So, over the weekend we attended Caitlin’s preschool to chat with her teachers on their appointed day of parent-teacher meeting, to see how she is doing in school.
In summary, Teacher Ng shared the following about Caitlin:
Motor skills lacking
When I first heard her say this, I was quite baffled. Caitlin’s been pretty good with her hands from an early age. Not that she was sculpting masterpieces or equivalent of Venuses, but she was already able to piece things together quite well.
What we found out was that Caitlin’s been rather lazy in finishing her colouring. In her workbooks she would just do maybe 10 quick strokes of her colour pencils and declare that she’s done. I found this strange cos I have always liked colouring myself, and before Caitlin started school, when I had the chance I’d jump on doing some colouring in her Pooh Bear books with her… then again I have always liked art myself. Maybe it’s because Daddee wasn’t around?? 
A funny note too, is that she is doing her colouring, she’d swap hands with the colouring pencil. Not that we have a problem with our kids being south pawed- I only asked what Teacher Ng thought, given her experience with kids. She said that it’s simply that Caitlin probably got tired with her right hand and swapped over. It is likely that she is right handed cos that’s the hand she starts off with, and also the same hand she writes with.
Their workbooks also include stickers, where they are required to match pictures, “fill in” the blanks, complete a situation, etc. With this, she excels. She pastes them quite accurately and in place. Nothing wrong with her actual motor skills then. Maybe it was just a polite way of saying Man, you guys have one very lazy little girl! Lemme try and guess who’s genetic trait this is!
Shapes and their recognitions
This was another strange one. In speaking to Teacher Ng she relayed that Caitlin has a problem with recognising shapes. We subsequently tested her at random afterwards and found that she had no problems citing triangles, square, circles. Rectangles- she had a problem pronouncing but otherwise could recognise it still. Perhaps it is shapes like heart-shape that she may not yet know, cos she would also already know the star-shape.
ABCs
She is quite appalling in this area, now that I personally had the chance over the weekend to coach her, too. They are only at letter “d” at school now and she already gets the first 4 alphabets mixed up. How is she going to start blogging?
Attention span
For her current pre-schooling we have already started her on an additional class of Mandarin. This is (only) a 30min class from noon. In speaking to Teacher Julie she was saying that Caitlin is sometimes caught daydreaming. We are wondering if it is because she is starting to tire by noon (since she starts at 8:15am) or that she is having trouble understanding Mandarin and as a result is spacing out. Okay okay, Daddee has to start speaking to her in Mandarin now, for her to start being conversant in it too.
Overall, I reckon she is doing okay, considering she had only started (late) schooling in March when the term began in January. In speaking to the teachers I personally think our little princess has come some way, compared to other kids. Okay okay I know they shouldn’t be compared- I am just doing so with kids who have been there longer.
I had also made a mental note to ask the teachers how Caitlin is doing with socialising. As expected, I had to suppress some small cringing. We were told that she sometimes still does not know how to share- she would want the toys that the other kids were already playing, and is not willingly giving up or sharing the toys in her possession. I guess we started her young life off on the wrong foot and neglected to show proper guidance in this regard.
Other than that, the feedback on her vocab and speech is pretty good. She is quite well mannered with the teachers, and quite proper with her personal hygiene. Again, we are glad that the only time she needed family help was when she had fever. Otherwise she’s been quite steady in being at school.
So for me personally, such feedback is quite reassuring that we are doing okay in parenting. Just need to pay attention to these other areas.
It was kinda funny finding myself on the other side- being the parent to meet the teachers. At the moment I cannot recall if there was any time in my personal history where my parents were summoned to my school… I was not a star performer nor a model student, but then again maybe I was just particularly clever in not getting caught!
It was also funny too that other fathers were checking Mummee out! No, I won’t tell her of this observation lest her head swells bigger than it usually gets!
Hmmm…I’d like to meet Mummee.
Focus: Hey, don’t stress out too much about the not-sharing bit. It’s understandable that Caitlin, having been the only child for all these while until recently has not quite grasp the concept of sharing with others that she is not familiar with. Sharing doesn’t come easy to adults even, if you actually think about how bad adults can get when it comes to hording!!
I Lol about the ABC bit, how you ended that part, and Micah caught me laughing at the computer and asked me show him what was so funny. Unfortunately he just can’t quite get it yet.
Anyway, I can just imagine the “hot seat” you were in and I don’t envy you. i totally understand about being defensive when it comes to your kid. I think I’d respond the same way too.
Moomykin’s last blog post..“My Favourite”
Hahaha…..you lef the mummy bit as the last remark, so now I can’t wait to see mummy too!
Where are you sending Caitlin? I guess diff kids grow at diff rates in diff areas! And it must be kinda a new experience hearing about your kid’s development from someone else! I mean these people spend only a few hours with them, what makes them think they know better right?
Ann’s last blog post..Change in character, change in activity
Thanks ladies! Hopefully Wife will get to meet the “other online women” in my life too!
I just want to add this from Mumsgather, who responded on her site instead of here. I am adding it here for my own easy reference later
(sic)
If you are looking for good sites to encourage your girl to learn her ABCs, you can start with Elmo’s Keyboard O-Rama and the Lets get ready to read page at Starfall.com. They are excellent. My kids love them. Here is a list of Online Educational Sites for Young Children which I recommended on my other blog. You might want to bookmark it for future use as the sites are really good.
(sic)
Thanks, Daddee, for the resources.
Will definitely check them out. Micah loves to do stuff on the computer and this will be more fruitful than just watching Youtube.
Moomykin’s last blog post..Mrs. Gadget-daddy
Oops I just realised that I haven’t answered Ann’s question…
In the interest of privacy and security, I will email you directly, Ann. But the main criteria of our selection have been mentioned in an earlier post. Worked out well too cos it’s so close to her grandparents, whom are already greatly helping us to look after the kids while Mummee and Daddee are at work.
Moomykin, I haven’t shown these to Caitlin yet. She hasn’t had much experience with computers (mainly cos my only computer is actually office-issued) so she wouldn’t yet know how to interact with some of the games on these sites. Having said that however, her preschool does have computer classes. Though I don’t know (forgot to ask) what they actually do in these classes, there itself she is learning to interact with them already, I suppose…
[...] I wish my work only involved colour pencils… Posted on May 6th, 2008 | by Daddee | If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!. Happy to report that Caitlin’s colouring (ie, her motor skills with the pencil) has been improving steadily. She has been getting at least one star-rating from her homework from her teacher; who, earlier this year, was telling us that her motor skills was lacking. [...]
[...] the way, we had another parent-teacher meeting last weekend, just at the end of the term. Caitlin’s progress has been very encouraging. Not [...]
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