News / Nunn Road / 2013 / June 2013

It is the time of the year again where we worry about the thick haze that is hazardous to our health.  We are constantly reminding our children to drink more water and most of them refill their water containers while they are at Nania.  During the bad days, we let them play indoors.

Some parents have approached me with their worries that their children may not be able to catch up with the formal learning when they turn 7.  It all started because they know about the tough Year 1 syllabus that their children have to face. 

I empathize with your fears but I cannot tell you that everything will be alright.  But based on the past experiences with other children who have graduated from Nania, we know that the children will gradually catch up with the other children in their classes.  Your help and support is very important to their growth. Some of these children have even surpassed those who were initially considered as good in academic achievements.  Sometimes I receive encouraging news that our former Nania children were the ones who were happy to receive homework from their teachers.

So, don't be discouraged that they seem not to be able to fit in right away when they enter year 1.  Instead, look forward and trust in their abilities to improve in their intellectual studies as time passes by. 

As I have mentioned before, our children in Nania develop their literacy through poems, song and stories every day.  They only need time and your guidance to catch up with word recognition.

We understand that your main worry is Bahasa Malaysia.  We will work on improving our children’s proficiency in that language by conversing more in Bahasa and also through poems and songs.

Teacher Chithra’s son is one of our former students. She has been helping her son right from the day one he started year 1 and even though he is in year 4 now, she still guides him.  She is happy with his academic achievement so far.  He shows interest in many things including taking part in storytelling, public speaking, representing school for chorus speaking competition and etc.

Recently, some ‘ants’ visited our classroom.  The younger ones reacted helplessly but the older ones showed confidence as they picked up the ants carefully (with tissue) and ushered them back to the garden.

Other incident in the class included a child injuring his finger but has help from his friend holding his drinking bottle for him to drink water.  When he accidently fell and hurt his gum a few days later, another friend broke biscuits into bite size portions so that he could eat them easily.  During play, whenever an object falls accidentally, someone will quickly rush over to help and hold up the object while some other friends show concern and ask to see whether their friends are alright. 

We encourage children to pray for the well-being of their friends when they are not well and quite often when someone else at home or close to them is unwell, they would request us to pray for them too.

We hope that all this courage, love and compassion come from the environment that we have created for them at Nania.

You will see that you have given the most important gift to your child i.e. a happy childhood.  Often I’ll read it again to remind myself to stay true to her teaching when I’m with these little children that you have entrusted to me. 

Teacher Nora