Experiment 3: Making fire

Because it's been crazy hot, we've been staying indoors.

But an off the cuff remark sent us all out of the house, into the sweltering afternoon, to make fire.

The heat led us to comment that it was how bush fires were made.

JED did not believe us.

At the same time, Jordan was brandishing a magnifying glass, muttering something about looking for clues.

Packrat then took the magnifying glass from her, braved the sweltering heat (he, especially, melts into a puddle within seconds) and gathered up some crinkled leaves, angled the sunbeams onto it and made fire.

The kids' jaws dropped in unison as the leaf crackled and smoked.

Each got a chance to do it and because it was blazing, it really didn't take much skill.

Man make fire

Son follows suit.

Leaf has big hole in it.

They wanted to make a bonfire but they were becoming Olaf in the summer. So they got shephereded in to have a shower.

While it was fun while it lasted, I still think we need to move to colder climates. 

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Playing with Possibilities at the Playeum

I have an eight year old who is obsessed with the right answer. We didn't teach it but there's an inherent need to make sure the answer is right. So we try our best to send across the message that getting things wrong is okay and it's part of learning. Part of it is inherent, the other part of it is bred by our school system where there is always a right way, right answer and attaining that is highly rewarded. That's good for some things. But not so good for others.

In such a system, some things fall by the way side. Divergent Thinking is one of them. Divergent Thinking is the ability to see many answers to the same question. Not entirely the same thing as creativity but where new ideas and new ways of doing things come from. This idea, I learnt from Ken Robinson and is something that we struggle to make known to the twins, especially, who are already entrenched in this culture of right and wrong.

How do we do try to do that? We don't dictate how they play. When they ask what they ought to do next, we ask them to go figure it out for themselves. We find toys and opportunities for play that are open-ended.

One of the opportunities that was given to us recently was an invitation to  Playeum; The Children's Centre for Creativity at Gillman Barracks. Unlike most indoor play areas, there aren't set ways to play. The closest I've seen to this is Kaboodle Kids, a play gym entirely made out of foam blocks. But Playeum worked on a theme (The Art of Speed) rather than a particular type of play.

The entire centre was broken up into different spaces where you could do different things. The theme of speed basically meant that there were a lot of wheels associated with the play. Along side the wheels were troughs and troughs of Lego and play pieces for the children to assemble what they felt might work on the various ramps. 

And that, was the great testament to divergent play. No one knew what was the perfect way to build a contraption that would survive the steep ramp without an explosion of Lego all over the place. Every child, including mine, went back again and again, adapting their vehicles trying to figure out what worked better. Eventually Evan worked out that it was all in the wheels. The black wheels with threads offered too much traction and it didn't gain enough speed down the ramp; that meant it couldn't jump the divide between ramps and his creations often crashed and burned in what we started to fondly refer to as The Valley of Broken Dreams.

When he figured it out, he taught it to Muffin and Muffin ended up creating a zoom-worthy vehicle that ended up as a blur no matter how many shots we tried to take of it. It was interesting to note also that despite the fact that Evan told Muffin how to build his vehicle, their vehicles looked markedly different and while Muffin watched how Evan built his, he went off to create his own.

 

We were late to family lunch because we stayed longer that we'd expected to at the Playeum and while regaling what JED did there, a question that surfaced was "So what did Jordan do since it was all Lego and cars?" My instinctive retort that needed to be suppressed was "Who says girls can't play with cars (and Lego)?".

Because that was precisely what Jordan did for most part of it; play with the cars and later on with Lego and marbles. I had expected her to be at the Workshop table where there was a buffet of recyclable materials, fabrics, glue, markers etc. And that in itself was a terrible assumption on my part. She didn't even venture there because she was busy trying to race cars down another set of tracks; in this space, you could adapt the tracks as well as create the vehicles. She twisted, propped up, laid flat, looped and curled the track, watched how her car responded to it and adjusted it accordingly. We have a million pictures of her building a mini roller coaster for her car without it going off the rails and none of the Workshop area, unfortunately.

She can't look!

An interesting observation was that despite the number of times their cars crashed, broke into a million pieces, the kids just went back the drawing board and tried again, always adjusting, always swoping out parts and using different things to see if it worked better.

Jordan and Evan also tried their hands at building their own marble runs while taking a break from the ramps and cars. Even with this, they used ribbons, straightened and twisted paper clips to 'tie' the 'tracks'. Tracks here being old tubes of cardboard or plastic pipes or tubing. Evan got a bit frustrated when his creations wouldn't hold but there was a gleam of satisfaction every time he dropped a marble in and it came out at the bottom.

So they ended up with a morning of play which wasn't dictated by anyone. It was just theirs. When asked which section they liked the most, they were unanimous in their vagueness. They all liked 'building the stuff', which was really all they did.

