place.  

So that's about it for now as the year wraps up and the winter break is coming. That is another matter of difference for the next post.

Busy November 3

Here is an update on P's activities this month. This includes the school's talents day presentations and their orchestra performance at Gimpo Art Hall.

Talent's Day

Last Friday was set as the School's Talent's Day of sorts. Everyone was informed about it more than a month ago and given an enough time to prepare. Being our first time to attend such thing here, we were up for anything. P volunteered us to participate in the program. He wanted to play the violin with his Dad and I was going to do a storytelling. I had no problem with my task except that I needed to know how big the audience and location will be. It turned out to be only classroom level so preparation was quite easy. His father, on the other hand, first balked at the idea but had no choice when the teacher made a phone call to him a week before the D day.

When we got there, we noticed a few people selling mini-bouquets in front of the school. It seems that we were the only parents who will be participating in the program. Most parents were just simply there to watch their kids. Is that how it's supposed to be? I am not really very sure until now.

The first in the list was a duet of P and the MC singing the Do Re Mi song. We were pretty surprised to see that our son was brave enough to sing in front of his mates' parents. There were also some mini magic shows each from the boys and girls, a dance, playing a couple of musical instruments like ocarina, flute, recorder and hand bells, a couple of mini-gag show skits, taekwondo exhibition to the tune of Psy's "Gangnam Sytle" and a pantomime of Let It Go song. It was just hilarious to watch these kids presenting their show.

One thing that I noticed is there weren't a lot of singing and dancing. If it was in Ph, I'm sure we would have been bored with a lot of singing, and group dancing. It would be quite hard to have all the kids join in coz there were more students in each class than here, with 40 something versus 25-30 here at the most.

Another thing that I noticed was the use of technology during the presentation. Since each classroom has a big monitor connected to the teacher's desktop computer, all the teacher had to do is hold the remote control to change the slide, music and whatnots.

The rooms were pretty small just enough for the less-than 30 kids, so I was wondering how we will all fit. When we got there, we saw the desks piled up along the hallway and only the chairs were left at the back part of the room. The kids, themselves, had 3 mats to sit on in the middle. It was totally a different school culture for me.

I am just relieved that P is quite active and thriving at his Korean school now. We are not yet totally on board the academics part but I'm just glad that he doesn't hate schooling yet. I do hope that this enthusiasm will not wane on when he reaches higher level like middle or high school. It's where the tough student life here really begins, from what I've heard.

Note: I may have to write a short thank you letter to his homeroom teacher before the school year ends. He definitely played a great part on my son's easy adjustment to school life here. I'm sure he has cut a lot of slack on my son's behalf during this past year.

So that's it for now. Gimpo Stuff on the next post....

September School Menu

This is the September Menu that I will finally try to decipher a bit. I was so overwhelmed when I first saw this early this year. Their nutritionist sure knows his/her job. I, myself, can barely prepare a menu good for the week or two.

It will be too much for my Korean language powers to translate everything but let me try with the food today, Sept. 22.

1. bap - Mixed Rice (Rice is a staple but it can vary everyday with other grains that they mix it with. I doubt if I'll ever see a plain rice as it is.)
2. Joreng Dukguk - Stewed rice cake soup (rice always comes with a soup)
3. Banchans - Side dishes
a. miyuk julgi bokkeum - dried seaweed (bokkeum is usually with sesame oil, seeds, salt and garlic maybe)
b. modun (modern? not sure about this) tangsuyok- meat stir-fry something (I don't eat this so I have no idea exactly)
c. bechu kimchi - cabbage kimchi (omnipresent national Korean food, Kimchi)
4. jin hwa gyoeng pear

Basically, the meal will have rice, soup, 3 side dishes and a dessert (usually whatever fruit in season like strawberry early this year, watermelons in the summer and pear/apples/persimmon these days). They will probably have mandarin oranges come winter time.

Moving forward to Wednesday, which is going to be a rainy day from what I heard from the forecast, they will have chicken soup, korean rice cake gyeondan (yumm!), melon and kimchi. A little bit different fare from the usual I'd say.

