Captain Kantang

Kantang means potato.

Evan is a total kantang. In every sense of the word.

We met with his teachers today and no surprise that the subject he struggles most with is Chinese and the teacher basically told us that his biggest problems are comprehension and sentence construction. No surprise once again. We're told the old adage; read to him, expose him, speak to him, let him watch Chinese stuff. Basically, as the teacher very succinctly and hysterically put it, 'no input, no output.'

Basically, he's living up to the expectations of him being totally anglo. In other words, kantang.

The local phrase for someone who is Asian but is totally anglo. Because the anglo-white stereotype is one where many potatoes are eaten.

And once again, that's Evan, described to a T.

He does love his kantang. If I let him, he would eat it every meal of the day in any form. Shepherd's Pie, hash brown, mashed. Cubed and fried Asian style with carrots and minced pork atop rice.

There's no convincing him that it's high carb and he should cut down on it.

It explains the chubbed up version of Evan.

And since he was home today while we were waiting in the sweltering heat to see his teachers, it was perfect time for him to learn to cook his favourite kantang dish.
 
Happy is the boy who has his kantang.

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Choosing our battles with Chinese

We're almost at the end of the first term of Primary 2. Things are moving at an infinitely faster pace. It isn't frenetic yet but it's slowly getting there. There is something on practically every day and the twins take it in their stride as long as they get some time to run around downstairs and shout on top of their voices. But the day they hate the most is Wednesday. On Wednesday, they spend two hours in what Packrat and I have labelled Nazi Chinese class. This was the same holiday class that the twins were doing at the end of last year. This was the same class that Evan didn't want to continue and we insisted they had to because it was good for them.

Admirably, they've stuck to the strict regime of homework that would require the entire week in between classes to complete. Chinese compositions to re-copy, spelling to practice, paragraphs to memorise and passages to practice reading out loud. But the thing is while they've definitely become more resilient in the face of great difficulty and in their eyes, drugery, we have decided to concede that it isn't for them. 

We discovered this about 3 weeks into the term but decided that we had a responsibility to the twins to make sure they see through the term. The reasons why we felt this way were that

1. Evan was demoralised. Every single Tuesday night, he would tell us how much he dreaded going to class the next day. He felt like he was being picked on by the teachers because he was slower writing. I didn't believe him until I saw the teacher rolling her eyes at him above his head. So he didn't see it but the Mommy peeping in to check if they were done caught it in full.

2. The school and therefore the teachers work on a different pedagogical philosophy than we subscribe to. We don't and have never believed in putting down a child to motivate him or her to succeed. Perhaps some children respond to that but we have never treated JED that way and therefore they recoil from being treated in that way. It has a lot to do with my mother reminding me to "teach a child from what he knows to what he doesn't know" rather than "This is what you ought to know, I don't care how you get to that point, but you bloody well get there or suffer wrath." And it didn't seem to matter that what they ought to know was various standards above what they actually knew at this point. This actually makes this Nazi Chinese class a great class for kids who want to excel. But for kids like mine that still need to have the love for the language cultivated and the pillars of the language strengthened, nope. Akin to building a skyscrapper on swampland.

3. We spent many of their pre-schooling years in schools that were bigger on nurturing than demanding excellence for results. This school was markedly different. Nurture? Where is there time to nurture? We have things to do and places to go. Flail? Learn how to swim? Can't? Then, drown.

4. Jordan was becoming too competitive. Because they put so much emphasis on who finished first, she always wanted to finish first regardless of the quality of her work.

I did blog about sticking to our guns and letting them go through it. Well, guns have been stuck to and gone through they have. We've given our notice and we're done with it.

Practically, it does leave a big hole in supporting their Chinese. And we've been trying to plug it ourselves, the way we want them to learn while we find something of the right fit. This has meant that I've had read to JED in my very rusty and patchy Chinese. It's also meant that Packrat and I have spent a whole afternoon on the floor drawing up matching flash cards for the twins just so that part of their revision becomes a game rather than mundane memory work. Perhaps this way, they retain it past the test next week.

It would be so much easier to concede as necessary the whole rote, over-teaching schtick that everyone is buying into. That way, I can, in all good conscience, keep them in the Nazi Chinese class because it is good for them and I can be sure that they won't fail at the language. My way? They truly might fail But that is looking at it only from my perspective. From their point of view,  Evan hates the language already and barely tolerates it. If I stuck him at the Nazi Chinese Centre for the long term, it might end up with him having such a revulsion for the language that once he figures out how to be more rebellious, he won't care if he fails at it. Jordan, she might pick up a bit more from it but at what cost? Becoming uber competitive and crying every time she doesn't come in first?