There were other areas as well though JED didn't spend a lot of time there. It wasn't as if they weren't as fun. In fact, the Dark Room was one of my favourite areas  because I love shadows and making pictures or shadows. There was also the Workshop space I mentioned earlier where we could make whatever it is we wanted with the available tools. Packrat spent much of his time building cars to try and outdo the boys. I don't know if he succeeded though.



At the end of the day, one thing Ken Robinson had said resounded "if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original" and it had truly been a morning of their coming up with their own original creations and where there was no right or wrong way to do it. Any place that does that is good for anyone's soul.

Details of how to get to Playeum and other nitty gritty but important pieces information. 

Location:
Blk 47 Malan Road
Gillman Barracks #01-21/23

It's near the Hort Park and it quite far into the barracks so be prepared to trek and clock steps or drive.

Mon to Fri from 7:00am to 5:00pm

First Hour Free Parking

$0.50 per 30 min for the Second hour

$3.00 per hour for the Third hour onwards or part thereof

Saturdays from 7:00am to 11:00am

Free Parking from 11:00am to 7:00pm

$0.50 per 30 min

Mon to Fri from 5:00pm to 7:00am (next day)

Saturdays from 7:00pm to 7:00am (next day)

$0.50 per 30min (capped at $2.00)

Parking is free on Sundays so that was great. 

Ticketing:
Child (1-12): $20 (It's a non-profit organisation but they have to keep putting out resources and pay for utilities!)
Accompanying adult: You play for free.
Not open on Mondays and Christmas meaning Haze days are a great time to visit them.

We are most thankful to Playeum for the the time and space to create, tinker and make without instruction manuals!

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Playing with Dirt

JED are coughing. Badly. And to be honest, it was my fault.

2 weeks ago, I sent them out of the house because I wanted to take a nap. It started to rain when they went down to play. And instead of coming up, they went on playing in the rain. First with boxes that they tried to shelter themselves with and when the boxes got soggy, all the pretence of caring went out the window.

Of course, I got into a lot of trouble with the maters for having got them sick. But they all came home wet, freezing with a sparkle in their eye.

I like them doing that. Not the getting sick but the other thing. I think they don't get to do it enough. My childhood memories were about walking in huge drains in my apartment complex and ending up somewhere totally obscure and having to find my own way home. I harbour memories of great resentment because my brothers used to go out in the middle of the night to walk in the cemetery with torch lights- without me. I felt I was missing out. Their excuse, our mother would have killed them if they brought me.

It's easy not to do that. The grand maters are full of fearful tales of abduction, outrage of modesty and that the world is full of bad people. They aren't allowed to take the lift up themselves and they aren't allowed to be downstairs on their own. Part of me is fearful, conditioned by them. Packrat does a great job insisting that I chill and let them be. It's not easy. It's easy to err on the side of bubble wrapping JED.

In our world, it's easy to stop them from going near anything dirty, smother them with sanitiser and regale them with cautionary tales of danger and accidents.

But even I know that it's hypocritical for me to behave that way. One day, on the way home with Evan, I stopped short and stared at, what was to him, a bush. He tugged me along but I wouldn't budge, staring at some leaves. Then I pointed out to him two leaves, stuck together and told him a spider lived inside. He didn't believe me till I gently pulled the leaves apart and there, cowering inside, was a very pretty black spider with silver stripes. He asked me how I knew that there was a spider there and when I explained to him that spiders made homes in leaves and I hunted them when I was young, he was suitably impressed and wanted to know how to do it.

The twins go out of the house on their own quite a bit and they know they have to look after Muffin if he goes along. They're usually somewhere down the corridor and downstairs playing. They know not to go anywhere near the road and they have made friends with other children in the block. They come home with treasures of swords, light sabres, spears (long sticks) and cannon balls (coconuts, don't ask.). They come back dirty, sweaty and grubby.

My plan for this holidays will be fewer paid workshops and camps and more 'free range' fun. After all, I have read too much about how the cleaner our kids are, the lower their immunity is to allergies
(I draw my line to not bathing every day though), how kids in the woods (wild) are going to be extinct soon and the need to disconnect to ignore all of it.

Some places that kids have been set free and where I've had to stop myself from actively cringing and stopping them from playing how they want to play.

1. The Green Corridor. Lots to explore. Wild chickens, squirrels, forget me nots and thick vegetation. Sticks, whacking the bushes and raising an army of insects. Only thing that is necessary, industrial strength insect repellant for the commando mosquitoes that attack in packs.

2. Botanic Gardens. 

JED know Botanics like the back of their hand. But they always find new things to do there. I'm just the driver. Recently, they spent a good hour at a spot they love, first picking out leaves and sticks from the water and stirring up the mulch from the bottom of the pond then sticking their hands into the water to try to lure fish into their hands with fish food. Evan's thrill of the day was when a fish swam into his hand and he badly wanted to close his hand around it but was worried he'd crush it. I wanted to stop them, every one of them. Dirty water. Hands in mouth. Salmonella. 

