All About Preparing For Primary One

[kaitlynangelica]

Hi simplyjo,


how old are you kids? I sent my gal for phonics class at CS Montessori at Bukit Timah Plaza and after two or three months, she can read some 2 to 3-letter words already. It definitely is important to send them for phonics. Actually, I tried to teach her at home but no matter how hard I tried, it didn’t work. So had to pack her off for phonics.

[simplyjo]

Hi dt7570,


My eldest girl is attending Chinese lessons from one of her school teacher once/week, and Hanyu Pinyin is included too. The chinese teacher shared with me earlier that children may get confused if we put them in phonics & hanyu pinyin classes together at the same time cos the sounds are different but the children are too young to differentiate. Kindergarten usually teaches some basic phonics in K1 so it's better to start hanyu pinyin in K2 or when the child has at least learnt the phonics sound of A-Z.


Hi kaitlynangelica,

I've 3 girls, 6yr, 4yr & 20mth old - 3 lovely devils in angels' disguise!
Eldest in K2, 2nd in Nursery and youngest is little piglet at home...

[dt7570]

Hi simplyjo


My friend recommended my a native chinese teacher. She gives lesson at her house with a room converted to classroom. Class size is 6 students. I will start him with that.

thanks!

[rr2000]

dt7570:

Could anyone recommend any learning centre for P1 Preparatory Class in the West Area?

Metoo want to know for my kid in K1. Will appreciate if you can summarise you experience looking around for P1 prep classes.

[rr2000]

[quote]I will check out Just Education at Jurong area. [/quote]
Did you have any success? I went to JE, Jurong yesterday. The prep class seems only starts during the K2 holidays. The lady I talked to sounded like it's a crash course for 2 months.

Anybody confirm this is the way it is?

[jedamum]

rr2000:

[quote]I will check out Just Education at Jurong area.

Did you have any success? I went to JE, Jurong yesterday. The prep class seems only starts during the K2 holidays. The lady I talked to sounded like it's a crash course for 2 months.

Anybody confirm this is the way it is?[/quote]justeducation takes on the 'advance teaching' technique...ie they teach in advance of what is being taught in school. for that i guess the K2 dec holidays is where they start the advance teaching for P1.
but they do have on-going programmes for K2 kids...you can check it out from their website.
currently, my boy's math preparatory work is done by me his chinese is by berries and i am leaving english (ie vocab, grammer etc etc) for him to pick up at P1 as i have no clue how to coach him myself....so at the time being, is only getting him to do more reading to improve his comprehension skills.

[simplyjo]

Original Title: Primary School Dilema


it's really so tough to be parents these days... on one hand, we all hope to get our children into good schools, yet we worry we will stress them. If we do not wish to stress them and put them into the so-called \"normal neighbourhood\" school, we then worry if they are learning too little...

My eldest girl is going to P1 next year & we plan to enrol her into Ai Tong, where I'm an ex-school girl, so chances should be pretty high. If all goes well, we will see if she can manage in the school but we had also agreed to trsf her out if she is not progressing well.

Having said that, I went to browse thru some P1 assessments in Popular out of curiosity and I was so surprised to see the \"chim chim\" questions in these P1 assessments! Now, hubby & me are worried if we are doing too little to prepare our girl for the challenge ahead... sigh... must think over our decision to put her in Ai Tong again... headache headache... can help but wander who is going to the school, my girl or me??? :?

Moderator's Note: Threads merged.

[caroline3sg]

Simplyjo

Don’t give up the chance to go into Ai Tong. You still have half yr to prepare.

My son is also not prepared to go P1 next yr. It takes a lot of effort and discipline on the parents’ part. I think those SAHM are the ones who have time to prepare their kids.

[simplyjo]

caroline3sg:

Simplyjo

Don't give up the chance to go into Ai Tong. You still have half yr to prepare.

My son is also not prepared to go P1 next yr. It takes a lot of effort and discipline on the parents' part. I think those SAHM are the ones who have time to prepare their kids.

Thanks Caroline...

Term 3 just started this week and when my girl took back her Spelling & 听写lists, I'm really speechless... chinese words like 开斋节, 屠妖节, 三块蛋糕, 五杯牛奶, 农历新年 etc etc... English spellings included words like Deepavali, Kavadi, Festivals, Catholic, Muslim, The Buddhist go to temple to pray etc etc... :shock:

K2 standard already so \"chim\", cannot imagine what to expect in P1... My mum already nagging that we should get a tutor for my daughter but hubby & me feel that it's really too early for her to have 1-to-1 tutoring. We would prefer to send her for enrichment classes where she gets to interact with classmates, which is also an important learning process too.

[ChiefKiasu]

simplyjo:

...Term 3 just started this week and when my girl took back her Spelling & 听写lists, I'm really speechless... chinese words like 开斋节, 屠妖节, 三块蛋糕, 五杯牛奶, 农历新年 etc etc... English spellings included words like Deepavali, Kavadi, Festivals, Catholic, Muslim, The Buddhist go to temple to pray etc etc... :shock:


K2 standard already so \"chim\", cannot imagine what to expect in P1... My mum already nagging that we should get a tutor for my daughter but hubby & me feel that it's really too early for her to have 1-to-1 tutoring. We would prefer to send her for enrichment classes where she gets to interact with classmates, which is also an important learning process too.

:shock: :shock: I think your kid's kindergarten is really siao! I don't recall my son's P1 spelling list to be anywhere near that level of difficulty... and it's a SAP school some more.

Personally, I agree with your decision to stick to enrichment classes rather than one-on-one tutoring, which has a tendency to kill off any interest in the subject at that early age. Kids need to play to learn.