new kid on the block

4 primary school kids studying at night.
1 kindy kid preparing for his entrance assessment makes 5.
1 preschool (not that he goes to school) who wants to be so like the others.

give him an alphabet book and he so excitedly takes his seat with the others at the study table.

kiasu? nope, just polishing his potentials :).

back to basics

we're back to doing grammar drills.

unfortunately.

singular-plural, countable-uncountable, subject-verb agreement, and we haven't even covered tenses... can you hear the mummies and the kids all going 'argh!!!'

from last night, the kids have to contribute 10 sen for every mistake they make to the makna fund. and in the event they don't make a mistake at all, mummy will contribute RM1 to the fund.

the money is payable immediately. there's small makna box on the table. one night, and it's pretty heavy already.

ibu and mummy are looking forward for our turn to contribute the RM1 to the fund.

sooner rather than later.

pkbs2

most of the results are in.

the only one who seemed to be better overall is syakira .. all A's except for english (ibu is disappointed, but I know the latih tubi was a bit last-minute). she finally got A's in her penulisan, and the highest too, so hopefully this will boost her confidence as a writer. but as long as it doesn't stifle her creative writing.

hania seems to be doing the worst. ouch! but she's like so I didn't study as much as I should. more like, I'm also getting up much later in the morning that I only have time to watch a little tv before getting ready for school....

after the tears

the kids had their pkbs2 last week. oh yes, we were like 'again, already?'.

last week was their exam, this week they're getting their results.

some not so stellar. hania is breaking her own records by pulling in all B's for her subjects with english and science still pending.

but the story today is mathematics.

last week, while studying for it, amjad was reduced to tears. ibu was feeling bad but patience was wearing way too thin. but he persevered, even when offered time off to sob in private.

and I am humbled. today, he came back with a score of 91 for his maths paper, and syazmi an 88.

took a look at his paper today. and I think he's getting the idea that it's okay for the question paper to be filled with calculations, only his answer sheet has to be free of non-relevant markings.

mummy's doing something right, thank you. ibu was just there for the last lap. but the kids ran their own race.

ujian diagnostik

al-amin's gombak diagnostic test contents:

Iqra' - dari buku 1 hingga 6
Bahasa Melayu - membaca perkataan dan ayat; ujian perkataan dan ayat
Bahasa Arab - ujian bacaan dan lisan
Bahasa Inggeris - menulis perkataan & ayat serta membaca
Matematik - mengenal dan menulis nombor 1-20; mengira utk operasi tolak dan tambah (dlm BI)
Jawi - mengenal & menulis huruf hijaiyah; membaca perkataan & ayat
Hafazan - 6 surah dari surah Ad-Dhuha ke bawah
Doa - doa-doa harian
EQ - ujian situasi & emosi

azraf's update

so the long-awaited letter came in the mail yesterday. not an acceptance letter yet, but just letter for his placement test and interview (both for child and parents!). long-awaited since his friends who applied to al-amin keramat had received that letter two weeks back.

the interview/test is set for aug 9.

are you a morning person?

we're so lucky amjad is. he goes to bed at 10, with either ibu or papa's handphone for his alarm. he gets up at 6:20 am, goes downstairs, has his shower, gets ready for school, has his breakfast and watches tv while waiting for syazmi and syakira to be ready.

we're lucky becuase he does all that by himself :). syazmi and syakira are also pretty independent. of course, having a maid helps a lot, in terms of preparing their 'lunch box.' they take cereal for breakfast.

azraf is another story altogether. his wake-up time is slightly later at 7:30am since the van comes at 7:50am. 20 minutes of which the first 10 we have a very grumpy boy who is only half awake. miraculously, after his shower, he'll be all ready to go and the next 10 would be like 'cm-on, i want to go to school already.'

yesterday, he missed the van. he just didn't want to get up. and he was not out of bed yet when the van came. of course after he was ready, he was like 'send me to school now.' not this time, he just had to wait until we were all set and ready to go and could drop him off on our way out.

an advantage of sktm2 would be that year1 is in the afternoon session. in tahfiz, he definitely has to go early. but al-amin starts at 11 am. oh yeah, next year he no longer has the option of arriving late in school, so that should be fun -- not!!!

only tahfiz please

... so time's ticking, azraf is going to standard one next year to... don't know!!!

teacher lin told this story two weeks ago.

the kids were writing jawi
teacher lin: azraf, write beautifully, you are going to al-amin right.
azraf: no, no, tahfiz.

alamak! ibu better look around more seriously.

Report Card Day Part II

So went to school again on Saturday. But the Q in Hania's class was so long, that I gave up. So when Mummy went to school to see Syazmi's and Syakira's teachers, she also went to see Hania's teacher.

