News / Halaman York / 2019 / February 2019

In just the first two months of the school year, we have already enjoyed the Chinese New Year festival! It was a wonderful success, with our returnees and newcomers coming together to celebrate the day! We are looking forward to more festivals and activities ahead.

    It is delightful to observe the children’s joy at being back together after a short Chinese New Year break. The children shared their experiences with friends and told the teachers about their activities at home with their families during their Chinese New Year break.

    At Nania, both the older and younger children are placed together in a multi-age classroom. The younger children are able to stretch their abilities and the older ones learn to nurture and help look after the younger children. It emulates a loving family environment where the children have consideration for each other’s abilities and limitations.  The “will” of the big child can be engaged in helping the younger ones.  The younger ones, while still being encouraged to be themselves, learn from the bigger children who are their role models.

    A firstborn child has the opportunity to be the younger child in a mixed-age group and the youngest child in a family can take the role of an older sibling. This multi-age classroom also provides valuable sibling experience for an only child.

    Usually, the younger children look up to the big children and look enthusiastically forward to leadership opportunities in the coming years. They desire to do the activities that only the older children can do such as pouring water for snack time, weaving and skipping. 

    At the same time, the older children feel important when they are able to help with duties allocated to them. Serving the younger ones builds tolerance for them and it broadens their soul’s capacity to love. This symbiotic reliance builds good relationships among the children. Good play relationships produce the harmonious play in class and this will surely help them when they move on to Primary school in later years.

    Punctuality is important for us to maintain a consistent rhythm. Drop off time is between 8.30am to 9.00am. Please arrive on time. Children who are late do not have enough time for their morning artistic work and creative play. When they arrive late, they are anxious to join the other children doing artistic work or play. Hence, they may refuse to put away their things nicely before joining their friends. If they are very late, they usually refuse to clear up during clearing up time because they have not had enough time for creative play. Although we understand the situation, we still have to correct the child. This can put the child in a poor mood for the rest of the day.

    Also, they interrupt the flow in class and the other children cannot fully settle into their work and play when teachers have to attend to every late child. Therefore I request the parent to please bring your children by 9.00am daily.

    I am sure that your child would have told you about teacher Kerry’s newborn baby. Yes, Teacher Kerry has safely given birth to a healthy and chubby baby girl. We miss her as she is on maternity leave for 2 months. Nevertheless, she will be back in action in the 2nd week of April. During her absence, Teacher Lingz will assist Teacher Iren in the class. Teacher Lingz is Nania’s former teacher.

                                                                                                   Teacher Chithra