I'm afraid I'll have to stop this now since I'm getting hungry with all these food. I must try to make my own menu now. :D This is a good inspiration for me to get to the kitchen and start dinner.

posted from Bloggeroid

1st Korean Summer Break

Summer break was filled with camps, performances, out-of-town trips and a loooot of reading at home.

Blog Update: Forward to 4th Grade in Korea (1st Semester)

P School's School Calendar 2014-15
1st Semester: March 3 - July 29

We haven't done any update on this end for quite a while. And it has just gotten worse since we moved countries. Here's a quick run through with what we've covered so far for the first semester at school.

The first semester has been an adjustment period for all of us and we still are adjusting until now. The classes are shorter. They finish at 3 pm on Mondays and Tuesdays, and around 2 pm on the rest of the week. The kids usually have after-school activities, either at school or at another private academy of everything like English, Math, Arts, Piano etc. They don't have to wear uniforms to school except for the after-school Taekwondo.

We were overwhelmed with the after-school activity choices during the first few months when P comes home with a number of newsletter from the school. All the notices were sent out to each kid including articles on proper parenting, nutrition, and even the school's cafeteria menu for the month. There was also the schedule for "neuk-sek omunim" or the "traffic enforcer mom" that helps out the kids going to school on the crosswalks in the morning.

Most of the after-school activities from school are either free or has a very minimum monthly fee. P ended up with Taekwondo four times a week and an orchestra twice a week. There was also a whole semester of one hour Korean one-on-one tutorial at school once a week and for free. He really needed the Korean language lessons still.

We also managed to get him another Korean language one-on-one lesson two hours, twice a week from the Multicultural Center for free. We had to wait for around a month after we signed up though.  He was able to start around June and we were told that they will start charging a minimal fee by the next month. Luckily, they haven't done so until now. :D P still likes the class and I think this is also helping him learn the language.

Part of the after-school activities are mountain trips once a month, weekly fun stuff at school which actually looks like "fancified" babysitting for kids whose parents are out working. Nonetheless, these Korean students have quite a lot of things to choose from.

During the first semester, he was able to join a bilingual speech contest and made it to City level and perform with the kids' orchestra. He sure had a busy first semester with nothing much to show yet for the academic side because of the language. He can fairly hang out with his classmates now but we still have our work cut out for us on the academic rigors of school. Most of the subjects are still a shot in the dark except English and Math. He was able to figure out the latter a bit easier than the rest, thank goodness.

Before the semester ended, the school sent out activities announcement for the summer break. This will be on my next post.

POEMS - End of Year G1

A poem is assigned to be memorized every grading period, sometimes with costumes or props. Let me have a quick recap.

English.

3rd. Pitter Patter. Costume: Raincoat. It has no remarkable content that I can remember.  I now wonder where it was from.

4th. The Star. Costume: All Black with Star Mask. This is the last piece for the year. It is an interesting choice. The first part was pretty familiar among the kids. It was initially given with enough time to prepare. As it turns out, it was moved to an earlier date so roughly two days only after the regular written exam was left for us to really concentrate on it. It helped that P had been exposed to the first three or four stanzas of the poem long time ago because of our nursery rhymes cds and tapes. In addition to that, the poem, itself, has good rhyming sets. We made it.

Filipino.

1st. Ang Daigdig. Outfit: Sunday dress. Typical poem memorization was done.

3rd. Iwasan ang Kayabangan. Costume: All Black with sungay ng usa or Lion head dress. This is one very remarkable piece in Tagalog which displays more than memorizing the lines and hand gestures. It is a pair work which involves interaction between the two performing characters. Given ample time to prepare the child, we managed to not only memorize but also focus on the proper tones and whole body actions. It is way better than typical poem recitation which uses “pinoy singsong.” It has characters and if delivered well, can be a good performance piece for two.

4th. Ang Huwarang Bata. Outfit: School Uniform.

I couldn’t remember the other poems. It probably means that it has no remarkable content to remember. I think it is such a waste to let the kids memorize such poems. (^^)

Even though I am not a real big fan of poems, there are two poems that has left some fragments in my mind. First is the poem, “Ina, Ilaw ng Tahanan.” I remember my parents letting me learn it before I started school. It has the impact of the importance of my mother who played teacher to me even before I started school.