I wasn't fantastic at Chinese but I had neighbours that I played with, who spoke only Chinese and I loved the Channel 8 dramas. Those two things saved me from the fate that awaited my very anglo, mission school- going brothers. I didn't hate it like they did because I used it and I was conversant in it and it helped me do relatively well for it. Even if I'm no longer there, it's where I want JED to be at and my sense is that forcing what seems to be the industry's standard of what is the best down their little potato-banana throats is really not going to help this cause.

So we fight smart. We forsake this war in the hope that we will have energy for the longer battle and it might be a little bit more painless.

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A good teacher

Thankfulness is having a teacher who understands the child's learning style and is aware of her gifts enough to capitalise on them to make Chinese much less intimidating and much more fun.

Not entirely certain why it's Rapuzel rather than Rapunzel. Call it creative license. 

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Calvin's Dad

I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes and one of my great parenting takeaways was that from Calvin's dad who would make him do miserable stuff in the name of building character. And as parents, we sometimes, meanly create character building occasions for JED.

Tangentially, as a very banana-kantang family, Chinese as a struggle for JED. We don't speak much of it but the demands of it in school are getting increasingly great. And having struggled with it as kids, we know how important it is to get the basics right.

Evan doesn't like languages. He doesn't like reading as much as his sister and he hates writing. He's very male in that he's very terse. Why write it in so many words when a simple 'no' could suffice? And add to that, writing in a second language with pictographic characters?  So even as a 7 year old, I suspect he is already at the point where he doesn't like the Chinese language.

Unfortunately for him, we aren't going to pay money to get some hack to certify him unfit to do a second language. And we'll try to help him as much as possible. That help comes in the form of tuition, unfortunately because mine truly sucks and Packrat's is worse than I am. We discovered a tuition centre that teaches Chinese composition, something that he'll have to do in the coming year. We tried it out during the holidays and it's a pretty decent class but it's extremely rigorous and requires them to write quite a bit.

Evan hated the holiday class on account of the writing. He complained that it was exhausting and he was always last to finish. For him, anything that requires a bit more effort and tires him out is probably not worth doing.

This is where Calvin's Dad looms.

Evan chucked a manic fit when he found out that we had enrolled both Jordan and himself for the weekly version of the holiday class. The tears and tantrums came fast and furious because it was difficult. 

While everyone tells me that I have the manic evil eye and am the quintessential tiger mom, when the kids cry, I feel for them and I felt for him. I started to question if perhaps it was too difficult for him and if he was ready for such rigour. There could be an easier and more palatable alternative. 

Packrat unfortunately, is the sterner version of Calvin's dad. He doesn't want Evan to run away from it because it's difficult. He wants Evan to realise that work is work and you gotta work hard to do well. And that getting by and being mediocre because it is just easier that way is unacceptable. As he said all this to Evan, my heart hurt for the sobbing boy. 

But deep in my heart, I knew that Packrat was right and that it was the right thing to do. And I would probably say that to my students. So it was just me, being totally Mommy about it. And if we had withdrawn him on account of his having chucked a fit, what sort of message would we be sending to him? 

So, come tomorrow, he's going for it with Jordan and another friend. Even though it's Christmas Eve. I guess a Chinese language school isn't all that big on Christmas. And the only way he's ever going to know that I'm not as mean as I sound (for having him go for the class) is when he starts reading this blog. 

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Speak to the (right) brain

There is this cliche proverb that MOE used to use to recruit teachers.
“Tell me and I will forget.
Show me and I will remember.
Involve me and I will understand.
Step back and I will act."

 But with all cliches, there is a little bit of truth in it.

Part of my professional outlook came from listening to Ken Robinson talk about education. One of the talks that I listened to talked about how we stupidly assume and categorise children's learning according to when they were born, assuming that everyone born in the same year would be able to take on the same sort of learning. Developmentally, age is a milestone and does give us a rough guide as to what the child is capable of. But it is prescriptive. Our education system is. On top of that, it is a cookie cutter approach. Every child, the same.