3. At home and at grandma's.

We just leave them be. Especially at Grandma's where there are flower beds, soil, drains and lots of pails set out to collect rain water. Sometimes, there's the sloshing of water, sometimes there's the sound of a shovel or their bare hands digging up the ground and sometimes there's just a lot of clomping around. Occasionally, they end up doing chores (without our asking) where they sweep up leaves in the driveway or wash the driveway or windows with collected rain water. They come in grubby and they come in wet.

I don't make many comments about it except to tell them to change out of their wet clothes, wash their feet and hands.

That's the one thing I can't quite bring myself not to do yet; to ignore the fact that they have dirty, gross hands. 

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Exam Season

The question I'm getting asked most often this week is "Do your kids have exams?" followed by "Are they/ you stressed?"

The short answer is no, they don't have exams. But the long answer is that the short answer is a load of crap. Any test that we are informed of at the beginning of the school year, has the children bringing homes files for revision and has a mock test before the actual one is an exam however they try to couch it. Mini-test, Bite Sized test, Continual Assessment, Holistic Assessment; all exams by another name.

Are we stressed? A little bit. The twins are resentful of the sheer amount of work they have had to do in order to revise and be prepared for the test. But a contract's a contract and they're very admirably sticking to it and living up to their part of the bargain.

There are a few things that have helped me and them keep sane. I know the pressure and expectation intensifies as they get older. But here are some things that have been doing the trick this time round.

1. The aforementioned contract: Now, knowing that Packrat is dead serious and knowing what they have to lose if they slack off, both Evan and Jordan have been remarkably on task. Of course, there is complaining and mistakes but the earnest attempt to actually complete their work is more visible. That helps because I don't need to come home to a pile of undone, messy work.

2. Planning: I sit with all their stuff and schedules open and look at what needs to be done and whether it is realistic in the given time frame. Then I work backwards from the number of days I have, the number of pages they can realistically complete and date the pages. I don't spring anything more than the stipulated pages that I had already dated. That way, they know that once they are done, they're done and they can play.

3. Have good support: I am thankful I have good support for the twins. They have a brilliant Chinese tutor that makes learning fun. She has squeaky hammers and tennis balls as part of her bag of tricks. I do the boring stuff with them like make sure they finish whatever revision papers she sets them and I try to go through as much of it as I am able to (ability here plays a huge role). I sat with the tutor before the test season and discussed how we were going to do it. I told her specifically not to have the twins sit there and do papers with her but for her to just focus on the bits they needed help with.  So she does just that and I pick up the slack on the bits that the twins need less help with.

On top of that, the twins are still at BlueTree. And once again, while their teacher is strict with them and expects quite a bit out of them, she revisits old topics as she moves ahead, making their understanding of multiplication and division, for instance, more malleable. She intersperses the table work with games and physical math. So the twins came home declaring their ability to use the measuring tape and regaling tales of the various things they subjected to the measuring tape. So, while she keeps their noses in the grind with homework, the twins are willing to do it. It also has got to do with the amount of scaffolding she gives them. Making them not fear Math, just like the Chinese tutor that makes Chinese fun for them is truly half the battle.

If I hadn't been blessed with having these teachers around to help then I think I would be spending much more time making and looking up resources so that I could replicate these things at home though I'm not sure what degree of success I would have with them.

4. Mastery: The biggest thing that is keeping me from losing it and taking it out on the twins is the constant reminder that these tests really aren't about the grades and an end in themselves. Whenever I feel the urge to let rip a roar of frustration, I remind myself (to varying degrees of success) that it's one test and it's not what matters. I'd figured out that a lot of the stress comes from my expectation of what is good for them. Having been brought up in the Singapore education system, it's easy to say that the best thing for them is to be in the top class and in the top school. I constantly have to fight that voice in my head. In the last few months, there is another voice; softer at times, not as confident but gaining more each day, that reminds me that if the twins are truly struggling, despite all efforts then perhaps the top class isn't where they ought to be and what I think ought to be re-looked. The semi-epiphany that I came to is that eventually I want JED, Muffin included, to be able to grasp the concepts and be able to use them. In one word, mastery.  So then, what we should be working  towards  isachieving that mastery and I've tried to shift my focus towards helping them attain that.

I'm not sure if I'll still be singing the same tune next year or this year end when the stakes are raised. After all, I am fighting a rising tide that is our ridiculous education system that epitomises academic inflation. But framing testing in this light does seem to have given me a little bit less to yell about.

All that being said, I really cannot wait till next week is over and everyone gets some much deserved rest and play time. Even as a teacher, I don't know if I looked forward to school break as much as I have in the last 18 months.

On that note, here's a little bit of a shout out, for those looking for something for the kids to do during the holidays. The twins saw this mailer from BlueTree- an Art-Science camp about the feathered friends and have asked to do it. It's two days at the beginning of the holidays and since I'm going to be at work, I figured why not. And the best thing about it is that after having fun at BlueTree, they're still going to have the rest of the day to play!

