Beth has taken an interest in flower arrangement.

I love how easy it is to pop outside and snip off cuttings of different coloured blooms - white, yellow, orange, fuschia, pink, purple - as the mood pleases.

A vase of fresh flowers really gives the dining table and bathroom that extra lift.

Bless the former owners who put so much effort into creating a beautiful garden for us to enjoy, and God, who made Spring and flowers.

Self-Initiative

Beth is playing through Repertoire Book 1 by herself.

Not because I asked.

Because she felt like it.

She's working out the notes herself, trying to jog her memory and making a heap of mistakes on the way.

But she's doing it herself. That's the point!

Term 3 School Holidays

What a leisurely Sun afternoon.

No inward groans at the thought of rising early, getting the kids to school or packing lunches.

Love the school holidays.

Do all parents go through the same trials?

Chatted with my favourite school mum yesterday. Her daughter is Beth's best friend.

A quick discussion about play dates (which we've been trying forever to set up) led to an opportunity for me to find out if I'm the only one with a fractious 8 yo.

Turns out I'm not alone.

My friend, whose daughter is confident, well-rounded, bright and sporty and well-liked by everyone, confided that just the other day, her daughter was screaming and carrying on in the car on the way to school.

She was unhappy at having been told off by her mum, and yelled out something like, "If you keep doing this, I'm never talking to you when I grow up!"

At which point my friend said enough's enough, and told her to exit the car and make her own way to school.

I was so relieved to hear this story and so glad my friend shared it.

I have so many days where I'm gnawed with guilt, thinking: I'm not a good-enough mum. Why do I lose my temper with my kids? Where have I gone wrong? What am I missing? Why are my children so badly behaved sometimes?

But maybe this is just life.

My kids are of me but not me. They can - and do - choose whether to do good or do evil.

My job is not to micromanage but to teach them to take responsibility for their own choices and actions, to understand that with every choice comes a consequence.

Also, there will be good days and bad days in every family.

When the bad days come, I must remember to be RESILIENT and STAY SANE through it all, without compromising my morals or saying or doing something I might later regret.

When the good days come, I must remember to GIVE THANKS and BE GRATEFUL. It could be worse.

Because this - good or bad day - too shall pass.

Morning Dramas

Beth has been pretty good the past few days, except for her usual can't-get-up-for-school nonsense.

She managed to practise the keyboard last night without my help. I was hovering in the bedroom, unsure of whether I should go out and see if she was practising correctly, yet half afraid to hear a shout for help from the lounge.

As someone said, when she is good, she is very very good. When she is bad, she is HORRID.

This morning, it was the little one's turn to act up.

"I want two ponytails!" ("We have no time for this!")

"I want to wear a dress to school!" ("No one wears a dress to daycare. You'll get it all dirty when you play outside. You're supposed to wear play clothes.")

No amount of reasoning works when you have an irate preschooler on your hands. You just have to deafen yourself to the screaming and the tears and find a way through the middle.

"Stop crying!" I yelled.

"I can't stop crying," she sobbed.

In the end, we compromised. She got her two ponytails and she gets to wear her dress tomorrow when she's home with Mummy. And we all got to school on time.

Oh the greys they give me...

A Nice Change

Beth is being very cooperative and teachable this afternoon.

She even managed to learn a new music piece by herself, working out the notes instead of having her usual meltdown.

I loved hearing her attempting the pedals for Swing and Poseidon's Throne.

What might she accomplish if she were this consistent every day!

Sleep Problems

Every family has its own issues.

Ours is that our girls refuse to sleep in their own room. The beautiful lavender bunk bed has become an expensive toy.

Every night, the four of us have to find new ways to configure ourselves so we can comfortably fit into our QS bed.

The 8 yo says she will if her sister will sleep with her.

The 3 yo says she needs to be with her family i.e. mummy and daddy.

Last night, hubby gave up and opted to be first under the covers.

When I moved to snuggle up to him, J objected.

"I want you to sleep HERE!" she screamed, pointing at the far corner of the bed. She wanted to be the one in the middle.

Big Sister came to the rescue.

"Mei mei, listen to me. You are not making sense. Daddy and Mummy are husband and wife and husbands and wives sleep together."

There was some other stuff she said which I've forgotten.

I was just so tickled by the irony of her giving her sis a solemn lecture while still insisting on sleeping with us.

To be fair, she did make an attempt to move to the mattress on the floor - "Ah! How nice! So much room!" - but it didn't last long and soon it was four-in-the-bed again.

The Terrible 8's

Maggie Alderson's article You Can't Take It As Read in last weekend's GW was HILARIOUS.

Our children are of us - but they are not us. They are entirely separate beings. My daughter is 8 years old now and I'm still trying to get a handle on this.

She might have been referencing Khalil Gibran:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

http://www.katsandogz.com/onchildren.html

After all the travails with Beth over recent months, I finally feel vindicated.

It's not my fault - it's cos she's 8!

The Reading Box Drama

May be on my way to first confrontation with Beth's teacher.

Apparently, for reading comprehension, the class rule is that all students have to work their way through all 10 books in the Sunset Reading Box before moving on to the next level, the Red Box.

