Founder's Day and Open house - 28th May 2015

Yesterday was Mee Toh school's Founder's day cum open house.  This year, Caden is  one of the prize winners in CCA excellence category (Scouts). So we were invited to attend the event in support of our child.

MP, Ms. Sun Xueling is the guest of honour for the event

 

It took him 3 days to get involved in rehearsals before this big day.. he must had some fun in school experiencing this ..

After the prize giving ceremony,  Caden partnered up with his classmate, Kesler, to man the Math Booth for the Open House event, as they explained some of the rules for a Math puzzle for those who visited.

 

It is the first time he represented the school to play the role of an ambassador and represented the Math department. I think he was selected as he's seen as someone ' dependent upon' to carry out the task with his friend.

 

Both boys had a good time and played their roles well when I stopped over to 'spy' on them.. Ethan obediently stood by the side and guessed his own set of answers..

 

Getting the participants to guess the sum of all sides of the dice (including the hidden sides)



a shot of their partnership at their booth

 



It's definitely a good experience for Caden for being involved in the Open House event this year.  One of the rare moments I get to photograph him in his scouts uniform in a school's setting =)



Taking a break - Good news for the boys

I have been spending some time with the boys on their school work since I started with part-time lecturing. 1 did well for exams but another didn't. I know it's very much dependent on the aptitude of each child so some things cannot be rushed.. If this is how I reason out with myself. A lot of my colleagues in school told me that they had been through the stage which I am going through now and 'warned' me the worst is yet to come! So their advice to me now, is to 'let it go', so no point getting affected by their results after all.

I gathered that if parents were to push kids too hard, learning becomes a pain to them.  Easier said than done, best approach to cultivate self-motivation is to get them interested in each subject. Obviously this is the ideal situation, but how many of us can succeed to get your own child interested in their own studies??? I don't have the answer - or perhaps it's draining to design customised programmes to each child under my care, on top of work, and house chores.

I don't know about other mums who have been spending some efforts on coaching, guiding their own kids on their school work, but I guess I am so done with whatever I was doing. I just need a break for now - how long, I don't know.. till the point when I can find my motivation to gear things up and explore a more appropriate approach, to introduce another learning approach for the boys.

So I suppose this is the best news for the boys... hopefully they get to enjoy their freedom while they can  - for now!

Caden's 11th birthday celebration

Caden turned 11 years old late last month and we brought him out for a Swenson's dinner at Waterway Point.

Given that it's a Thursday, we couldn't do much but to just have a nice dinner outside. It's also my first attempt to drive to the shopping mall and thankfully everything went so smoothly.

The boys as usual had some arguments amongst themselves and were not on good talking terms during dinner. Nonetheless, Caden is always happy when you put nice food right in front of him.. and on that day,  we saw so many other kids celebrating their birthdays in Swensons too!

His version of 'Topless 5' Ice cream

As Caden wanted to make a birthday wish out of a cake, he has asked for a mini one (cos we were all too full after dinner) to go through his favourite routine of the year:

 

And he managed to gobble up this mini cake in no time! what an appetite he has..

 

I wish my dear son good health and happiness always. And hopefully he gets more sensible and mature soon!

Kallang Ice World

On one of the long weekends last month, we met up with Brian's family for a session of Ice-skating!

We reached Kallang Ice World early, I think it was just 30minutes after 9am. There were already a few kids on the rink but the crowd was still manageable.

The 4 boys were very excited. They helped each other to wear their skating boots and went off to the rink. As it was the first ice-skating experience for both Caden and Ethan, we decided to just hold onto the bar along the circumference for a start.

Little did we realise that the children's metal bar is actually made available for kids below 1.2m and there are only 20 pieces on loan (for free!). First come first serve. By the time we realise we needed 2 for our boys, the metal bars were all snapped up by the later crowd...

Subsequently we found a few metal bars 'abandoned' in the skating rink, so finally the boys got some help.. Ethan enjoyed it a lot more with the help of the metal bar.

Caden was too tall for the bar but nonetheless, it's easier with the support

Most of the times, PaPa helped by giving him the support.. Skating is not for me so I ended up watching them instead.. hiak hiak..



 

After getting the hang of the sport, Ethan decided to let go of the bar and skate on his own without help.. Children really can pick up things fast!

Just 20 minutes before the 2 hour block, he's skating like a pro...



All the boys had a good time, they even spoke about when they can make a second trip here to skate again.. fees are not cheap.. It cost us $17.50 per pax for 2 hours (adults) and $15 per child. So for a family of 4 like us, total bill came up to $74 (including 4 pairs of gloves).

So to cut costs, we need to bring our own socks and gloves next round!