Evan fits into that mould. He learns in the straightforward, traditional manner. No doubt he enjoys other forms of learning as well, but he isn't fazed by sitting down and doing worksheets.

Jordan, on the other hand, thrives on alternative learning methods. While her worksheets are done carefully and she is obedient, meaning that she will sit and listen if she has to, it exhausts her. The first month of P1 left home coming home totally wiped because for 6 hours give or take, she just sat and listened.

Since I am home, to the best of my ability, I try to help her figure things out in ways that are more up her alley. In pedagogical speak, I try to facilitate her learning in ways that are more accessible to her. Ha.

Anyway, this means attempting to turn concepts or assignments where ever possible, visual or kinesthetic for her. 

In Math, we started using Cuisenaire rods. Aunty J got JED a set of it from The Mind Store over Christmas. And all three love the bright colours. The wonderful thing about these rods are they are all accurately measured in 1 cm increments. So, 2 rods with a value of 5 each will stack exactly against the rod with the value of 10. We used it with Jordan for her number bonds and even before she could remember 5 + 5 = 10 without using her fingers, she knew instinctively that "yellow rod + yellow rod= orange rod".

She spends a lot of time, however, obsessively ensuring that all the rods line up or trying to build things with it. But whatever it is, her math, at this point got a whole lot easier once she started being able to "see" the sum. Another friend uses narratives. That shall be my next attempt.

Then there was spelling which I had already blogged about previously. In that post, I talked about her cutting out shapes and labelling them appropriately. The spelling became a non-event. No pressure. It occurred to me then that in order for her to be enjoy what she was doing, the serious parts of it had to be disguised as seemingly incidental; that it isn't what she needs to focus on.We still occasionally repeat the spelling of the word a few times if she isn't familiar with it. But her internalising of it seems to come from her ability to connect with the words.

So her favourite activity and mine as well as when she gets to illustrate as she goes along. I give her words and ask her to draw me a picture with those words. This takes time though because she is meticulous in her detail. When she is done, she has to label them. 10 spelling ones, one picture and it all actually makes sense. Even verbs get illustrated. She illustrated 'frightened' the other day with a girl shrieking at a mouse. Unfortunately, I think that one got tossed out. I think I get more of a kick out of it than she does because I love seeing how her mind instinctively places everything spatially and how she attempts to illustrate words that do not lend easily to illustration. If we ever play Pictionary, she's on my team!

She draws a boy and a girl to illustrate 'people'. She draws the girl falling and the boy's arms outstretched. She gives the girl a speech bubble warning the boy that has to 'catch me' because I asked her to try and draw 'catch'.

She draws for Chinese too. We love how, in the second panel, she actually looks like she is thinking very hard before an idea strikes her.

For this term, she's had to do poetry recital for Chinese. That would have sent me quaking in my shoes (Public speaking- stress!, Public speaking in Chinese - even more stress!) but for a girl who loves performing, this was great. To add to that, we gave her puppets of the characters she was talking about and actions for the poem. It was then that the poem came alive for her and she could relate to it. She has since named her puppets though she gave them English names. She says it's easier for Muffin to remember. 

I know the reality of the situation is that she won't be able to draw all her lessons. But for now, while it's still relatively straightforward, it's helping her engage and be interested. To us, that's a large part of the battle that she associates school with learning and that she likes the learning. On our part, we try to fan that interest as much as possible.

 

   

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To market to buy some fruit

The twins' Chinese class seems intent on hot-housing. At K2, I have been told that the standard taught there is Primary 2. The twins seem relatively chill about it. It is I, the Mommy who stresses because I struggle to read the stuff that I need to go through with them.

I didn't really hate Chinese the way a lot of people did. But I do remember it being somewhat boring at times, what with the repetitive writing and memorising of paragraphs. Evan has already started complaining about the writing and I have no real heart to tell him that it goes downhill from this point on.

 While I am still able to, I try to make it as fun as I can.

Last week's lesson was on tropical fruit. To the twins, these were just words on a page with no real concept of what a mangosteen, longan or lychee were.

1. 榴莲 - durian (Durian they know but abhor with a passion much to our disappointment)
2. 山竹- mangosteen (We just don't buy them enough)
3. 芒果- mango (We tried giving them mango, but the sweetness was too intense and they shied away from it)
4. 木瓜 - papaya
5. 红毛丹 - rambutan (Jordan loves the stuff, Evan is freaked out by the hairs and Muffin the ants that come with the fruit)
6. 龙眼 - longan (Too heaty for them! Eat a little bit and a sore throat is guaranteed)
7. 荔枝 - lychee (Packrat doesn't like lychee and I'm not fond of it either)

The only way to show it to them was to bring them to market. Not the supermarket but the market itself. And that's what we did. 