Hania's teacher said she is active and participated in class. Wow! This year we did not get any remarks on 'she's in her own world' kind of thing. We're happy :).

Syakira is still getting 'she's very quiet' remarks in class. That has not changed from kindergarten. Good that she's not a kepoh-chi but a little bit more active participation in class is desirable.

So Syazmi's teacher said she'll try and put Syazmi and Amjad next to each other in class after this. The boys are gonna be sick with each other :). So hopefully it will also get him to be more attentive in class. We have here one boy who last night before going for mengaji remembered he hasn't packed his books for today, and another who would pack his books in the morning right before going to school.

report card day Part I

21 June is supposed to be the reports card day (or the parent-teacher day but we all know what it really is).

since I had to be in the school early in the morning to supervise my practicum students, told amjad to tell his teacher I qould like to see her on friday instead i.e., today, and mummy then said ok, please take syazmi's too.

so met the teacher this morning. no real surprise since we knew the results. brought it up to the teacher my concern that syazmi is sitting at the very back. turned out syazmi has been sitting up front until april, as the teacher wants to motivate him to pay attention in class, but as did not seem to be working, she felt she should give other kids a chance to sit in front.

the boys are generally well-behaved in class, would ask questions if they need clarification, but syazmi seemed to be more playful than amjad. and teacher was hoping to be able to talk to the parents, so mummy and abah will have to make the track to school tomorrow.

oh, oral. amjad got a B for pronunciation and grammar, syazmi a C. grandma? :)

Part II, tomorrow, still need to line up for hania.

and the results are in....

Amjad: BM Penulisan B Pemahaman C Matematik B Sains A (WOWEee!!!) English B )(sikit lagi nak A at 79), Agama A (Alhamdulillah)Sivik A (94 -- great job!), Kajian Tempatan A. Kedudukan 21/40.

Syazmi: BM Penulisan B Pemahaman B Matematik B Sains A (Wowee!!)English B, Agama A (Alhamdulillah -- big improvement here), Sivik A (cukup makan at 80), Kajian Tempatan A. Kedudukan 19/40.

Syakira: BM Penulisan A, Pemahaman B, Matematik B, Sains 74, English B, Agama A, Sivik B (amjad's comment -- kak de tak de sivik, disokong oleh syazmi ... should take away their As?), Kajian Tempatan B. Room of improvement here. Kedudukan pending.

Hania: BM Penulisan A, Pemahaman B, Matematik B, Sains A, English A, Agama A. Kedudukan 6.

Azraf: BM 99, English 100, Mathematics 98, Agama 98, Arabic 98. Yaasin Ayat 1-21 memorized.

mid-year

the kids' mid-year exam has a weird schedule. Tahap 2 only started on Wednesday, Tahap 1 started on Tuesday. Then Friday it was no-exam for teacher's day celebration. Monday (today) is a public holiday. Tomorrow they have school, but no papers. Their mid-year starts again on Wednesday. The only core paper the Tahap 2 have left is Science. Tahap 1 still have Maths and Science. THey all finish on Friday, and then their 2-weeks holiday starts.

As the kids put it, "we have 5 days to prepare for Science."

Yeah right.

Thursday it was as if their school holidays have started, no one thought of going through their usual school day routine of studying in the afternoon. Friday moms are at work, we trust they did do their 2 hours study time well. Saturday the kids were all in front of the computer, doing non-school stuff. Saturday night study time with mummy. Sunday night study time the kids flunked big time. Today no computer time at all, some study time in the morning, and some more later tonight.

Hania did some math drills online, she did better with division than with multiplication, so papa's changed the drill focus to multiplication now. Her row of mirrors is now overlaid by rows of multiplication table, papa decided his girl spends too much time under the stairs in front of the mirror, at least now she's expected to spend a lot of time under the stairs in front of the X tables.

Feedback is that the papers were tough. As long as we're seeing improvements, not expecting a total jump to straight As, not that that would've been unwelcome :).

Kiasu parents? Nope, just want them to fulfill their potentials.

surat kiriman tidak rasmi

in preparation for their mid-year exam which started on monday, the Tahap 2 kids wrote a letter to their dads for more computer time, here is amjad's. will post syazmi's and syakira's later.