Second poem is a selection from one of our textbooks in second grade. The book itself was pretty thin and I was able to read it way ahead of our class. It seems that the stories there were not enough. We had to memorize this particular poem. It’s about a girl who wanted to go to a fair with her dad. The poem described the fair, the girl and the one thing that caught her eye in the fair: a doll. However, there is a line in the poem that the father said to the girl before going to the fair: “you can go to the fair, but remember, don’t buy everything you wish.”

Looking back on this poem and why it has stuck to my memory makes me a little sad. I’ve never really thought why this, of all poems, has remained in my memory. Now, I realized why. I was definitely able to relate to the little girl who wanted that doll but could have one. It was just so heartbreaking. 

End of Year of G1

We are on the last week of the official school year of my first-grader. It has been an exhilarating journey and it has come to an end--- almost. The recognition ceremony is still set for next week but the kids are mostly stuck home by now. I meant, my kid, that is. :D

It’s time to gather the notebooks, books and other Grade 1 materials that have to be taken cared of. It’s also time to start on our homeschooling/vacation with planned field trips. The focus for this summer is writing: English, Filipino and handwriting itself. I’ve just realized that they will start learning the cursive writing next year. I remember my 2^nd grade teacher, Mrs. Alfaro, who has the prettiest handwriting that I’ve sadly failed to copy. L

This is another look back to the school year that has passed and molded us as student/child and parent/teacher.

These last two months had been quite busy for kiddo as I’ve expected. February was filled with practice for the school foundation on the first week of March. It was followed by the 4^th and final periodic exam in barely a week after it.

School Foundation Day

A whole month of practice is always set for the yearly mass field demonstration.

The steps are taught to the kids inside the classroom as early as the end of January. They start practicing under the scorching hot sun in February. This would usually bring physical stress to everyone especially when they start to practice at a larger area. This would usually be at least twice within a few days before the performance day.

The day finally came and we all trotted to the other campus to watch and take part in the day’s activity. We also brought some food that will serve as our brunch: fried rice, boiled eggs, and sweet potato. Except for the water that we brought, I had them try the hot coffee and choco (P10 each) from the vending machine in the canteen and the pearl shake store nearby. We bought medium sized ones which cost P28. These filled us up until lunch time.

Wall Climbing

After the morning program, we spotted an area set up for wall climbing. We were interested but only P did actually climb. Perhaps, next year again? :P

It was way too hot but P managed to get to the third board. Not bad for a 7-year-old starter who seems to be scared with a lot of things. :D

Reading Family

We settled on some picnic area to read: D with a PDA, M with a smartphone and P with his Kindle. It was such a good feeling.

We headed home around one in the afternoon after hanging out on the school grounds. It really made me appreciate the place once more. I’ll be looking forward to another trip next time.

Exam Week

It’s another grinding week for both Mom and Son. We have to extra prepare for the non-English subjects which are really daunting tasks. Good thing is that we started a little early and didn’t really cram altogether. That doesn’t mean that we were able to cover all subjects well. I still cannot say so coz the Fil paper has not been returned yet. The Makabayan paper boasted of two mistakes, less than the typical five that he usually gets. Yey!!

Early part of the month


November started as a holiday-filled month but ended in a hectic rush as the month rolled in. 
It was the English month and since P was a member of the Lit Guild, he had the chance to
join the activities for the club members.


He was part of the choral reading and some other little activities that they had during the month.
He took part in the club's various quiz bees as watcher, emcee, and goodness knows what else. It was the choral reading that really took a lot of time for practice as this involves a number of students. He missed some of the first practice sessions but manage to really get into it after a while. TM tried to let the kid practice reading by himself before but he wasn't interested. It seems more fun to practice reading together with other mates. I found him enjoying the rehearsals, specially the dress rehearsal where they got to wear costumes.


Tricky part for Teacher Mom is preparing the costume as I had not really been such a big fan of costume design. Sewing is not my thing and putting a costume together would necessarily involve that somehow or another. Unlike most kids who had theirs specially done in a dress shop, ours was simply put together of what is available (a long-sleeved white shirt bought on a sale, and a pair of pants which he already has) with the addition of a few cardboards, foil papers, glues and velcros. 