There's an early bird special going on, so catch it before it flies off. (Bad puns intended!)

BlueTree Education is at  271 Bukit Timah Road, Balmoral Plaza #02-15 Singapore 259708. You can call them at 91064702.

 The twins' Math class for the term are being sponsored by BlueTree Education. If anyone is keen to try their stuff, they offer free trial classes. I love what they do at English, Logic and Literacy (which sounds way fun!) and Current Affairs Club too but for now, the twins need more play time than classes.

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Sailing, sailing home

Evan didn't have much of a March break. He spent 4 out of 5 days of the break in Sembawang. Boondocks, Singapore style.

He was there sailing. After the fiasco with his CCA selection and not getting into the sailing CCA, we promised that he could try out sailing for himself during the holidays.

So we went the distance, literally, and signed him up for a kiddy sailing camp that the SAF Yacht Club offered.

We barely saw him those 4 days. He left after breakfast and came home for dinner and being inebriated by the sea air and sun, he would fall asleep soon after.

But he had fun.

Highlights for him:
1. Being thrown into the sea and made to swim 50 m to shore. He imagined sharks and swamp things lurking in the water.

2. Playing with sand while he waited for his friends to return.

3. Actually being on the water and sailing.

4. Learning all the different parts of the boat. The easiest way to piss him off was to go "the left side of the boat" or the "front of the boat". That would elicit an irritated hiss, "It's the PORT side, MOMMY!" or "It's the BOW of the BOAT!"

5. Being able to master the knots he was taught.

Things he didn't like but we thought built character:

1. Theory lessons about the weather, clouds, reading the current from the waves and knot tying.

2. Being hit one too many times on the head by the boom. He learned pretty quick that he had to duck.We console him and tell him at least he didn't get hit by the boom and end up in the water like another of his course mates.

3. Sailing around in circles, literally. He got annoyed at the wind getting in the way of the direction he was meant to head. (There's a life lesson in that somewhere)

4. Getting sea sick because the patrolling power boats rocked the bath tubs they were in.

5. Having to eat chicken every day for lunch or going hungry. (He has a strange aversion toward chicken right now)

By the end of it, he was browned to a crisp and definitely had more than the FDA recommended amount of Vitamin D.

 Can he sail? According to the coaches, he sailed decently and could get the boat going the direction they were supposed to head. Will he do the next course? We don't know yet. We're hedging because it's really far. He'd hedging because he worries about being sea sick (telling him that upchucking in the sea was ok and a great way to see fish up close and personal didn't seem to appeal much to him).

We'll revisit it before the next course begins.

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Mourning in private

It's been an emotionally exhausting week. Every where we turn, every time we're on any social media platform, we are inundated with the death of Lee Kuan Yew. I've read some, tried to ignore quite a lot and taken to heart quite a bit; his red box, his love for his wife, his house that looked suspiciously like my grandma's house a couple of blocks down from him and  despite how draconian his reputation was, he was also an empathetic man to those who needed his help.

A friend once wondered out loud why we mourned the deaths of people we don't really know. So the question of whether we were just caught up in the moment or felt true genuine grief was something I wrestled with.

I knew this day was coming. After all, we had all started to see how frail he had become. We all knew he was in intensive care. We all knew it was a matter of time. But even then, when we woke up to the news at the beginning of the week, for that moment, everything hung heavy in the air.

We didn't do a lot of what everyone did. We didn't go and join the queues at the Padang to pay our respects and we didn't get the car decals. I didn't change my picture on FB and I don't think I actually put up anything on FB this week.

But that didn't mean that we didn't think about it. That didn't mean we weren't in mourning. Much of our conversation revolved around the stuff we had read and our responses to it. Much of what we talked about to JED revolved around him as well.

Up to this point, he has been a very removed figure in their lives.

So I have tried my best to personalise him to them. I told them that Mama and Ah Gong (my parents) met him when they were students in England. I told them that when I was young, we would drive past his house at Oxley to get to my grandma's house and I would wave at the guards. I told them that Papa taught his grandsons. That has helped a little.

We took Muffin with us to watch the cortege travel from the Istana to Parliament House. He waited for an hour for the 30 second drive by. He wanted to see LKY and was upset that he only saw the box. For the rest of the day, he whined that he didn't see "Lee Tan Yew" (That's how he refers to LKY)

And as the gun carriage passed us by, we were struck by how the casket seemed too small to contain so great a man.

I'm not entirely sure how much of it he actually understood but he was able to tell the teachers where he had been and came home reporting that if we visited Lee Kuan Yew again, we had to bow. He has also woken up over the week asking for "Lee Tan Yew" so we know he's been on Muffin's mind.