Ke hadapan,
Ayahanda Mohd Rozi semoga ayahanda dalam keadaan sihat walafiat.
Anakanda Amjad ada satu tujuan menulis surt ini. Tujuan anakanda menulis surat ini kerana untuk memasuki internet selama dua jam.
Anakanda tahu bermain komputer dua jam itu sangat lama tetapi untuk menenangkan otak selepas dua minggu peperiksaan. Anakanda bukan hendak bermain game tetapi memasuki email dan youtube.
Harap ayahanda akan bersetuju dan memberitahu kepada anakanda.
Sekian, terima kasih.

yang benar
(Amjad)

anyway, the kids gave it to their respective dads, and abah and papa cair so they got their two hours a day (though they didn't explicitly asked for daily quota!).

for more reference:
format

here we go again...

the dreaded division unit.

hania is getting everybody else around her all worked up again with her 'shrug' attitude towards division.

would've been okay if she's getting it right but she'd go 'but kawan nia cakap' -- and it bugs papa who is her math tutor.

papa: this is 10 divide by two. see, what would you get?
nia: ten.

so we try the roundabout way.

ibu: I have RM10, to give to you and azraf, how many do you get each?
nia: 5!

money talks :).

at least papa can still withstand nia's long-suffering sigh after she listens to his explanations -- which is why he is hania's math tutor.

papa: so now there's 12, and you put into 3 group, how many in each group?
nia: ibu has RM12, to give to 3, so (thinks), RM4 each.

papa's trying to get her to see the connection between multiplication and division.

he should get a medal.

scrapbooks

so last night at 10 pm amjad remembered he had a scrapbook homework due the following morning.

they were to do a scrapbook of a book they have read.

so he spent two hours doing it. I'm actually surprised he did it all by himself and did not throw a tantrum to have us finish it for him. at one point, I asked him whether the project was really due the following day as syazmi had already gone to bed. but he finished it, and the only thing we had to help him out was to staple the thing together.

and then this afternoon I asked syazmi whether he finished his scrapbook, and he said yes, in school. he said he forgot coz there was no book at home. that almost got him a figurative knock on the head but as it was his birthday today I let that go with just saying that's not true, there are lots of books at home.

a little later the whole story came out. I thought he finished it in school before it was due. it turned out only a handful of them finished the project and the teacher got very mad and after a scolding, they were sent to the library to finish the project.

and then we have syakira who has finished her scrapbook way ahead of the deadline.

and the teachers deal with 40 different personalities daily... phew!

sweeping out the cobwebs

off this blog :)

the new school year has just been a busy one, but nice kind of busy.

this year, mummy and ibu decided to do more value-added thing. more mental exercises to help with their concentration, memory etc in addition to working on their school work.

alhamdulillah, the kids have been showing some improvement. still not there yet but they're starting to be more independent and show better concentration. and they seem less pouty when it's time to do work. and everyone's generally getting most of their homework done during the homework period (off-adult supervision).

final year results

we are definitely dazed!

all the kids turun kelas. their individual grades have generally improved from pkbs3 but there's still a lot of room for improvement. but at least there are more As to go around for each of them.

oh yeah, more work ahead next year!

Program Nilam

Syakira came home on from school on Wednesday with a brand new bicycle. THe school called for an impromptu assembly to give out prizes for the NILAM program. She got first place for Year 3, and then won the overall prize for Tahap 1. Cool!

We never really knew the prize is that much, after all, 3 older kids in the school but none even came close to a 'podium finish.'

Syakira reported 377 books, and she wanted to continue with the book reports after the last report was handed in, but her teacher said no need, keep it for next year. and no wonder, it wasn't even a close call, the second prize winner reported 17+ books.

Congratulations Kak De!

hania's hafazan win

some time last month, while we were doing hafazan at home, hania said she was entering the hafazan competition in school. so I said, ok let's practise at home. and little miss confident said 'it's ok, i know already.' and she added she had known the suras from when she was in kindy. fulamak!

anyway so they had the competition in school the following week. she said she did okay, she knew the suras, while some others made mistakes. the only thing was being a little scared in front of the audience. this was in conjunction of the school's panitia agama islam week.

the announcement of the winners came two weeks later during assembly. i was already in the car waiting for them so got to hear the teacher announcing the winner. hania came second. the moment her name was announced she got up. well, i guess she did have reasons to be confident!

Vocab building

I started a little game on our notice board. make up words from a given sentence. We've done dragon booster, melawati, grandfather etc.

We started with any english word, but now it's 3-letters or more only. The responses have been pretty good. actually, better than expected.

Last night, when I had wiped out the previous words, the kids were suddenly throwing out big words, I wasn't sure what they were doing and then I realized they were giving me the main word. we decided on SPECTACLES.

Hania had a good list of 4-letter words going, I think all in all more than 20 3 to 5-letter words. Pretty impressive.

Some days nobody wrote down anything, some days they couldn't wait to do the word list.

Syakira has asked mummy for this at home, but wants it done upstairs or 'nanti orang kata kita tiru ibu.'