Beth came home in tears yesterday because a classmate was allowed to skip to Red after achieving 3 18's (full marks), whereas she herself had notched up 4 18's but was required to work through all 10 books.

My tendency is to avoid conflict wherever possible. I can't do the 做坏人 routine.

I offered various possible explanations: the teacher felt the classmate had an advanced level of comprehension and it would be a waste of time to hold her back? The teacher felt Beth needed to work more at her comprehension?

Of course, I realized none of these explanations were particularly comforting to my competitive child. She likes being top of the heap and doesn't take kindly to suggestions that at Grade 2, it's only natural that her classmates will catch up to her and even surpass her in their academic achievement.

So I said if her teacher's explanation for her actions matters so much to her, I'll email her teacher to clarify.

In all fairness, Beth is rarely upset by what happens at school so this is new to me.

I mentioned it to hubby last night and right away, he said something forceful and aggressive which does not bear repeating; never knew he could be so protective of our kids. He agreed with Beth's perception of the unfairness of her treatment, so I've just sent off an email - couched as courteously and non-accusingly as possible - and we'll see what her teacher says.

Sg primary schools to be more PE and arts focussed

Pay more attention to PE, art and music in primary schools: PM Lee

AsiaOne | Sun Aug 29 2010

PM Lee spoke about giving a "tailored, holistic education" during the National Day Rally 2010.

PRIME Minister Lee Hsien Loong addressed education as one of the important priorities for all Singaporeans during his National Day Rally Speech this year.

Held at the University Cultural Centre at the National University of Singapore, PM Lee spoke about giving a "tailored, holistic education" and emphasised that more attention should be given to physical education (PE), art and music in primary schools, in order to "nurture the whole child".

More specialist teachers should be trained and recruited to improve teacher-student ratios for such subjects.

However, he also said that traditional strengths should be maintained in Maths and Science, and soft skills such as oral expression should be strengthened.

He also spoke about how schools in Singapore are equipped with modern facilities, each developed with its own specialties, such as arts, band, sports, robotics or uniformed groups.

PM Lee highlighted a few of the interesting programmes in schools, such as a wall mural in Haig Girls' in which sketches are conceptualised by students, Nusantara Orchestra from Siglap Secondary School and hip-hop dance integrated with physical education at Riverside Secondary.

In his speech, PM Lee also raised the issue of the Primary Six Leaving Examination (PSLE) as a major hurdle, and that the PSLE is not "meant to be a do-or-die test that determines the whole future of a child".

He advised that there will be many good choices in secondary school and that students should not be dismayed.

The Power of Singapore Math

Rachel Chan | my paper | Fri Sep 3 2010

School which used Singapore Maths went on to boost maths grades by about 30 per cent over five years.

AMAZED by how well maths coach Bill Jackson's eighth grade class responded to their colourful maths textbooks, with their pictures of tropical fruit and use of British English, the principal decided the whole school should use them.

Students at the elementary school in New Jersey, one of the first in the United States to use Singapore Mathematics, went on to boost their maths grades by about 30 per cent over five years, said Mr Jackson, 51, who now trains maths teachers in New York. He is in Singapore for a Singapore maths forum.

"The students were really engaged because they liked the concrete-pictorial-abstract approach, and especially the model method," he added, referring to the way Singapore's maths textbooks depicted maths concepts and taught students how to solve problem sums.

Mr Jackson started adapting the Singapore curriculum for his class in 1999, having been impressed after a friend sent him some sample pages from a Singaporean maths teachers' guide. That year was one of four in which Singapore's Primary 4 and Secondary 2 students (equivalent to fourth- and eighth-grade students in the US) topped international rankings for their achievements in Maths and Science.

Piqued by anecdotes like Mr Jackson's, the US-based Gabriella & Paul Rosenbaum Foundation conducted a study from 2003 to 2008 to establish just how well Singapore maths textbooks do in the US.

It found, for instance, that students taking Singapore maths classes in the North Middlesex Regional School District, the first district-wide implementation of the curriculum in the US, scored significantly higher than students from other districts on Massachusetts state exams.

It also found the curriculum was more effective the earlier students started using it.

Today, schools in about 110 districts in the US use Singapore Maths curriculum materials published by Marshall Cavendish. The latest is an elementary grade textbook called Math In Focus, which is the US edition of Singapore's My Pals Are Here! (Maths) series.

Schools in over 35 countries are also using Singapore maths textbooks.

"With the US mathematics textbooks, teachers try to figure out how to cover several pages in one lesson. By contrast, with the Singapore mathematics textbooks, teachers need to deepen their (students') understanding of mathematics, so they can spend several days on less than one page in order to help students understand the concepts deeply," said Dr Patsy Wang-Iverson, vice-president for special projects of the Gabriella & Paul Rosenbaum Foundation, who will today present key findings of the study at an inaugural global Singapore maths forum, held by Marshall Cavendish.

Ms Lee Fei Chen, deputy head of publishing at Marshall Cavendish Publishing Group, said the earliest importers of Singapore maths textbooks in the US were homeschoolers who wanted alternative programmes to the core US syllabus.

Subsequently, "a lot of (attention to Singapore's maths syllabus) was (paid ) by one or two committed teachers, convinced that this was a good programme, and they wanted to try it out in their schools", said Ms Lee.