Primary One

Entering into the year of 2015.  This is a much anticipated year as my little girl is reaching another milestone in her life - Primary One.  Although Elyse has been working hard on her Mandarin, and I'm quite certain that she is not too bad in her writing, reading and spelling, yet she's still quite poor in her conversation/communication.

We sent her to school and stayed with her the very first day for a couple of hours.  Honestly, it has been years since I'm surrounded by pure Chinese-speaking crowd.  Although I may understand the teachers completely well, the mental adjustment was still needed in this case.  Needless to say, my daughter was totally blank.  However, she was able to follow the instruction pretty well.  That I am proud of her. I left even before the recess.  She told me she's ok.

The second day, we were advised to leave after the assembly.  Since then, we only sent her to the classroom in the morning and left as soon as the assembly started.  Elyse seems to be doing fine with all her homework and spelling.  In fact, the spelling is way too easy for her.  However, she couldn't understand very well whenever teacher announces something.  And she still have a hard time making friends.  Although she made a few attempts to find out which student could speak English in her class, it has not been very successful.

Elyse goes to the canteen alone during recess.  She even buy food from the canteen, her very favourite - french fries.  She likes English lesson (although the teacher teaches English in Mandarin), Computer  and Music class.

Two interesting incidents happened during the past 3 weeks:-

1.  After the first day of school, my girl was complaining to us the classroom is a bit warm the second half of the day.  Casually, Daddy asked Elyse why didn't the teacher turn on the air-cond since we paid extra $$ for it.  The second day of school, Elyse asked the teacher the same question that was posted by Daddy the day before.  The teacher switched it on for awhile.

2.  One morning, Daddy sent her to school.  Apparently my little girl forgot to do her Mathematic homework.  However, everything was written in Mandarin so Daddy was just as blur as her.  So what did that smart alec do?  Daddy look at a few students' book, compared the answers, and told Elyse what to write in her book.  Neither she nor Daddy knew what the question was.  Was that a lesson in cheating???


Seriously, I have been living in fear for the past couple of weeks.  Those months of crying when Elyse entered kindergarten is deeply engraved in my heart.  I fear for the worst to happen when she starts Primary One.  But thank God that my girl did not cry or lament on the fact that she's in a Chinese School.  In fact, she expressed her liking in the teachers as they are all very nice.  It is my continous prayer that Elyse could adapt quickly and to make friends.  Would you do so for my little girl?