After weeks of figuring out how to go about it with less sewing or almost none at all, we finally completed it. Dress rehearsal came and the level of "casualty" has been passed. Since we tried on doing less sewing, our final output would have a good deal of foil paper which is more prone to tearing. And that was just what happened! Well, for the most part, it held well except for the all paper thing part, the sash. 


Watching my son watch his fellow clubmates with great interest and he, himself, proudly parading around in our "product" makes up for the stress in creating the costume since I am not really much into costume-making. Ours may have suffered a few glitches during the run but the kid did feel proud of his costume. It's in the epaulette. HAha!!


We'll just see how it can stand the real test on the D Day! (We may have to make some improvements though.) 


Performance Day


The place was a bit far but we all managed to bring the kids. It was all filled with flurry of activity as almost everyone from the club and their parents are busy for the performance. Almost every class has something prepared. 


P was able to perform, albeit a little off from the rehearsals. I just have to thank the club's adviser for giving him a good part. He sure needs a lot more exposure to get used to performing for a crowd. Minor changes didn't really freak him out but it did threw him off a bit. Oh! The part of being a stage Mom that I will have to avoid, literally. ^^,

G1 1st Quarter (Aug-Sept 2011)

Academic and Linguistic

It has been a couple of weeks since the kiddo took this year's quarterly major exam. We managed to go past the first part of Filipino subjects, attend some extra-curricular activities and end up somewhere in the upper part of the class.

August flew by with activities such as poem recitation, scouting and P's birthday. The poem recitation was not that demanding as they only have to memorize and recite two poems in Filipino and English. P fared well but didn't manage to get any extra award. Nonetheless, Teacher Mom was contented that he seemed to enjoy the short time on stage without much fuss. What surprised me was the other awards that were given or I meant the little thingies such as crown-kind-of-thing that looks so cheap (pardon the term, I am not referring to the cost at all) and inappropriate. It looked like a mini-JS Prom award. A sash or an award would have looked better.

So far, what have they covered in school curriculum?

1. English – sounds, vowel sounds (initial, median, ending), nouns (proper and common), alphabetical arrangement, spelling
2. Math – numbers 1-100, addition up to 3 digit numbers, subtraction, place values (3 digits)
3. Science – parts of the body, taking care of the body,
4. Filipino – mga tunog, katinig, patinig (unahan, gitna at huling tunog), pagbaybay
5. Sibika at Kultura – mapa at Pilipinas, direksyon at lokasyon, pook pasyalan at mga sagisag ng bansa

Physical Education

Scouting was the next activity and since it was a first, TM has to really be there, on the sidelines, that is. He has to eat lunch in a restaurant which turns out to be a place where utensils are not the norm. Later that day, the Teacher Guides had to inform us what happened during lunch time. He's the only one who doesn't know how and cannot eat without utensils. OUCH!! on our parenting skills!! Finally, DH hopefully realized that a little bit of "cowboy" eating should be made familiar to the kid. (ah! Mommy note here.)

Following activities were more on physical group games and despite the physical exhaustion of watching and cheering, Moms and kids sure had a blast. Even if it cost our educational budget around 600++, it was another fun-filled learning experience and we hope to be able to join again next year.

Just after a week or two, it was followed by an intramural meet. Now, this one should be another physically-demanding activity but kiddo ended up joining a board game event. Ha! It was another worthy time to spend watching him play against other kids his age with a game that he also enjoys. It was a mere game at first, and it felt good to watch the kids play “seriously,” as well as loose graciously as well.

He did manage to join a running race after some coaxing but didn’t even made it half-way since he fell and didn’t know what to do after falling. His face seemed to say, ”Should I continue running to the finish line or what?” Unfortunately, TM had so much hope that she positioned herself to take photo around the finish line and kiddo didn’t see her when he fell. We’ll try to be better next time around.

This seemed to take place again a few weeks later when P was assigned to give the prayer during a school program. Since we were informed about it the day before the program, we weren’t able to smoothen out the memorization part of the short prayer. It ended up in a prayer with a long dead-air and almost wasn’t going to finish at all. TM had to blame herself again for not pushing the kiddo to memorize his part well and not being able to position herself strategically in case kiddo needed some more sideline coaching. ON the second thought, would it have been better left that way? Sometimes, the kid has to realize that there are times that he has to perform and rely on himself alone. TO be or not to be…that is the question.