First, the twins had to take down the fruit they had to buy. Evan complained loud enough for our entire level to hear. Granted the characters were difficult to write and Mommy didn't offer him any assistance except to tell him which radical came first.

  

The fun bit was seeing all the different fruit on display. Jordan sounded like a broken record as she asked repeatedly for the fruit on her list, refusing to take no for an answer but using that as an opportunity to re-ask the question again. She tailed the shopkeeper going "你有没有insert relevant fruit name in Chinese?" (Do you have rambutans/lychee/mango etc?)

Some things they learnt. 
1. Mangoes cannot be thrown about. The stall keeper scolded them for it.
2. Mangosteen attract a lot of flies. 
3. Rambutans are not in season and neither are the lychee. 
4. Longans are dusty and dirty to the touch. 
5. Durians are only sold in the afternoon. 
6. Mangosteens have an imprint on the bottom that tell them how many segments there are in there.
7. Mangosteens stain their clothes purple.
8. Apples are cold when licked! (Contributed by Muffin who went about trying to lick apples that had just been taken out of refridgeration)

9. Fruit are heavy. Mommy made them carry their loot home.

Did they have fun? Apparently so. They told everyone including the school bus lady that they had gone to the market to buy 水果 (fruit) and showed her their shopping list which they very carefully brought to school and home. 

At the end of it, Jordan had tried some mangosteen (like), papaya (don't like) and was itching to try the mango (not allowed to yet because she was coughing). Evan didn't like anything (he is a purely apple and grape boy). Muffin was okay to eat the papaya but only the soft ripened flesh. And Mommy was $23 poorer just from buying fruit. 

Technorati Tags: JED, Learning Chinese, Singapore

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Blood, Tears and Puke

What a day it has been.

Tuesdays are our busiest days. It starts off with the twins going off to Chinese before school. I come home to get little Muffin on the bus (his Chinese is later in the day. They don't run a pre-N class at the same time as the twins' class), go back to get the twins, head off to school and then to work. The afternoon is the reverse. Pick the twins from school, get them home, swope kids at the car porch and take Muffin to Chinese. Take him home, breathe for 5 minutes and go off to work.

Every Tuesday, I wake up bummed at the length of the day, take a deep breath, say a prayer and dive head in, hoping for the best.

Perhaps, yesterday, I didn't pray loud enough.

It was just normal crazy right up to the point where I had to pick the twins from school. Then there were

1. TEARS
Jordan came out of class, holding the teacher's hand and looking like there was a black cloud over her head. The teacher was oblivious but Mommy wasn't. When questioned, she muttered something about her work being all wrong. And there were red lines cancelling out a lot of what she had done. (No details here because I am waiting for the file to be returned and then I shall blog about this with vengeance). Sufficed to say, she was upset that her work was streaked with red and she burst into tears every time she looked at the offending piece of work. There was also much self-flagellation about how lousy she was. It took 5 minutes of stroking her hair, hugging her and promising that she could sit in the passenger seat to calm her down sufficiently. And that 5 minutes made me late to pick up Muffin who was waiting.

Then there was

2. PUKE
Muffin no longer naps in the afternoon. It is hard for him to nap when his siblings are around and he wants to play with them. That makes him a cranky baby by about 4 pm which is the time he sets off for Chinese. On Tuesdays, the standing instructions is that he needs to nap. Because the twins aren't home, it isn't too difficult a feat. Unfortunately, he didn't nap yesterday and plain refused to go to Chinese. He had to be cajoled downstairs but when he saw me pull up, he took off in the opposite direction for the lift. When we eventually caught him and stuffed him into the car, he did what he does best when he is upset. He upchucks. All over himself, his car seat, the car and the pavement. This meant he needed to be changed, the car needed to be cleaned, his seat had to be wiped down and the pavement required a spray down.

At this point, the mental debate in my head was whether we ought to keep him home; after all, he was going to be at least half an hour late. But the crazy mom in me refused to allow that. If I let him stay home, then he would know for a fact that upchucking would get him out of Chinese.

