Kiasu parents.com?

see what I have been introduced with by my ex-JC classmate:

http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/content/preparing-primary-school

here's an extract:

On English:

1-2 years old
Visual recognition and pronounciation of all 26 alphabets
Verbalize simple sentences with nouns and verbs

3-4 years old (Nursery)
Understand phonetic sounds of all 26 alphabets
Write all 26 alphabets
Identify the starting letter of words
Spell simple short words
Read simple sentences

5-6 years old (Kindergarten)
Blend phonetic sounds of combinations of letters
Read simple books
Formulate and write simple English sentences
Verbalize answers to picture comprehension

On Math

1-2 years old
Recognize and say the 10 numeral digits from 0 - 9 in the correct sequence
Recognize shapes (circle, triangle, rectangle, square)
Count objects up to 10

3-4 years old
Write the 10 numeral digits
Finger math (show 0 to 9 using fingers)
Count objects up to 100
Count down from 20
Differentiate between ordinal, cardinal and nominal numbers
Ordinal: The number is used to indicate the order of things in a set, ie. 1 comes before 2, 3 comes after 2. They show the rank or position, eg. First (1st), Second (2nd), Third (3rd), etc.
Cardinal: The number is used to indicate quantity. It answers the question of "how many?". This is normally the result of counting, eg. 3 apples, 10 rabbits, 1 me.
Ordinal: The number is used as an identity. Eg. My home block number is 27. My birthday is on 5 Feb. My telephone number is 67654321. My favorite bus is No. 197.
Compare:
Quantity: More, equal, less
Size: Bigger, same size, smaller
Length: Taller (longer), same height (length), shorter
Weight: Heavier, same weight, lighter
Speed: Faster, same speed, slower
Time:
7 o'clock in the Morning, 12 o'clock in the Afternoon, 7 o'clock at Night

5-6 years old :
Perform simple addition and subtraction of totals up to 10
Understand addition bonds:
10 = 1+9 = 2+8 = 3+7 = 4+6 = 5+5 = 6+4 = 7+3 = 8+2 = 9+1
9 = 1+8 = 2+7 = 3+6 = 4+5 = 5+4 = 6+3 = 7+2 = 8+1
8 = 1+7 = 2+6 = 3+5 = 4+4 = 5+3 = 6+2 = 7+1
...
Simple number series
eg. 1, 3, 5, 7, ... (odd numbers)
eg. 5, 10, 15, 20, ... (5's)
Up to 5 times table in terms of groups of 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's and 5's.
Recognise and write the English equivalents of the numerals
Read the 12 hours of the analog clock, and apply AM and PM
Identify Singapore coins and notes of different denominations, up to S$10.
Tell the value of money by summing up coins, up to S$1. (No decimal point)
Identify 3D shapes: cube, box, cone, sphere, cylinder and the number of 2D faces they present

almost *faint*

Caden is not officially 5 yrs old yet, so I will use the 3-4 yr to benchmark his progress:

English:
Understand phonetic sounds of all 26 alphabets (pass)
Write all 26 alphabets (pass)
Identify the starting letter of words (pass)
Spell simple short words (pass)
Read simple sentences(pass)

maybe going 1 step further:

Blend phonetic sounds of combinations of letters (learning now)
Read simple books (pass)
Formulate and write simple English sentences (not there yet!)
Verbalize answers to picture comprehension (only good with his fav cartoons!)

Math:
Write the 10 numeral digits Finger math (show 0 to 9 using fingers) - PASS
Count objects up to 100 Count down from 20 Differentiate between ordinal, cardinal and nominal numbers (pass) - He remembers all our mobile numbers!
Compare: Quantity: More, equal, less Size: Bigger, same size, smaller Length: Taller (longer), same height (length), shorter Weight: Heavier, same weight, lighter Speed: Faster, same speed, slower (pass)
Time: 7 o'clock in the Morning, 12 o'clock in the Afternoon, 7 o'clock at Night - Caden only knows Okto starts at 9am every Sat and Sun morning and his fav Power Rangers is at 1030am.

Ethan - quite on track since he falls within the 1-2 yrs cat.

Piang San...

since I cannot go near my sons in the next 5 days, I shall delegate the daily reading routine to my ah lou.. hahaa...

Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease - It's Mummy!