Medical
July 22 – He hurt his finger on the school’s restroom. TM had to rush to the school clinic to see his badly-hurt finger. It was bloody (P cannot stand the sight of blood) and very painful. He almost missed the English Club activity. Good thing that he was able to calm himself and still join later part of the spelling game.
The bandage and the ointment had to be administered for more than a week. Sometime around the early part of August, I bumped into the medical personnel of the school and gave them update on how the wound is healing. They also had to inform me that P is underweight. He’s on the thin side and a little taller so the ratio really categorically underweight. Now, what do we do about it?
Sept. 13 - He lost his upper front tooth. A classmate accidentally elbowed him and out came his tooth flying. The next day, I searched for the culprit and gave her some sweets as a thank you for saving us the trouble of getting that loose tooth out. 
August and September. As of writing this entry, P has been consistent on his monthly fever occurrences. The joke is his all-time favorite medicine is paracetamol that he has to take it every month. What gives?
That’s about it for now for the chronicle of P’s learning experiences --- academically and whatnot.
Until the next entry: Math-related homeschooling for extra math events at school and other weak subject focus.

Hitting G1!

Summer flew by with a lot of catching up on reading, and more reading: Famous Men of Rome, Hardy Boys series, etc. We also did bits of lessons on Fil and more or less a month of Kor language learning and at the same time, deciding on the primary school to attend this coming school year.

P took the entrance exam and passed it with flying colors, after which is the reading assessment and enrollment. We were given a short list of school supplies to prepare for the incoming school year.

The List included:

9 notebooks (to be changed every grading period)

2 G1 pad paper

1 eraser

1 pencil sharpener

2 pencils (specifically Mongol according to the list)

1 roll of tissue

2 pcs. 1x1 ID photos for their ID

June comes by and off to a good start upon attending the first flag-raising ceremony for the school year. Since he's a transferee student, he doesn't have any uniform yet. Luckily, quite a number of other classmates were, too.

So far, we managed the first few weeks of school: buying his textbooks, attending meetings (HPTA, extra-curricular groups, etc), submitting the seemingly endless photos for school files, getting familiar with his classmates and their parents, and teachers of course. We do homework, and advance reading specially on his Fil and Makabayan subjects as he really needs to have it, or else he'll draw blank during class.

In between these, we were able to squeeze in lots of playtime and running around. Teacher Mom is really glad that P has found a bigger place to run around and use up his energy. Stress notwithstanding, we're looking forward to a school year full of activities, and challenges that will make us all learn and grow.

Another graduation day...

A third graduation ceremony for kiddo.

2008 - five months of Nursery level (Nov. to March) at a small private learning center

2009 - home home home...

2010 - seven months of K1 (?)

2011 - full year of K2 at a regular school

This is the full-year term that we had really worked for his graduation day. So this one's a bit more memorable than the previous ones.

The graduation ceremony ran for an hour and a half. It turned out quite a good one saved for a few glitches. Location was at school: well-ventilated (air-conditioned auditorium) and space just enough for the number of people attending. The program flew by, without any long speeches given by adults! It was really a neat program put together by the school.

Later that day, hubby and I ended up comparing the program with the previous ones we've attended so far. Here's what we've come up with:

GC1

Good:

• small number of people in a VERY spacious air-conditioned auditorium (it was comfortable)
• the program served as a yearbook-like thing

Bad:

• the choice of speaker was a bit self-serving (a very bad point according to hubby),
• uncontrollable picture-taking by the parents
• **awards for kids were ranked (kiddo didn't get any, he has barely turned three at that time *winks*)

GC2

Good: **not much to say except maybe that Kiddo got a silver medal (?evil grin)

Bad:

• location (open air but hot, coupled with two power outages, uncomfortable benches)
• time - program started very late and took too long since it has a lot of kids
• more than 2 adult speakers who didn't seem to think of the audience's discomfort but just a chance for campaigning (Sorry --- I really think that politicians should have no place in graduation ceremonies, specially in preschoolers! Who are we kidding!)

