News / Nunn Road / 2012 / February 2012

Going into the month of March, the children especially the new ones have grown more familiar with the daily rhythm. One of the rhythms is the morning 15 minutes of circle time after snack and before outside playtime.  Children enjoy circle time as we sing songs with movement, do fun exercises and play games.

We will sing some familiar songs and I add new ones. The children naturally and happily move and sing along together with me.  There is so much joy in the classroom till its time to go for outside play.

On a more sombre note, I’m a bit weary and sad that some parents forgot about their children‘s need for simple childhood fun and laughter as well as movement, songs and play that they wanted for their children when they first registered them at Nania. Some are now worried as their children turn 6 that they still cannot recognise or write words and numbers.  Sigh!This is very premature. It is just the beginning of the year, give them until year end to master that.

The older children have waited eagerly for their turn to become big children in the class.  They know it’s their turn to do all that the previous big children have done i.e. weaving, paper writing exercises, jumping rope, bouncing ball, binding their own book, reciting Chinese poems, Malay suku-kata and English alphabets and numbers.

Besides these preparations, as they approach year end, they also get ready their own musical instrument, recite poems, learn and memorize speeches for their graduation day.  Graduating parents will be proud of their children’s abilities and the confident way they carry themselves on that day.

With graduation behind them, the children will sew their own purse using the beautiful yarn that they have weaved since the beginning of the year.  Isn’t it great to see them grow up and complete their kindergarten years this way?

Teacher Kerry told me the other day that she envies the big children as they are learning and enjoy so many fun and wonderful things daily.  I guess she wished to have a childhood just like them or is it that she is taken by the eagerness and joy of learning the children show in their faces daily.

Once during a conversation, a mother said to another mother ‘to listen to the inner voice of the child’.  I was impressed at how confident she is of her child.  She rather let her child have 1 more year of self learning instead of pushing her child through academic drilling one year earlier.

If you are truly listening to your child, I’m sure they’ll tell you to give them their full time for self learning.They are learning at their own pace. At their age, they need you to guide them on their life long journey.  The classroom style can wait when they turn 7 and onwards.

I have been slightly ‘below the weather’ lately.  I’ll take care of my health as I know the children miss me if I don’t come and see them daily.  Thank you for your kind words and concerns too.  

                                                                                         Teacher Nora