After 2 days of viral fever and gastric flu, ulcers started to form all over my mouth. And it's really all over. This morning, I went to the Doc again for his examination and he confirmed that it's HFMD. Sigh.. I do not know how I contacted this and where the source is from, since I have always been careful with putting food into my mouth with my bare hands. Moreover, last week, most of the times, I am at home babysitting in Mil's absence so the outside contact has been greatly reduced. The only closest case will be Ethan, who had ulcers near the tonsils but Dr Sim confirmed that it's not HFMD cos there are no rash on his hands and feet.

Without knowing that I have HFMD incubated within me in the last few days, I had maintained close contacts with my 2 boys since I am on medical leave and resting at home. Hopefully they will not catch the virus from me otherwise it will be damn torturing for them to go through this virus.

This means that I am fully quarantined in my cosy bedroom with my laptop as my only mode of entertainment for the next 5 days..

Suay things that happened to myself thus far in the last 10 years:

1) HFMD
2) diagnosed with anemia and low red blood count last Dec during the full body health check
3) fake chicken pox - nest bites on my body http://my-precious-baby.blogspot.com/2008/07/seeing-them.html
4) post delivery hormone imbalance which resulted in full bodied rash (minority 5% of total preggie mums) http://my-precious-baby.blogspot.com/2007/11/mummys-complications.html
5) 2 threatened abortions, of which 1st one resulted in hospitalisation
6) extraction of 4 wisdom tooth at one go
7) broke front tooth when I fainted during shopping in year 2000

and not to mention many other incidents during my school days

I was just sharing with my ex-co that I have been trying to take a step off from work where nec, and spend more time with my kids. Knowing the personal drive in myself, she doubted and asked me is this really what I want out from the career path. I told her when she has children of her own, she will understand when there is a need to prioritise in life. I lost both my parents by teens and have been very independent since then, fairly self-driven and completed my Accountancy degree locally in NTU. Never taken any tuition lessons in my whole studying years (irony - now that I started tuition for my kids b4 they start proper sch!). Possibly it's because I have always understand you need to work hard in order to attain what you are trying to achieve. So I need to channel this energy onto my kids instead of work so that they will be guided well while they are still young before things go outside your control.

Viral fever

This is a very bad weekend for us as both our boys came down with viral fever and coupled with skin rash and throat ulcers for Ethan.

Caden has vomitted alot today and we had to forced him to take the butt medication since he is not absorbing fluid medication well..

hopefully they will be up and running soon..

Enrichment lessons

Recently we have enrolled Caden into I can Read centre after procastinating for almost a year. Caden has enjoyed the lessons since and been looking forward to his Tues night classes. This serves as a very good commitment on Mummy's end as she will be forced to leave the office by 530pm on Tues (hopefully can continue to work in long run).

Coincidently, we bumped into Caden's pre-school ex-classmate in one of the makeup class before CNY. The mummy was telling us that she had enrolled her son into IcanRead, CMA and chinese lessons back-to-back on 3 weekdays in a week. Mummy has been reading up on mental arithmetric sometime back. So her recommendation on the CMA centre came in just abt the right time. Furthermore, there is a centre set up around punggol central (at the MRT station) so distance is not too much of a prob in case my ah lou cannot rush back from work on time to pick Caden.

The fact that Caden has just improved much in his piano lessons lately has made us reconsider in stopping him from the music school.. if we enrol Caden in mental arithmetric lessons, then he will have 3 lessons a week and this includes homework arising from the enrichment lessons.

Before then, we have been wanting to let Caden enjoy his childhood as much as he can but when you start hearing and witnessing how others have not done so and suffered fall-back in the lessons conducted in their primary years. These caused us to begin to wonder if we should give our kids a headstart and tap onto his powerful brain cells before he turns 6.

so likely, we will start him with CMA centre soon or maybe after his 5th birthday in April, but this boy of ours has been urging us to bring him back for mental arithmetric lesson again next week after he has an experience in the trial lesson last Thurs!

Ang Baos

Caden has been asking us when is the last day of Chinese new year, he remembers that on it's last day, that's when he can open all his ang baos which he had obediently entrusted to us as and when he received from the aunties and uncles whom he met during these 2 weeks.

So yesterday when he asked this question again, we told him that it's the last day and he happily requested to open all his ang baos again. Obviously we wanted to avoid the whole mess of sorting out the money in front of our boys and kindly diverted his attention to something else.

This time round, we didn't have the 2nd round of reunion dinner at my mum-in-law's place on Sunday because both my in-laws flew off to China for a tour on Sat morning.

During the whole CNY, we covered almost all places that we had wanted to go (except for my ah lou's old neighbours, which I guess will be postponed to next yr again) and visited River Hongbao.