The twins' learning curve has been steep; at school, they've been inundated with "Just In Time" lessons about this relative stranger. But they are at the age that they take it all in, seriously with absolutely no sense of cynicism. So, they've come home asking to go to his funeral (nope, we're not important enough to be invited), Parliament House (nope, the queues are too long and they've stopped letting people in) and the Istana (once again, nope, you're not important enough so the guards won't let you in.) Jordan has asked repeatedly for a history book. Not only does she want to read about LKY, she wants to read about other people in Singapore and about old Singapore. I have resolved to get her a secondary school history text book.

But because of that, we have wanted to give them some sort of closure. They've been displaying some distress at LKY's death though they have been unable to articulate why. It's pretty much their first exposure to death of someone albeit not close but nonetheless impactful to them. And because we weren't able to take them to Parliament House, this morning, we trouped the whole brood down to pay tribute at the Istana.

Each made a card and I brought it along with a stick of glue. Of course, when we got there and they saw the available cards, they wrote a couple more.

That helped them, especially Jordan who took the time to read the cards of others and admired the photo collages and drawings that people had left behind.  They asked us questions- why there was a drawing of LKY crying, what people from other countries were thanking him, why people left candles and flowers and gifts. They had to get it out of their system. This afternoon, they all seemed a little bit more settled.

As for us, the adults who were children when he was Prime Minister and became critical young adults as he stepped down from office, it's been a surreal week trying to reconcile our intellectual criticisms of him with the emotional reaction of seeing the Great Man of our childhood pass on. Yes, Singapore has lost a great someone, our own national myth. And no, there won't be anyone to fill those britches or that seat in Parliament. But at the same time, the distress I feel is more personal. This great man of god-like proportions was also a father and grandfather but his family has had to put their loss on the back burner as they conducted dignitaries through to pay their last respects. I know that if it were my own father, in a coffin, all I'd want to do is to cry for him, mourn his passing and keep his memory alive by talking about him to others. Feeling that, I ache for his family who are unable to go up to the coffin and touch it and talk to their dad or grand dad because there are millions of others waiting to walk by.

So our thoughts of condolences both wax lyrical about what he has done for Singapore as well as thanking his family for sharing their dad/grand dad with the rest of the world. As I go to bed tonight, as Singapore prepares for the funeral tomorrow, I feel very moved to pray. Not just to pray for the nation and the soul of the man who has passed but for the family that must now live without him.

And that pretty much sums it up.

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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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Grooming a young lady

National Day celebrations in school has always been the annual rummage through the drawer for something red and something white to wear.

Tangentially, we've come to the conclusion that Jordan's school is a very conservative and 'proper' mission girls school. Other mission girls schools allow their younger girls especially, to go to school in PE attire and spend the rest of the day in the same gear till dismissal on PE days. I had naturally assumed that Jordan would be allowed to do the same, only that she isn't. She is expected to change back into her uniform because 'proper' girls don't spend the day in PE clothes.

So it came as no surprise that she was given a long list of guidelines to follow for her National Day attire. And that drove me slightly batty.

1. No spaghetti straps.
2. No singlets (though when she told me, it came across as nothing sleeveless)
3. It had to be RED or WHITE with no other colour prints. 
4. Only stripe and dot derivatives were allowed.
5. Skirts/ shorts and dresses had to reach the knees.
6. If they didn't, leggings had to be worn. Leggings had to be white.
7. Shoes could not have heels or wheels. No slippers either.

As Jordan rattled off the list, I pictured her in something resembling and red and white burqa which I was very certain, her Christian conservative school, would not be able to find funny and I would very quickly get called into the principal's office for.

White and red were bad enough. The white shorts we ended up pulling out were too short. The leggings I paired with it had pale grey stripes on it. Same response to the possible skirt options. The white tops we had were all sleeveless and Jordan vetoed it.

Eventually, the option was to go nekkid or in uniform and while she was happy to go in uniform, I was determined get it right and if possible, use it as a statement of how ridiculous I found some of the guidelines to be.

So this was the eventual ensemble that we put together.

When she pointed out that her top was still sleeveless, I pointed out that the material on the end of the skirt more than made up for it. She also pointed out that her skirt was too long and it would be difficult to go to the washroom if it were wet.

I told her we couldn't always win and she just had to hike up her skirt like any other 7 year old would do. And that way, NO ONE could query her length of skirt.

The little girl who HAD to do it as the rules stipulated was having a lot of cognitive dissonance from a mother who insisted on showing her that there was middle ground.

Incidentally, I had also known that the sleeveless top wasn't going to get her into trouble because the aforementioned rules were Jordan's interpretation of it and not really what the teacher meant.

I think she and her school deserve each other.

I shall also enjoy and treasure these days where she loves the long swishy skirts and where "You mean you're going to go out wearing that?" is not about a battle of how short and revealing her clothes are but how hot she might be.