Thankfully, Packrat gets home by that point and takes over, volunteering him to take him to Chinese while I wash vomit out from between my toes.

But even that was a bad idea because that led to

3. BLOOD.
The twins had gone off to the playground on the bikes. But not 10 minutes had gone by before I heard them sob and wail down the corridor. Apparently, while racing one another, they ran into each other head on leading to both being flung off the bikes and scrapping their hands and legs badly. Evan was the one who was more upset because he came away with more scraps and therefore more blood. The thing with Evan is that he can't do blood. Especially his own. To him, blood is supposed to be on the inside. There is something very wrong if it is on the outside and it is flowing. While that isn't wrong, it drives him into panic, hysterics and eventually leads him to  hyper-ventilate. He becomes cold, clammy, pale and is screams and shrieks like a banshee being slaughtered. Jordan, not wanting to lose out, turns on the tears for the second time in the day and soon I had to deal with 2 children wailing and gnashing their teeth as if the world had come to an end.

If I were a cartoon character, my hair would have frazzled and exploded and my eyes would be glazed spinning circles.

And to think that after all that, I had to go to work.

I told Packrat at that point that what I really needed was either a lot of alcohol or a big bat. I suspect a big bat would have been more satisfying. Unfortunately neither could be had so here I am blogging about it, still feeling wobbly from everything that happened.

The bestie's consolation was "It would have pushed any mom over the edge" and another good friend's remark was "Today will be betterer".

So here's's to a betterer today and perhaps I will pray louder on Tuesdays so that this doesn't happen again.

A bright spark amongst all the chaos and tears.

Technorati Tags: pre-schoolers, motherhood

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Chinese redux

Last week, someone was trying to describe his fiancee to Packrat and struggled to find the words. Eventually he lapsed into Chinese. Someone else in the group had to then translate what was being said to the very lost looking Packrat. Packrat stated that he was effectively monolingual. I added that our 5 year olds had a better command of the language than he did.

Our 5 years olds do a decent job with a language we don't use much at home. We have learnt that the most effective way of introducing a second language to a child is to have each parent responsible for one language and only speak that one language to the child. That sounds like a good idea in theory but in practice, that meant me. We were also told that unfortunately, the parent tasked with the second language would get ignored more because communicating with that parent would be more difficult. Humph.

Anyway, we decided a few things when it came to our kids learning Chinese. It had to be fun and relatively painless. It shouldn't scare them and most importantly, it shouldn't stress them out and cause them to dread it. All the memories of Chinese tuition and memorising copious amounts of words and phrases we barely remember now have left an indelible mark on us.

It's been 2 years since they've started a weekly Chinese class. For the most part, they are willing to go, Evan more than Jordan but I've explained that already . It has got a lot to do with very encouraging, un-intimidating teachers who play with them and dramatise stories for them. And they've gone from getting 1's (hardly ever using Chinese) to being able to read Chinese better than English and random pages of a Chinese story book as well as write their names. In a nutshell, they've overtaken their father.

Having said that it doesn't stress them out, it does stress me out. Admittedly, it is a rigourous curriculum that they are put through and the only way they are able to read their readers is that I, the designated 2nd language parent, take them through. Being the best person for the job doesn't take much in our family and on paper, I do have a distinction in the language. But when it comes to reading, I am just about their level or have to depend heavily on pinyin. Even then,  I am occasionally stumped by the twins' reader and more so stumped when conversing with them. There have been days when I photograph the page with offendingly difficult characters and send SOS messages with pictures attached to my more Chinese enabled friends. (I never trust the twins when they read me the character because once, I stupidly  believed them when they told me the Chinese character for the dog's bark was "wo wo". It wasn't, it was just the onomatopoeic way of referring to the dog's bark but they had me fooled for a while.)

Thankfully, it seems much more painless for them. For now anyway. Plus, I have the added tools of Chinese videos that they enjoy watching, wooden block games that look suspiciously like mahjong but it gets them to identify and put together radicals to form characters and other games that they have lots of fun doing.

For Muffin, who is still disturbingly pre-speech, I'm just leaving him to jig to Chinese songs and telling him what his name is.  I can just about handle one level of Chinese at a time.

 


I won't be able to keep this up forever and at some point, it will definitely get too difficult for me. Then, I will have to cede the job to someone better qualified than I am.  

Technorati Tags: pre-schoolers, Learning Chinese, Singapore

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