GC3

Good:

• location (air-con, appropriate stage)
• well-planned program (no adult speakers at all!) just kids all throughout
• adults simply said a few lines of "I confer..." and helped handing out the certificates and awards
• made use of a projector with cute slides of graduating kids' photos (optional and quite fancy but it sure added some fun)
• started almost on time
• kids were not ranked (although kiddo got quite a satisfactory number of awards, I do think that it was wise not to rank them as it seems too early and takes the joy of simple learning for them)

Bad:

• the ever-present parent-pseudo-photographers (including me)
• there were some more minor glitches but not much I can say here

** this point can is debatable and bias of course!! *sly grin*

Bottomline of the activity today? We think it was a decent one: worth the time, money and effort of everyone. As for my son, he wants to enroll at the same place next year. That we still have to think about. Cheers!

And since I had written something nice about the third GC (Graduation Ceremony), I won't be feeling bad on posting some photos of P's souvenirs (mala-wedding collection ang dating.)

Until the next graduation day! (Hopefully, that would be roughly in six years time.)

March Blues:A look back

Graduation Fever is on!

As I start cleaning up the books and papers P has used this year, I look back to the first days of his K2 life at his school. It is the first time that he has started and finished from June to March. As in a REAL whole year and not a few months short.

It seems quite sad for DM to finally say goodbye to his pre-school years. The more formal schooling will begin soon and hopefully, he'll be able to continue his eagerness on learning. Sure, we did have our setbacks but graduation this time will feel different. We managed it for a year! Think of getting up early to get to school, doing homeworks, packing the snacks, attending school meeting and going to school activities and trips.

To date, we have attended:

1. Approximately at least four times of homeroom meeting, plus extra ones for activity meetings.

The first homeroom meeting I've been to in this school was quite disappointing as I had hoped to get feedback on how the kids are doing at school generally: what they are learning, would be learning and stuff like that. Unfortunately, the general consensus of the group seems to be concern on the election of officers, the class project for the year (which I totally don't agree much on everything that was listed) and other money-generating concerns. Ah! Expenses, rather.

What were those on the list? Hmm...

cleaning materials for the room/toilet

a linoleum for the classroom

a book shelf

some water related item

I don't believe that material things such as the ones on the list is the end of all things in ensuring the kids learning. It's not the just the existence of a bookshelf that will help the non-readers learn to love reading. There are still K2's in their that can actually read. It isn't just the teacher's responsibility to instill early literacy but a collaboration between the teacher and other parents as well. Oops! I really don't want to get started on this. I'm sure almost all the parents would be able to afford hiring a private tutor for their kids. That is another road to take. Nevertheless, a stronger literacy school program for reading should really reinforce whatever they should be learning.

Let me go back to the list.

- The linoleum is all tattered and torn now. Good luck to the new students (or should I say, parents) next year. Better buy a thick carpet next time, perhaps?

- The water thing didn't last until the next report card.

- The book shelf is left at the corner, I really doubt if the books inside got changed at all. As for the kids reading level? Beats me.

Giving the report card was the highlight of the meeting and some parents barely got to attend and just simply pick up the cards. This I was able to figure out right away and kept in mind for the following meetings. Hah!

2. Extra-curricular activities (some of them has special meeting called and almost would have additional expenses again--the cost of having sending a child to school)

a. Filipino Day

b. Foundation Day

c. Family Day

d. Christmas Party

e. Field Trip

f. Pre-school Day

Some of these meeting has been basically to inform the parents of the details of the activities and I am grateful for that. As for the other matters, well...

Let me just continue to reminisce of the things that my kid was able to bring home this past year:his unzipped bag (I have to constantly remind him of stones-off consequence for this), dirty clothes from playing--finally (only started around after a few months), test papers, small and giant colorful stars and circles (for well-behaved kids or if he gets perfect score on tests), and stories of ups and downs in the very short hours that he has stayed at school. There were a few tears but there were more smiles as the year comes to close.

Graduation is coming fast. He'll miss his friends, but there is an idea of seeing them again a few months later. Still, DH has raised the idea of going back to homeschool or changing school. It makes me think and rethink some more, should I still send my kid to school next year?

Moving on.

P.S. Next post will most likely be about how the graduation program will turn out. I still have to post my thoughts on the Preschoolers Activity Day. Daume.