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Enforced play

I read a lot of articles that make me nervous. And it's got to do with school. But it doesn't have to do with them keeping up with school though I do worry about that some times. It's got to do with how  our system keeps them indoors and seated at the table for too much time. And how, that isn't a healthy thing. Sitting at the table is synonymous with doing work, doing work is synonymous with learning things and learning things is a good thing therefore being indoors and sitting at the table is a good thing.

But the contrary, according to the articles, seems to be true. How to keep the kids from fidgeting in class? Send them out to play. How to keep the kids focused in class? Send them out to play. How to keep them from becoming myopic? Send them out to play.

So even though I have been part of the system, I find it difficult to accept the long table hours that JED (more Jordan and Evan and in particular, Jordan) have to sit through daily. I get why some of it is necessary but it boggles the mind, especially in the face of all the research out there, why the majority of educators and policy makers out there seem to be missing the point. It cannot be that they don't read the same papers or articles that I do. I'll probably be accused of being myopic in some way; not being able to see the big picture and all that. And because of that, I worry for JED, that they aren't getting what they need.

So, for now, I try to provide them all the outdoor time they need by juggling their needs. I let them do silly things like form rainbow loom jump ropes to jump over, hang off exercise yard equipment (though it scares the living daylights of me) and take them from walks that extend beyond 1 km in the night. That is above and beyond PE and other organised play.

Recently, I made the call for Jordan not to complete her homework because it would have taken her all the way to dinner without a break. I sent her out to the playground downstairs to muck about. And for now, I can still do it because homework is relatively non-emergent and there were no other co-curricular committments. I realised later that night, with a sinking heart, how it was a battle I was definitely going to lose. It was more a matter of when I would finally have to cave rather than whether I would cave. And that weighed very heavily on me.

Packrat and I were recently discussing a future holiday we were planning to take and I pointed out that it would be dependent on whether the twins (who would be Primary 3 or 4 by then) had holiday classes at that point. His response was " they will not go to those classes then." Brave fighting words. I don't know if we'll be able to say that at that point. We'll try as hell though and hopefully the stuff I read starts sieving through the policy makers' and teachers filter bubbles as well.

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No Nap Made Worthwhile

Every morning, I have a simple wish; to be able to go back to bed once I'm done with the morning dropoffs. Unfortunately, there is Muffin who is awake by the time I get home. On occasion, he rings me before I get home to ask if we can go out. 

This morning was no different, except that with a cough and cold that has been ongoing for 10 days, more than ever, I had a heavy head and wanted to have a lie down even if I couldn't go back to sleep. But when your four year old calls to ask if we can go to Botanic Gardens and he tells you that he's already had breakfast and his bath, everything else becomes moot. I take a deep breath, pick him up instead of park the car and swing back out. 

But I didn't regret it. Neither did I drive into a pole but that's beside the point. 

Apart from the fact that Muffin is always full of glee and joy in the gardens, we managed to see something that I don't think was an everyday occurrence. 

Muffin's favourite activity at the gardens is to feed the fish at the Swan Lake. He's used to the gazillions of fish and terrapins that await his stale bits of bread. But this morning, there was something else in the water that made both of us stop short. It looked Loch Ness like. Upon closer inspection, it was a huge monitor lizard with its head above water periscoping around. That in itself was fascinating enough as it swam near the edge of the pond and occasionally dived under. Muffin was convinced it was a crocodile or an alligator.

Truth be told, I HATE LIZARDS. Big ones, small ones, all sorts. If I had been alone, I would have run screaming in the opposite direction. As it is, when this was circulating yesterday, I had told Packrat that if there was a monitor lizard hanging from our neighbour's or our gate, he could come find me at the Starbucks across the road after the AVA had come and picked it up and promised that it was gone and good.  But for Muffin's benefit, we had stuck around. 

The last dive the lizard made was a long one. Muffin kept scanning the water to locate it. When it did surface, it had something clamped in its jaws.That leads me to another thing I shudder and would not go out of my way to look at. DEAD HELPLESS ANIMALS. And the monitor lizard had caught itself a giant catfish and was trying to make land with it so that it could probably feast on it. 

Its valiant struggles attracted a crowd and Muffin while fascinated was also a little freaked out, dragged me to follow the lizard while it tried to find somewhere it could make land. It made it half way round the circumference of the lake before the cleaner decided it had eaten enough of the catfish and removed it explaining that if he didn't do that, the fish would rot and the water would be grossly murky and stink. 

Muffin has not stopped talking about the 'vomitor' lizard and the poor catfish. He told every stranger we met all the way back to the car. He told his teachers in school. He told the helper on his school bus. I saw him gesture and show her how big it was. And he is convinced it is evil. Even though I explained to him that the monitor lizard was just hungry and needed to eat, he wasn't very convinced that the monitor lizard was 'good'. The 4 yo's world is very black and white. 

