When Joey started Kindergarten One last year, I felt the heat. While I personally believe that pre-Primary should be all about having fun with friends and gradually starting to learn new academic stuffs, the learning environment in Singapore does not really allow that. The moment she started K1, she was starting to have English & Chinese spelling every week, and lots of worksheets to complete both in school and at home, plus this ‘subtle’ expectation that she ought to know how to read.
Well, I really shouldn’t be feeling so jittery about this whole deal. She was only five years old, so even if she couldn’t read or recognise words, I didn’t think I should fault her for it. But at the annual half-yearly Meet-the-Parents session with Joey’s teacher, she would always tell me that Joey has difficulties reading, and that I should spend time to coach her in this area. Apparently, most of the other students in the class seemed to be able to read better. It made me very stressed.
And so, I started scouting around for enrichment classes that I could possibly send Joey for, to help her to master her phonics and read better. Many friends told me to try out ‘I Can Read’ programme and I was seriously considering to sign her up for the class even though it would set me back by a few hundred every month.
Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, before I could even register Joey for the classes, she started to read! I was a little surprised when she picked up a storybook, and started to read it out loud cover to cover. At first, I thought it was a book she’s been read to many times before and she was reciting the story out of memory. Then I realised that she actually could recognise most of the commonly-used and connecting words such as ‘I’, ‘We’, ‘He’, ‘She’, ‘They’, ‘are’, ‘in’, ‘out’, ‘to’, ‘wants’, etc. I took out books she had not read before and she could read out the whole book with my help for some of the more difficult words. I was thrilled! So was she! =D
Thankfully, Joey is a girl who loves to read. With her new-found skills in reading and recognising words, reading has become an enjoyable hobby for her. She no longer needs to guess what the story is about from the pictures, but can now read out most parts of the story herself. This new empowerment has been very enriching for her. And great for me too, because she would read stories to Baby Jayne too, and I can rest. Wahahaha!
A load off my mind for the time being (with no holes in my pocket yet!). I am starting to feel nervous about the second part of this year when hanyu pinyin will be introduced to her. Would she be confused with English spelling??!
I should learn to breathe in and out first.