So, I am glad that we went to the park. I am glad he got to see the monitor lizard in action close up. So close up, we took a video for his siblings, who would be most jealous, to watch. I am glad he got splashed by the lizard's tail (though he was suitably miffed because the water got into his eye) and I am glad I got a chance to explain to Muffin that what he was seeing was natural and pretty much the same as what he watches on National Geographic.

Do I still wish I could have taken a nap? Definitely. It's 1 pm now and that nap feels more necessary now. But do I regret not taking that nap? Nope. I  think even if we stalked the lake every day for the rest of the year, we may not get the same opportunity as we did this morning.

 

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An unexpected visitor

The twins have been in primary school for about a month. And it's become very clear to us that of the two, Evan is enjoying it much more than Jordan is. There is very little that appeals to Jordan in school. It isn't a good fit for her. Her teachers, too busy with 34 other children barely know who she is. Time outside in the play areas are less than 30 minutes on non-PE days and slightly less than 60 minutes on PE days. Her kinesthetic strengths are quashed by the need to sit for hours on end and the effort that she has to make to do so has exhausted her to the point that she doesn't really have any interest in doing much else.

The Singaporean parent in us wants to tell her that she's got to just suck it up and get used to it. It is after all the Singapore education system that she is going to find herself entrenched in for the next goodness knows how many years.

The educator in us is saddened. We see before our eyes what Ken Robinson was talking about when he spoke about schools killing creativity. Jordan, the one who drew at every chance she got, wasn't drawing anymore. And when she did draw, it didn't amount to very much. Her drawings seemed to reflect her mood; blah and uninterested. Then yesterday, we kept her home because she had a ear infection. She was the happiest child in pain I had ever seen. She had an entire day at home with nothing to do and no school to go to. And what she did was draw. Draw and draw and draw. She drew a mildly disturbing narrative of a pirate killing a bear for food but it was coming of her in oodles. She seemed free of the artistic constipation that seemed to have defined her for the last month. I spent most of last night picking up scraps of paper all over the house that she had drawn on.

The month has been us tip-toeing around her, trying to figure out what would work to bring back that spark in her eyes. It brought us joy to see her drawing with such fervour.  But at the same time, it saddened us. Being in school seems to have dulled her desire to create and we worry about the long term implications of that. Will her desire to draw and create really be beaten out of her by the rigor and demands of our one-size-fits-all school system? Will she end up being mediocre because much of what makes her Jordan doesn't fit into what is expected of a Singaporean student?

We try our best to give her time outside of school that she can just be Jordan. We have freed up their weekends and some of their weekday afternoons but it wasn't till the unexpected breather yesterday that we saw the Jordan of old surface. I want to hope that it really is just a period of adjustment for her and that she will be able to find that balance between boring school and fun everything else.

This morning, that chirpy and enthusiastic Jordan had retreated back into her shell once again; to be replaced by the surly, grumpy one who wasn't keen on going to school and slouching into the school gates with a storm cloud over her head.

Hopefully it blows over.

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JED M.D

One of my deepest guilty pleasure is to watch Grey's Anatomy. It is usually my Saturday night tv. I am saddest between the months May and September because the season ends, the actors go on hiatus and we wait with bated breath to find out if the series is renewed for another year.

So, it didn't surprise Packrat when I told him that I signed up the twins (Muffin is still too tiny) to be  Doctors For a Day at the new Mount Elizabeth at Novena. We didn't know what they were really in for except for the fact that they would be dressed in scrubs. That, was enough to sell the programme to me. Jordan and Evan in scrubs. Heh.

That said, Packrat claimed that they didn't actually look like little doctors but little food production line workers. True too.

They went through different rooms, with different apparatus; a general clinic (with thermometers and real stethoscopes), an emergency room (with defibrillators and bandages and oxygen masks) , the nursery (with baby dolls that needed to be changed, fed and put back to sleep, complete with the bassinets) and the operating theatre (where they got to perform lung surgery on a lung cancer patient). A lot of thought was put into it and the children got to touch and play with everything. There wasn't a 'see but don't touch' rule at all.

So what did Evan like? According to him,
1. 'Shocking' the patient- One child pretends to be the patient who coded and the rest take turns to shock his heart. And every time he is shocked, the adult 'doctor' goes "JUMP!" and the coded patient obediently follows, causing all the other little ones to giggle and clamour to make him 'jump'.

2. He liked that the cancer patient's name was "Mr Smoke-A-Lot" and that he could remove bits of cancer from his lungs. Once the cancer was removed however, Evan must have felt that this patient's cancer was Stage 5 or something because he put back all the little 'tumours' back on the lung. Poor Mr Smoke-A-Lot, he really didn't have a chance.

3. He liked sitting on the wheelchair though I did tell him that doctors didn't sit on the wheelchair though the patient's did.

What did Jordan like?
1. The nursery ward: She fed and rocked the baby, changed 'her' (she insisted it was a her) diaper and laid her back in the bassinet. When I told Jordan that both she and Evan could fit in one bassinet when they were born, she asked if they were as small as the baby doll. Yes darling, you were and look how big you've become!

2. She liked the stethoscope though she claimed she had no heart because for the life of her, she couldn't find her heart beat.

3. She was let in on a secret that no other 'little doctor' knew. She had gone up to ask one of the adult 'doctors' why Mr Smoke-A-Lot's face was covered so unglamourously (my words, not hers) and she was told that Mr Smoke-A-Lot didn't have any skin on his face and it would be too scary for the other 'little  doctors' to see.

What Packrat and I liked and observed:
1. We didn't need to be involved at all. And we could see how the children could speak up and ask questions without us being there. I even saw Evan ask for help because he didn't know how to put on the mask properly.

2. The adults in scrubs explained things at their level and never turn down an answer even if it didn't make sense. Evan had replied that smoking caused HFMD and his answer wasn't dismissed as wrong though he was told what were the real consequences of smoking too much.

3. It was well-paced and the children were engaged right till the end though that meant ridiculously drained children by the end of it.

4. The 'doctors' and 'scrub nurses' were actually medical students who volunteered for this. That scored points with me because this wasn't something anyone needed to do. The parents kidded that if they were real doctors, they would have been down to do this because they hadn't seen their quota number of patients that week. 

5. There really was a gender thing going on. All the girls gravitated towards the nursery and baby dolls and some of the boys (Evan et al) were more interested in the powder puffs (it did cross my mind why there were powder puffs in the nursery since powder has been found non-kosher to be used on children these days)

What we didn't quite like but it was not a big issue:
1. The assistants who did all the administrative stuff like print the certificates (they got certificates!) and present them to the children spoke a) terrible Singlish and b) could not pronounce the simplest of names much to the offence of many parents. 

But on the whole, as an initiative to raise awareness of the hospital, it worked really well. Whether or not it is going to make any of the children want to be doctors, I'm not sure. Evan very adamantly insisted that he still wanted to be a scientist; his reason being that the mask and scrubs were uncomfortable. Packrat informed him that scientist wore masks and scrubs sometimes as well, to which he heaved a sigh of resignation. Jordan on the other hand asked if doctors could still draw. I told her they could when they had time and she told me she would get back to me if she wanted to be a doctor.

Whatever it was, it was a one-of-a-kind experience for them and we were glad that they went.

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Home is where the family is

The coming of the long weekend had JED asking us what we were going to do. We didn't have any plans to go away so we asked them  what they wanted to do.

This was their list.
1. Have their cousin B sleepover.
2. Go swimming at Grandpa and Grandma's club (their club's pool has got slides and water features)
3. Visit and hang out with Uncle B
4. Sleep in our room.

We're half way through the long weekend and this is what we've done.

1. We went to Uncle B's and Evan and Muffin set the record in chicken rice eating. As I watched the two boys polish off 2 containers of chicken rice with full condiments, I was filled with both pride and fear. Before my eyes were just 2 of the many reasons why my children would soon bankrupt me.



2. JED went on their first night adventure trek. Uncle B lives near the beach and outfitted with torchlights, we walked by the river to the beach at dusk. It is filled with mosquitoes, wild chickens, bats, chameleons and strangely a Hansel and Gretel trail of oranges. They loved the walking in the dark with torch lights. Muffin pretended he was a firefly, holding his torchlight on his back.



3. On the way home, we pick up Cousin B and Jordan, Evan and Cousin B gossip all the way back about their favourite cartoon trading views about their favourite characters. For the first time, we realised that they weren't pre-schoolers anymore but little individuals with interests. They continue that conversation while I was trying to tuck them in and the two girls natter away till they fall asleep.

I see for the first time what Jordan is going to be as a teenager.

4. JED spend National Day morning hanging out with Cousin B, climbing door frames, playing hide and seek and eventually settling down to watch My Little Pony where they trade more information and facts with each other.



5. They do make it to Grandma and Grandpa's club with Cousin B in tow and end up with mid morning tan lines, drenching all the adults with water canons and finding different and new ways to go down the water slide and upping each other's attempt.

6. Then there was the National Day staple of watching of the parade. This year, we are informed by Evan that our President is Dr Tony Tan and the planes that are part of the fly past are F15's. We are however, misinformed by him that our National Anthem is One People, One Nation, One Singapore. When we pointed out the actual National Anthem to him as his favourite Chinooks flew the flag past the parade grounds, he claimed Majulah Singapura was just a National Day song and was extremely disappointed at not hearing his idea of the National Anthem. 

As expected, they are exhausted by the last two days as are both Packrat and I. But it has been a nice sort of tired, where we haven't done anything exceptional or expensive but just hung out and spent a great amount of time with those who are part of the family. And it being National Day and all, it seemed very much like the apt thing to do.

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